Kitely Mentors Group Meeting, 20 Feb 2013: summary

[Marstol Nitely]

Attending the meeting:
Ada Radius
Dinero Outlander
Graham Mills
Ilan Tochner
Marstol Nitely
Suzy Silverweb
Virtualbelfast

CEO Ilan Tochner began the meeting by talking about the bug fixes and OpenSim enhancements Kitely rolled out a few days prior to the meeting. He wanted to know if anyone had anything to report about the fixes so far. Ada Radius reported posting to the forums about an asset missing bug. Ada said it was better, but not completely fixed.

Discussion about viewers (mostly Firestorm) followed. Ilan said, “It turns out Firestorm sends wearable changes in a very peculiar way which is prone to breaking.” He went on to explain that Kitely had added some code to try to overcome the problem, but that it wasn’t a 100% solution. In addition to Firestorm, mentors mentioned using the Phoenix, Dolphin, Imprudence, Angstrom and Lumiya viewers and a sometimes a combination of viewers for different uses.

Kitely also added code that helps overcome problems caused by switching between V1 and V2 viewers.

Ilan said they added code to the Kitely backend to support giving users of the SL version of Firestorm a notice to install the OpenSim version of Firestorm. He said they will enable this feature once the Firestorm team creates an OpenSim-compatible viewer version that doesn’t install in the same directory as the SL-only version.

Following is a link to viewer information for Kitely. It includes a special note for Firestorm users, an overview, how to configure a viewer to access Kitely, creating a desktop shortcut and which viewers are and are not supported by the Kitely Plugin. http://www.kitely.com/startviewers

Ilan asked any mentors who hadn’t seen the recent blog post about categories and assets to review it at: http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-new ... ategories/

He needs input on the Structures categories. He explained that the main problem with the Structures categories is that the current options aren’t immediately clear. They define building types based on one aspect that it can be used for, while making it hard to know where to place other aspects that may be relevant. For example: Amphitheater is listed in Education Structures. Amphitheaters could also be used for plays, concerts or other uses.

“In general, we’re trying to find a collection of options that is both exhaustive and clear in where everything should go, but not so specific that it requires a lot of options,” said Ilan. Kitely used a Wikipedia page as a reference for structure, but that page has too many options. They opted to use the midlevel from the Wikipedia category tree, but its definitions are ambiguous.

Each listing can only go it one category. It has not yet been decided if one item will support having multiple attribute values for the same attribute. One possibility is to define structure by what it can be used for, not what it is, but even that creates duplications. Ilan wanted more suggestions. Following is the list of Structure Categories listed on the blog:
Agricultural Buildings
Commercial Buildings
Educational Buildings
Government Buildings
Industrial Buildings
Military Buildings
Parking and Storage
Religious Buildings
Residential Buildings
Transit Stations
Other Structures

Ilan wanted to know if the list (above) would make more sense as attributes. He said that they might not have categories, but maybe adding another type of attribute would help with the multi-view perspective needed for structure. “Are they like body parts for which we have categories or are they like furniture use for which we have attributes?”

When asked what values are missing Stio (Virtualbelfast) suggested that Entertainment Facilities should be added for a category with attributes like cinemas, live music venues, nightclubs, etc.

Ada Radius shared some ideas on structure categories:
Theatre Structures
Clubs
Shopping Structures
Environments
Other Structures
With the following attributes:
Military, Urban, Rural, Religious, Space (to start with)

Environments would be for items like holodeck environments.

The group was split on which categories to use. It was decided to table the discussion in order to think about it and hopefully get some input on the forums.

NOTE from Ilan: Please provide feedback for this issue.

[Marstol Nitely]

Thank you for summarizing the meeting Marstol

[Dot Macchi]

Thanks for the summary, Marstol. They are a lot of work, but are appreciated.

One thought I had with regard to Structures: Would it make sense to have a simple top-level category split of Private/Public?

Architectural style might be a useful attribute. That would help those building a themed region, and might be more neutral for business/educational/governmental use than the current themes of steampunk, SciFi and the like.

[Ada Radius]

Thank you Marstol! That kind of multitasking awes me, it does.

I like that idea Dot, Public vs Private - that could direct buyers down a useful path. And for builders, the criteria for each is distinct also. Any public building can be made private, of course, just put it on a private sim. But not all structures built for private use work at all as public use spaces.

[Marstol Nitely]

That's an interesting idea Dot. It is sort of a size separator as well. Public spaces would generally be larger and be able to accommodate more than a few avatars. While most residential areas would fall within private which might not always be smaller, but probably more often than the public. I'm sure there are some things that might fall into both, but I'm not coming up with anything off the top of my head.

[Marstol Nitely]

The question is whether that type of two-value attribute is helpful enough to limit the selection to items of interest. If the split is about equal then there will still be a lot of items for people to browse through.

As an example of where a two-value attribute makes sense consider the Rideable attribute. A lot of people look for rideable creatures but most creatures can't be ridden. The existence of the Rideable attribute therefore helps people find the few rideable creature entries amongst the many non-rideable creature entries. If rideable creatures where as common as non-rideable ones then this attribute wouldn't significantly reduce the search space thus being of much lower value when searching.

[Marstol Nitely]

I believe Dot meant as more of a starting place for categories with subcategories underneath. I could be wrong though. When I go back to look at the two lists, there is a lot more public than private on the first list. Ada's list is good, but it seems more commercial with very little what I would consider private or residential. You'd think this would come easier after weeks of discussing categories and attributes, but sometimes it just makes my head hurt! It would be nice to hear from some more expert shoppers to know what they might look for?

[Dot Macchi]

Marstol is correct: I was thinking of this in terms of a category/subcategory structure.

Public:
Commercial (shops, malls, offices, ...)
Educational (schools, universities, science labs, ...)
Entertainment (cinemas, clubs, cafés, theatres, amphitheatres, ...)
Industrial (factories, warehouses, ...)
Medical (clinics, hospitals, ...)
Military
Religious (church, synagogue, mosque, temple, ...)
Utility/infrastructure (power stations, transit hubs, transport-related, ...)
Other

Private:
Residential structures, perhaps split into subcategories such as cottage, house, flat, mansion, castle, other

[Marstol Nitely]

I like that list Dot. Except I think religion should probably be "spiritual". I also wonder how the fantasy structures would fit in there? Would arts/museum structures go under educational? I think Utility could also be an attribute or subcategory for private. Poor Ilan's explained the category vs assets a hundred times since this started and I'm afraid I'm still scratching my head.

[Dot Macchi]

Museums would be Educational; art galleries might be Commercial or Educational.

I tend to see Religious as based on organisations (hence the need for buildings), and Spiritual as more an individual response. But that might be a personal viewpoint.

I agree that Utility might also be useful for Private; that subcategory could be used for watermills, windmills, etc. Another possible subcategory for Private might be Outbuildings, for non-residential sheds, barns, greenhouses, stables, rabbit hutches and the like.

Fantasy might appear within Public or Private -- I'd see that as a Theme or Architectural style rather than a Category.

By the way I'm still not convinced that many would search for building material when looking for a structure. Architectural style or Theme might be more useful -- building materials would tend to be implied by that.

Will there be a top level attribute of Mesh vs. Prim-based (including sculpties)?