1. I tend to think that, were I in a similar position to Linden Labs, my attitude about feedback might mirror their own. Of course they want to know what their customers want. But the sarcastic, vitriolic, and sometimes downright cruel way that people present their "wants" in online forums is often counter-productive.

It isn't enough to say that a situation is frustrating. It has to be heart-rendingly frustrating, destroying your will to live, making you want to hunt the software coder down and murder them in their homes. Forums become like a sort of performance art. A handful of people shouting in an echo chamber sounding like the entire population of China. While 95% of the customers, the ones that for the most part really matter, may have a completely different and utterly unexpressed perspective.

I don't know whether shutting down the main discussion/bitch/gripe forums was the right thing to do. But I can understand why it was done. It also isn't clear to me at this point how effective the "new" ways of communicating with the Lindens will be. But I don't see that the old forums were very effective, either.

Posted at 1:35AM on Sep 20th 2006 by Tomas Hausdorff

2. It's hard for people to stay positive all the time, especially with all the grid problems we've been having lately. That said, I do love the potential of Second Life which is the reason why I'm around and will stay around for a loooong time!

Posted at 2:01AM on Sep 20th 2006 by Yo Brewster

3. Yeah, this is really wierd shit. They're a cult up there at the Lab.

It's like they believe they have this stable of rare, skittish race horses who are these young programmers of theirs, at least a third of whom or more are former residents, and that means they fit the geeky/Aspberger's/bipolar sort of profile that spells "over-sensitive" and "thin-skinned". And that such people need to be shielded in a biosphere to be able to perform adequately, and must be preserved from negativity.

Somehow, the collective force of all those whinnying race horses not liking negativity has forced the Lindens hand on this. I don't get it. They need to grow some thin skin.

More to the point, they just need to grow that necessary protective layer between the devs and the customers that all the other game companies have. But...they resist doing that because they don't want to turn into EA.com.

Think of everything you know about the 3-4 Lindens they have on the forums. Think of how ill-prepared and ill-suited they really are for the job of handling a rowdy bunch of negative adults bent on venting, replete with Aussie foul-mouths like Siggy who are proud they are Aussie foul-mouths, as I've recently learned from Fade Languish who prides herself on same. Think of how these Lindens, former residents to a man, are geered more to partying or playing or even working hard inworld and enjoying Second Life, and not having to work the real-life stuff of customer relations which is the sort of sucky job that not everybody is suited for nor should attempt.

Mitch Kapor was able to say in describing his own biography that he sucked at customer relations so he moved on to other things. They were unable to say that about the Lindens they chose to do the forums, so they acted like the dictator who says "I need a new people" when the people are saying "We need a new leader."

Most adults, including myself, would say, fine, let the poison posse be. We don't need a Stratics/ TSO experience. We just need to either a) be able to fight back as much or as little as we like without fear or favour or b) have the Linden net nannies at least play fair and send the Siggies and Mulches and the Ulrikas to the dog-house for calling people douchebags as much as anybody else.

And that's what a Jeska or a Torley can't do, being from the player base and assuming that all beta players can do no wrong.

Aside from that MMORPG dynamic you have the fact that the Lindens are trying to do this heavily complex and new revolutionary thing with the Metaverse stuff. So they feel they are special, and they want to be treated as special. Yet, most people tend to treat SL like a balky car or clunky washing machine that just isn't *working* right and helping them do their job. And the race horses get prancing and whinnying when they hear people bitch about the spin cycles lasting too long.

I would say that a bit of social engineering -- reverse social engineering? -- should be used on these thin-skinned Lindens. OK. They're feeling all precious and emo? Let them blog. Let them talk. Let them write 10 times a day -- oops the grid is down. Oops, um, we need to take the grid down to "fix something". Hey, BRB kids the grid will be up in JUST a second. OK, two hours went by on that but it's because we found a glitch on the glitch...that is, just let them *talk*. The record -- the record all by itself, without anyone bitching, moaning, or getting angry at them, will give them ALL the material they need to concentrate their minds a little more wonderfully: they need to change something about the way they do stuff.

I think this removal of the 90 days they had originally promised for the group forums, and the introduction of this lame, Stepford Wives kind of Residents Help Forum should prompt people just to walk out en masse. Of course, they can't be counted on to do that.

Posted at 5:18AM on Sep 20th 2006 by Prokofy Neva

4. I've gotta go with Prokofy on this. You don't like negativity in forums? Address the reasons for the negativity. This is part of the game, LL, and I don't mean SL-as-game. I'm talking about the game of social dynamics. It behooves you to listen to your userbase, as they are the ones who have made SL what it is. This isn't like throwing a scrap of meat to a dog and expecting eternal gratitude. These are human beings with legitimate concerns about the world they spend a great deal of time in... they do vote with their dollars, but credit can only be extended so far. I'm sure it won't take too many more horrendous outages and attacks before people begin to think "Why am I here if it's not fun or safe anymore?"

One way to manage the pressure building up from these events is to let the cover off the pot; give the residents a forum in which they can vent their steam before it causes them to explode. If you'll allow a rather diffuse anaogy, it's like the debate over DRM; if I've paid for something, shouldn't I have the right to use it as I will? Similarly, if I pay a monthly fee to be in SL, shouldn't I have a right to express my feelings about my experience? Taking communication away is never a good idea, as history shows. I've said it many times before and I hope not to have to say it too many more times: New users is fine, but keeping users is better. Keeping them means keeping them happy. This is not keeping them happy.

