Saturday, June 27, 2009

Annemarie Niekerk has died


It is with great sadness that I have to announce that the RL person we knew as Annemarie Niekerk died after a long illness. Her SL family was there with her over these difficult months. She and her family are a great example of how loving a SL D/s family can be, Our thoughts are with Liz, Tas, Eve and Emma as they come to terms with this.

Her SL memorial is at

San

Cellar Gender Policy

Dear Members,

I have now spent a long time consulting a range of people. Many thanks to all those who sent me their opinions or talked to me about this issue. It is good to know that so many care about the Cellar and that it is a special place for them.

There was a huge variety amoung those that sent me their opinion. Amoung those I talked to personally, however, there was near unanimity. This is significant to me as those include many whose RL sex I know to be female. This is a difficult issue, and I am sure I will not satisfy some whatever I do. I am sorry if the policy here is not to your liking.

My general principles and inclinations are as follows.

The Cellar's female ethos is overridingly important. That is it is a welcoming, caring and helpful place - not a place for quick sex or instant liasons, but one where quality relationships are encouraged and celebrated. It is not only a place for lesbians, but for women of all kinds and orientations. Tolerance of all different kinds of sexuality, and approach/style of BDSM is essential, not to mention any kind of nationality or religion.

There are some vulnerable people who come to the Cellar due to its caring ethos. Some have bad experiences in for example from Gor, abusive D/s relationships, or RL experiences. I would like to be able to afford them some protection, but have come to the conclusion that the only way to do this in SL is via tha norms of quality behaviour in the Cellar and via the mutual support network that is available there. It can not ensure the RL characteristics of those as the Cellar and it should not give the misleading impression that it can.

The Cellar can not achieve its ends by "hard" means such as banning. This does not work in SL -- only persuasion and self-selection works. If someone is banned they can just come back as another av. However if they dont find that avs here are easy to exploit and that callous behaviour is disapproved of they are likely to go elsewhere. Thus the purpose of the policy and guidelines should be to encourage good behaviour as much as possible and discourage and abusive, uncaring or exploitative behaviour.

The Cellar is a feminist place in the senses that: it promotes the rights of women to be respected and free from abuse; it is for the mutual support of women; it promotes a female ethos. It is not, however, vindictive towards or against anyone, merely be a place where women can relax and simply socialise without threat or hassle.

Thus the new policy of the Cellar will be as follows (it is similar to the old one).

The Cellar is a place for females only. No male avs, sexuality or behaviour will be tolerated. We ask that any males who are simply pretending to be female should respect our wish to be female-only and go elsewhere. No penises or other displays of maleness are allowed.

It is recognised that there are people (TG/TS/TV) with female brains but RL male bodies. These are allowed by on some conditions: (1) they talk to me, San Mauvaise before spending substantial time at the Cellar (2) they reveal their RL status to others before any sexual intimacy or entering into a longer-term relationship with them (such as collaring) (3) they live as a female at the Cellar in all respects.

People at the Cellar will ultimately be judged on their behaviour. There will be no witch-hunt in the sense of trying to find out about the RL sex of av's and anyway this is contrary to the SL Terms of Service (which all have accepted by using SL). Avs who behave callously or abusively will not be welcome at the Cellar, even if they are RL female. TG avs who show by their behaviour that they act in accordance with the Cellar female ethos will be accepted on terms equal to any other av.

My decision on this is final. I am, as always, always willing to listen to the views of any member if respectfully put. However I will not now change this policy for at least 6 months.

San Mauvaise

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Search and the Cellar

Forgot to mention in last post.

I had already taken the Cellar out of search as an experiment. Most of the members who come to stay and fit in come as a result of recommendations by others and members Picks mentioning the Cellar. Many of those that arrive using search are looking for a quick thrill.

So if you search for the Cellar and it is not there - it is not (necessarily) due to the adult restrictions!

So, do send suitable people to the cellar, give them the LM to it (obtainable from the orange shiny ball in the entrance arch), do add the Cellar to your picks.

I will evaluate this experiment in a month or two. As always I welcome members' comments and suggestions!

San

Upcoming changes to SL and the adult restrictions

I do want to help ensure that under-18s do not come to the Cellar. However I am equally sure that the new regulations will make it more difficult for some of our legitimate members.

Firstly, we will not be in a hurry to introduce the restriction on entering the Cellar. Secondly I dont think we are a "public place promoting sexual activity" we are a club open to the public promoting quality D/s relationships that may or may not involve sexual aspects.

If you have used payment information (essentially a credit card) with the Lindens there should be no difference for you. If you dont, then you should be able to verify your age using the Linden system. Apparently this is completely seperate from SL and SL only recieve a code indicating a successful verification. However I have not yet tried this system.

The recent linden post on search and adult ratings is here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/technology/blog/2009/06/10/search-and-adult-content



If you want to test whether you are adult verified try going to:
Linden Account Verification Test, Oatmeal 15 (249, 242, 22)

If you are worried or want to discuss this do contact me in world.

San

Friday, June 5, 2009

End of the Road for Dari's Haus

As you can read from http://www.darishaus.com/site/ while the website is still there (will dissapear in a bit), Darian Caudwell is leaving SL and has put a large amount of the collars etc. he produced into the public domain.



There is a vase in the middle of the freebies at the cellar with all this stuff in (also at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Yurim/235/87/31 and http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aneslasleja/62/58/2). Please take these and give them to others.

The collar may need a bug fix once the dari haus website has gone. See below for details:

Keeping Your Collar running



Written by Darien Caldwell
Monday, 11 May 2009 18:42 originally (here)

The collar polls this website for diagnostic reasons. Now that Dari's Haus is closing, this website will also eventually close. Once this site is gone, the collar would produce an error on every TP, however, there is a simple fix to ensure your collar continues to work without this error.

Please Select Read More to be taken on a step-by-step guide.

  1. 1. Rez your collar on the ground.
  2. 2. Press Ctrl-Alt-T to make invisible things show as red highlight.

3. Then Right Click on the collar and choose Edit.

4. Check the box that says "Edit Linked Parts"

5. Select the Content Tab, then click on the lightly red ball that's usually near the center of the collar. This prim will be named "dari_node".

6. Inside is a script named "!".

7. Delete this script, by right clicking on it and choosing the delete option.

8. The collar will prompt to reload settings. Say 'done' to start the reload, and you're finished.



San

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Exhibition of wedding pictures (Moni and Michelle)


Moni Basevi and Michelle Grant's wedding pictures can be seen at Ratna's Artistic Lens gallery at the following LM

Mystical, mystical (42,  163, 27)

Walk through the main gallery and then down the stairs, where you find an exquisit set of lovely wedding photographs made by Ratna.

San