Hey! What happened to my comment?
Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 2:19 PM by: Torley Linden
Friendly greetings! It’s me, Torley Linden, Community Developer of Communications. In the midst of another productive day @ Linden Lab, I wanted to take the time to answer some of your blog-related questions:
Q: Hey! What happened to my comment?
A: Before commenting, please make sure you are familiar with our Guidelines for Blog Comments. As it says in there:
The first time you ever make a comment here, it will be held in our moderation queue until we can manually approve it. This is because of our anti-spam measures. Subsequent comments usually go through directly. Thanks for your patience.
Also, please don’t send a single comment many times, because comments which look like spam will be flagged as such. We already have enough spam to deal with, so please stand out. As of now, 7,777 spam caught since we moved to WordPress VIP.)
Q: Why do some posts have comments closed? Did you delete my comment?
A: Hrmmm a 2-for-1, I see! Tricky! But here goes: (1) Some posts are informational announcements, so we’re not in need of new info or — we already know what’s going on, and will give YOU that new info. And (2) If it fell afoul of our Blog Guidelines then likely, yes.
We’ll continue to have plenty of posts with open comments, where we welcome your fresh feedback. Like this one. Tell me something I don’t know so I can learn from you!
Q: Why won’t you answer my support question? I need help!
A: Ah, the Official Linden Blog isn’t an official place to get that kind of assistance from us! That’s precisely why I added the Widget on the right sidebar: Need help? Please visit our Support Page.
In case that’s not clear enough, we’re going to add a pointer right next to the comment form too. Oh! You’ll also want to read Robin’s recent post about our future Customer Service changes. 
Q: Are Widgets (definition in link) flashy eye candy?
A: They can be, and they can also be nutritiously substantial. Leading off from earlier, Widgets were added because we need to make a diversity of content changes rapidly. They’re a necessity for our blog to adapt more flexibly, and update more frequently; it’s been a long and winding road we’re still traveling.
End result: making it easier for you to get timely news, organized helpfully, with fun!
Some of this will be a lot clearer when we look back… please remind me in a year’s time that I made this post.
Q: Why aren’t you talking about packet loss, sim crashes, other problems, etc.?
A: I hear this one a surprising lot. Answer is, we sure are. Did you see Joshua Linden’s recent post? Or all the recent Grid Status updates? Many Lindens post here, and I’m working on a way to get an authors’ list. At last count, 40+ Lindens have contributed!
If you’re having difficulties finding hot topics here, then that’s where we might be able to tweak Widgets to make things better. And as mentioned before, comments with open entries are done with the purpose of discussion and learning things we don’t already know from our community. See? It’s all connected.
Additionally, this keeps coming up: the myth that all Lindens have supercomputers and flawless connections. Wish that were true, but I’ve been hit harder with packet loss than most of our Resis. So if you wanna come ’round, pull up a chair, and sympathize about your packet loss woes, I do relate. Infact, I’ve been a lightning rod for everything from inventory loss to UI wonkiness to prim drift. To say the least, it keeps me grounded, and helps me communicate this relevance with my fellow Lindens, so we understand what’s important to you.
This is an actual comment I got:
Q: Bastards closed commenting on the next two blog entries…. how can we bitch if they keep closing the blog entries to comments?
A: Please don’t be nasty. 
This blog is about communication.
But… this blog ain’t for bitching. Remember, this is THE INTERNETS, it’s SERIOUS BUSINESS. There are plenty of places you can bitch, like your own blog, or some Resident-run forums are okay with that too. So, you gotta lot of choices, and one of them is: instead of bitching, please help us improve Second Life for you.
Bonus questions:
Q: Why are you using UTC-8? That’s confusing.
A: Pardon for my nature as an avatar time traveler, as noticed in my last post, the “UTC-8” was confusing some of you. Eventually, we hope to go towards that direction, but today… PST it is. So now, TIMES IN PST!
Q: Why do you get so excited about little things, Torley?
A: Because it’s worth it. Apathy is useless, and to riff on Herbert, fear of happiness is the mindkiller. I’m excited about big things, too, being more of an AND person than an OR person.
There’s a lot of context to this, but I’m not here today to tell my life story.
I’m certainly happy you’re here with us in Second Life!
November 30th, 2006 at 2:25 PM
PST is probably clearer for Americans, but I suspect UTC-8 (or GMT-
makes more sense to the rest of the world (especially Europe). I know I can’t be bothered to keep track of all the different US timezones and their offsets from GMT…
Of course, I’m probably wrong.
November 30th, 2006 at 2:30 PM
Heh. If you do a google on comments I’ve made on this blog, you’ll see I regularly trip up Akismet
I think I tripped it up yesterday
November 30th, 2006 at 2:33 PM
GMT Dammit - We invented time!
November 30th, 2006 at 2:34 PM
Thank you Torley, and the all the rest of you Lindens too. For doing it, putting up with it, dealing with it, and continuting to dream. Sorry, nothing new to tell you really… though I can happily bitch, moan, *and* groan, that in my little slice of SL heaven, things are going really quite well.
~ 8-}
November 30th, 2006 at 2:34 PM
Mako Mabellon
This is not an invitation to go-off topic about LSL: A project I’m working on (well, it’s kinda done already) means I have to keep track of ALL timezones, not just the ones in the US.
November 30th, 2006 at 2:35 PM
How do you maintain a positive outlook, Torley?
I would dearly love to know and implement the recommendations in my own life.
