Proposal: Enhanced Community Input Mechanism

(This isn't really a new "feature" as such, but Jeska feel free to move this thread if you think it's better off in that forum.)

The first thing the public SL FAQ says is:

1. What is Second Life?
A 3D digital world imagined, created and owned by its Residents.

In practice, that's true only to a limited extent. A lot of the things Residents imagine are not implemented in SL, only because Linden Lab reserves the right to govern the place as it sees fit. This is just as it should be. LL solicits input from the community when it's considering changes to things like the economy and land sales, and they do a good job of it, for the most part. But I think the promise of a virtual world like Second Life could be better realized through an enhanced mechanism for involving Residents in decisions like how to improve the ratings system, for instance, or how to release new land, or any number of things. It would take a lot of courage on LL's part, but I think launching the grid in itself was a courageous thing, and Philip's idea that it should be a place created by, of and for its Residents is a fine and brave idea as well. It would take only a small step in the same direction to increase the satisfaction of Residents and their sense that they have a role in shaping the society we call the grid. As follows:

LL already solicits input on new features and feature changes, to an extent. When a change to something like ratings is being contemplated, for instance, we're asked what we think of the old ratings system and how we think it could be improved. Then LL goes away and puts their heads together, comes up with a solution, announces it (generally without much notice), and the flaming starts.

What about inserting a step or two into that process that would give the community more real input into the actual changes being contemplated? Thusly:

1. LL would solicit opinions on something it feels is broken or possibly in need of adjustment, as it does now. But this would be done in a moderated thread in which off-topic posts and ad-hominem attacks would not be allowed. (Those will soon crop up in the Discussion Forums without anyone's help.) The discussion would continue until LL felt it had gathered enough ideas.

2. LL would go off and put their heads together and come up with one or more prospective solutions to the problem (including, possibly, doing nothing at all).

3. (This is the part that takes some courage.) LL would announce more or less *exactly* what it's contemplating doing. If three ideas for fixing Problem X are bouncing around LL, all three would be posted to a new moderated thread. LL would of course reserve the right to make whatever changes it felt were necessary in the end, but by disclosing prospective changes to the community explicitly, they'd foster a much greater sense of "buy-in" and get much more meaningful feedback.

4. A public comment period commences with the posting of the contemplated changes in #3 above, in the same moderated thread. The public comment period would last ten days or two weeks. Besides fostering the sense of buy-in, LL would get to take better advantage of the vast store of wisdom and expertise that is the grid's population. Again, off-topic/ad-hominem posts would be disallowed.

5. LL would think it over for as long as necessary, and then announce the changes they'd decided on, giving something like two weeks notice for the community to digest them. By that time, most of the flames would have died down, anyone considering leaving would have reconsidered, and we could all get on with the business of having fun.

Obviously the objection that would be raised is that "we can't disclose features that are under consideration." But I've yet to hear a good argument for that contention. Of course, a new feature that advances the technology or MUDplay engine is not to be made public before its release, I understand that and support it. But it would not harm LL at all to make public changes it's considering on the level of "governance" (i.e., ratings system, land sales, abuse reporting, stipend bonuses, event support, things of that nature). Yes, they'll get flamed, but they're getting flamed anyway once the actual change is announced. With a well defined community input mechanism, the flames would be far more useful, and the Residents then have themselves to answer to as well as the Lindens if something were to be put in place that they didn't like.

Thoughts?

I generally tend to disagree on this purely because residents (myself included) are commonly more interested in the short-term gain and "popular opinion" to a matter than the solution that's best for all of us in the long term. Sorry.

As a game dev, Jr., one of the major things I see that developers need to do is take opinions fished out of the community with a grain of salt. Listening to the "group think" on an issue, alone, usually will screw you in the end; don't listen at all, and most of your community leaves. Soliciting ideas is done now, to a small extent (ie. we're thinking of dropping permission X), but some of the large stuff like the economy/rating changes, well, have still not "died down" in their entirety.

In that light, I see the process done now as fine. I realize that's probably a minority opinion compared to the vocal minority here (!), but there are certain moves that are usually best handled by the Lindens without the initial drama.

