Events/Discussions using Voice?

My new place has in the description "Use of voice strongly encouraged".

Imagine a bunch of people all talking at once ... well yes in a lot of places voice is a stilted affair with people not having much to say, but imagine a bunch of people who are not socially awkward and are able to have a conversation in a public place RL.

I am tired of the people whining about voice, I will state clearly that it can add to SL immeasurably. Plus, and unpopular as this will make me, it does stop people lying about their gender (people can do exactly as they please but I do not like having someone tell bald bare faced lies and try to engage with me emotionally as something they are not ... they tell me, that's fine).

So does that mean I am unwelcoming to people for not wanting to use voice? MEH. The place has a vibe and feeling I am going for, and the kind of person who is unihibited and fun and not scared to speak is exactly what I am looking for.

In fact, Nimue, thank you for this post. I consider it very helpful ... when I do have events I will make a point of listing them as being voice friendly!

Alan, you said it! I also find people respond differently after using voice. They can tell there is a person there, first and foremost, in a way that text can simply NOT convey.

Wurl posts a transcript, usually within a day of the talkshow. That's probably because each show is recorded as machinima, and voice is recorded with it, and he can then produce a transcript.

Voice has such a negative reaction from some people that I think it creates a mental block toward ideas that would make it a more effective tool.

This is the thing Cristelle.

I'm personally past worrying when people get defensive about it. Their loss. Voice has been great as far as I am concerned.

Ordianl, you’re killing me!!...LOL!
Any idea what the problem is?
If you would like, IM me and lets see if we can figure out what is wrong. Or I could send you a notecard with some troubleshooting tips.

A negative reaction? Deservedly so, with people like Cherry and her new venue (Wish she'd posted a name so I could avoid it like the plague) which come off as oh so smugly superior to non-voicers. Another prime example is the voice bigot, Mr. Bigwig (surprised he hasn't bloviated over the thread yet).

Personally, I classify voice events as the intellectual equivalent of dood-speakers and gesture/sound spammers. I just prefer a bit more literacy that the average voice chat session delivers. The few times I've had it so I could listen, the idiocy level was through the roof and I turned it right back off....its like voicers develop Tourette's and say things they'd reconsider if they had to take time to type it.

Coincidentally, it was a hardware issue for Wurl. He couldn't get voice to work initially because of his headset.

Well, really, I am not that bothered, as I am not that interested in using it generally (if I really wish to talk to somebody I will use Skype) - I am only really bothered by the idea of missing out on presentations by people during events, and they all still seem to use streaming audio broadcasting, presumably because there are _others_ who are similarly crippled. In addition I have tried an awful lot of things and my patience with "voice" is a bit thin now.

But it is most kind of you to offer.

Now who's coming off oh so smugly superior?

I will invite you to go to Wurl's Friday Night Talkshow at Flossberg Studios in Cevedale to have a more positive experience with voice. 9:30pm SLT every Friday.

Voice has its place, and I would think that generally, clubs are not a good venue to use voice because of the potential for confusion and generally banal club chatter. This is why I have voice disabled in my lounge - the conversation wouldn't be followable, or held only by a few people.

Voice is not completely evil but you are demonstrating exactly the kind of blockage that prevents more constructive use of voice.

I don't think it does at all. Of those that I know, most have an entirely open attitude to it, in that they are quite prepared to use it as far as it is compatible with how they wish to use SL. The fact that voice might not be desirable for them is not _their_ fault.

Yay Maklin. Don't worry ... you wouldn't like my place. Ironically, the people who I tend to talk to on voice are extremely expressive in word also. Personally, I spend an awful lot of my time RL at work caring about grammar and the like and I am somewhat literate to say the least.

I wouldn't worry about avoiding it like the plague though as you'd have to seek to find it in the first place! The thing is, if you will hang about in dubious places with voice then that is what you will get - dubious yammerings. Did you try to make things more interesting yourself by talking about something more important?

I am guessing not. It's a lot easier to complain than to do something positive, after all.