My own preferred strategy of devising elaborate Auric Goldfinger style traps for my childhood G.I. Joe toys is wearing a bit thin.
November 30th, 2006 at 2:37 PM
I really liked the made up SLT. Of course in the end it’s all the same.
November 30th, 2006 at 2:39 PM
theres only 24 time zones, can’t be that bad XD
*hugs torley*
November 30th, 2006 at 2:50 PM
Oooh we have comments! Thanxies! *big huggerz*
@Lucifitias: Wonderful question! Answer: years ago, I was severely depressed and suicidal after one personal tragedy after another struck me. Some of it is rather graphic and I won’t get into it here, but… to some, perhaps it sounds like such a cliché: if that’s the case, I was certainly living my own hell!
I became desperate to do a 180-degree turn. The idea was easy, the actions of becoming happier were not. There were a lot of events that happened along the way, and a big part of it is making friends in Second Life. So whenever I start to get sad, I remember how bad things once were for me, and am soooo grateful for what I have now.
I’ve had enough sadness for at least two lifetimes! That’s why I’m so happy today.
So to anyone who wonders, no, I wasn’t always the cheery, watermelon-loving YAYZERAMA!!!! person you see today. The absolute opposite, infact. Been there, done that — negative redundancy — I’ve moved on.
A key tangible thing I do: whenever I observe something that makes me happy, I comment on it, or share it with the one(s) responsible. Such as all the great creativity that’s been birthed in SL. I find making others happy brings a lot of happiness back my way. Which is why I’m so eager to help here, and why it cuts so deeply when there’s pain. Both personally and professionally.
On chronology: drives me crazy, can we go Swatch beats already?
November 30th, 2006 at 2:54 PM
Yea I could sit here and bitch about lag, objects not rezing at times etc but SL is so much fun and to me amazing it works as well as it does given the recent load, all I can say is thanks guys for your hard work!
Stephe Ehrler
November 30th, 2006 at 3:19 PM
It’s pointless closing comments - people just leave their comments on the last post that has open comments anyway.
By all means encourage constructive criticism and discourage unnecessary bitching etc., but don’t close comments - it makes you look like you are too arrogant to care what residents think.
November 30th, 2006 at 3:20 PM
Regarding PST vs GMT-8 (or even UTC-8)…
Just report all time in Internet beats! Right now it’s @013 (3:20PM GMT-8). Am I the only person on the planet left with a Swatch clock showing me Internet time? :LOL:
November 30th, 2006 at 3:23 PM
Since all the other blogs are now closed to comment, I find myself in the probably incorrect position of putting this comment here.
Earlier, as I was setting up part of my new store (for those who are curious, this was NOT a good couple of days to try to pull that off), most of my rezzing issues seemed to be resolving themselves. I placed a wall and some store signs, and a lot of artwork. Now that I log back in, the store seems to have reverted. A wall I deleted is back and most of the artwork and one of the signs are now missing. Luckily enough, it looks like most of the stuff is in my inventory, so it isn’t totally lost, but a couple of hours of work just went down the drain. Again. Some more.
November 30th, 2006 at 3:31 PM
Lack of happiness leads to fear and Yoda said the rest.
Just a sub note. Back in the day when Slashdot was old enough to have a bunch of users and new enough to have not enough bandwidth for them all people all thought they had great connections to Slashdot as after all they owned it.
Yeah they owned it but after collage they had to ship the server to a hosting service so they connect remote like everyone else.
When they did a short run of eppisodes for a short lived internet radio program they wanted to comment on a story on the website so they started pulling it up … dead air then “Here at slashdot … bandwidth sucks…” They couldn’t connect to the server and had to recall the story from memory or just quickly changed the topic. I forget.
Yeah I can see people thinking you guys log into SL by sitting at a server.
Byond the mad move it would be to even use the servers for any client side tasks, Yeah. Servers at hosting service? Am I right? And the Lindens each at home.
Yeah I do bitch about the lag. I do it on my own lj and in world. I also bitch about stubing my toe. A place for everything and everything in it’s place.
Besides bitching dosen’t resolve things it just gives the bitcher a chance to hear it and give friends an understanding of the bad mood and need for large bucket of chocolate ice cream or 12 rounds of FPS gaming or whatever it is that makes the bitcher happy again.
November 30th, 2006 at 3:32 PM
Only 24 times zones?
Technically there in an infinite number of times zones.
24 hour jumps, or 1440-minute jumps or 86400 second jumps.
The time between the zones mite get smaller and smaller but they are still zones.
You need to be that accurate almost in order to navigate.
The whole resign GMT was agreed upon in the first place.
November 30th, 2006 at 3:40 PM
Torley, you are doing wonderfully at communicating. This
needs to be true for other facets of the service.
What needs to be passed on is this: there’s tons of anxiety out
there about all of the tech issues. The CTO should be addressing
these publically.. not a month from now, but _right now_. So pass
this on… someone with the technical chops to explain what
is going on needs to do a Town Hall very soon. They need
to show leadership, they need to communicate, and they need
to lay out a clear schedule of what should happen, and when.
November 30th, 2006 at 3:45 PM
My solution to the time zone problem:
I’ve replaced the clock on my computer with one that shows multiple time zones, for example:
Right now I can see -
Local - 10:45am Dec 1
Second Life - 3:45pm 30 Nov
November 30th, 2006 at 3:45 PM
So much arguing over time… just scrap them all!
