The Destination guide of Second Life is something that people who have been in SL for a long time generally tend to ignore. However, when it comes to new people the Destination Guide is something that is used a lot by them to get to know new places and find new places to hang out.

The current Destination Guide no longer works.

Over two weeks, myself and about a dozen other UK residents were doing live streams or recording videos in places listed in that guide that, by being listed in the guide were deemed “friendly” or “newcomer friendly” by Linden Lab, the owner of Second Life, and therein lies the problem.

It has become obvious to everyone involved in making these videos for a project that was ultimately cancelled that Lindon Lab has not been actively checking the places they deem “safe” for new players.

To emphasise this, we have a few examples.

London Gateway

The “Gateways” were part of a collection of regions grouped by Linden Lab a little over half a decade ago into which new players were funnelled into. At the start, this was a good idea. Places like Caledon Oxbridge helped numerous new residents get to grips with Second Life. On the flip side of that coin though, other places have been abusing and misusing that power handed to them, none more so than London Gateway. As mentioned in this forum post ((link no longer works)) by Vic Mornigton, he was banned by London admins while he was streaming the London Gateway to some half a thousand people watching the stream as an introduction to Second Life. No reason and no contact was given to Vic Mornington before, during or after the ban.

On a visit to London about 2 hours after the ban, myself (Fenny) and Lizzy stood in the area above, which is the landing zone for about 50 minutes. We have seen numerous people teleport in, look to have a convo, and then just vanish. After contacting these people it turned out most of them were either ejected because of a group tag to a club or were outright banned for no reason. Worryingly for Linden Lab over 80 per cent of these people were new (under 2 days old) residents.

Throughout the 50-minute-long visit, there were Americans on voice discussing hard Class A illegal drugs on voice, discussing cannabis on voice and discussing sexual acts on voice, all with impunity and no sign of any of them being warned or banned by the admins.

As an update. We heard from Vic Mornington not too long ago that Linden Lab removed his post about London. According to Linden Lab it “Violated Community Guidelines”. These are the same “Guidelines” that state Islamophobia shouldn’t be allowed, but it is running rampant in SL clubs…speaking of Islamophobic clubs that Linden Lab have deemed as “safe”…

Muddys Music Cafe

Regular readers of this blog will be no strangers to Muddy‘s. It turns out the angels were unbanned from Muddys over the last month, and we didn’t even know. When Lia was making the “Clubs of Second Life” video based on the Destination Guide listings, Lizzy was able to teleport into Muddys, which meant the ban, for some reason, had been lifted.

So, all three of us decided to pop into Muddys to at least stream 5 to 10 minutes of the place as it is a club that’s deemed “safe” by Linden Lab the owner of Second Life and the club owner, Bridget Hamil. During the live stream, the club owner appeared and then subjected me and Liz to a torrent of abuse in local public chat…while the live stream was going on and watched by over 900 people.

Over the last 6 months as well, Muslim and Arab-based groups within Second Life have seen a higher prevalence of Islamophobia coming from a handful of clubs, but none more so than Muddys, with people who enter the club wearing basic accepted traditional Arab outfits asked to leave the club or face a ban. Muddys increasing Islamophobia is not doing Linden Lab any favours at all and Linden Lab seems to be doing nothing about it.

Once again, Muddy’s, like London, is deemed “safe” for all visitors.

Central Park Hangout

Another place is listed as Second Life “Newcomer Friendly”. I’ll keep this short, the torrent or general abuse happening on voice and in chat from what looked like three people arguing about Trump…well…we left cause we started getting a headache. Thankfully we were not streaming at the time.

So, are we saying that the Destination Guide should be scrapped? Well, all in all, we and a dozen other people for this cancelled livestream project visited the better part of 20 places listed in the Destination Guide. Over half of them were not streamable, either due to what was going on with other residents on voice or due to the owner(s) of the place being aggressive in local chat or randomly banning people.

The live streams were set up to showcase Second Life by using Linden Lab’s own Destination Guide as a showcase of what was on offer. It failed.

The current Destination Guide and the way it is running and policed is simply no longer fit for purpose for Second Life and needs to be wiped clean and reworked from the ground up, and, more importantly, it needs to be regularly checked and policed by Linden Lab from the standpoint of a normal avatar.

The fact that the people who watched the streams as they were going ahead had no idea that Second Life was still going, and the fact that Second Life was much more impressive graphically is a testament to how much the platform has improved. However, what turned into a trainwreck of live shows due to places that should not have been in that guide put off most people from signing up for an account.

Written by Fenella Baily
Edited by Liza Blackwood