Tag: Communications and LL

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”.

Conversational Identities….

Posted on by Inara Pey

(Mark) Wallace Linden fires off his first topic for “conversation” this week, and it is a doozy on so many levels.  Will the Real You Please Stand Up brings what several Lindens have been mooting for some time  – the linking of real life information potentially directly to your Second Life avatar(s) identity/ies – in to the “public” domain of the flogrum.

What interests me about the post – other than the intense and understandable reaction from users to Wallace’s words – is the lengths to which Linden Research is prepared to go to in order to justify their decision to start putting in place “open” links between people’s RL and SL identities and the fact that the decision has clearly already been made.

As such, Wallace Linden has not so much initiated a conversation around the idea of bringing in the tools to make this possible, he’s more-or-less making a pronouncement LL will be actively undertaking to implement the tools in the coming months.

Let’s start with the former first: the degree of negative feedback from the majority of “residents” – the likes of you and me, whom I’ve opted to start calling “casual users”, on account of the fact that by-and-large we use SL purely as a form of “entertainment” (even if we run in-world “businesses”) as opposed to the “emerging market” of so-called “corporate users” LL seemed determined to try and find woo – is on record. Many are concerned over Facebook’s recent policy changes which have effectively made revealing much of your personal information filed with the company an opt out process, rather than, as it should be, an opt in (or so I understand, having never, ever gotten involved in Facebook in my life).

Yet, rather than confronting these concerns head-on and using them as a means of opening a two-way dialogue, Wallace instead opts to go back further in time – using Friendster’s 2003 approach to “false” identities to somehow further justify the need to link rl and SL identities more closely.

Indeed, were I a total cynic, I might even conclude that there is a veiled threat hidden in Wallace’s choice of example as an opening gambit.

From this dubious outset, Wallace goes on to paint a rosy picture of online interconnectedness that is  – in essence – fair and true. For, as he states, The thing not to miss here — and it bears stating despite how obvious it sounds — is what all these online “identities” have in common. At the center of them all, the hub that ties all these personae together, is the very real, non-virtual, analog and offline “you.” Whether the connections are public or not, your Second Life avatar, your World of Warcraft toon, your Facebook profile, your LinkedIn employment history — all of these and more are just different aspects of a single entity: the person reading these words. They are all already connected to each other, via you.

Yes, yes, absolutely, Wallace. But here is something else not to miss – and it bears stating despite how obvious it sounds – is what, for the majority of us, these online “identities” have in difference to one another. Whether the connections are our Second Life avatar, our World of Warcraft toon, our Facebook profile, our LinkedIn employment history – they are all what we have chosen to reveal of ourselves through these differing media to meet different aspirations, wants and needs. They are all already connected to each other via our real-world self. And as such, we don’t need you, or anyone else at Linden Research trying to engineer / persuade / cajole / drive us into greater degrees of self-revelation than we’ve already opted to make.

Strong arguments to this effect have been made in response Wallace’s post, but what is interesting  – to turn to my point on this having been a “done-and-dusted” decision on LL’s part – is not so much that Wallace has replied to critiques, but rather the wording of his replies.

Not once does he reply directly to the arguments raised against such a move. Not once does he even suggest that LL are seeking to engage with users on the pros and cons of the matter.

No. The only assurance he will give is that there (presumably) still-to-be-defined tools will “opt in”. and really, even this is a pretty bland reassurance, as “opt in” cover a variety of “up-front” sins. Yahoo Messenger, for example, has a default “opt in” user must then physically opt out of in order to ensure the messenger doesn’t deposit cookies (or “biscuits”, as I believe Yahoo calls them) on their computer that enable Yahoo to target users with adverts based on their web browsing. It is only AFTER you’ve gone through the process of creating your account, editing your profile and tracing down the “opt out” function that the “biscuits” are actually removed from your computer…

The only other assurance we get from Wallace is that “I don’t think anyone at LL is in favor of forced identity publication.” Which again, is pretty bland, given it is immediately followed by, “That said…..” – which immediately carries the implication that there is nothing inherently wrong with forced identity publication.