“[cottage cheese O'Clock] This thing went ping”
Much better!
Or, if you have somethinig like the personalised google home page thing, stick a gadget on there that allows you to see PST, then when you read this blog, have the other page ready loaded in a sidebar, another tab or window and you can easily see.
I like your your cheery outlook, Torley, so very like mine!
^_^
November 30th, 2006 at 3:47 PM
just wanted to thank the family linden, i have to give props on
this latest round of updtaes/upgrades…..its actualy running better
for me than it ever has, given the mammoth scope of what you
have put together here, truly amazing world. thanx guys….
….heres to you
‘ere
November 30th, 2006 at 3:54 PM
Hi Torley
I certainly love your approach that the blog is for communicating. Unfortunately, my experience so far has been that unless you have only positive things to say, nobody wants to know, and the blog format is engineered in such a manner as to make effective communication nigh on impossible.
No comment threading or tag features.
People asked to comment, then sniped at when they do so.
Communication with anyone other than the original poster frowned upon.
Freedom of speech and polite self expression frowned upon.
Constructive criticism shrugged off if not outright deplored.
And the best one so far, people being asked to submit bug reports inworld, as they can’t be effectively harvested from the blog, but when I comment in other ways, I am told to get off the blog because I’m spamming the feedback? o.O
What, exactly, is this blog meant to be used for, please? Because my impression is that you may as well disable all comments and just use it for posting news, which isn’t really a blog, is it… Or not in the way I always understood blogs to work.
I’m sick and tired of the whole thing and won’t be using this blog anymore. Expect you’ll all heave a sigh of relief anyway, since you don’t appreciate my positive comments - or even my giving presents - but are quick to condemn me when I am so depressed by the whole attitude of LL that I feel like quitting
Except that I have paid for a year’s account in advance, so I can’t really, without losing my money.
Cheers, and Out,
Fledge.
November 30th, 2006 at 4:11 PM
Since we all inhabit the same one “world”… I like the idea of using SLT in everything SL.. client, posts, and forums.
P.S… Hugs and high-fives all around to Torley and the other Lindens, Mentors, and Helpers =)
November 30th, 2006 at 4:32 PM
Torley,
A most excellent post. I almost feel bad for being one of those bitching yesterday, however, while the system is down, it is fun and relaxing to complain, so don’t take it personally.
However!!!! I’ve been on this system for almost 3 months. I love it. I love it. Oh, did I say, I love it? But everytime I get ready to try to do more, we have one of these major outages and I debate why I am here. Bucky says the CTO needs to get out in front of this and I agree completely. There should be some major apologies coming out for another horrible patch NOW and there needs to be a clear schedule for what we can be fixed and when.
Fledge also mentioned his disappointment on the comment about not complaining. We should complain, it is frankly amazing that you try at THIS point to quell this. Once things got working again, MAYBE then would be a good time for you to put out the “let’s keep it positive” comment. Now, we have nothing BUT complaints.
Yes, I am VERY thankful for the hard work the Lindens are doing. YES, I love the game. NO, I am not going to quit. But, Lindens will need to either get a little thicker skinned or start hiring the right people to make sure these problems don’t happen in the first place. It is a sad state of affairs for all companies that as you grow, your team may need to change. There comes a time when the company needs to grow up. The time for Linden of old has now past. I know the company can grow and provide the service that is needed. I also know there will continue to be some pain until that happens.
I know you can do it though.
Best of luck Lindens.
November 30th, 2006 at 4:36 PM
Well, Torley, I appreciate your cheerfulness and positive outlook and don’t think anyone deserves the tragedies that you have had in your past.
However - several suggestions, for the Blog in general:
1. Make sure bloggers don’t post an entry about bad news, and then sign off with, “Cheers!”
2. We can’t tell you what you don’t know because we don’t know (and can’t know) what you do know.
3. Lindens deciding in advance what they “need” feedback on, and what they don’t, is kind of already not listening, know what I mean?
4. If we knew how to improve SL rather than just tell you the problems we’re having (i.e., “bitching”), then we would be either applying for a job at SL or already working at a similar place.
I can tell you I have packet loss out the wazoo, but I certainly can’t tell you what to do about it. (Except stop letting anyone into SL after 8k are on.)
5. And to use packet loss as an example, I think one of the problems is while you and some of the other Lindens might be aware that it is a problem, WE can’t know you are aware, or working on it, unless you say so, and say so often.
A poster earlier suggested that someone make announcements about this and other issues frequently, and I think that is a good idea. See, you just mentioned it here in this blog entry, and that is very reassuring.
But not every resident reads every blog entry ever made, particularly since they quickly disappear down the page. So - saying people should stop talking or asking about it, since you ALREADY KNOW about it, is rather beside the point.
The point is, residents need to know you know about it, know you are working on it, know HOW you are working on it, and hear that on on a frequent, updating basis.
(In fact, there are Lindens themselves who still don’t have the news that this is a problem, and are offering advice as if it were confined to the resident’s own computer connection.)
In other words, it isn’t enough for someone to tell you there is a problem three weeks ago Tuesday, and then you “know,” and then no one need discuss it ever again.
What is important is that you keep communicating to the residents what THEY need to know, not vice-versa.
coco
November 30th, 2006 at 4:37 PM
Torley
All I can say is that you’re doing a great job. As are all of you Lindens are.
I think of all of the hiccups, issues and everything that goes with it as growing spurts.
Thanks for doing a great job and Happy Holidays!
