Month: February 2010

I’m United!

Posted on by Inara Pey

Well, while there may be more to LL’s acquisition of Enemy Unknown and the Avatars United website than meets the eye, I’ve opted to take the plunge and sign-up.

The major reason I did this is because as it stands, anyone can lay claim to an Avatar’s name; and while I’m not *quite* paranoid enough to believe anyone would set out to impersonate me, Inara Pey has become something of a part of me over the years, that I hated even the idea of the name going elsewhere.

Registration was straightforward enough – and not reliant on real life information. Once registered, AU presents an environment not too dissimilar in approach to Yahoo Connections: you get a profile page on which you can add personal details, a picture of yourself; you can set up your own photo albums, upload applets, etc. It also tracks your friendship connections with other avatars and also lists your most recent activities. This latter point is something I could actually do without, particularly as activities also get reported to the “Activity Feed” on the main page of the virtual world associated with your AU avatar name. This means that every photo you post, every group you join, is subject to immediate (if short-lived, given the frequency of actions) review by anyone viewing the AU Home Page for the virtual world linked to your avatar. Cyber-stalking lives on AU…

That the system includes blog and forum features is interesting – particularly as you can set-up your own. In the case of the latter, it raises interesting questions over moderation and freedom of speech. We’re all depressingly aware of LL’s heavy-handed approach to the former and curtailing of the latter, particularly where critiques of the company is concerned. One wonders how well critical, avatar-created forums within AU will fair, and whether there is any means for LL to eavesdrop forums.

While I’m not big on applets, there IS a useful tool for Second Life users. It comes in the form of a thing called BLIP. While primarily a means of enabling communications between your avatar in-world and your AU contacts / pages, BLIP also allows you to link your avatar in AU to your avatar in SL – thus verifying you are really you, rather than having someone else use your name.

Given the vast number of “Linden” names sprouting across AU, the use of BLIP to link AU avatars to in-world avatars should be mandatory for all LL staff joining AU to ensure imposters are kept to a minimum, especially when there are over 200 avatars registered with the “Linden” last name…

Leaving aside the fakers, AU certainly does seem to be popular among the Lindens. A lot of LL staff have signed up, from Mark Kingdon on down (could there have been a corporate directive ordering them to do so?). Does this mean AU will become one of the few remaining means we have of engaging with LL staff? Hard to tell. Those who have joined seem to fall into two camps: those only willing to Friend with other Lab employees (why? can’t they simply chat over lunch or around the water fountain…or is using AU all part of LL’s drive to reduce their carbon footprint *cough*); or those willing to Friend with others but only trade banalities.

That said, there is something about AU that is compulsive: I genuinely only signed to “protect” my avatar name, but….

….there are opportunities within AU, particularly for those of us running SL businesses, which I do find rather attractive:

  • It is possible to set-up an AU group for your business, and encourage people to join it. While linking of in-world and AU Groups isn’t possible, this might still be a awy for people to overcome group limitations *if* AU really proves popular with SL users. Add to that the slightly viral nature of AU within itself, as there is a chance you AU group might generate further interest in your business
  • Similarly, the forum offers the opportunity to post about your products and reach a potential “new” audience of users
  • The photo album means you can share your Second Life moments away from Flickr and other third party sites –  a useful factor if more go down the Facebook road…
  • The aforementioned blog could be attractive to those wishing to keep a similar diary-style blog of their thoughts and activities.

I’ve already started linking my AU bits more solidly with i-Squared Designs than I have with my “in-world” self, per se, and will likely continue down this road for a while.

Of course, as with everything else, AU does present some things that need changing (and in saying this, I’m pointedly ignoring the over-arching question of WHY LL should choose to pull this thing into their fold *now* – that’s a topic done to death elsewhere):

  • Coins: no. No, no no, no. They are intrusive and unnecessary. Get rid of them. That you have to PAY to do any decent customisation to your profile page is bad enough, but monetising the site (and, I assume, encouraging others to create bits for it) is the wrong way to go.
  • Navigation: could be a lot smoother in places. I’m tired of finding myself hitting HOME and winding up on someone else’s profile page or in some other territory I don’t recognise.
  • Shouting: can someone at least change this into something a little more friendly? I don’t shout at friends (unless I’m really, really upset) – I converse with them; I chat with them; I engage with them. I don’t wish to be seen shouting at all and sundry. Yes, I appreciate there is a private message function, but the concept of “shouting” comes across as very anti-social.

