Today in Second Life we had:

• 31,133 new signups bringing us to 10,551,423 signups total.
• A peak concurrency of 53,256 at 2:50PM, and a minimum concurrency of 27,078 at 1:30AM. Median concurrency for the day was 40,114.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.90 (lower is better).
• The Wonderland scandal in the mainstream media has been exposed to an estimated 50 or 60 million people.
• Linden Lab data feeds are still giving troubles.
• The Public JIRA has been giving troubles through the day.
• Four big-name designer brand islands are down right now 'for personal reasons'.
• An Evening of Beauty at Tete-a-pied.

For most of the last week, Linden Lab's public data/statistical feeds have been showing signs of being a bit ill. Starting on Wednesday evening, concurrency information started to fall ten or fifteen minutes behind actual data - an unusual occurrence. It's only in the last 24 hours that the system has started to catch up again.

At the same time, the figure for active users ceased updating entirely, with the most recent update to that figure being Wednesday night (24 October), at midnight SLT (US Pacific). Perhaps these subsystems are considered relatively minor, but Linden Lab have said themselves that they consider the accurate and ongoing publication of this data critical to their program of transparency.

The public JIRA has been spitting unusual (and some incomprehensible) Java error messages at people since this-morning. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Rob Lanphier, Linden Lab's open source liaison says that Linden Lab have been working on the problem, but do not know what the cause is.

It seems to be happening less, at present, but there's been no further word that the issue has been isolated and repaired.

Linden Lab has responded to our request for comment about the Wonderland scandal with a statement. The statement was issued just minutes ago by Lewis PR, Linden Lab's external public relations handler. Lewis PR provides public relations support for a wide variety of companies and organizations.

"At present, we have no firm evidence of wrongdoing from our own investigations into Wonderland nor from our Abuse Report channel."

Linden Lab therefore has not acted on reports about the site from Second Life users and from Second Life's child avatar community (we are told that reports have been being filed since July) because they have not been able to find any wrongdoing.

Linden Lab's full statement follows, after the jump.

News of the Wonderland scandal is spreading through the UK press. Channel 5 News led with the piece - it's all over Sky News. Some of the UK's largest tabloids are picking it up - outlets with millions of readers. UK business magazine, The Business, has just taken up the story.

"users feel the virtual community is unsafe and uncensored; they're also deterred by the huge amount of sexually orientated activity which takes place in the world."

The Business magazine slams Linden Lab for their "unshakeable libertarian positions", and says "This will be a huge set back for Linden Labs [sic]".

Expect to be reading and hearing a lot more about this in the news in the coming days.

Of course, this activity directly contravenes Linden Lab policy - so, why didn't they act days or weeks ago, when this activity was reported to them?

We have been promised an official comment or statement from Linden Lab "shortly". That was nine hours ago.

[Update: 10PM SLT (US Pacific) - Linden Lab has just issued a formal response]

You'll have to wait a few days to get your fashion fix from the quad. Canimal Zephyr, Ginny Talamasca, Elikapeka Tiramisu, and Starley Thereian recently announced that they have closed their islands for several days, citing personal reasons. The islands affected are Canimal, Dazzle, ETD Isle, and Celestial City.

The announcements all came in at the same time, so I hope that everything is okay. They have asked that you respect their decision. Come back to us soon, guys.

Continuing with SL's best Halloween-themed builds, here's far-and-away one of the creepiest I've ever enjoyed. The fine folk calling themselves ELITE (Electronic Lesbians In Their Element) have created quite an amazing build they call Dykemare on Elm Street.

Great builds are more than mere geometry; excellent textures are of far more value than prim contortions, and these are fantastic! A lot of weathering, cracks, grunge, and overall color choices make for a claustrophobic, decaying site that will have even the most stalwart heart quail in fear. For those brave enough to make the trip, there's also a photo contest, the winner of which will net 3,500L! Go check 'em out!

(Thanks, Kelly!)

I'm slightly late in getting this out, but there's still time for you to participate! Roslin Petion, of Tete a Pied, is hosting a special group-only event tonight, October 30th, at 7pm PDT/SLT. If you're a reader of the Second Style blog, you'll have noticed that Grazia Horwitz has been flaunting her custom skin from Tete for the last few days!

Now you can have your very own custom skin from Tete. Have you ever liked the eyes, cheeks, and lips on different skins? Tonight only, if you're wearing your group tag, you can mix and match components, or add freckles and beauty marks, for the low price of 1200L per skin.

On another awesome note, TaP marked down some of their skins for Halloween. Their Drow, Gothique, and Marie skins are 50% off until November 1st

Those you in the twitterverse, and possibly other places, might have just found out that, according to rumour, LL is no longer responding to emails. They will, hereafter only respond to Live Chat or the Web Support Pages.

There is a side comment to the effect that this may not be universal: certainly there are people who still give out their email addresses, it would be interesting to suggest that, for example, Catherine Linden, in charge of PR, can't be reached that way. A policy statement would be useful, but I would suggest not holding your breath for that. There are mailing lists that still request email replies too, so presumably they don't count in this.

