[Halloween legs up] Do something CONCRETE NOW!

Instead moan on the forum a/o replying to the blog entry (that it seems ignored by Linden) about how they think to rouin our Halloween parties, i propose to do something concrete: please use the webchat (live help) and and make sure that a *real* person is listining your opinion... it doesn't count if he's Philip Rosedale or the polish girl, it counts that a massive number of people "alert" someone there in the office.

If you don't know how to open a live chat with lindens, do the following:

Click on the top link > SUPPORT
Log into the support system using your name (there's a link already filled with it)
Click on "Solution Finder" link (in the middle page)
Now Select a random option from the list and click "Continue to Step 2 >"
Click now on: "My answer is not here ->"
Type something in the search box and click > "Search and continue"
If it find something click again on "My answer is not here ->" otherwise click on "Continue to Step 4"

Now you have finally the links to chat with the support team in real time... then choose the appropriate category from:

Live Chat
Billing Live Chat
Inworld Live Chat
Outworld Live Chat

I hope someone will listen... i've spent many lindens to organize the Halloween week, i have spent REAL MONEY to organize the events, the upgrade comes in the middle of afternoon here in Europe, it will screw 50% of the events, to not talk about the risk of a failing upgrade (loosing assets, problems with TP, longer downtime). I guess many of you here are having the same problem.
This must be a joke.. i can't believe they really forgot about the fest.

Whilst I understand your concerns, downtime is almost always on a Wednesday, and many people either do not celebrate halloween - or for a variety of reasons actively go out of our way to avoid it.

Proposing bombarding live chat with complaints is irresponsible at best, pathetic at worst.

Never plan anything on a Wednesday. You should know that by now.

23rd April 2008 is a Wednesday. It's St George's day in the UK. Do you think Linden Lab are going to change their plans for wednesday maintenance to accommodate those of us in England who wish to celebrate our patron saint's day? Of course not - because the simple fact is whenever you have maintenance, it inconveniences *someone* somewhere in the world.

This time, it happens to inconvenience a festival that has been overtaken by commercialism. I'm quite sure that most people aren't aware of what Halloween is beyond carving pumpkins, dressing up in silly costumes, licensed extortion of candy from your neighbours, and disrespecting the opinions of those who do not wish to join in your activities by vandalising their property.

Broccoli

Broccoli Curry:

That's, frankly, moronic. A huge percentage of stores and clubs in SL have special sales, items, and parties for St George's day, do they? Did you even think about that comparison before you made it? There have been public preparations for Halloween for weeks, so I don't think you can really compare the two.

If Halloween was as unimportant as you claim, I doubt seriously that I'd be constantly bombarded with notices about Halloween events, items, etc. The idea that we would change the night we celebrate Halloween to accommodate LL's update schedule is idiotic. Your 'tude toward Halloween may seem rational to you, but frankly most of the US/Europe doesn't seem to fall in line with it.

Whats st. georges day? Just wonderin...

Yes, and deliberately.

Halloween is clearly something of interest to the original poster - frankly I couldn't care less about the event.

As a patriotic English resident, St George's day is very important to me, and I'm sure that those that aren't patriotic English residents couldn't care less either like I couldn't care less about halloween.

SL is offline for just a few hours, in a regular slot, in one of the quieter parts of one particular day that happens to coincide with a real world event that most people who choose to celebrate actually aren't aware what it is, outside of the commercial side which they are clearly looking to exploit.

Downtime should be over by 6pm UK time, leaving the whole evening available for parties, sales, whatever. Isn't part of the halloween tradition that these things are supposed to happen AFTER DARK in the first place?

Broccoli

P.S. No doubt CBS wasn't worried about planning their CSI farce on Wednesday...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_George's_Day#St._George.27s_Day_in_England

A day of national celebration for the Patron Saint of England. I guess it would be our equivalent of 4th July in the USA in importance, at least to those who choose to celebrate it.

Broccoli

cool, thanks ^^

You do realise that it is probably because of CSI that we have maintenance next week instead of this week? Developers (as in developer, or solution provider directory, rather than Linden Lab) can request "avoidance days" for maintenance where possible on an internal LL calendar if there are major events like the CSI tie-in that justify it.

