As Days Go By
Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 2:22 PM by: TorleyI’m going to candidly bang some pleasant points we’ve got for your perusal:
- YES SOMETHING IS BEING DONE ABOUT LAND SWOOPING! Look for a completely overhauled “set land for sale” process, currently being worked on. Still easy-to-use but will deter unhappy accidents. Many Lindens have been giving their input directly based on the many sad stories we’ve heard. Consider this a distilled achievable!
- Map-tracking failing for you, e.g. “Show On Map” doesn’t work? Don’t worry, we’re aware of this one too. We’ll communicate when we’re nearer to a fix. Promise!
- A bunch of the “focus issues” are already internally fixed, and some are available in Preview 1.12, which is slated to launch live next Wednesday (Aug. 23). Directly in response to comments I’ve gotten here, so: if you’ve been upset because your avatar spazzes when you mean to type, or tried to type in a field and an incoming Instant Message suddenly stopped you, help is on the way.
- Eric Boyer asked a great question of why we have a blog—I answered! You can call it whateva you want, even our “fun home page of stuff”, but the whole point is for US to let YOU know what’s going on.
- And ‘cuz Snapshot Preview questions are popular, we’ve acknowledged the votes! More developments to come…
- New Group tools out next week in 1.12, you can read the F1 Help Groups guide (accessible inworld via pressing F1). It tells you how old settings get converted over, and also remember these two things: (1) All pending group invites will fail when we convert from 1.11 to 1.12. and (2) Unaccepted group invitations will need to be resent once 1.12 is deployed.
My mindset today is dancing on water; if you’re in a dancetastic mood, you may enjoy High Contrast’s “As Days Go By“. Really dramatic, pulse-pounding music good for getting things done! Any drum ‘n’ bass heads in the audience? I keep looking for DnB clubs inworld… please let me know!
Okeydoke, back to learning WordPress, going through my Issue Tracker—thanx for all the feedback on blog improvements, I’ve set up an umbrella project for ‘em so the right Lindens can work their magic—investigating inworld stuffs, etc. Fun fun fun.
August 16th, 2006 at 4:43 PM
Maybe they will stop complaing if you rename the the blog to The Official Newspage of Linden Lab.
August 16th, 2006 at 4:49 PM
It’s a crazy idea, but it might just work!
In a sleek sort of way, it reminds me of my own personal dislike of words like “machinima” and “podcast”, and how popular they’ve become, so I’ve just been using them to communicate–after understanding my own failings reading too deeply into the terms themselves, instead of the broader picture of what they convey.
It’s going to be a fun ride, that is for sure.
August 16th, 2006 at 6:29 PM
This is good news indeed. I am very pleased that LL seems to have heard us and is showing that in a demonstrable way. Thank you.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:56 PM
What ab out the long standing problem where items in a vendor or even siting in your own inventory mysteriously change from limited perms to ful perms, tehreby allowing people to make copies of your content and sell it? among MANY otehr bugs that are being ignored. Moot point since we already closed our shop and stopped even trying to create content, since these bugs allow theft and nothing gets done about that either. Unless you are in the richest one percent of account holders. Biter? Yes, I am. SL has been one try after anotehr with things stolen from us, us being cheated, griefed, you name it it has occured. Even up to an including a falsified statement being made by a liason before against me, which on a subsequenty phone call I was told would NOT be investigated even.
August 17th, 2006 at 12:19 AM
great track by high contrast!
for in-game drumandbass, visit the voodoo lounge!
August 17th, 2006 at 3:02 AM
[...] This post by Torely Linden addressing some of the problems that people had been experiencing with Land Swooping. Yay [...]
August 17th, 2006 at 3:19 AM
I’m very glad to hear you’re overhauling the ’set for sale’ process. There’s been far too many unhappy incidents. Much needed.
August 17th, 2006 at 4:00 AM
I posted this a couple of months ago as a replacement for the current interface for land sales:
http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=1097895&postcount=2
I will try to do the screen mock-ups shortly.
August 17th, 2006 at 5:56 AM
While you’re sorting out the kinks in the Linden Blog, you might make a minor tweak to the blog mailing list exporter. I just noticed that the e-mailed “The Latest from Second Life Blog” versions don’t include the author of the post, just the post date. Minor issue, and it’s easy enough to click the link and check if it’s important, but you might want to fix it sometime.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:33 AM
Changing the name of the “Blogs” will not help
Keeping the forums as they are will.