November 30th, 2006 at 4:39 PM
Thank you Torley, I’ve always known you where the PR person.
I have fault bad in the past when I see you in the trenches trying to buffer between the resendents and the Lindens. I hope LL is lucky to find someone half as good as you are to help you out.
I think Torrid Midnight was correct, they should take what you have and bottle it up with all it’s pink and green goodness and sell it.
November 30th, 2006 at 4:46 PM
Time is still an awful problem… Picking any *one* won’t satisfy everyone… Wouldn’t it be great to have an option to see the *local* time for people in their hover along with their name as an option? That way I know “oh, for the person I’m talking to it’s 5:00 even though here it is 22:00… Or maybe to list their current time on their profile to avoid adding hover text - or something to that effect? Or maybe to list their GMT offset and their local time at the moment somewhere? Just an idea…
November 30th, 2006 at 4:47 PM
Ohh.. by “awful problem” I don’t mean to say it’s a huge problem in SL, but that the solution to global time is sticky in many, many ways for just about every system and environment…
November 30th, 2006 at 5:42 PM
These guidelines are excellent, let’s hope that they will be acknowledged. The thread yesterday was a disaster - almost 1500 posts on only about three different topics, strippers hitting on other people in the thread, Linden bashing, illiterate poo-flinging, etc. The residents ruined their own thread by clogging it with so much garbage that anyone with new and meaningful feedback was just scrolled past. There were posts by people who admitted to not even reading the last 1499 posts and then complaining (not too constructively either) about the same thing that 327 people had already moaned about, just so their own name could be seen in the blog.
Please people, take Torley’s advice. Screaming in the blogs is not helping anything and is just making it much worse. Don’t crap where you sleep.
November 30th, 2006 at 5:42 PM
>
Nope, this is still not up. I just tried it. I still cannot accept a partnership proposal that was sent to me.
November 30th, 2006 at 5:49 PM
^ Thanxies for the continued comments and encouragement! @Kilandria, feels like the holidays already here. Snowfall is heavy.
(@Chronic, “don’t excrete where you sleep” rhymes better, mebbe it can be a song.)
And:
@Joel: That sounds like such an obviously good idea, I wonder if it’s already been done. To such ends, if anyone’s seen a WordPress plugin like that, please let me know ASAP.
@Rose: Funniest irony (or not) is I’m not even PR! I’m not even Marketing, or Customer Service. Lemme tell ya, a lot of about this world is wacky to me. But… there is beauty. Trivia: one of my fave dresses is Torrid’s “Love Letter”, tinted watermeloney of course.
And generally: just about every time I’ve been kicked in the avatar ass with a DAMN ANNOYING PROBLEM like many of you have, I’ve reported it to Lindens in the know, or if I didn’t have the time at the moment (because I was working on something else, depending on priority), I’ve entered it myself as an open issue. In the past, I’ve aggregated whole heaps of issues — what really helps is looking for patterns, because time after time, just like human emotions… you see the same things.
I believe I’m a positive person, but I temper that with being critical a lot (see my bug reports, gah). It is nice people see me as friendly rather than a jerk, but I hope for more credence to be given to when I am fault-finding, because I am.
@coco: There sure are lots of important things which need frequent reminders, I’m with you on that. And I actually believe, there are a lot of factors which can never be obvious enough — so better to overstate than understate. There’s always gonna be someone who says, “I didn’t hear about it!” That takes some fine judgment and I’m still learning, always will be.
One of the things I struggle with most right now is information overload — my inbox is swamped and there’s so many things which are ranked “really important”! I swear I need a freakin’ popurls for SL! Maybe I can highlight more of these critical issues using Widgets, since the sidebar doesn’t move down with new posts. *writes down idea*
Re: constant topic of forums, as many know, I’m the most heavy user of the SL Forums ever. In the future I’d like to see more sites which break the conventional communications “roles”; I’d like to see Second Life be a part of that. Proof it’s happening: WetPaint.com, which is a hybrid wiki-blog-forum thing.
@Maria: Being immersed to the diversity of Resis I am, I’ve heard numerous compliments in addition to the complaints. Great new features which are muddied up because of the problems. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to characterize things as “good” or “bad”, because they just are. Some call that cornball, but I say: if you learn from your mistakes, weren’t those mistakes ultimately a good thing, as embarrassing as they may have been? (And I’ve added my share.)
Now the horrible thing comes when the same mistakes keep happening; I know in recent memories, releases have been dreaded because “something big goes wrong”. What often happens @ LL is there’s post-mortems with internal details, they get documented. What happened this time has similar symptoms that’ve caused problems before, but it wasn’t a redundant repeat. Beyond our deepest apologies, which I certainly feel, I vow to do my part to continue to identify “cracks” before things break apart.
Time and time again, like textures,
it comes down to seamlessness: like the Apple philosophy, “it just works”. You want safety and security, odds are you have enough undesirable unpredictability in “RL”. Maybe you want a stability in Second Life you don’t have elsewhere, or at least, peace of mind. This is wholly consistent with our “building a better world”, and not just in the utopian sense either.
I am many things at the same time, positive AND negative being one of the foremost. Let that stand for the record. And thank you for your patience (I know I say that 10x like a pinball multiplier) while we continue to hire and scale.