Broccoli

Eh, so you'd classify a mediocre TV show tie-in (that brought about what appears to be massively disappointing results) as "major", and something that is being celebrated by the majority of users and businesses in SL as unimportant? Again, are you really thinking about these comparisons?

The CSI thing isn't centered around a single day. For most viewers, the episode aired at night, long after this scheduled downtime. Halloween, on the other hand, IS centered around a single day, and we don't really have the choice of wandering to a sprawling halloween sim a week later to catch up. The CSI stuff can be done anytime, Halloween is one day out of the year.

So, a TV show merits a delay, but probably the second biggest SL holiday wherein untold numbers of events and such are planned... doesn't? I wonder if you compared the interest in CSI to the overall interest in Halloween events if CSI would seem "major" to you...

My local first life stores have had halloween stuff on sale for weeks. Once that's over, christmas stuff will go up, then after the new year sales you'll see easter eggs for sale. You're talking about the commercial aspects of halloween, which go on for ages, not the actual event itself (if anyone even knows what it is beyond that dreadful american tradition of 'trick or treat').

The point being that you have after 6pm UK time till midnight to still have your 'events' - even more hours if you're in the US - and, as I've already stated, the whole event is supposed to happen 'after dark', specifically the Witching Hour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witching_hour) anyway. Just goes to show, once again, that people are celebrating something they have absolutely no clue about.

Broccoli

LOL

Again, no one really cares what you think Halloween is about. It's immaterial. What matters is SL is taking down the servers on a day when everyone else that isn't a Halloween scrooge wants to be online and doing things.

You can go on and keep expressing your annoyance that we all aren't wiccans dancing around naked in the woods on Halloween, or whatever your beef is, but it is no different than the Christians who get all uppity about how we supposedly also don't celebrate Christmas correctly. Feel free to be dour and mourn commercialism while the rest of us have fun how we choose to have fun. That has nothing to do with this discussion.

In the end, sorry hun, but in terms of social, cultural, and economic importance, that terrible "trick or treat" phenomenon you mourn leaves whatever obscure rite you are whining about far behind...

Yes, we don't generally pay attention to the original meaning of Halloween (Samhein I believe, yes? Been awhile...) is, but thats not the point of it anymore, at least in America. Its a night to have *fun* now.. whats so wrong with that? Sure, corporate America gets a bunch out of it, but its still having fun.

To me, it seems more like Broccoli is just secretly enjoying the fact that a pet peeve is being satisfied, regardless of the feelings of people who celebrate Halloween in a way he/she/it doesn't approve of.

I tend to think if this were Christmas, and a pentecostal were here delighting in downtime because it impedes secular Christmas activities, well, the venom would be flowing more freely...

Actually, most people don't have a clue what christmas or easter is about... but do you really think that there would be as much uproar on the forums if this was a major Christian festival, instead of what is essentially a 'hallmark holiday'? Of course not.

Those who wish to celebrate halloween in SL have all evening to do so, whether US or UK. In the dark, when it's supposed to happen. If it happens to be inconvenient because you had other things planned, that's not my problem - and it would happen any other day.

I don't celebrate halloween, but I'm not stopping anything else celebrating it if they choose to. I'm merely stating the point that it's not a 'show stopper' to everyone, whether they understand what they're celebrating, or just making it "fun".

You want to complain - send an email to [email]philip@lindenlab.com[/email], but don't waste your time on the forums where nobody can do a thing about it, or more importantly clogging up live help from people who actually need to use it.

Broccoli

How about I complain how I like, and you just read along, or not, sweetie?

*pinches your cheeks*

I'm just trying to put things in perspective, that's all.

Five hours downtime, on a day when most of Europe and the US are going to be at work, is not at a time when you are likely to get many people there anyway. Halloween is supposed to be a 'night time' event anyway, in case you hadn't noticed. You don't get trick or treaters knocking on your door at 11.30am do you?

24 hour long 'events' are lame, so we can disregard those anyway.

You want to organise a party? Reschedule it. It's not a big deal. It's Wednesday. These things happen.