Right now, AU is quirky, potentially useful and not the cloaked monster some have portrayed it to be elsewhere. I have to admit, I’m curious as to the direction it will now take.

ADDENDUM

One thing I meant to say above. AU can be intrusive. Applications, whether installed or not, can spam you with unwanted e-mails. Further, installed applications can access information not otherwise seen in your profile (date of birth, gender, timezone, etc.). To avoid both, you must actively opt out of the associated settings (something that is a black mark against the site – giving out this info should be opt-in). To do so:

  1. Go to APPLICATIONS at the top of your profile.
  2. Click on MANAGE APPLICATIONS to display the Manage Applications  page.
  3. Click on GENERAL SETTINGS to expand this section.
  4. UNCHECK those options you don’t want intruding into your life beyond AU.
  5. Click on the blue SAVE SETTINGS button.

Hobnail Linden

Posted on by Inara Pey

We’ve all become depressingly familiar with LL’s continued push to drive all open discussion / debate that does not meet with their liking out of their flogs. Despite proclaiming that they are “listening”, and that time and agin, they are “consulting” with us, and that our views are “important”, their actions demonstrate precisely the opposite.

Take the recent outcry over the proposals to shut down the vBulletin forums in favour of the all-but-unavigable and utterly depressing Clearspace flog. We got lots of head nodding from LL, and lots of soft words, but at the end of the day, nothing changed.

When people challenge controversial posts from Lindens on matters that are of deep concern to residents, we get a telling commentary, thus: we’re a corporation that’s driven by decisions made in the executive suite and the board room. Those decisions are made with an ear to the ground of what current Residents want, and what we think we need to do in order to grow the population. We very certainly do listen to what’s said here and in the forums, and inworld, and in user surveys, and elsewhere. But the prevailing voices on this blog or in a particular forum thread don’t always determine what choices we make. (Wallace Linden, in a reply in “Will the Real You Please Stand Up“).

In other words, “Well, we’ll listen, but what we choose to hear and from whom is entirely up to us, and we reseve the right to cheery pick what we hear. And even then, if what we’re hearing doesn’t match what is being said in the board room and executive suite, tough.”

Now – once again – when Residents try to reasonably and openly express concerns to Linden Lab through the only medium they have left to them that Linden Management allegedly read, along comes Lexi Linden to stomp all over efforts with hobnail boots.

And even when an attempt is made to precis the concerns and post them to the “discussion blog”, where “lengthy discussions” are supposedly allowed….in comes Lexi to shut things down.

Whether or not the latter of these two threads came over as shirt-tempered; whether or not SL answers was the right place to post the original (and well-worded) letter is entirely beside the point. Why? Because both posts show the breadth and depth of frustration MANY long-term users of Second life are feeling as a result of actions and attitudes taken and demonstrated by Linden Lab.

As such, these questions, asked by people who are willing to part with (in LL’s own words) thousands of dollars of hard-earned, real world income each year deserve considered replies.

What they don’t need is someone stomping all over what is perceived as unwanted voices of dissent that spoil the look of the nice, glossy flogs.

If residents raising concerns are going to continue to be treated in this way, then let’s at least see Lexi Linden given a more appropriate name.

My vote is for Hobnail Linden, in honour of her oversized boots….

Addendum

It’s actually ironic in a way. Lexi linden trounces on three SL Answers threads that are critcal of LL as being “inappropriate” for that area of the “forums” (despite two of them being posted under SL Answers > General > Discussions (my emphasis). and she does so within 10 minutes of said thread being initiated.

Yet this thread, which demonstrates misunderstandings, potential intolerance among residents, etc., is allowed to roll on unabated…

Double standards?

Let’s talk – on our terms

Posted on by Inara Pey

Not too long ago Mark Wallace Linden burst upon the scene as the new “Conversation Manager” at Linden Lab. At the time, I found the whole idea somewhat of a mockery, and an attempt to further co-opt the forums and chatter in the “official” SL blogsphere – after all, Wallace loudly proclaimed that his primary role was not so much about encouraging conversations with existing users is it would be about “reaching the people LL want to reach”.