Posted at 12:54PM on Sep 20th 2006 by Akela Talamasca

5. I think the key point Philip was trying to make was echoed in "If we are running the forums ourselves..."

He's trying to encourage a resident-moderated (semi-official) forums site. This would free up some personnel, but more importantly, divorce LL from the financial and legal responsibilities associated with the venom and vitriol for which SL forums have become infamous. Frankly, I'm suprised they allowed the cauldron of drama to overflow this long.

Furthermore, this is all perfectly in line with Philip's stated goal of having SL be entirely user created and operated. "Police yourselves" and "ostracism is the most effective means of punishment" is severely hampered by the liability inspired "no names" policy as much as their cliquish nature.

If you're actually lamenting their loss - if you need some place to attack other players and LL - collaborate with others of the same mind set, and make your own forums. I'll wager that you'll even see Torley and other lindens post there.

Posted at 1:29PM on Sep 20th 2006 by someone else's alt

6. It's about cash flow, not depressing. Some people manage to have entire careers where they spoend all day deeling with caustic negative people. Why the hell do you think we lawyers charge so much.

Administering the forums is entirely doable, it just takes some serious commitment, and moderators that are not percieved to have thier own agenda. The forums could have been culled of much of the surious negatively, by simply deleting offensive posts and telliing people why the post was offensive and why people were banned.

The problem is that LL does not have the resources to do it, and it means enforcement is inconsistent. In consistent enforcement was a huge problem as that creates the sense that some people are favored, and others not.

Phillip Linden has said over and over that LL are not meant to be administrators, but innovators. This is a fair role for a compnay, they should concentrate on what they like to do.
But that does not take us away from the power vacuum created by thier abdication of administrative responsibility. Most every problem in SL could be solved with agressive enforcement and a larger customer service staff. Of course at the Rate SL is growing, the scalability is very difficult.

SL would also benefit hugely from seeting out a format for dispute resolution, and having the decrees and awards of the mediators enforceable with IP bans. But even having a mediator means having a mvery large body of standards to draw from.

Griefing is going to be a central issue in SL, but without transparency there is no deterrent. There are no cops, so griefing will flourish, particularly the sort of griefing that focuses on one person. A grid wide takedown gets you banned, but ongoing harassment of a resident is fine.

Frankly I think LL wants to spin off SL as concept to a company who will take up the reins of adminitration. LL wants an AOL type entity to come in and administer, retianing LL to act as the primary technology developer for the platform. Resident governemnt is an impractival pipe dream, as most residents don't want it.

Closing the forums likely has little to do with linden moral, and a lot to do with potential investor or buyer relations. Who would be interested in administering an online community where the residents gripe about things that need fixing.
SL is like a used car, you put on a coat of polish and redo the paint and interior and hope the buyers never look under the hood.

Posted at 3:06PM on Sep 20th 2006 by Jake Reitveld

7. You refer to a "big, stable, professional corporation." Most of these are not privately held. I think that shareholder accountability is missing here and so the comparision just isn't the same. Can you imagine the furor there'd be if the company were public. With all the trial and error going on, someones head would surely be rolling.

Posted at 1:54AM on Sep 23rd 2006 by Willard

8. >> Perhaps I look at Linden Lab as a big, stable, professional corporation that doesn't necessarily need a hug

They are not big. They are not very stable. They aren't that professional. Other than that, they are obsessed with giving each other hugs (most of them are out to get love points there)

LL is a case where the product (2L) is endlessly fascinating, but the company behind it needs a strong dose of adult leadership. Philip is obsessed with running some sort of utopian experiment, where most of staff sit in a large room, do 80% of any given project, and then move on to whatever else strikes their fancy.

It isn't working. The best thing that can happen right now is for a group of innovative ADULTS to gain control of the development process, to get rid of those who are more into the conference du jour than showing any real leadership, and to focus on what the users have been screaming about in the forums.

Someone else mentioned the word "cult". It is apt, and in this case, it does get in the way of what LL needs to be doing. Want to know of "cult" that does work? Steve Jobs & Apple. Philip is no Steve Jobs.

Posted at 5:06PM on Sep 21st 2006 by Spaniard Indaworks

9. How dare you refer to Fade as "Foul Mouthed" Prok.
Take any random sampling of ten of your posts, and ten of Fades, and we'll see whose foul mouthed out of the pair of you.
Oh, and btw, Fade is male, in SL and RL, if you want to be called by your preferred pronoun, extend the same courtesy to others.

Posted at 8:26AM on Oct 4th 2006 by Lucifer Baphomet

10. I've only just listened to the Townhall today - better late than never - and I was just gobsmacked to hear the drivel that Philip was coming out with regarding "not wanting to hear negative feedback all the time".

Someone hail this guy a cab and take him in the direction of "Real Street".

If you're in business and you want to please customers you have to take ALL the feedback, and IF it's all negative (a) TOUGH, (b) you obviously have a lot of things that you need to improve on, and (c) if you're management it is your role to absorb all the negativity, act on it, and ensure that your workforce remains motivated.

What you DON'T do is whine to your customers and say "please don't say nasty things to us, we don't like it".

Very worrying, very irritating, and extremeley extremely pathetic. You're managing a commercial business guys. Suggest you either grow up, or throw in the towel, otherwise once the "real world" companies start coming in they will eat you for breakfast.

Posted at 6:41PM on Oct 6th 2006 by Stan Pomeray