From: someone
Originally posted by Snark Serpentine
SL's astounding flexibility doesn't attract their interest, because SL is "ugly" and difficult to use.
I bumped into two newbies on saturday who were RL sisters who hang out on There who were trying out SL.
They seemed like the very socialable more than technical types, but insisted on learning how attachments could be made. I tried as hard as I could to explain it very simply and not use too much technical terminology, but in the end I think they became overwhelmed and frustrated. I heard them talking with each other and my impession is that they will probably not become residents beyond their trial.
I'm not really expressing an opinion here, just relating a very recent experience which is an example of what Snark said.
What can we do to improve this situation so that people like them might have stayed? I'm not sure.
From: someone
Originally posted by Snark Serpentine
However, from what I've seen, SL is starting to get a lot more "ur kyoot wats ur IM" types wandering around the world. Maybe it's because There's latest release is buggy, but more likely it's just more people hearing about it. As SL starts to get as much press (and it will) as There, this problem will keep growing.
This is inevitable in any social group of humans. The same thing happens everywhere, especially online where there is an extra degree of anonyminity.
Fortunately, we have bootstrapped a good community which behaves maturely for the most part, who are very helpful to new people, and has a low tolerance for griefing activities.
The challenge now is to maintain as much of these positive aspects of our culture as possible while SL grows and and a wider variety of people and memes immigrate into SL.
From: someone
If (when) we see voice chat in SL, get ready, because the Lindens had better start handing out banhammers to a middle tier of enabled moderators.
According to the recent Town Hall with Cory Linden, they are working on voice chat. The transcript is on the forums here somewhere =)
The problem with "middle tier of enabled moderators" is that there is still an issue that started with one of the big MMORPGS (maybe it was EQ?) where one or more the "empowered residents" sued the game company for employment rights.
This act of greed has effectively cut off a very useful tool for companies who run MMO environments and games to delegate some CS responsibility to enthusiastic volunteers.
Due to that litigation, only the more daring of companies will risk implementing a system of volunteer empowerment again.
This is why the CS in most online games/environments is doomed to deteriorate as the world grows. I just hope that LL can find a way to keep up with the tide as the world continues to grow.
Perhaps they could enlist trusted volunteers who can filter through the majority of the problems and escelate anything requiring "divine" intervention directly to a Liason or someone who can take action. This will probably be a good compromise between empowered volunteers and providing a scalable system to maintain good customer service.