Even if one is prepared to give Wallace the benefit of the doubt, and try to look upon his appointment in a positive light and as a means of trying to bridge the credibility gap between the Lab and its existing user base, it has to be said that the guy got off to an alarmingly bad start in his first attempt to start a conversation. Not only did this ill-conceived, poorly worded and badly defended post cause a storm of controversy, as witnessed by the comments that follow it – it also turns out that Wallace himself was shooting pretty wide of the mark in attempting to pave the way for Mark Kingdon to make his announcement on LL’s latest acquisition.

Yes….once again LL, through accident, design or the sheer ineptitude of a “front line” member of staff (Wallace), royally put its foot in it.

Now it seem the “conversation” is to be further strangled at source, with the announcement today that the old vbulletin forums are to be done away with next week.

That LL have long been intending to shut down the old – and highly popular – forums is no secret. The “plans” have been out there for some time.  What is upsetting is that – despite repeated pleas from a vast number of residents  – LL are going ahead and scrapping vbulletin in favour of the cumbersome, nigh-on unmanageable (from a user perspective) Clearspace toolset which has been a blight on “conversations” and “communications” since its ill-considered introduction last year. What is equally startling is the claim by Linden Lab that, For years, vBulletin has stymied our attempts to maintain the forums as well as they should be maintained, and for this we do apologize. But our resources have been limited, and we chose to focus them on the platform instead — a choice we think you’ll agree was the right one.

Excuse me? vbulletin….one of the most popular, easy-to-use and most widely accepted forum software toolsets has stymied Linden Lab in trying to maintain a forum environment?!

Are we really to believe that vbulletin – something that in used around the world by large corporations down to hobbyist clubs running their websites through small-scale subscriptions, a software toolset that is provided as the ideal low-maintenance forum system by ISPs the world over forces Linden Lab to choose between maintaining its forum OR maintaining the grid? My God, are things really that desperate at LL?!

Or is it more the case that vbulletin is not to LL’s liking because it does not provide them with the level of control they wish to exert over “conversations” among residents? Does LL view vbulletin’s relatively open format as one that allows people too much in the way of choice in the communications they choose to start and the debates they opt to engage in?

Certainly, the reasons for making this long-protested move seem to back this latter view up a lot more than any idea that vbulletin is simply too unwieldy. Under “More focus”, for example, we read: As part of the transition, we’re removing some redundant forums and streamlining others, so you can more easily find the information you’re looking for. We want the forums to be about conversations with a purpose; to that end, we’re paring down to some of the most focused forums. In other words, we’ll determine what it is that can be viewed, and we’ll determine which “conversations” are “valuable” enough to be transitioned and continued under our control.

We’ve already seen that under the “new” system, Resident Answers – which can admittedly be controversial at times, but which has a rich history of meaningful content and debate  – has been usurped by the sanitised “SL Answers” in which any debate or discussion is almost instantly nixed by LL foot soldiers.

Even the assurances that the old forums will still be “available” as they are to be indexed and “archived” after the switch-over seem to ring hollow – and things don’t get much better in Yoz Linden’s follow-up discussion thread.

Here, God help us, the Lab’s frontmen latch on to the idea, put forward by one BlueGin Yifu that LL should consider limiting the number of individual comments a person can make each day under the pretext it would avoid self-appointed moderators of columns and – worse, that LL should consider Limiting the length of individual responses. indeed, Lexi Linden is so enthusiastic about these points that she invites BlueGin Yifu to open a JIRA on these “great moves”!

Yup…limit people’s ability to post and limit their capacity to give reasoned responses or raise issues worthy of wider debate. That is “really” going to get conversations going, isn’t it?

But then. Lexi has hardly been about the more community-building aspects of conversation and debate, given she is the Linden that generally leaps all over for blogrum in hobnail boots, summarily closing threads and issuing statement that threads X Y or Z are unsuitable mediums for “debate”…..

Doubtless there are valid reasons for the changeover – LL seem to be able to throw most of the maintenance issues over the fence at Jive / Clearspace, rather than having to tinker with things themselves – even though, as mentioned, vbulletin shouldn’t be THAT labour intensive by comparison. There may well be licencing issues that win out in Clearspace’s favour; I’m certainly no expert here.

Doubtless, to, the new system will – indeed already has – gain its own horde of fans and users. Nevertheless, the underlying feeling that we’re losing more than we’re gaining by this move is one that cannot be easily shaken, nor to can the feeling that a great wealth of debate and discussion is about to be lost – much as the wealth of interaction within the XStreet forums all but vanished when these were replaced by Pink Linden’s narrow-minded “commerce forum”.