Halloween, however it is celebrated, wherever it is celebrated, does not affect me in Second Life at all.

Broccoli

Of course it doesn't effect you, you've stated over and over that you don't celebrate this. The fact is, continental European events often start at 11 or 12 in the afternoon SLT. There again, you have the inevitable problems that arise from the changes made during downtime, risking the whole day, evening at all.

Sure, you don't care about that either, because it doesn't effect you. So... why bother commenting at all? So if LL rethinks this and makes their downtime the next day, or the next week, that won't effect you either. So... I'm trying to figure out where your interest here lies...

Broccolli, I do believe you missed the point of the outrage, focusing on semantics instead of the core of the issue.

Fact: Halloween is a holiday celbrated by a vast percentage of SL users (regardless HOW they celebrate)
Fact: It's centered around a single day (like most major holidays)
Fact: Planning in many forms for Events has been going on for a month or more as it does with all largely celebrated holidays

the OP is upset (and rightly so, IMO) that LL has chosen to completely ignore those above facts, by scheduling downtime right in the middle of it. I find that odd since many games/businesses/venues use such holidays to PROMOTE participation (Guild Wars being a prime example)

I say Good On the OP, and agree, if you have a problem, open that window, just once is fine, politely lodge your complaint, ask them to pass it to their managing body, thank them for their time, and let them get back to helping those with other problems. if it's an issue to enough people, perhaps it will be heard, listened to, and considered.

on a side note, you might want to consider, before decrying the commercialism involved, that LL is a commercial entity, and that what's good for SL business is also good for lindex exchanges which they do make money on. promoting user participation and interaction are at the core of their business model. If people have Events on common days crashed repeatedly, they quit doing Events, people quit showing up and you have a slow general demise do to user apathy and cynicism...

FYI if a large percentage of residents had been planning events on St.Georges day, and LL decided to plop maintenance in the middle of it, they would be upset to, and rightly so, and I would complain right along with them, not because I celebrate the holiday, but because they are ignoring a large percentage of their user base, and ultimately, that drives users away, the game dies, and I have no one to play with (yes, it's selfish, but it's honest)

My confusion is on the indignance of some people that something that they should have been expecting, being as this particular event happens to fall on a wednesday this year.

Maintenance is always an unwelcome interruption to "playtime" - which invariably affects europeans more than americans anyway - but it doesn't usually generate so much hostility.

Other games I play - World of Warcraft and Sims Online - both have 'halloweenish' events planned, which I also choose to ignore there as well, so it's not just SL that causes me a problem here.

Maintenance will be over by 10am PST, 1pm EST, 6pm GMT - which leaves PLENTY of the day for those who wish to celebrate something.

If it means you then have to choose between participating in an event in real life, and an event in Second Life, then it's no different from the many other times we have to make that decision.

I find the original call to bombard live help with complaints frankly irresponsible. It's not what the service is there for, and if it gets abused... like many other things, we lose it. It's hard enough to get support for legitimate reasons as it is, let alone having to fight for time with people whining about something that just requires a little rescheduling.

After all... you have nearly a week's notice, it's not like it's Tuesday.

Broccoli

Broccoli are you actually thinking or using some sort of computerized algorithm to give your replies? The fact that the maintanance are "usually" done on wednesday doesn't mean that LL employers have a gunshot pointed to the head and they *MUST* do it on that particular day.
There's a "SL BIG EVENT", none will care about the "RL Halloween", we are talking about inworld events, it may be the "Blondie Festival" and it would be the same: *IF* the majority of ppl on SL have planned a event for day particular day, it just doesn't count wich day it is (or why); then planning a so long downtime (5 hours MINIMUM), and planning it on some user prime time (Europe and Asia), and risk to destroy the whole day (an upgrade is ALWAYS risky.. and i guess you experienced the 10 hours downtime recently...) is just: STUPID.
You're arguing about the importance of real world fest... but here we are on Second Life damn, and Halloween is one of the most important event of the year *ON SECOND LIFE* ...there's NO REASON to not move task to a different day.
We are all in mad (except you.. i believe) because we cannot understand how it is possible that a person (or a staff of person) didn't turn on their brains to make this (totally wrong) decision.
Did you received a reply from Linden on this forum? Ah right.. this forum isn't used as "customer support".. did you received a reply on the blog? Ah they are not entitled to do so.... what remain? Right, it is the "Support Team".. where *at least* there are (maybe) live persons to talks to.
Yes i have a problem, a problem with your decision, and then i use the appropriate tools to ask for a solution > Live Chat.