@Fledge: To be clear, as it says on the Blog Guidelines page, We love connecting with our community and value tolerance and free expression!. That is not hot air, I have seen many criticisms about SL on this blog. I am sorry to hear this sounds like your last comment. But really, you should think better of yourself. There are many times I was gonna give up…
@Bucky, you’re far from the only person who’s said this; CTO, you mean Cory, right? I will let him know.
@Ultra… ooops that’s off-topic for here… I won’t delete you but Chadrick’s recent post is still open and related. Go for it.
@StevenSDF; I think you have me beat with emoticons.
@Pointless — sometimes that says more about the person making than the comment than the post they’re commenting on. I know it’ll happen anyway, but how someone reacts to a situation speaks loudly about their character, especially since there’ll continue to be many, many entries OPEN to comments. Just, not all of them. Isn’t variety the spice of life? And doesn’t Second Life have its own spices? To wit, I must admit I’m often looking out for creative trackbacks as extended comments to our blog, so perhaps an understated mainline here is:
With entries with blog comments closed, let’s leave trackbacks/pings/pingbacks open.
Observe what happens, reabsorb, adapt, learn from the knowledge of our people — this could be you! — and move on.
November 30th, 2006 at 6:02 PM
I doubt that UTC goes to Daylight Savings at the same time as the US. In fact, would someone please educate me: does UTC do Daylight Savings at all? I’m only pretty sure it doesn’t. So SLT is PST, but that is only UTC-8 for part of the year.
Of course, we could use nautical time zones, which have all the advantages of changing with DST, and the additional advantage of being understood and used in normal practice by only a small percentage of people. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timezone#Nautical_time_zones
November 30th, 2006 at 6:19 PM
Torley, I know you’re doing the best you can. So let me at least help make the burden a little easier to carry by telling you about a couple of things that have gone right.
The IM “typing…” indicators and emotes are perfect, and help bring SL’s IM system forward into the 21st century. And I know my friend Vertex Zenith would be pleased to see that the emotes are finally there…Vert, this cowbell’s for you!
Also, I’m impressed with the sophistication of the new Friends List display, and the automatic IM and chat logs work as advertised. Though I wish the timestamps carried over into the log files…but it’s a small matter. And the “Web” tab in the profile is, of course, the shiznit; you can now access Evans Avenue Exit directly through my profile.
So be comforted; it’s an ill wind indeed that doesn’t blow some good.
November 30th, 2006 at 6:32 PM
@Erbo, well I have some more good news for you!
We know about the timestamps-not-showing up thing, it’s a bug. Will be fixed in 1.13.1.
I’ll also share your comments with the Linden devs responsible for these excellent things!
That reminds me, I gotta work on my web profile.
Sage words indeed, thank-you.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:12 PM
Torley, while there have been some glitches, which are not unusual, I agree with Erbo, the enhancements to Friends and IM are fantastic, as are some of the bug fixes.
My one desire, would be to see the blog entry corrected that says that the partnerships page is working, since it still is not (just verified that a minute ago). Or at least that someone is looking into ahy accepting proposals does not work.
Overall, good work, and I hope you guys keep it up.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:21 PM
Partnering doesn’t work still. My gal can’t reply to my proposal.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:23 PM
Hey Earwig, right on…
I just tested a Partnership and it went through for me; I got the expected:
Can you please verify that you’re logged in as the desired account and double-check that you checked the right email box it was sent to?
If it’s giving you an error message, please say so.
We indeed had several Lindens looking at this earlier; if there are more problems we should know the specifics ASAP so we can update.
And thanx!
November 30th, 2006 at 7:27 PM
Torley, Yes, I’m logged in as the desired account, no, it did not request an e-mail account, nor was there an error message. I click “I Accept”, and it returns to the same page, with my acceptance text gone. If I click to refuse, that goes through just fine (my future partner and I did that as a test earlier). It really is that simple. We even tried turning around the proposal, and it behaved the same.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:32 PM
K, I’m digging deeper on this! Thanx for the info, Earwig and Sargent.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:38 PM
Yay! I love Second Life and all its up and downs!!! Way to be!
November 30th, 2006 at 7:52 PM
Torley, I sent you an IM in SL with more information on the proposal that is not working for me and my partner. Hope that helps.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:59 PM
Oh rats! Sowwies, IMs are flaky for me… I get way too many, hard to manage, sometimes my IM-to-email gets turned off mysteriously (maybe all the crazy testing I do :p) and my msgs get capped, etc.
Like it says in my profile: please email me with the info!
[EDIT] Lucky, I got yours! Thx for the example.November 30th, 2006 at 8:12 PM
Sigh. GMT. PST. Can we have SLT/PST on all the pages of the SL site? I get so cunfused, especially since SL broke my bodyclock and right about now i’m in insomniac miasma.
I’m gonna make a SL t-shirt that says “It’s not my fault your day is my night.”
November 30th, 2006 at 8:29 PM
Thinking clockwise…… I seem to rememeber Phantasy Star Online using that hilarious Swatch beat time - which would be great in SL if you had your own local time next to it so you could get used to what possible time of day 1337 might be.
Maybe some kind of global SL timethang is in order? It’d be a lot more sci-fi and otherworldly and metaversal if our clocks didn’t run in minutes, but ran in, say, potatoes.
For all else that’s afoot, i’m noticing my poor cog-grinding pre-intel macmini now rezzes the world about 3x faster since the update and ironing out of crunchy bits. Dunno what y’all did, but….. nice.
It’s really not my fault your day is my night, though.