Besides. They should just hire Sanya Thomas for handling community relations in the Grab Bag fashion. There's a system I endorse.

Very good post Walker!

I like your suggestions - let's develop a way to integrate this inWorld rather than the forums.

The forum are not SL...



_/_/_/

I like this idea but wish that it could be implemented in world and not in the forums. Say a system where we could petition LL in world via a petition booth at some governor linden owned location.

-Click petition booth to pull up request form
-Add feature request/petition and click to save
-Click petition booth to pull up all open petitions
-Sign which ever petitions you deem necessary by voting yes or no
-After 10 days petitions recieving the votes of X percent of the population will be reviewed by the dev team for consideration.
-Petitions which did not pass may be ammended and resubmitted at a later time.
-Once a petition is passed after review by the dev team all voters will be notified.
-LL may submitt proposals at anytime to the petition booths in order to gauge the feelings of SL users with regards to policy change ect. These proposals may be voted upon as well for consideration by LL.
-A space such as ahern could be used for debate and town hall meetings to discuss the proposals.

I am not sure if this is even close to what you are suggesting and I may just be talking out of my bum.....I'm not really known for cohesive thought so sue me

haha...teaches me to take so long to form a thought...my thoughts exactly Merwan!!

Thanks Merwan and Isis, that is of course a key component of the proposal which somehow escaped me on the first pass.

In-world implementation would take some thought. There has to be a better way than town hall meetings in which Robin is deluged with chat.

The main problem is getting the word out to many/all residents without resorting to spam-mail, which LL seems to be against. As far as the real-world analogue goes, though, the forums do act as a kind of newspaper where residents can look for news of new features, etc., if they so choose. It's probably more residents' responsibility than LL's, but it would be nice to have some better in-world news service. [shameless plug] (And there's always the Second Life Herald, of course! [/shameless plug]

I could envision a newsstand that gives out a notecard, updated weekly, that tells you what the top issues of debate are, with links to the forum threads. The note would have to be updated by hand, of course, but it's not a big project. Even a relative newb like myself could handle it. (And maybe I will.)

And hopefully nearby there would be a Suggestion/Response Box where residents could (a) submit suggestions for new features while in-world, and (b) find out what features were being considered and submit their responses during the Public Comment period.

I think that in the past LL has responded to suggestions like this by saying that the forums are the place for that kind of debate and discussion, but I see no compelling reason why it couldn't also take place in-world, under a model like this one. If anything, it would get people to spend more time on the grid, which can only be a good thing from LL's point of view.

Walker, slow news day? Don't you have a paper to put out lol?

Why don't you take Uri's blog and put it in the game? Do all these things in the game, yourself? Instead of on a website, out of the game. There's nothing to stop you from making a news kiosk device that issues notecard issues-du-jour and has the voting device suggested by Isis Becquerel

Just stop asking the Lindens to do stuff. They won't do it, and we don't want them to do it. They already do too much stuff, and that only gives them ideas to do more stuff. They already fake-ask us our ideas, and it leads to a we-pretend-to-work and they-pretend-to-pay us dynamic -- they pretend to have the game functioning on fast servers all the time, and we pay them almost nothing for this wondrous work. They simply should charge more for access to faster servers, and frankly, many will pay a little more like they pay for their cable bills.

Let's just look at them, in one sense, as the Gods Who Have Failed. Yes, Gods, but Gods Who Have Failed. They have made a nice pretty shiny grid, but they have failed to deliver fast servers with fast FPS and 24/7 functioning servers, and worse, they have failed to deliver players the freedom from other players which they want for their $9.95 LOL. Few Gods would be able to deliver such freedom that can be free from others' freedom! But...it can be tried by players themselves!

Make such a newstand, and I will be happy to put it up on my properties including a mall and rental communities and other public spaces as they develop. Rent the space from me, I'll give you a month free to test it out. Make a simple device that just notecard-gives and returns if YOU want to do all that paperwork to analyze results (or hire me to do that for you).

Why should the Lindens administer player feed-back systems?

