A rare post from Philip Linden confirms recent reports we've been getting that randomly selected Second Life users have been being polled for user satisfaction. Residents are asked if their Second Life experience is getting better or worse, with an option to provide a line of feedback as to why.

Several people who were at my office hours yesterday were among those polled. 1angelcares Writer (whom we interviewed separately) had to change her answer:

"I had such a hard time filling it out that I changed my 'better' answer to 'worse'," she said. She's not alone. Several people have said that they had trouble getting it to respond well enough to fill it in properly.

It seems like a good move to sample broad user opinion this way, but I suspect the actual interface for doing so needs a little more work.

This is the 11th in a series of interviews that are being conducted with new residents, in order to gauge the effectiveness of the orientation process, and to gauge disparities between the preconceptions and the realities of Second Life. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I met up with 1angelcares at JJ's Coffee Bar in Shawangunk, where the fire light set off 1angelcares' skin perfectly. One of her missions in Second Life is to have her avatar look as much like herself as possible so as to increase the feeling of her own personal immersion in the fantasy of Second Life; she took digital photos of herself and did a side-by-side comparison so as to improve verismilitude. She feels that "In SL, looking like a 'real' person is being a rebellious non-conformist," and suggests the tag line, "SL, where the abnormal is normal."