November 30th, 2006 at 8:39 PM
Note: I intended to post this about 4 hours ago or something. Got distracted
Luciftias
Don’t you mean Rube Goldberg ?
Mark Barrett
So do I, but sneaking SLT into WordPress would be a pain.
etherkye Hansen
Unfortunately for me, there are considerably more.
Torley
The problem with Swatch beats is that it would drive everyone to have a local offset to global time, instead of the more convenient global offset to local time.
Pointless
Linden Lab employees are not paid to be masochists, so they should not forced to be put through unfocussed, non-constructive criticism, mindless bitching etc and still be expected to put on a smiley face. Some topics do not need commenting on. Old ones that degenerate into off-topic rants are obviously past discussion.
Closing blog threads is appropriate, and should be done.
Ultra Nefarious
Please use the forum or support lines as directed instead of the blog.
Fledhyris Proudhon
This is the nature of a default WordPress install.
>huggles<
Maria Scheflo
As taken from her profile: I’m a dragoness
The problem is that people tend to complain about issues that are entirely irrelevant to the blog post, which puts people off from discussing the issues at hand.
Cocoanut Koala
If you go to a doctor, do you tell them about your cat’s illness or your own ?
A blog post is made about a specific issue, and in the context of that blog post all else is irrelevant.
While that is a good point, other than the town hall meetings, and perusing the forums, and the mailing lists (all of which are difficult to use or find useful information on) I don’t think Linden Lab have made a blog post for “what would you like to know” yet. That kind of question, because there are at least 800 thousand of us (flexible estimate on non-alts) and a blog thread would become unmanagble to read, would be best posed in the form of a closed-comments blog post linked to a forum thread- basically creating a more high profile version of the mailing list for the town hall questions.
Rose Bradley
What Torley has is watermelony goodness. Now the actual quote was:
Torrid Midnight
Taken from SecondCast Episode 45 @ around 55:52.
Joel Savard
If you’re referring to an in-world thing, the current solution would be to use your first-life profile to list your UTC offset if you’re not comfortable with listing your country. I’m working on a future evil-plan to combine with the current project that I shall elect to not plug
Chronic Skronski
Echo Folsom
UTC is not a timezone system. it is an offset mechanism. Timezones are “offset from” UTC.
Torley
I’m sure I can cheer Fledge up, if at least only to the point where she will leave a comment telling me off for ranting too furiously
Earwig
Torley
Seriously, emailing Torley is good way to go. Torley has an unbelievably high turnaround time for someone so popular
November 30th, 2006 at 9:01 PM
Trilobite Reisman
<selfpimpage>already done. If you’re wanting a clock for any timezone, I can hook you up with one, or give you the API scripts to play with making your own :-)</selfpimpage>
November 30th, 2006 at 10:34 PM
A few of us were chattering offline that Linden Lab needs a Scoble.
We found the prodigy! Keep it up Torley, you’re gonna be the resident Scoblemelon, and it might be just what LL needs.
November 30th, 2006 at 11:08 PM
Here’s an idea I haven’t yet seen…and would dearly love to see (in relation to timezonese)…why not have the current SL time displayed on the login screen - so we can check the SL time in relation to an event without having to login.
Yeah I know - wrong spot to suggest it, off topic…but there is sooo much discussion about timezones in this blog, and I have been dieing to say this to someone, anyone, for ages…
November 30th, 2006 at 11:11 PM
Well, now that I think about it, it is a waste of time for me to post my suggestions here, or anyone else, really.
After all, SignPost Marv has all the answers. I think you should give him the ability to post his own blog entries! He could just turn comments off, and save himself the trouble of batting aside everyone else’s points.
coco
November 30th, 2006 at 11:28 PM
Torley, don’t forget that whilst you and a few Lindens might like the blog format because it’s “different” to how most other online games communicate with their players, many people would still prefer to have a decent, full set of forums that actually allow the players to decide what we talk about, rather than being restricted to the few subjects you choose, sanitised by the Love Machine, to make it look as though all is well.
Broccoli
December 1st, 2006 at 12:37 AM
G’day
Great work Linden Lab marketing!
You had a MAJOR public relations problem in these blogs and it’s a perfect way to handle it by encouraging Torley to post, post and post some more.
She’s lovely and she mediates things perfectly and because she is “not in marketing” it’s sincere.
Good work Torley and good work Linden Lab management for encouraging her to placate the masses.
Cheers
Alex Warrior
aka Janine Au
December 1st, 2006 at 12:46 AM
ty for the info Torley! can I quote you on this without the context? … “So, you gotta lot of choices, and one of them is: instead of bitching, please help us improve Second Life for you.” =P
December 1st, 2006 at 1:24 AM
Yea my partner proposal wouldn’t go through either. She got it but the message but it won’t take..
December 1st, 2006 at 3:07 AM
> @StevenSDF; I think you have me beat with emoticons.
Ah, sometimes I have to stop myself from using too many. XD
For some reason it tends to annoy others :p
OMGTEHSMILIEFLOOD
:p 
I like how this thing has gone totally OT
December 1st, 2006 at 3:10 AM
Sign-
The moderators were happy to see Coco leave the TSO stratics forums also.
Enough said.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:33 AM
[...] (more…
[...]
December 1st, 2006 at 3:42 AM
The “Big Issue” in posting to a BB is how are other people going to react to your post. I learned that craft in 2002/3 when I had to resort to stock market share BBs to find out what the **** was happening to the markets when people were loosing their jobs, life savings, and in some cases going to war, and nobody on the inside would give you a straight answer. If anyone is interested review some old (and current) threads on http://www.advfn.com for everyday examples.