Does this mean we should roll over and accept the inevitable? No. Whether or not this is a done deal within LL’s ivory towers is moot. This kind of social engineering simply is not needed. As Ciaran Laval states, it’s time to say no to this invasive function creep and take care of our own identities, we certainly don’t need social networking sites to manage our identities for us, it seems as if George Orwell was two or three decades premature.

This is the message we need to carry to LL through the flogrum, through posted replies, our own blogs and posts to any and all metaverse sites that report on this move: we are all intelligent adults and we’ve been perfectly capable of managing our online identities for as long as the Internet as a whole has been available to us; we certainly don’t need the likes of Linden Research and/or Facebook or any other organisation or partnership telling us how to do so going forward. And we need to fight every step of the way to make sure than any such “tools” alluded to in Wallace’s post are fully, truly and demonstratively opt-in in every meaning of the term, and not just in some facile “well, it’s sort-of opt-in…” half-arsed implementation that we’ve tended to see in the past where LL’s policy moves are concerned.

Closing the (conversational) circle

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s funny how cyclical things can be. Back in May 2008 I questioned the arrival of Katt Linden as the new “Communications Manager” at Linden Lab – specifically asking whether her appointment marked a genuine change in LL’s traditional lack of open discourse with users, or whether it was merely window dressing.

While many were initially enthusiastic about Katt’s arrival, I was somewhat cynical – for a start, her role was clearly regarded by many senior Lindens as merely a by-the-by, and not something that would be taken seriously: first mention of the post came in the form of two tacked-on comments to announcements by Robin (Harper) Linden and Catherine (Smoth) Linden the latter of what was in a post on an entirely unrelated subject, and it was still more than a month before we heard anything from Katt (aka former resident Kathleen Craig) herself.

So effective and important was her role that within twelve months, she was gone, again without so much as a whimper, leave alone a bang.

While it would be grossly unfair to blame Katt for her lack of impact – she was obviously employed on a whim and probably had her powers and role rigidly controlled by those above her – it is also fair to say her own attitude at times did not curry favour with residents at large, as I’ve recently commented in my review of 2009.

Now it seems the circle has closed as we’re introduced to (Mark) Wallace (Linden), the new – wait for it – “Conversation Manager“. His arrival on-scene seems to mirror that of Katt, inasmuch as first word of his upcoming arrival came in the form of a by-the-by announcement from a senior Linden  – in this case Mark Kingdon himself, admittedly – and Wallace has been in the role for over a fortnight before he’s actually been able to say anything.

OK – so fair enough, it takes time to get feet under the desk and to begin to understand a new working environment, so one can forgive Wallace for not having hit the blogrum sooner – and at least his position would seem to have a greater weight assigned to it because a) M actually took the time to mention it, and b) he’s a journalist who has actually co-authored a book on Second Life.Valid points all.

Even so, colour me unimpressed.

I’m not going to get into the debate about Wallace’s credentials. Others more knowledgeable than I have done that, and even if you discount some of what is being said as personal bias elsewhere, one has to raise an eyebrow at Wallace’s past and his potential suitability for the role.

No; what has me discounting his arrival as an effective communicator from the outset comes primarily as a result of his working title, Conversation Manager. Sorry, however you dress it up and trying and make it touchy-feely, the title is indicative of one thing, and one things only: control.

Back in the 1990s, British Telecom instigated a series of saccharine laced touchy-feely television adverts fronted by the “hard man” actor Bob Hoskins. These adverts were intended to portray BT as a kindly, warm-hearted enabler of conversations betwixt families and friends under the catchy by-line it’s good to talk. In reality, the adverts were an attempt to cast a warmer, friendlier light on a monolithic corporation that was seemingly growing ever more distant from its customer base, was just beginning to feel the pinch of fledgling competition in the residential communications market, and which seemed to give the merest lip service to the concept of “customer services”.

