Talk:Second Life

The official blog for Second Life stated they have rolled out a new logo^[1]. However I am not very familiar with updating company/business logos on Wikipedia, so if someone can point me in the right direction, or better yet doing it themselves(because I will probably mess it up somehow), that would be great! — Félix Wolf (talk | contribs) 01:06, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Some pieces of text in the article directly point to the user without any quotation. I know that is a bad practice in this sort of writing, so I would like to know what we could do about this. -A Fluffy Kitteh | FluffyKittehz User Profile Page 22:32, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Many recent articles about the Metaverse mention Second Life.

• IEEE Spectrum
• Slate
• BBC

This might be useful over at the mess at the Metaverse topic. John Nagle (talk) 06:54, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

The irony is that we Second Life oldtimers used 'Metaverse' and 'virtual world' as synonyms back in the mid-noughts. How naïve we were! — Gwyneth Llewelyn (talk) 23:26, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

The opening infobox refers specifically to the "Second Life Viewer". There are two infoboxes here, and one for the viewer and one for the server. Do we want to rename the opening template to "Second Life", or keep it as "Second Life Viewer", since the info in the infobox has info pertaining to the viewer portion of Second Life, or do we want to rename it to "Second Life", which people would probably just call the viewer anyway? I am fine with either, but we also need to make sure that Template:Latest stable software release/Second Life Viewer stays in sync with whatever the name field of the infobox is. This was done as part of this revision, however I reverted it for the time being. — Félix Wolf (talk | contribs) 20:23, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

An IP has twice tried to change the article to call Second Life a game in the first sentence, short description and elsewhere. But our first paragraph has sourced content which says

Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game.

They give their reasons, and so our calling this a game becomes editorialising (we, without sourcing, would be disagreeing with Linden Lab). We cannot do this. I reverted this once and it was put back and extended. I have reverted again per WP:ONUS which states:

The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.

Please discuss here to see if any consensus can be found to call this a game rather than a virtual world. My own view is that it is a virtual world that has both social and gaming potential, as well as modelling, education and other things. It seems to me to be clearly incorrect to call it simply a game. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:14, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I will also add, your find-and-replace of "virtual world" to "video game" throughout the text made nonsense of some sentences and changed the actual titles of books in the bibliography. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:19, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I have requested page protection because you are not interested in talking, you have tried this edit in the past, and because you are a banned user. See User talk:2406:3400:60D:B1E0:6C36:336A:BFD6:40F6. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:38, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

(Bias disclaimer: I am a active "resident" on Second Life)

I personally would call Second Life a virtual world, rather than a game. There is a whole philosophical argument to be made on "What classifies as a game?" and "Does a game need a objective to be a game?", but for the most part I believe gamers and virtual world residents would agree that a game needs a objective to be a game. Second Life has no objective, therefore is not a game. It can contain games inside of it, but I'd argue that would be like calling a game engine a game because it can be used to make games, even though game engines such as Unreal Engine are used in the movie industry, or how IRC chats can have games running in them, but it is still a social platform that someone has put a game inside. — Félix Wolf (talk | contribs) 16:11, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Second Life was designed as, and continues to be, a social networking platform. Thank you for reverting recent attempts to describe Second Life as a game, which it is not, and never has been. Oniscoid 15:53, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

It looks like the IP editor has returned to edit war, still with no discussion here. I'll request page protection again. Woodroar (talk) 15:55, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Honestly not quite sure what is wrong here. For some reason, it references Template:Latest stable software release/Second Life Viewer when getting the version info, but the [+] button links to Template:Latest stable software release/Second Life, which doesn't make any sense to me. The "Second Life Server" infobox works flawlessly, it's just the "Second Life Viewer" infobox that doesn't work. I've looked at the template parameters and couldn't see anything different with whats going on there, unless maybe it is pulling the article name for the [+] and the infobox name for the included template? I would highly appreciate if someone could sort this out, thanks! — Félix Wolf (talk | contribs) 16:06, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what the issue with the template approach was for the Second Life Viewer infobox, but I just made an update that has it pull from Wikidata sources for software versions instead. As I understand it, this is the preferred approach these days.

I know the infobox is technically titled "Second Life Viewer", but I felt it was appropriate to just use the Second Life Wikidata item, as most people likely perceive the viewer as the primary piece of software through which they understand Second Life as "Second Life". If someone wants to create Wikidata items for Second Life Viewer and Second Life Simulator, however, that could be a good improvement, though I feel that the primary Second Life Wikidata item still needs to track Second Life viewer version history for the sake of completeness. Perhaps there's some canonical, idiomatic Wikidata approach that can associate related software/items to a parent item, with some ability to mark one of the associated items as primary/preferred.

What do you think? Should we call this resolved and add a deprecation notice to Template:Latest stable software release/Second Life Viewer?

Toastercup (talk) 13:59, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

I suggest adding the movie Free Guy to the Popular Culture section. Unlike Ready Player One (suggested in a comment from back in 2018), Free Guy actually has as a plot element the fact the original programmer's goal was to create a virtual world that resembles the real-world Second Life (except with more advanced graphics). 136.159.160.127 (talk) 19:23, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Do you have a reliable, secondary source that calls out this resemblance? Woodroar (talk) 02:05, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

AFAIK, Linden Lab and Second Life are still going concerns, which makes this article extremely out of date. I see a single reference to an event in 2017 and one in 2019 but almost everything else refers to the period 2003 - 2010. Has hardly anything significant occurred in this virtual world for fifteen years?

Also, I have seen references to Linden Lab recently engaging in some sort of censorship in Second Life in reference to the Charlie Kirk murder. Perhaps we could mention this controversy? Pascalulu88 (talk) 12:42, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

If you spot any reliable, secondary sources but don't have time to add them to the article, feel free to drop them in the "refideas" template at the top of this Talk page. Hopefully someone will come along and add that content.
Unfortunately, it's been a long, long time since I've seen any reliable sources cover Second Life in any detail. All I see now are random passing mentions on social media. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Woodroar (talk) 16:55, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Pascalulu88 (talk) 03:53, 24 September 2025 (UTC)