Wagner James Au / New World Notes

"In a virtual world," SL/High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale recently asked on Twitter, "is showing tenure (age of account) bad or good?"

Which is an interesting thing to ask, and becomes even more intriguing when, after one follower wonders why Philip himself isn't answering his own question, he replies apologetically, "I don't want to dominate the conversation. Yes, designing for a new world."

So that's worth noting! I asked Philip for more details and will update this post if I get a reply. As for "new world" he may just be referring to the recent 3D audio-centric relaunch of High Fidelity. Or perhaps another world entirely? In any case, the thread is worth a read, here's some answers to his question:

In a virtual world, is showing tenure (age of account) bad or good?

— Philip Rosedale (@philiprosedale) September 28, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Reputation is definitely important and newbies are definitely more likely to behave badly as they have nothing to lose and are trying to find boundaries. I'm not sure whether you should gamify reputation or let it happen naturally. Gamification likely creates distortions. – fellow ex-Linden Jim Purbrick

I only recently started to care about account age a bit more since it’s become an unfortunate common indicator of fake accounts or accounts of those created after having a first account banned. So I guess it would depend on how badly the account system of the platform is abused. — Senior Graphics engineer Laura Reznikov

If you show it, it’ll be used to create status hierarchies, in-groups and out-groups. Maybe that’s a design goal that nudges users to aspire to achieve a tenure milestone (outcome: retention). But tenurocracies can also get out of hand and create a hostile environment for newbs. — Vlad Coho

Much more here!