Linden labs “issues” pale into insignificance compared with those days.
So I have two tips for a stress free BB life.
1) Never post if you are having a bad day with external unconnected issues as human nature dictates you will want to “take it out” on someone
2) Always cut and paste into Word (or similar) and reread the post before hitting the send button, there have been many times when I have posted and have done that, and on reflection deleted the Word Document BB post.
No disrespect intended
Regards
John
December 1st, 2006 at 3:58 AM
How is the partnering thing looking Torley?
December 1st, 2006 at 4:58 AM
Thank you for each and all continued thoughtful comments…
@Trilobite (I like trilobites!), we usually state timezones on pages with time-related info. I know the Events page is missing them, and inworld it still says “PDT” instead of “PST” for Events. Open issue to be fixed.
@Marv: Good lord, quotemaster you! Thanks, now I know where Torrid said that.
@Eric: Thanx! That’s really an honor, esp. coming from such a veteran of the field as you!
Hrmmm mebbe we should have more multimedia here, just like Scoble has his video show! Like one of the 9rules goes, “Respect your inspiration”, and Scoble inspires me. He’s got the #1 WordPress blog after all!
@Elizabeth: Login screen does display PST time in the upper-right!
@Broccoli: Yup, esp. since I am historically a forum fiend myself. Lots of Resident-run forums are arising, however — no LL “sanitization” there. Big future hope for me: post-forums (I mentioned WetPaint earlier). Too much forum software is samey, I want more mold-breakers, not for la revolution cause, but because as Second Life itself shows… more, better ways to communicate, always.
@Alex: Well that’s really nice of you!
I don’t really know what “placating the masses” is all about, I just say stuff and react like any good Stephen King everyman being assaulted by night terrors. I assure you our marketing isn’t insincere tho!
@MM: Yes, quote that as much as you like.
Re: partnering thing, I updated right here.
Thanks for all the the warmth, especially because it’s so (literally) cold. It’s 5 AM PST here and I’m eating Irish Stew. The snow outside is very fierce. I fell in earlier when trying to get the mail, and made snow angels. I’m crazy like that.
December 1st, 2006 at 5:33 AM
@SignPost Marv: What an impressive list of comments.
@Flex: My apologies Hun. That will teach me for assuming.
@Torley: Thank you so much for your comments hun. Also major thanks for the increased communications this time around. I’m seeing the blog updated often with latest status and I’m seeing a lot of in world communications. This is awesome. Just the right steps needed. LIke I said, I knew Linden could make it to the next level. We keep seeing those signs that you are making it.
Keep up the progress and the move to the next level. Don’t worry about the negative comments, just remember they are us reminding you the direction to go. We love the game and things are getting better.
Most important, thanks for getting the system stable enough that I could have my first event last night. It was awesome. Who ever thought you could have a wet t-shirt contest and make it look realistic. Will definitely have to do that again.
December 1st, 2006 at 5:52 AM
@Torley: I know I’d be interested in seeing some of the patch post-mortem results… I doubt I’m the only res here interested in seeing the process as well as the product.
December 1st, 2006 at 6:05 AM
I’m sorry if this isn’t quite on topic, but that is a very snazzy picture at the end of the blog post there Torley! That’s not straight from SL is it? I never knew a plywood cube could look so good!
December 1st, 2006 at 7:02 AM
I hope this isn’t a rehashed idea, but I have an idea that might take care of the time zone issue.
Link all time stamps on the blogs and web page (in-world would be nice too, if possible) to the following:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/full.html?&sort=1
World time map, sorted by country.
December 1st, 2006 at 7:19 AM
@Adam: I really like that world clock page, I’ve used it myself in previous updates. Let me add that as a blog to-do. In the meantime, I think I can also include it as a Widget on the right.
@Storm: I’ve let CTO of Linden Lab, Cory Linden, know how interested Resis are in getting more technical details about what happened and where we’re going with Second Life. Maybe we can get a technical Town Hall put together, let’s see!
@Cerulia: Hehe totally okay to ask, it’s part of the post after all. When I have time, I do SL-related art. That was a shot out of SL, with some blur added. Nothing extravagant, but I thought it was romantic to see a plywood cube in moonlight. On second thought, two cubes would be even more lovely.
@Maria: Thanx for sharing this with us, I’ve felt the same way about “negative comments” before too.
December 1st, 2006 at 9:34 AM
Brandon, I have no idea what you are talking about. The TSO moderators were my friends, half of them, and asked me many times to help moderate there.
coco
December 1st, 2006 at 11:44 AM
since this has nothing to do with this thread, i know that, but since LL has decided to stop comments on the pertinent topics, i’m posting it here. I am a paying customer, and that means that LL has taken my money for their service. I understand that the code for SL is extremely complex. I understand that there are literally Thousands of servers that need the new code. I understand that the Codemonkey’s work long hours for each update…
BUT WILL SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY EVERY UPDATE THAT GOES THROUGH IS 4-5 DAYS BEFORE EVERYTHING IS STABLE, AND EVEN THEN ONLY AFTER AN EMERGENCY PATCH, I MEAN OPTIONAL VIEWER….
if i were a cable tv company and this sort of thing happened, where every 2 weeks, my customers got better reception over their antenna’s for 5 days, i’d be out of business fast. It isn’t worth all the “new features” when teh core program goes to hell. I personally could care less about new splash scrrens, and new “website” in profile, when i can’t even get a search to connect reliably, nor are places searchable for. LL IS TURNING INTO AOL OF THE MID 90′S!!!!!!! you are caring more about flash and glitz, and press than you established subscriber base. AOL is no longer what they are, and they are now a totally free service. FOCUS on your core!!!!!!!