We all know SL is growing, and growing faster than LL, appreciably faster. However, is moving to a position of fewer routes of communication a good thing? In light of the earlier news about sexual ageplay in SL, I wonder if anyone will answer our emailed requests for a statement?

Sloog, you may remember, is a HUD that lets you tag places and people and search for them both inworld and via the web. MERLOT is a tool for indexing, and a database of, online learning and educational materials. SaLamander is a system to tie them together, led by Wainbrave Bernal, aka Jonathon Richter of the University of Oregon, in partnership with Sloog.org and yours truly.

What does it all mean? Well, anyone is welcome to go and pick up a Salamander HUD from the Centre for Advanced Technology in Education and when you find somewhere educational in SL, click the button, follow the instructions and register the site. The UOregon people will sift feeds and transfer them over to the wiki, and we will gradually acquire a register of folksonomy tags for education in SL.

Sky News, previously covered here, has 'discovered' Wonderland, a sim in which Ageplay is condoned at best, and encouraged at worst. A representative from the Kid Avs community has made this statement: "It's really upset alot of us as we've known about this place and its reputation for weeks, and no matter how much we AR linden lab or IM the Lindens ourselves, they don't seem to want to close it down. Now it's our Kid Av community that's going to get it in the neck. Its like, what was the point of starting up all those policy reviews about broadly offensive behaviour, then not doing anything when a real problem sim appears? Its very frustrating, all our hard work ignored."

Now, let's understand a few things here. According to the article, "Wonderland is a virtual children's playground where paedophiles cruise and kids are solicited," said Jason Farrell, a Sky News reporter who's reportedly been researching this for some time. Well, on the surface of it, there's no actual proof, once again, that these child avatars are being driven by actual children. It's likelier that these are adults roleplaying as children. Regardless, this is exactly the sort of 'broadly offensive' behavior that Linden Lab is famously against, yet nothing has been done about Wonderland, despite repeated entreaties over a period of weeks from the community of residents who roleplay nonsexual children. Of course, the mainstream press pick this up and run with it, making Linden Lab look bad, the child avatar community look bad, and all of us in Second Life look bad by tenuous association.

We've contacted Linden Lab for a statement, but received no response by the time we went to press. If/when we get a reply, we'll follow up. The way Sky News is pushing this right now, you can bet that none of us have heard the last of this.

Back when I was a wee newblet (the second time around), Secondcast was the Second Life podcast to listen to. Since that time, almost two years ago, they've recorded 63 total episodes, of which only about 13 of them were in the last nine months. One fifth of the cast, Lordfly Digeridoo, recently pronounced Secondcast dead, after months of inactivity.

While I can't speak for them, I can speak as someone who has been on the show four or five times, with the latest being an episode that never aired in July. I heard the tone of the program change before me. What was once a fun project ended up taking a backseat to their own personal projects. Walker Spaight wrote a book, Johnny Ming and Torrid Midnight went to work for the Electric Sheep Company, Lordfly Digeridoo for Millions of Us, among others, and Cristiano Midnight busy as ever with SL Universe.

Instead of focusing on the fact that it's gone, though, I'd rather relate a happy memory I have from the show. After having been on a couple of times, Johnny asked me to make an episode into a Machinima. It turned into a total disaster. The rest of the cast was really bored and did not hide that fact. They goofed off when I needed screenshots, then got cranky before they were to watch all the Machinima.

Read on for the rest of the story ...

I got some responses to my call for Halloween-themed builds, so I'm going to give them some love as promised. First, we have a lovely graveyard dancefloor, which can be yours courtesy of Csteph Submariner and SLexchange. I've tested it, as you can see in the Gallery; it's definitely danceable! And don't weep for me, dancing all alone; as a werewolf, I'm obliged now and again to do the odd Monster Mash.

(Thanks, Chris!)

Yesterday in Second Life we:

• Spent US$1,234,000 at an exchange rate of L$268.9 to US$1
• Exchanged US$236,000 at an average of US$9,800.0 per hour.
• Market buys were US$165,000
• Market sales were US$70,000
• Limit-limit buys were US$1,300
• The busiest time was at 5pm when about US$18,000 was exchanged.
• The quietest time was 5am when about US$5,000 was exchanged.

Today in Second Life we had:

• 26,734 new signups bringing us to 10,519,814 signups total.
• A peak concurrency of 53,269 at 3:15PM, and a minimum concurrency of 25,644 at 3:05AM. Median concurrency for the day was 39,775.
• The Grid Stability Index for the day was 1.41 (lower is better).
• A short burst of problems with the login servers in the early morning.
• CNN has announced that they will be coming in to Second Life, gathering news submissions from residents.
• Linden Lab says oops, we may have double-billed land-use fees to some residents.
• Linden Lab releases the September quality-of-service metrics.