C'mon Broccoli lighten up man. Haloween is a 'fun' time, sl is a 'fun' place. Do you really think that the grid will be 'up' by 6pm GMT ? (eyes the formation of low flying pigs). A friend and I have an event planned for that evening (GMT time), no profit just fun, and now we face the usual after downtime problems which we all know so well. As suggested elsewhere in the thread moving the downtime for its traditional Wednesday spot may well be another example of corporate clout being deemed more important than rank and file inconvienience. It's time LL took stock and set out, first and foremost, to listen to the people who actually create the experience in their virtual world.

Try telling that to the thousands of people across the country who will be living in fear of the bang on the door of the trick or treaters, and the worry that they'll find vandalism and destruction outside their house in the morning.

I know people who have given 'trick or treaters' a piece of their mind, who the next morning find the paint on their car scratched and half their garden uprooted, maybe oil in the pond, or some other such 'harmless fun', which is what it's all about, alright?

Halloween is not 'fun' to me, or many others. I do not participate in it. Consequently it won't affect my second life at all that maintenance falls on it, any more than the usual inconvenience of any maintenance downtime.

Before you, your friends, your children, or whatever, go out knocking on doors doing 'trick or treat', think how you react when the local religious group knock on the door. You don't welcome it? You yell abuse at them, thinking it's intrusion into your privacy and your right to do whatever you like? Well this is exactly how I feel about 'trick or treat'. It's not about dressing up kids in cute costumes and collecting candybars from your neighbours, however much people like to think it is.

However, do remember I'm not the one stopping anyone celebrating it, in real or virtual form. I'm merely speaking out against the event in general, and why I don't think it's important enough for maintenance to be rescheduled.

I wonder whether people would feel the same if it wasn't scheduled maintenance (with a week's notice, I hasten to add) but a griefer attack that crippled the grid for several hours.

Broccoli

That, frankly, is a matter of opinion, and therefore *could* be considered trolling. I'm not saying it is, but it could be. I personally don't agree with Broccoli, but I thought that first post by Broccoli was very well put, intelligent, and not attacking at all.

You forget for a moment, despite all the events scheduled, despite all the sales going on, and despite all the hype regarding Halloween, it's been scheduled for Wednesday, October 31, 2007 forever. And you also forget for a moment that LL has (for the last year that I've been a resi anyway) ALWAYS had Wednesdays set aside as a down day. Regardless of what Wednesday, there's always been a chance that your particular Wednesday may be the "one" LL chooses to use for down time. Those who schedule events on St. George's day are free to learn from this thread.

Given the above two facts, planners (good ones anyways) would have thought this far in advance and realized, "Hey, I should probably schedule this for after 12:00 pm SL time."

Wasting resources (Live Chat) on lesser things like this is what cheapens the real issues SL may be having. It also is what causes the "Cry Wolf" syndrome, where someone somewhere really will have an issue, but, because of so many people harping on about a known down time on a known day, gets ignored and labeled as another whiny complainer.

I don't know Broccoli from anywhere but the forums here, but I think (personal opinion, mind you) jumping all over Broccoli, issuing blanket statements regarding intelligence, and not listening to an opposing opinion with respect only causes resentment

Have you taken your meds today? I live in London UK, and I would be scared sh*tless to live where you do, you seem to know a lot of people who have terror struck into their hearts by various events you have an opinion on.

I don't celebrate Halloween in RL either, however, I was looking forward to celebrating it here, I'm half way through building a cheesy ghost walk for the occasion. I don't have a lot of time right now, so ghosty type things I would need to buy (economy) however, I'm just saving LMs now, so if they change the update day, I'll buy, if not I won't.

It does effect people and LL should be made aware of that by any means necessary