December 1st, 2006 at 11:54 AM
I will say that the AOL comment is very relevant indeed.
On the one hand my news feeds are becoming overwhelmed with SL news, today for example I hear that ABN AMRO the investment and merchant bank are setting up in SL….(source Reuters)
On the other hand Gov Linden together with the Linden Labs team do seem to have the ability to snatch one last spectacular defeat from the jaws of impending victory.
Focus on the core, by that I mean speech and a web page on a prim.
Regards
John
December 1st, 2006 at 12:26 PM
re: ABN AMRO
1. Beware the Linden being designated as a currency. Only the US government can create (out of thin air) currency. Please be careful - a lot of activities seem to be in the grey zone. e.g. external exchanges of Lindens into USD or other currencies. I was particularly disturbed to hear Philip’s comments at the last town hall meeting about acting like a central bank (hope he does it better than Greenspan - we are about to enjoy his legacy). If there were zero spillover into RL, this might be ok, but as things stand now, I hope you have expert advice on all things L$ related.
2. ABN AMRO and other RL firms entering SL will have even HIGHER expectations than current residents. Please also keep that well in mind. You don’t want to see the headline on CNET: “IBM pulls out of Second Life.” Think of residents as very helpful PROXIES for how well you are doing with respect to corporate entities establishing themselves here. If it is getting screwed up for the residents, it has high level visibility at Adidas, Reebok, Toyota, Nissan, IBM, Harvard University, Starwood Hotels, Dell, Sony, Reuters and others. Anyone at those firms can grab a free account, read the blogs, experience for themselves the wonders of disappearing islands (hey, that could be ours!) etc.
Re Cory: I would love to see a TOP 5 ISSUES post every single day listing them, indicating what has been done or tried in the last day, what is being done (”working on it” doesn’t cut it), what Cory believes the current status to be and, as appropriate, an ETA for a fix. (hours, one day, several day, couple weeks?). This post need not be commentable. Town hall approach would, I’m sure, degenerate rapidly into a poo slinging contest.
Thanks for the good work here Torley.
Nick
December 1st, 2006 at 2:27 PM
Considering that any blog updates ahead of this one really do not have much relevance to what I am going to say, and that this one seems to be a catch-all I would like to point something out to anyone in world right now having issues:
If for any reason the display of all profile information is not occuring no matter who you view (more than just the name!) DO NOT LOG OUT AND BACK IN. It only makes it worse. In fact if you go to the prefs. section of edit and hit Communication you’ll see that the server thinks you’re offline ….
Until the profiles display, as far as the system is concerned you are not online. reloging does not fix this as I discovered last night (seven relog attempts, got in world and everything was worse - not better.)
December 1st, 2006 at 5:55 PM
Cocoanut Koala
From the way WordPress’s permissions system works, I’d need to be given Admin level perms to switch comments off, but only contributor level perms in order to make posts
Yeah….. I get accused of being an arogant sod, but you expect to let people just run free without any intelligent opposition (as opposed to ZOMG LL IS TEH SUXXOR) ? Don’t be ridiculous.
Torley Linden
You been map stalking Cube Linden ?
NickCA Dittmann
Any government recognised by the citizenry of a nation can create (out of thin air). Other governments need only recognised the government, and by extension, the currency for it to have any worth outside of a nation.
Which is why you have situations where the citizenry of a poorly managed economy will ignore the currency their government provides and uses someone else’s currency. This happens almost as much in the digital world as it does in the physical world- third world countries using the US Dollar for an ad-hoc economy, people selling gold on eBay, challenging the validity of the L$…..
I would prefer to see a bugzilla installation so bug tracking and reporting (and thus, whining) is separate from the blog.
December 2nd, 2006 at 12:39 AM
Quote “As of now, 7,777 spam caught since we moved to WordPress VIP.)”
That is false stats. Before WorldPress there were no problems with spam as all had to be registered. What WorldPress gives is control and censorship. No comments allowed on how many postings?
Jamie
Wonders how many legitimate postings got eaten by a formula.
December 2nd, 2006 at 12:44 AM
Just on the off topic conversations, Chadrick told off a couple of people for off comment posts when they were criticising something but said nothing about people posting to flirt with him or pat him on the back which is also off topic. I know the latter made him feel good but a little consistency would probably avoid many of the problems.
But (hopes it’s not too off topic)
I think Chadrick did a great job informing the community and taking comments on bugs and I think LL did a very good job getting most of LL back to a working state after the upgrade so I’d like to say that what Chadrick did publicly on the blog and what LL did internally was very much appreciated at least by myself
@Marv, I’ve seen you go off topic quite a lot, usually answering someone else thats off topic but never the less, I go off topic too so I’m not trying to tell you off here except that I think in an earlier post you were telling others off.
Much of the whining I think comes from the blog being the only place that it can be done that most people know about, it might not make LL feel the best but it’s their customers and a lot of it should be listened to, perhaps not taken to heart which is hard to do and generally just becomes an emotional drain, but if a company has 1500 odd complaints in an hour or two, they need to take notice at some level.