The Worst Thing I Have Ever Seen Ll Do.

You got any faith left in LL's desire to communicate with us? Get ready to lose it.

Here, the sum-up of what I just now wrote on Robin's blog, under the "New Direction for the Forums" entry:

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ROBIN: THIS is the way you run your blogs? THIS is the way you want SL to run? THIS is the way you want people to view LL? THESE are really the principles Lindens believe in?

I refer to the following:

I read on Prok's blog this morning that he has posted to Pathfinders blog, and his post had been summarily dismissed. He said that this is what he had written:
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Thanks for competing with your own residents once again, Linden Lab! I can’t imagine that the sinks from this effort would at all make that big a dent in the inflationary problems of SL.

And there are rental agents who already rent whole sims (I’m not one of them) and now you’ve essentially killed off their market.

As for the idea of creating “untouched wilderness,” you’re also stepping on resident initiative, time, trouble, toil, and expense, too.

For example: Some of us have worked over a year to create and maintain the SL Public Land Preserve with some 50,000 m2 at some 20 locations with different kinds of activity on it, ranging from enjoying wilderness and seeing historic builds to having activities available like boating, camping, art work display, games, free vending, etc., see Botany’s Grove: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Carlisle/114/76/23/

We raise donations of tier and cash, and it’s been a struggle — we’ve gotten perhaps 20-25 percent of the cost covered each month which is actually remarkable I think given how difficult it can be to sustain group projects in SL.

But now, we’re competing with the ability of Linden land to put out 6 sims instantly and use all of its own marketing capacity to draw avatars to it. It’s yet another example of why trying to make a free market for business to flourish, and a free civil society for people to contribute and help each other, is so amazingly hard in Second Life — our efforts are constantly displaced and undone by “the federal government.”

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He said that had been removed within the hour.

So I went to Pathfinder's blog and wrote something very close to the following:

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"Hey, Pathfinder, Prok says you deleted his post. He said in his blog that this is what he had posted:

[inserted post above]

What do you find in that post that is so dangerous?

What is going through your brain, what could POSSIBLY be going through your brain, to delete a post because it's critical?

Or did he write something that I didn't know about, or was this a glitch or accident?

coco
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The wording isn't exact, because I didn't copy and paste it to myself. I would never have DREAMED that my post would be deleted, too! But it is quite close, because I wrote it not more than an hour or two ago.

But I went back an hour later to check for the answer and lo and behold,

MY POST WAS DELETED, TOO.

Is THIS what you want, Robin? Is THIS what LL stands for these days?

Is this the "improved communication?"

Is THIS what you do to your residents?

Or should I say, allow former residents now Lindens to do to other residents?

This is the most blatant and egregious thing I have ever seen in my days on LL, and I've seen a lot.

coco

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DO they honest to god think they really can just supress people that way? Don't they know this NEVER works?

I urge you to voice your opposition to this sort of treatment of residents on the Linden blogs.

coco

P.S. I meant to say "summarily removed" on Robin's blog. I am just so beside myself right now with disbelief and anger.

So Beatty shows up at your house and gives a embrassingly long monologue about how blog entries are bad. Then he points out that external blog entries are like special people who should not be allowed anywhere near him, so he's like.. Montag, we should purge all those entries.

Blogs are bad. They are no replacement for the forums.

Blogs are meant to be diaries for other people to read, not a two way communication - that's what forums are for.

As for censorship... that's just out of order. If things break rules (porn etc) sure, remove them, but there is no justification for removing valid - and honest - criticism.

It gives the impression there is something to hide.

We all know how things are, so who is there to hide the truth from? Potential investors?

Lewis

I am, unfortunately, not surprised.

LL, just state that you're closing the forums because you can. The rah-rah stuff from Robin is an insult; not good PR. http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/08/10/forums-take-a-new-turn/

I believe the forum too has some sort of censorship, I've seen threads that were very critical of LL disappear just like that poof, while locked threads remain to be seen after locked.

And then there are those threads that get time stamped to oblivion. I got one of those too I think.

I have to say, I have other things to do today, so I won't be following this thread for several hours.

However, understand that I am simply beside myself.

With shock.

In fact, right now I'm thinking maybe Pathfinder is the problem, and should be removed.

But I have to say, I am not thinking well at the moment, I am just so appalled and shocked and angry. I never thought LL would just totally repress anything they don't want to hear, AND anyone who brings it up, even suggesting that maybe it was a glitch.

So a few hours away from this would be a good thing anyway.

coco

P.S. ASSUMING, of course, the thread LASTS several hours, or does the iron hand of suppression extend to these forums as well?

I've already had several people message me the link and said "read this". So whilst they might kill the thread, they cannot kill the dissent, and in fact the more they try and supress the truth the worse it makes them look.

Are Linden Lab really that afraid of the truth?

Lewis

Coco, I don't believe it's the hand that's at fault, this looks like a company directive, I don't think this perticular person (maybe I'm wrong) is doing this intentially, he probably has clearly written memoranda from LL asking him not to let negative posts be posted there.

Then again, everything is working as intended, the blogs were made to function like this. We should not be surprised.

I'm actually somewhat surprised that you're surprised.

This sort of thing is *exactly* the reason why the forums are being removed.

The forums provide a place for residents to share information, and to organize opposition and a tool that can be used to bring pressure to bear on things that they don't like.

Of course LL doesn't like that. Why do you think that they've complained about the "noise" of resident posts drowning out the messages of Lindens? As long as the forums exist LL will actually have to *deal*, in some way at least, with issues that concern residents.