Yanno what? I am actually GLAD that you have posted this, I know now not to concern myself even one iota what you think of my posts and to disregard any mouth-frothing you do. Post something interesting and my mind may change.

***

The irony. My voice client is borked! Back to Skype with me and my sweetie I guess.

I just don't think voice caught on like I thought it would.

Course, that could be just the circles I run with.

Maybe if I turned on voice and ran around the grid, I would find more people using it.

I think its most useful application is in teaching. One day I had a customer who is learning to build, and he had voice and so did I, and let me tell you it made it go LOTS faster when I could talk as I was demonstrating, without having to type everything.

coco

This is not always the case. Actually, far from it. It depends where you go, of course if you go to certain places this can happen but for the most part it doesn't. Seek mature crowds and clubs. Not those rowdy Rock clubs, there's enough screaming and yelling in their music as it is.

Clubs I frequent have events where people actually get on stage and sing and a winner is chosen by vote and gets whatever cash prize is given. Games are also done in voice and you don't really have everyone talking at the same time.

As I said, it depends where you go that makes the difference.

Seek and you shall find.

Those who won't use voice won't ever know how simple and easy it is to use and how much better it is then the tiresome typing. Plus, it becomes a lot better for all of us who do use it as there's less of them around.

Voice is nice, use it with friends mostly. But then all it takes is one person without voice and we all go back to the keyboard.

Another thing that really throws us off (us being my friends and I) is incompatible accents Texan, Jersy, French and Dutch. Put us all together and we might as well be speaking different languages anyway.

And that leads to one more reason voice has not caught on well. Translation devices will not translate voice.

In crowds I turn it off along with all the other gadgets. I doubt it makes a difference but it certianly does not hurt to leave it off. In the end, voice is just another tool to be used or ignored as the job dectates. It has it places; sometimes useful, sometimes not.

\m/>.<\m/

Oh, sure. The quiter gerital clubs are the perfect place for voice. It's hard to type with arthritis, ya know.

JUST KIDDING

I would bet I'm in the top 10% as far as age goes, easily.

My experience has not been stilted conversation but intelligent and witty, but in addition to the negative things I mentioned above (background noise, talking over each other, etc)I also heard "who said that?" "who said that?" repeatedly to the point of insanity. There is a big negative to not seeing peoples mouths move.



You said it'd be unpopular. I don't know about that but I wouldn't even begin to know where to comment.



I agree it's your place and you can do whatever you want and it doesn't make you good or bad, unwelcoming or otherwise, however, I don't think it's fair to classify those who choose to not use voice as inhibited and not fun. I love nothing more than to laugh but I don't like fingernails screeching on the chalkboard. So far, that's been what my experience with voice has been.

Students do not have to speak. They just need to hear their lesson. I respond to typed questions.

hmmm. I have not had any real experience with voice yet. I do not have a microphone so have not bothered.
I think, in the case of talk shows etc it would be interesting and i will turn it on eventually. I don't go to many events anyway so it doesn't really affect me.

I would like to use voice between friends, I think that would be great, but in a larger group I get very shy and especially if i am using voice I would probably never speak lol.
Plus I tend to be on SL late at night. I laugh all the time as it is but if I started talking to my puter mum would think i had completely lost the plot and because it is so late on I would creep her out and make her think there were burglars in the flat lol

I would hate to see voice being used exclusively but i have no problem with it being used as an addition. My main chat function is and most likely will be for some time, typing. I think more when I type. Although me thinking is generally not a good idea....

Added to that I have a very embarrasing laugh lol

I like voice. I don't like typing - I think I should have a secretary to do my typing - lol!
However - I do find voice can be confusing with more than about 5-6 people - you need to follow a few conventions about not leaving mics open etc., so as not to cause feedback.

Generally I have found people very tolerant of background noise and using a mix of voice and typing - communication being the important thing, not the communication tool.

Language learning seems to have taken off well - I was able to help a SL friend from Japan practice his spoken English (which was vastly better than my Japanese, I should point out!)

