The avatar is an identity unto itself - with a logic and history and social location in-world in secondlife. If you name the avatar - there are community formations that link the avatar to various social contexts - so naming the avatar might lead to tracing the avatar even "RL" - but even if it does not, secondlifers are very particular about their avatar privacy as well. at least this is my perception - I have been in secondlife in various modes since 2003 - and have encountered many people (including myself) who identify quite strongly with their avatars in-world - we have lives there (ridiculous as this may sound) and really just as much as I would not like my living room to be broadcast online (twittering is selective - so those of you who see me avidly twittering - dont for a moment think that's everything that's going on;-)) - I would not like everything I do on secondlife revealed. But revealing my avatar name in someone's research will allow for connections to be made. Having said that - there are many in-character bloggers and those can probably be used as published texts - again taking all the other cautionary notes that were said earlier into account. On Mar 7, 2008, at 7:09 PM, Gordon Carlson wrote:
A common method for protecting individuals is obscuring their identity via pseudonyms etc. Isn't this sort of the function an avatar plays? Assuming you do not divulge the real world identity, isn't anonymizing or otherwise protecting avatars sort of redundant?
I am all for leaning on the side of caution, but either avatars are already pseudonyms for people or the avatars aren't real and should not be covered by IRB. I can't see a case for them actually being human, though I am very much up for hearing one...
Thoughts?