I just finished reading the Au article from First Monday about journalism in SL. I was particularly interested in his thoughts on SL as 'journalism by metaphor.' He says that there is a lot to learn from SL that reflects on RL. He uses the example of the epidemic in WoW, which is one I have heard before. This use of virtual worlds is one that is particularly fascinating to me; to what extent is SL an extension of RL? Do we expect the same patterns of behaviour and personality? Do we expect the rules of society to apply in the same ways? It's interesting.... as I sit here and type this, I'm thinking that it would be interesting to give standardized tests to avatars to see how the results compare to RL statistics. How would avatars do on personality inventories? IQ tests? Social pyshochological tests? It would be interesting to see how avatars compare to real people in this way..... to replicate classic psychological studies online. This would allow us to really know how reflective SL is of RL.....