The World Wonders
August 17th, 2006 at 6:58 AM
Good on you guys for addressing the land swooping problem Torley.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:10 AM
Personally I prefer to have the blog that gives us information rather than all the sniping and things that go on in the forums. Also, all the multi threaded discussions made it difficult, for me at least, to find the information that really mattered, amongst all the pissing contests between all the smug individuals that think they know it all. It was also annoying when people would write a post in scripting language, not everyone knows what llpush or whatever is, but still might benefit from it if they knew what it was.
I made a couple posts to the forums and my first suggestion/idea was ripped to shreds, it really made me feel like dirt to be treated that way, and really gave me a bad taste about forums. I’m all for free speech and all that, but what about being kind to others around you? There is a way to say everything, and lots of people forget that, because IMO too many people are so self absorbed that they don’t ever try to consider if there is any validity to what someone else is saying if it does not conform to their idea of things.
It would also be nice if the daily blog was available in world at a kiosk at the welcome area or something, just on a simple notecard. More in world messages would be nice too, the way you have been doing lately to alert us of problems w/the grid. Messages like that of a positive nature would do lots to boost morale among residents I think.
My only question is, and you may have already answered this, but where do we send issues/complaints/suggestions, etc. where we KNOW the will be seen by Linden staff? It would be nice to know your comment/suggestion/issue were acknowledged by staff.
August 17th, 2006 at 8:50 AM
Good morning Residents! *waves*
You’re ultra welcome, Takuan.
Dmitri–please continue reading this blog! Your topic of confusing permissions is covered in Brent’s recent post: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/08/14/when-an-exploit-isnt-an-exploit/
Natasha: We definitely wanna spread the word on the blog and make it easier and easier–eventually the hope is inworld HTML will make it totally possible. Great suggestions, and o, as for issues/complaints/suggestions, many ways to send them, depending what kind! For anything within my expertise, you can of course email me (torley@lindenlab.com) or post a comment on the Official Linden Blog. While it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to reply one-on-one to all the correspondence I receive, I sure read all of it, am very thankful, and my blog entries are direct responses to the questions I get.
We’re also going to continue to do more, like Town Halls and Community Roundtable Meetings (first Thursday of each month) to hear out concerns, and reply with followups!
Consider this a personal acknowledgment to you too.
August 17th, 2006 at 8:56 AM
James: Nice use of trackback, thank you–and,
…thank you for the comments; more details to come on our actions vs. land swooping.
Mickey: Thanx I think I have been there before but didn’t hear DnB when I was visiting, so I’ll check out the Voodoo Lounge out again!
Moriash: Alas, I don’t see a way in the Feedburner email newsletter controls to do that. Great observation, I noticed the same thing… I will nevertheless keep a record of it so it stays in my mind.
August 17th, 2006 at 10:05 AM
Sorry, but the blog will never be as useful to the community as the forums are.
Sure, there’s a few out of hand arguments - all that could be dealt with by stronger rules and better enforcement of them to keep people in check.
I even gave Robin an hour of my time when she requested it to discuss how the forums could be improved - scrapping them was never part of my advice. Simple changes could have made all the difference, but no, we’re being dissected and scattered, rather than being bought together as one common community which, even as big as SL is, with the right work in the right places, is most definitely distillable as well as achieveable - not evaporated.
Lewis
August 17th, 2006 at 11:14 AM
“You can call it whateva you want, even our “fun home page of stuffâ€?, but the whole point is for US to let YOU know what’s going on.”
Precisely the problem, Torley, or don’t you get that? You keep talking about “wonderful” ideas for resis input–focus groups (really? And how many sociologists does LL have on staff to insure that your “focus groups” will use reliable population sampling methodologies?), and blog comments (driven by blog entries, not by user concerns), and emails (are you really prepared for the skyrocketing numbers?), and TownHalls (where maybe 15 people of 300000 will be heard), and Second Life Views (and the like). FIC FIC FIC, Torley.
Say what you want about listening to the community, but LL did NOT listen to the community on the issue of new account verification, and it’s NOT listening to the users on the forums closing. I know you’re getting emails and things that agree with the decision, but fgs, Torley, if you REALLY cared about what the community thought, you’d listen to more than emails and phone calls supporting the decision and get out in the community at large (not just in world, but at all the user run sites) and check the boards.