Also, a nice little music group - World Peace Jammers - use voice to play together...and they play very well too.

Voice isn't suitable for all situations and all communication - but it does augment the SL experience and no one has to use it if they do not want to.

I'll just pick up on the last point here Bradley because (and I don't mean this badly towards you OR personally) there is a flawed perception. I will clarify that by saying AND ... AND willing to use voice. I never said people who are not happy to use voice are inhibited (though some are and would say so themselves) but it is fairly typical logic here to make that assumption.

I know some very uninhibited people who aren't voice users. Equally, I know people who do use voice whom I wish WERE inhibited ... and that's where the mute function comes in

A lot of public voice is dreadful, I only use public voice where I know it will be worthwhile. Other than that, it's IM all the way baby.

I never use voice but I cant imagine why anyone would have negative feelings towards it atleast to the point of calling it a bad addition to SL. Some people simply like the more direct and intimate way of communicating. There are some things that just dont travel over text as well. Typing "Haha" or worse "LOL" really doesnt convey ones emotion as well as a real chuckle or laugh over voice.

My own reason for not using voice is that yes it would somewhat ruin the illusion and even if im on my less freaky normal person alt my native tongue doesnt really give me an accent that the ladies or anyone else would swoon over.

Exactly.

Usually my accent is a plus. Still, there was one intelligent serving soldier the other day, from the US and in Guam, who decided that he was going to type in open chat that "your country deserves to sink under the waves" ... I think. It just goes to show, despite him being in voice and listening to someone else from the UK, he didn't have the nuts to speak aloud and say that lol.

No one will ever be happy. And Ricardo ... actually, I agree with you. Goes to show, first time for everything

Zumpkin ... you never know, maybe someone has a big fetish for your accent ... it happens! Mainly I think the people who complain about voice just like to complain about voice. The vast majority of people either use it or don't. I do know one guy who said that he wants SL to stay as it always was for him and I totally respect that point of view. That being said, I think I know him RL and I will definitely know him RL when he comes over with another friend sometime this month.

And then, for him, he will hear what I say when I type and vice versa - and it will no longer be as impersonal and sterile as text only (NOTE I am not saying people who only use text are sterile, of course, let's clear up that right now ... but when you have heard someone talk they are de facto more "real". Perhaps that's why people don't like it ... because it makes the other person less than a thing on the screen which can be treated as a non-person).

My old Mac Mini (may it rest in pieces) was completely incapable of using Voice. I tried, using alts, and couldn't get it to even hear reliably. I have a shiny new Mac Pro tower now, and last night, just out of curiosity, I logged on with an alt, activated Voice (though I still don't have a headset or a microphone), and I actively tried to find ANYPLACE where Voice was actually being used. I wanted to see if it was even possible with my new hardware for me to just listen. Searched for something like half an hour, going to a variety of places that indicated they were voice-enabled in their Places listings. And I couldn't find a soul who had Voice activated. The onmy person I ever saw with a dot over their head was my alt.

So, assuming I just wanted to test to see if I could *hear* Voice without paying for a headset, where should I go? Preferably not a furry sim, since I really don't want to risk hearing the real voices of any of my furry friends. And it needs to be a fairly 'family friendly' environment, since my child is still on holiday break, and out of school. Any recommendations?

A lot of people are in conference or IM Ceera. I'll witter at you inworld if you want to test it. The Orientation and Help Islands usually have voice but that's not always conducive. Where I hang out has voice but that's not always PG ... lol.

My place in the sky looks PG unless you try really hard to make it otherwise ... butterflies and rabbits are kid friendly Want to come over sometime?

Thank you, Cherry. I'll see if I, or one of my alts, can get in touch with you a little later. Right now I mostly just want to see if it's even possible for me to just listen, in case the Lindens try again to do a Town Hall meeting or other feedback session where they insist on using Voice themselves. (That went over like a lead balloon the last couple times they tried, but you never know with the LL staff.)

No worries. If it's your alt, please just drop your name in there so I know who it is (and can get you past the Fort Knox security if I am at home).