Kitely Mentors Group Meeting, 27 Feb 2013: summary

[Graham Mills]

I'm not enthused by the opportunities for griefing and harassment in the Transfer Station. If I'm running a class I can arrange to be inworld so the TS is bypassed by students but that's not always going to be the case.

Even under the current system I'd prefer to have an opt-out so the world I'm using doesn't get promoted in the public worlds list before I can get the students into a group and close the region. I appreciate that's being paranoid but it's a concern as and when the grid gets busier.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Graham,

Transfer stations will be implemented in two stages: in stage A stations will be shared by anyone of a certain maturity rating who enters any world; In stage B stations will only be shared by people heading to the same world. Once we implement stage B a transfer station will only be shared by people who would have been in the same world at the same time anyway so no additional interactions would be created that wouldn't have existed without transfer stations.

People can't run scripts inside transfer stations. Nor can they enter them directly or hang out in them after the world they are transferring to is ready. People can't know you entered the Kitely grid because of these stations unless they happen to be in the same transfer station you are in at the same time you're in it. Even then, you're likely to be in it at the same time for only a few seconds to a couple of minutes at most. These are not hangout places where people can try to solicit you for things, people are brought in automatically and teleported away automatically after what will normally be less than 30 seconds. Unless you're both heading to the same world (in which case you'd have run into that person anyway) the overlap time when you and someone who has an agenda will both be in the same transfer station is probably less than what etiquette would dictate you even respond to a "hi".

If you're very worried about sharing spaces with strangers then you can log into an empty world you create. Empty worlds take less than 15 seconds to start so it's very likely you'll never see the insides of a transfer station that way, and even if you do it won't be enough time for people to even greet you (even if they happen to be in the same transfer station you pass through).

The inability to currently directly log into Kitely causes many usability problems and forces us to have an overly complex flowchart of possible things that need to be handled. This complexity is something we wish to eliminate. Making them optional will mean that we can't simplify the process as we'd still need to handle all the various pitfalls that can happen with the existing process if someone opts to not use transfer stations.

Please remember that once we reach stage B the transfer stations will not have anyone you wouldn't have run into immediately after you logged into a world.

I suggest you wait for transfer stations to be rolled out before you make up your mind about how useful they can or can't be for you. I think you'll find that your initial assessment may be a bit premature.

[Graham Mills]

If everyone followed the rules, I agree that there would be no problem. Alas, that is not always the case. What about the opt out? That would help.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Graham,

Scripts will be disabled for visitors to the transfer stations and teleports to/from them will only work when initiated by our system. People won't have an opportunity to not follow the rules. If we find that people try to abuse the transfer stations using various hacking tricks we'll disable their accounts, ban their IPs, etc. (like we would do for any denial of service TOS violation attempt).

Once the aforementioned stage B is implemented then only the people who are able to enter a world will be able to use that world's transfer station, which means that only people who have access to that world will be able to even theoretically grief you inside that world's transfer station. Note that our world access control system sits outside of OpenSim and isn't accessible from unauthorized IPs (i.e. from anywhere but from our control servers).

As explained in my previous post, the existing login procedure which can't assume that people always have an active world they can log into is complicated and has caused various new users problems when trying to login for the first time. Being able to assume the existence of transfer stations can help us avoid this procedure and code complexity and will make the login process more robust. Enabling people to disable this option will make it much harder for us to simplify the login process. It can be done in the future, but I think implementing stage B will resolve the issues that you fear may possible occur without us losing the benefits of having transfer stations to fall back on.

Please note that transfer stations also enable direct viewer login without first pressing an Enter World button and waiting for the world to start. This means that you'll be able to use Android/iOS viewers, such as the Lumiya Viewer, to login to Kitely without any additional steps.

[Graham Mills]

Personally I'd still like the opt-out on promotion. It's easy to think of situations when you would want to open a world temporarily, e.g. when a student misses the first class and therefore isn't in the access group.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Graham,

Once stage B is implemented only people entering your world will be able to pass through its transfer station (and even then only when the world is offline). In order for the student to be able to enter your closed world you'll need to open the world for access or include the student in an authorized group. If you make the world public than anyone who would try to teleport into that world, even if transfer stations didn't exist, would then be able to enter it. Once stage B is implemented you and your world's visitors won't meet anyone who doesn't try (and has the permission to) enter your world.

[Graham Mills]

Just to be clear, all I'm asking is that there be a flag on the management console that stops a world whizzing to the top of the public worlds listing because it has a class in it and I've had to open it temporarily. I think that's valuable in as much as it stops other Kitely users thinking this world is a popular spot and popping over for whatever reason to have a look. For a teacher, monitoring and dealing with such situations is a major distraction even if the visit is entirely benign. Equally I'd assume other users would be happy not to see temporarily open worlds in the public list.

I appreciate I can add students to groups via search but inworld tends to be easier/faster.

[Dot Macchi]

Would one way to cover this be to extend the "General", "Moderate", "Adult" world classification with a further level for "Education", say?

Or are such levels hard-wired in the viewers?

[Adagio Greenwood]

Hi Graham,

I think understand what you're asking for, it really has nothing to do with transfer stations but rather with having the ability to keep a world publicly accessible but not have it show in the Public Worlds page. Did I understand you correctly?

If you set up an inworld group via the viewer and set access to your world using that group (in the Access tab of a world's Manage World dialog) then you'll be able to easily add additional people to that group using your viewer. Any person you add to such a group should gain immediate access to that world.

[Ilan Tochner]

Hi Dot,

Maturity ratings are defined by OpenSim but we also wouldn't want to mix these values with values that represent what the world is being used for.