[Air-L] archiving virtual worlds for social science research

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

On Aug 29, 2007, at 9:44 AM, Scott MacLeod wrote:

> How would an organization like webarchive.org or someone
> archive all of Second Life, in the aggregate in real time, as well as
> the rest of the virtual worlds.

well in sl... you would have to just have the complete object  
database with all object properties, the scripts, etc.   the movement  
database and the conversation/avatar dbs.   from there you could  
likely recreate a live archive...

but really, do you really want to do that?  and what makes you think  
it should be done?

> Might one be able to create a record
> of all emerging virtual worlds from day 1?

nope, much is lost.

> Is there a way to retrieve
> an online SL conversation with actions from years ago?

no, not unless someone saved it in logs
> Some virtual
> world web-page centric archives exist, but do other kinds of archives
> exist?

i am unaware of them.  there are a few projects to preserve some  
thing... however.. i do not know of any large project.