Look at what happened with the SLstats issue. LL thought that it was a great idea, and thought that we should shut the hell up and quit being whiners about it. If we hadn't done something there, then LL would have been able to bring in people doing marketing and psychological studies, etc., with a precedent set that that sort of thing was okay, because after all, some residents were already doing it.

Instead, a precedent was set the other way, a precedent in favor of user privacy.

Actually, if you want a big issue, look at griefing. For the past year, LL has had their heads in the sand over the abuse of Push for griefing. They also would have preferred to keep their heads in the sand about the abuse of open registration for griefing purposes.

Without the forums, it's likely that LL could have continued to ignore the problem for considerably longer, leaving us to suffer while they distilled their objectives.

Finally, look at the interface changes that broke the chat function. People universally *hated* the change. LL pretty obviously thought it was a good idea, part of their idea of making it easier to "navigate through the keyboard". without the forums, I think it's unlikely that we would have gotten the fix for that that we did.

It seems obvious to me that LL would be *much* happier not to have to deal with these things, if they could get *their* message across, and make sure that no disruptive user side concerns that conflict with their agenda are heard. Eliminating the forums and moving over to blogs does this.

Personally, I think it's a bad idea, and something that's going to turn around and bite them in time, but that's managment think for you, and LL seems to have a pretty bad case of it these days.

Then all we can do is boycott the blogs, and encourage everyone else to ignore them as well. They serve no useful purpose, are of no practical community-building use, and are entirely inappropriate outlets for discussion.

For a company at the 'cutting edge of technology', using an external system that is several years past being 'new and trendy' pretty much sums it all up.

Lewis

Is this about the six rentable sims they recently announced? Surely Prok is aware that they've had six rentable sims for years, right? They're just seperating them from the vehicle sims so that the vehicle sims don't get fucked over during events. Big deal?

I realize this thread is specifically about LL suppressing communication, but in this case the communication is somewhat poorly conceived.

/120/25/47080/1.html

Hey, Blaze, if you're still out there, thanks for the memories.

Censorship of negative customer replies to blogs ... A Distilled Achievable achieved.!!

Now, did anyone, did ANY of you believe it would be ANY different?

Were you really that naive about this? You honestly expected honesty?

Boycotting and ignoring the blogs is the most worthless type of resistance possible. What do they care? It guarantees no one will say anything negative. They can post whatever nonsense they like and who's to say different.

In about 2 hours, Mark Warner (presidential hopeful (maybe) -- see other thread) would be coming to SL, so I'm going to go there with a protest sign about gambling in SL.

You don't think that Linden Lab are going to give him preferential treatment and probably kick people out who are protesting?

After all, there must be a reason why he was given a custom name when he's just one person.

My guess is there's more to this than some presidential wannabe thinking it would be cool to play a computer game in his spare time.

Lewis

That would be funny, cause it would go entirely against what the guy wrote in his press release.

THIS is the worst thing you've ever seen LL do? THIS?

As long as the new Linden land doesn't fall to advertisers and sex stores, I'm all for it! If this new land you (or that other guy you're speaking for) is going to provide similar wilderness and fun nature-orented activities then by golly, go Lindens! Death to polluted and prim-heavy builds!

Let's see a Second Life world that matches its startup screen

- Jolan

What concerns me is that Philip, in his most recent Secondcast interview (episode 25, at or about 13 minutes into the show) describes the feedback they receive - which I assume he means by way of both the forums and email - as integral to their development process.

In this interview he was asked why Linden Lab would make such a bold move to open registration without first soliciting feedback from the community. Philip responded, in a very Tao of Linden flavored way, that they actually believe this is the best way to do things. That by releasing a bold change without notice, and then listening to all of the angry feedback they got, they were better able to prioritize the big things that would need fixing.

He felt if the idea had been floated first, the community would have overloaded them with myriad requests. But by foisting this upon us without notice, the first and loudest complaints would be centered on the most important issues, and then they could react and fix these things quickly. And in fact, they did make a few changes as a result of community outrage.

The point here being that Linden Lab apprarently plans for a period of resident reaction and feedback after any major release - and uses this feedback to prioritize the features or changes that need to be adjusted. In other words, this critical feedback is integral to the development process.

Now, if the forums are shut down, and critical feedback on the blogs is being censored, how exactly is Linden Lab supposed to receive this valuable data that they have relied on for their development priorities? Are hundreds or thousands of individual emails supposed to replace the forums in this regard? Is this really more efficient?

No real problem with what LL is doing here, leaving the vehicle park alone and using other sims for rentals or open space when unused.

Now, deleting dissenting posts? Of course it is wrong and it is exactly what many of us expected. If they wanted to hear what we think they wouldn't be closing the forums.

Everyone is happy on the Linden Blog!

Everyone. Happy. NOW.

This weeks Episode of Drama-High:

CC: Ohmigod, my friends screed was taken down from the school bulletin board!!

Friend1: Oh, so - put it somewhere else? People will still read it, right?

CC: No, you don't understand!! The bulletin board is the ONLY place ANYONE reads ANYTHING!!

Friend2: Umm...okay, hey - I have to go to the library....see you...

CC: Don't LEEEEEEEEEEEEEAVE!!! (wails, and stomps down the stairwell to the parking lot)

Burnout1: Hey, why so stressed? Here, have some..

CC: NO! I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT YOU PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND MEEEEEE!! (crying, she exits to the parking lot.)

Burnout1: Uh, ok....more for me.

We conclude next episode - "THE UNFAIR YEARBOOK SIGNING" in yet another thread...stay tuned..

Complete with the LL cheerleader post. What flavor kool-aid did they serve at the SLCC this year, Maxx?

Gee Maxx does that all fit on one tiny cube?