You may disagree with my skepticism of your “everything is peachy” attitude, but honestly, if you REALLY want to know what the community at large thinks about this, you’d start a poll, but a link to the poll up on the MOTD, and you’d make the results public.
Look, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m wrong. But I will not believe that you’ve truly listened to the community until you publically poll the users about the forum closings, (and while we’re at it, age verification, and a question about whether the users believe that LL listens to their concerns), and publish the results.
I’ve said in other postings that you are the best Linden when it comes to customer service, and I stand by that opinion. But don’t underestimate the power of mass perception. I’ve been playing for over 2 years and I’ve never seen user morale this low.
Hey, here’s an idea. Do a customer satisfaction survey! I think the results will shock you.
August 17th, 2006 at 11:22 AM
^ I don’t have an “everything is peachy� atittude. I’m quite the skeptic and can be extremely cynical at times. That’s why I report on problems, to keep them in check.
Thank you graciously for your well-meaning words, and along what you said, I totally agree we need a way to poll all active Residents. A forum poll wouldn’t cut it, and at this point, neither would a blog one.
But you got me thinking, I should start polls on what Resis want *me* to blog about… and perhaps as an extension, what should I work on. That means “choosing my own work� is even more closely linked to the preferences of our community!
P.S. What is “fgs�?
August 17th, 2006 at 11:51 AM
Soooo this is not a forum????? one blog post 10,000 replies… hmmm sounds awfully familiar guys.
August 17th, 2006 at 1:41 PM
Torley, one thing occurs to me that might be helpful in terms of getting resident feedback for some “high priority” questions. How about a client login poll?
What I mean here is question asked during the login process with appropriate multiple choice responses. I’ve seen this used in other on line environments: EverQuest and EverQuest 2, for example. The biggest problem I noted in those environments was a lack of transparency: the polls were taken, but no credible display/reporting of results was given.
I suppose this would require changes to the client plus back end hosting to handle the responses, but I wouldn’t imagine that this would be particularly challenging. And it could go along with changes to support something else I’d like to see: a better mechanism for delivery of annoucements/grid status messages during the client login process. The client could link to a special category of the Linden Blog and display “emergency” announcements (E.G.: The grid is down/going down). It could also let people know when the grid is down for updates, particularly preventing users from downloading the new client and then not understanding that the grid is down as well.
Anyway, I think the client itself is powerful communication medium for certain “priority” information that should be better utilized.
August 17th, 2006 at 4:12 PM
Troy:
Tomas: I am very much in agreement–what you suggest, a “client login poll”, would make better use of Second Life itself. I know we have a project open that sort of relates; I’ll add your comment to it right now.
Also, we’re currently testing some better communication tools which would do some of what you suggest. (It’s also part of the reason why we’ve been quicker to respond during recent problems, with still room for improvement.) It’s apparent there are some gaping holes that ought to be filled. THANK YOU GRACIOUSLY.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:12 PM
Torley you are sadly mistaken about he permisions isue. IT si something I ahve tried time and again adn FINALLY got Brent to look at today, unfortunately too litle too late as I have already toally given up on content creation for general sale due to the lack of interest adn brush of atitude of other Liasons in world, and toal and complete lack of response or even record of the myriad bug reports I ahve made. This does NOT occur when things are incorrectly picked up with ful perms, but even if picked up with corect perms, siting hapily in inventory and/or vendors right up til Black Wednesday hits, then they mysteriously alter thier own permisions. Again I would love to think it is oiperator error, however when I can look in inventory adn see lots of items created with proper perms before picked up that ahve mysteriously changed perms on thier own, you cannot deny it is server side.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:13 PM
Oh and before you say no one else is having this problem, not rue. I know several otehrs who are having this very same isue, one of whom I live with IRL adn ahve stood over her watching ehr set perms correctly, only to ahve them alter themselves later.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:21 PM
^ Sorry to hear that! Hopefully I can get a better repro clued in from Brent or another one of our eXtreme Bug Hunters–I’ll keep an eye out for it.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:36 PM
I’m glad to hear that you are working on a more foolproof way to set land for sale, but that will not solve the land swooper problem. What WOULD solve the land swooper problem is land auction tools for residents. We ought to be able to auction land with resorting to third-party sites.
November 4th, 2006 at 1:43 PM
Buon luogo, congratulazioni, il mio amico!