Reading Wallace’s first post, those old BT / Hoskins ads came instantly to mind: comfy to watch, jolly in their japes – but wholly lacking in substance and utterly divorced from reality.  It’s very clear that despite the flowery language, Wallace’s role is not about encouraging open, two-way and involved conversations between LL and its residents. Not at all. If one read his post carefully, it is clear that his role is about directing one-sided “conversations” outward from Linden Lab towards those the company most wants to reach.

And the people they want to reach are not the residents – not by a long shot. Wallace himself admits this in a throw-away line, I want to help both the company and the Residents of Second Life — as well as the people we’re trying to reach (my emphasis).

“As well as the people we’re trying to reach.” Here, in a nutshell, we have the core aim of LL’s broader “communications policy”. The primary aim of LL’s communications is not to engage with existing residents. Its aim is to bypass us completely in the drive to entice new corporate and (probably to a lesser degree) “casual” users into signing aboard the good ship Second Life.

Hence Wallace’s focus is not so much on the blogrum – which is the primary (in theory) means of communicating with the majority of existing SL users – but rather on the already over-hyped use of other social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

Some are hoping for good things to come of Wallace’s arrival, and are trying not to let cynicism creep into their posts. Good on them. Me? I’m altogether too long in the tooth when it comes to LL’s view on “communications” and “conversations”. It’s not so much the I don’t believe the leopard can change its spots as the more optimistic are hoping; I tend to believe that in this case, once again, the leopard has no intention of changing its spots.

Signs and Portents….

Posted on by Inara Pey

Two recent events involving Linden Lab reps have caused yet more head-scratching.

The first is a posting from Amanda Linden on the subject of “work avatars“, espousing the view that if people are to do “professional” business in SL then they should consider having a “professional avatar” as distinct from their runabout everyday avatar.

I’ve found two things interesting with this – one of which is somewhat amusing, the other is more alarming. The amusing element is in the number of replies from people who have somewhat missed the context of the post. This isn’t about all of us engaged in SL commerce having to ditch our current look and come over all business-like. Nor is it about any form of “outing” real identities behind avatars on the part of LL.

No, the article is aimed squarely at the question of “professional” (read “corporate”) employees being in-world as representatives of their organisation, and the need for these individuals to keep their “professional” identity both divorced from any “social” identity they may have and use outside of working hours, and in line with the professional / corporate image they are trying to promote.

While many have mistaken the posting, as mentioned above, giving rise to a range of misguided (…?) responses, those that have realised the intent of the post have, in fairness given interesting feedback on the matter relating to the “validity” of “business” (or “professional”) avatars, the question of naming rights / abilities, etc. However, with one or two exceptions, no-one has really addressed the question of why is Amanda even raising this issue in the public forum?

Second Life was never designed to be an engine of business. Period. It was designed – if such a term can be used – as a fun-based social networking platform (and I never thought I’d hear myself say that!). Yet, in the drive to make it sustainable, Linden Lab have been increasingly forced to look at the corporate environment as a means of generating sustainable revenues and growth (again, this drive is to me one of the clearest indications that all is not well with the SL economy as an “engine of commerce”, despite the rosy pictures painted every quarter by those juggling with the finance figures). To this end we’ve had much focus from LL on their “behind the firewall” product which (I gather) is designed to be the nirvana for all corporate communications needs.

And, in its own way, this is fair enough. Second Life does offer some unique opportunities for internal management to corporations. Whether they can compete with established tools and technology (video streaming, desktop-enabling video conferencing, secure collaborative work tools and information sharing, etc.), is obviously debatable – but one cannot simply discount SL on the basis of existing technology, or for LL for trying to leverage what they believe is a potential market.

Where this becomes an issue, however, is in the way it impacts how Linden Lab view the grid as a whole. Until recently, the grid was a place of open interaction, creativity and development, where many different lifestyles and communities could converge and mix and share (largely) without rancour or fuss. Sure, groups were/are prone to their own bouts of drama; yes, Linden Lab did and does sometimes show an insidious favouritism here and there – BUT on the whole, for those in SL it really was a case of “our world, our imagination”.

