In commenting on my last post about the Teen merger, Ayesha Askham raises a point that has been touched upon before – and not only by me; and that is LL’s seeming inability to think things through.
While I still stand by my view that the merger will not result in the heavens crashing down around our collective ears, how the matter has been handled is, as Ayesha rightly points out symptomatic of an ongoing problem we, as users, face every time a policy change is announced.
That problem is this: once LL has determined a course of action, they resolutely set their faces towards that goal in spite of whatever reasoned arguments are put forward, or what later transpires to demonstrate that maybe we, the residents, do actually have a better grasp of the complexities of SL than those (currently) employed by Linden Research itself.
In this respect – and as many, many, many people have elsewhere pointed out – HAD Linden Lab sat down and listened to people back during the time of the Great Adult Policy Change farrago, and genuinely considered the overall benefits of defining a PG continent then the merger of TSL and the Main Grid would now be a non-issue.
But this doesn’t mean that we, as residents, are actually free of a portion of the blame here. The painful fact is that over the years, we’ve become our own worst enemy in trying to deal with LL. So often, we react to almost anything LL has to say as if they were the Axis of Evil actively and maliciously working to bring about the collapse of SL, and thus to be despised and vilified at every turn.
And if you don’t accept this, let me ask you: just how many times do you react to any news at all that may impact your enjoyment of SL with a roll of the eyes and a bitingly sarcastic swipe at LL? Even as recently as this week, and the news of the Apez collapse, I personally heard several people react with sentiments amounting to, “Bloody LL, killing the competition!” (or words to that effect) when LL had nothing whatsoever to do with the Apez crisis.
And herein lies my point: truth be told, we share a portion of the blame for LL not listening. I say this not to excuse or legitimise their cock-ups; I’ll let my record for calling them out speak for itself. What I am saying is that even when we do offer logical, sensible, achievable and workable solutions to perceived issues / problems (as in the aforementioned case of establishing a PG/G continent), we do so with such force of anger / negativity we actually encourage LL to ignore us. The result is that – as Ayesha points out – LL and SL constantly seem to lurch from crisis to crisis. And even when they’re not to blame for problems – they still get a pasting.
And so the disconnect between company and users persists, and even those who once made an effort (however kackhanded) to involve themselves with users end up retreating into their own little ivory towers as they scale the dizzying heights of LL management, and so perpetuate the problems and the angst (Good old Jack).
Some saw the “return” of Philip Rosedale as CEO as a sign that this circle would somehow be broken (as it was myopically and wrongly seen as being “Kingdon’s fault”). However, the fact is that while he may still appear to be the Cool Dude of SL, Rosedale himself has a lot to answer for when it comes to LL’s approach to its product and its users. And – whatever portion of the blame we ourselves should be prepared to hold up a collective hand to and say, “mea culpa!” – it cannot be denied that the circle can only be taken by someone at LL being prepared to “screw their courage to the sticking place” and make a decision to actively engage with users in the knowledge that in doing so (to mix my Shakespeare very thoroughly), they’ll have to risk the “slings and arrows or outrageous fortune” (or at least, outraged users) and by debating them, soothe them (so to speak).
But that isn’t going to happen until LL get an CEO who can actually break the mould within the company – and that is going to be hard.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 