Who will stay the dyer's hand, i.e. those who administer a river of information if they are dye-makers i.e. content-writers can pour in more or less dye in the news and feedback business as they like? I'd rather not put that in their hands.

It's the Lindens grid and its their servers. We should try to think how we can get the Lindens to REALLY lease their servers to players and then just make them work, and go away.

Yes, and don't tell Uri you saw me here!

I've been thinking about the Herald newsstand idea just as you suggested. One thing that's kept me from looking further into it until now has been a lack of places to put one (as well as my activities recruiting new writers, writing stories, raving around the grid, etc.). Plus I'm not sure if I'd have to distribute the new cards to each newsstand via LSL or by hand, but that's a question for another thread. Once I get it going I will definitely take you up on your kind offer, thank you.

/me rolls his ink-stained sleeves up and gets back to work setting type

The Lindens should facilitate player feedback systems because, in the end, they are both government of a world, but also a business. Contemporary marketing for businesses utilizes a circular model: one that cannot exist without feedback. As smart businesspersons, the Lindens should work toward anticipating the needs of their customers by getting to know their customers. They do this already through content creators surveys (which I was heartbroken to find out are randomly given out; here I thought I was special *sniffs*).

It is smart research and development to give your customer every opportunity to warn you before he or she experiences cognitive dissonance. This kind of research helps to build better products as well. A consistently useable internal mechanism for giving feedback would be a sound investment of time and effort, I think; the Lindens' constant opportunity for communication with its customer is something most businesses would envy.

~ Perse

it's pretty much a known fact that people by their nature make decisions that benefit themselves short term and screw themselves long term, especially with virtual societies like this. that's why LL should keep making its own decisions. if they let the community vote on every decision that affects SL it would be a paradise for us for a few months and then die under the weight of all the shitty decisions we made.

Richard Bartle who is some kind of virtual world bigwig sez........

that's from a bigger article but it gets the point across.

I'm not proposing we get to vote on anything at all or have any kind of a formal role in the actual making of decisions. Just a better way to get our input in there in case any of it is useful to LL. The basic idea is that we'll give better input if we're better informed. It doesn't eliminate the informal What do you guys think of X? approach that's now being used, it just adds a piece of What do you guys think of these specific things we're thinking of doing about X? to the process.

Community input is useless because LL barely has the resources and capability to do the bare minimum. Check the bug queue. Clearly, they are barely keeping their heads above water. We can suggest features till we're blue in the face, but if they can't even solve the teleport bug - what's the point?

What we need is not community input, but a way for SL to hand over responsibilities to the people of the world at large and to better leverage the technical and artistic skills of its denizens.

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I'm also not proposing a new way to suggest features. I'm just proposing a more coherent way to solicit community feedback on changes that the Lindens themselves are publicly considering. Soliciting community feedback is something that LL already does (and so they clearly have the time for it), I'm just proposing a more structured approach. The proposal wouldn't take any more Linden-hours at all. In fact, by stretching the process out just a bit, it might even lighten the work-load.

What? Now you actually expect me to THINK! BAh!

It takes all kinds, Devlin. No thinking necessary. Elbow lickers have their place in SL too. But I do understand your concern.

I couldn't agree more, Jeffrey. Things like the change to ratings do get debated for an extended period of time. When a change is decided upon and announced people still flip out, even those that were actively involved in the discussion leading up to the change. That's human nature. I do think that a bigger effort could be made to get more people involved in the initial discussion, but if LL doesn't end the discussion at some point and make a decision then nothing will ever get done. It will never matter what decision ends up being made. There will always be dissent no matter how long the discussion is allowed to continue. I'd rather have people making the decisions whose full time job is contemplating how best to manage and structure SL than a cacophony of voices who are more concerned with their individual point of view than arriving at true consensus, which ultimately isn't possible anyway.

As previously outpointed, it wouldn't change who makes the decision, nor really when.

Part of the reason that forum discussions on issues that are up for change wind up being so cacophonous is that they're usually not focused around specific, detailed proposals. Usually it's just, "What do you guys think of X? Discuss." This is useful, but not as useful as getting the community's feedback on specific changes that are being considered, before the changes are made. IMO.