That is no longer the case. The “big business is everything” mantra is one that is spreading across the whole of Linden Lab, resulting in a grid that is slowly but surely being sanitised, and individuality squirreled away on private sims and small holdings. “Adult” content has been largely removed to its own continent or private sims; any that remain on Mainland are (theoretically) unable to advertise or gain much visibility unless people stumble upon them – and where they do advertise, users are encouraged to AR them so they can be taken down.

We’re now seeing discussions emerging between Linden Lab and a favoured few relating to “zoning” areas of Mainland for “community building” – words that again subliminally suggest “homogenising” the Mainland into a nice, clean, “safe” environment where Corporate Daddy will feel safe letting his children (employees) “play”.

In this, Amanda’s enthusiastic posting is but the latest demonstration that there are those within LL who view Second Life as being “all about business” – and very little else, despite the lip service they may pay to the rest of us. The only reason the idea of having a “professional” avatar is being promoted is because Amanda and others in LL want to see the grid as a confluence – not of communities and lifestyles and interests – but of corporate marketing and exposure. A place where all those behind-the-firewall grids can safely connect and where their minions and roam outside the hallowed portals of their corporation and “do business” with others “safely” (and by “safely” I don’t necessarily mean “securely”, I mean simply without the “risk” of running into any one of two dozen exotic avatar styles we all take for granted in SL).

And this is the worrying aspect of Amanda’s post; not that we’ll all have to somehow be “outed” (as some on the blog comments are decrying), but that here again we see Second Life – a place never designed to support Big Business – being slowly but surely forced into a business suit, shirt and tie….

Nor, in passing, do I find this kind of commentary being followed by Philip Rosedale’s recent bombshell unconnected. Other the last several months we’ve seen several departures from Linden Lab that have raised questions concerning the company’s intended future direction. Until now, the hardest of these was perhaps Robin Linden’s departure.

While Robin caused a mixed range of reactions from those around her, she did, in many ways, having the “community” of Second Life at heart. Not all of us agreed with some of her actions all of the time, but she was committed to the idea of Second Life being an open community. As, I think it fair to say, was Philip. And now he, too – despite all the comforting words – is off. Why, exactly, is unclear. Lots of promises and pleasing words – but one cannot help but feel that in sharing the same workspace as Mark Kingdon, Rosedale finally realised the yawning gulf between his dreams and ideas and Kingdon’s (Kapor’s?) vision for the future of SL, and the fact that the two can no longer comfortably co-exist.

So what of SL and the rest of us? I have no idea. But, like many others, I’m concerned about further developments coming out of Jack Linden’s office, as reported by Ciaran Laval and variously-reported elsewhere.

First off, the issue here – and Ciaran states – is not that LL have discounted a bulk sim sale to the likes of Dreamland (who are a huge customer well aware of their potential buying-power – thus discounts are hardly surprising). What is worrying about the deal is – again – the degree of obfuscation apparent in Jack’s responses to valid questions pitched during his Office Hours, and as reported by Ciaran. So much so, that Jack himself had to admit he was coming over as evasive – before hiding under the excuse that this is some kind of “beta program” – a laughable response at best.

Discounts are discounts. End of story. They are a legitimate part of business practices and require little in the way of hiding from others – so they fact that Jack (again) feels the need to obfuscate (just as he did over OpenSpace / Homesteads, and with the Adult Changes, and with the Blake Sea situation….), suggests that either favouritism is involved here, and a programme to edge-out the smaller land owner and private sim owners is in the process of being developed, or – frankly – Jack is (again) demonstrating a degree of incompetence in his ability to deal openly with his clients.

Personally, given the push for a bigger Big Business presence in SL, the erosion of the voices and dreams of those who made SL possible, and moves such as this latest “beta programs” from Jack, I’m beginning to get pessimistic about the future of SL.

These moves simply do not bode well for the smaller, independent player or player groups within Second Life. Again, leave us not forget that, after the special “beta testing” Jack developed with USS over Blake’s Sea, we’ve now got the much-touted Community Partnership Programme, which is utterly biased against small independents – right from the opening words: “a new initiative focused on expanding Linden Lab’s relationship with large, inworld communities“.

