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Nov 23, 2003, 6:11pm

After she finishes building her house you go there with a bot and save it.
So if she deletes it later you can restore it with your bot afterwards.

From: "the lady" <thelady263414 at hotmail.com>
Subject: Virtual Terrorism?
Date: Sunday, 23 November 2003 20:40

Many years ago when Alpha World was young, a hopeful young lady became a
citizen of our fine community. From the moment she entered, she faced harsh
words and criticism. She built a little house out from the view of everyone
yet tried to fit her way into the community. There were good times as well
as bad, but it seemed that for her, the bad times out weighed the good many
times fold. She decided to leave but before she did figured she would do so
without ever having left one trace of her existence in the place that had
lended to her hurt. When it was finally done, she left. After her pain and
grief and subsided a bit, she decided to come back to AW and visit some of
those who had been nice to her. Someone asked her how she could have been
so upset as to delete an entire house before she left. She had no answer.
After a short time, she again, tried to build a new home, this time vowing
to never delete again. However, when the desperation of her circumstances
grew unbearable, she again formed a pattern of deleting objects. After a
period of two years, she had deleted 6 major builds, but the devastation
went much further than that. Because she was so absorbed with her own pain
and hurt she did not realize that with each build she deleted, she broke
relationships but more than that - the bond of trust she had formed with
those in the community and closest to her. Each time she tried to mend
relationships, her reasoning was that she hadn't hurt anyone but herself
when she deleted her own objects. So, why should they be hurt? What should
it matter to her neighbors?

And then very harsh reality became her close friend, so close, she choked on
the truth.

Is this the definition of AW Virtual Terrorism?

The use or threatened use of force or deletion or altering of objects and or
property by a person or an organized group against people with the intention
of intimidating or coercing communities, a group of people, a world, a
universe, a galaxy, often for ideological or political reasons.

Was she a virtual terrorist? She didn't delete anything but her own builds?
She wasn't treated very well in many circumstances by those around her in
the community. Maybe it was her way of asking for help. Let me ask the
question in another way, if she built a house next door to you in real life,
then tore it down because of what someone in the neighborhood did or didn't
do to her, then came back to build it again, then burned it down, and
continued all over town that way, would you want to be her neighbor? Would
you want to give her any community privileges?

Another more important question, should we expect Activeworlds, Inc. to
negotiate with helping to give caretaker rights, discounted hosting services
to world owners and similar perks, gratuities, responsibilities to those who
delete, threaten to delete in the AW Universe?

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