Indeed, taken together, one cannot help but view the CPP and this latest behind-closed-doors deal between LL and Dreamland as part and parcel of moves to sanitise Second Life ready for the Second Coming of Big Business, as heralded by Amanda….

Window Dressing – or something more substantial

Posted on by Inara Pey

So…we have a new “Resident Communications Manager” at Linden Labs, charged with managing company / Resident communications.

Huzzah!! Role out the red carpet! Trumpeters, a fanfare for Katt Linden!

No, I’m not being sarcastic. I genuinely mean it. One of the weakest elements of LL’s operations is their continued failure in talking to Residents (or is that in fact their “unwillingness”?) And now, after 12 months of hunting, the post has finally been filled. This is BIG NEWS for Second Life users….

So why has it been marked with more of a whimper than a bang by Linden Lab?

The position was clearly filled over a month ago…yet the first mention we had was a kind of , “oh by the way…” comment by posted by Robin (Harper) Linden when commenting on the forums on March 31st. Catherine (Smith) Linden actually introduced Kat on the 2nd April, but bizarrely did so at the end of a long rambling post about LL’s trademark policy.

Both are hardly blistering announcements for what is purportedly (and should in fact BE) a mainstay role in LL’s relationship with its customers.

And even then, we don’t get to hear from Katt herself for another 20 days, when she finally gives herself an introduction.

OK… in this latter regard, I’ll accept the poor girl needed to go through the inevitable corporate indoctrination – I mean induction – and receive training for her role in terms of SL requirements (although her post actually suggests she is already well-versed in the latter, and could well be a former SL Resident).

BUT….what is worrying is the immediate focus of her work in communications, as expressed by Catherine Smith and echoed be Katt herself: “…will be focusing on our Resident communication channels including this blog and the forums to make sure we’re using the right tools to communicate clearly and frequently with the community.”

Excuse me?

  • We have an Asset Cluster that breaks almost daily – and when it doesn’t actually break, it wobbles around in a very alarming fashion;
  • We have LL technophiles who appear incapable of either a) stringing a cohesive sentence together or b) are incapable of treating their readership with respect (or possibly both) and persist in pumping out blog reports that speak of “gremlins” in the “works” but people are “banging on things” to fix the problem;
  • We have a total lack of pro-active communications from LL when these things go wrong – no in-world messages; no updates or advisories. Instead, people are left to find out the hard way that things are borked: failed transactions, lost goods, missing funds.

All of these have a lasting, and highly damaging impact on people’s view of both Second Life and Linden Lab. These are issues that need vastly improved communications – FROM Linden Lab TO their customers.

Yet, when a person is hired to (one would hope) fill this void – what is she tasked to do first? Look at the blogging / forum tools.

Given that both of these tools – while not without their little niggles – both WORK and are SCALABLE, STABLE and not prone to collapsing in a very messy heap if anyone so much as glances at them in a wrong tone of voice, then one has to ask, “Why is the Resident Communications Manager even wasting her time poking her nose into these non-issues?”

So WHAT if HTML tags don’t work in the forums. So WHAT if embedded links (or whatever the perceived problem is here) don’t work in the Blog? Linden Lab, we can live with it!

What we can’t live with is an Asset environment that breaks with absurd regularity. Yes, we appreciate it will take time and a huge effort to fix….we can even accept that, however reluctantly (again given this problem has been around longer than LL has been “hunting” for a new Resident Communications Manager). But we can only do this if Linden Lab get PRO-ACTIVE in their communications.

So Please, Catherine, Robin, Philip, et al….forget the bloody blog and forums: start telling what things have gone wrong WHEN they have gone wrong – and put Katt in charge of in-world messaging NOW.

This simple act alone will restore some faith in your managerial abilities.

There are other ways you can further improve your communications (and your image with your customers (aka “Residents”)….but I’ve outlined those in my reply to Katt’s blog post, so I won’t bore you with them here.