Is Voice an obligation or an option?

So, we have voice now. Not that I've really noticed because nobody I hang out with can really be arsed to use it. At most, we get a few people who are "So . . . you want to use voice?" and other people who are all "Nah, I can't get it to work anyway." and we all go back to typing.

So I see a lot of articles about how voice is going to change the way we all interact, but they all seem to hinge on the notion that everybody is going to be using voice no matter what.

What if you find text more convenient, for whatever reason? What if you simply don't feel like spending money on a microphone when you've got a perfectly good keyboard that gets your point across just as well?

And though I've heard horror stories about voice users saying horrible things about text-only folk (calling them 'muties' and so on) most reasonable people I know who use voice have no problem with typing when they come across someone who prefers it.

So will voice really change things that much? Do we have to use it if we don't want to?

I was always an option. People simply feared it would not be.

Nice thing is, since I don't have voice installed, I'll never know it.

Option, pure and simple, and nothing to get a hair up the butt about.

I have had exactly 1 person ask me if I could voice with them. Since it was not someone I had much desire to talk with anyway (They were wearing an ugly jumbo newbie penis at the time), I politely declined.

Other than that nil. I had far more interaction when I tried voice on the Beta Grid.

To be honest voice is fairly inconvenient for me. I'm seldom alone in the house, and the resulting background noise means I would need to sit alone in a room in order to use it.

That and my partner giving me funny looks when I started talking to myself

So voice is relegated to those special times when I really need to use it.

Unless it really does cause lag - then you will get hair up the butt.

Ha ha! Colette for the win!

I've had lots of people ask me to use voice (I don't). I know there's a lot of voice going on around me, but I'm not sure I care.

I haven't noticed more lag just BECAUSE of voice. If anything, it's the asshat servers being unable to handle the load, as usual. And if it does cause lag... just turn it off. No one is forcing anyone to use it.

One place where I *did* end up finding an issue was a wek or two ago now, during a planning meeting on SL's 5th birthday. The organizers used voice to hold their meeting, and while it was said dat typing was "okay," it was clear that the meet of the discussion was on voice, and was not transcribed.

The argument was "well, you don't have to talk, but you should listen." :-/

Mari

And the majority are doing exactly that. Thank you very much.

But thanks anyway for once again reminding us that this is all we have to do.

In your specific case, (and not in any general sense) how was this a problem, or an "issue" for you?

Sounds to me like if you don't have Voice activated, you can't participate in meetings that insist on using Voice as the main communications. LL should NOT cut out the non-voice users from participation in meetings that are not specific to Voice. If it had been a meeting about the Voive service, I could see using Voice. But if it is for a general meeting, you're shutting out people who should be able to participate.

Oh, like it wasn't doing that before voice!

Me, voice is an option. It's enabled on the land and disabled in my preferences. I don't see the need for it for myself. It might be nice for a Linden doing customer support. *falls over laughing at the idea* But, it's a pain for me to hook up the stupid headphones to the back of the comp and then to turn around and unhook them when I want to listen to music on my good speakers! No, I don't have a USB headphone/mic set.. and voice isn't important enough to me to buy one.

It meant that I could not, in essence, be a part of this meeting and, therefore, was limited from being involved in said event.

Mari

Well, that would be me out then as well; even now I still can't get it to work, and I flatter myself to think I am not the Grid's greatest technical ignoramus. It is lucky, to be honest, that I never had any intention of using it, but I _was_ a little curious to hear what it sounded like.

The few times I turned on voice the things said to or about me weren’t worth listening to. There always seems to be one person screaming a random obscene word around every group too..

You "could not"?... Due to technical reasons? Or a personal choice to decline to enable voice? Speaking a bit to this, and to Ceera's comment that LL should not cut out non-voice users from participating in meetings not specific to voice - First, I'm a bit puzzled by that statement. Why should voice enabled meetings be restricted to voice specific topics? Second, in Mari's case, it seems evident that the majority of participants preferred to use voice. So are you saying that because you have a personal preference to not use voice, and not even enable it in order to hear the other meeting participants, where you still could have typed your responses.. that the rest of the participants should cave, and switch off voice, just for you? This is only a question at this point, because I'm still not clear on the specific reasons you had issues with it, and the specific reasons you would not switch it on, whether technical or matters of personal preference/choice.

For all the screaming I've seen about how voice is being imposed on folks, the reality I'm seeing is quite the opposite, in that anti-voice residents seem to want to impose their no-voice policy on the rest of us, even in situations such as this SL5B meeting wherein the *majority* of them likely *preferred* voice. Who's imposing on whom here?

We used the voice client for one day. I locked up and crashed repeatedly. The few voice people who visited our sims seemed to be compelled to play their own music over voice and make childish noises and refused to stop.

I uninstalled voice, happily installed the older prevoice client, and then turned off voice on our sims.

All is quiet now, happy and peaceful, and when we want to talk we use skype!

I have tried to get voice to work on both my XP Pro and Linux machines with SL and neither work. Oh well. I don't care.

Actually, it was a minority of residents at the meeting who used it: that minority happened to be the main organizers.

I'm also not saying dat they need to change what they're doing to fit me. I was simply illustrating this as an example of a situation where voice was more of an obligation, less of an option. That I cannot/will not enable it (for both personal and technical reasons) does not mean I expect people to cater to my needs - simply stating one of the places where one runs into difficulty.

Mari

I see what you are saying.

Basically choosing not to voice doesnt make you somehow disabled and unable to turn voice on to listen to a meeting.

Since its a choice. There is no real perogative on LL's part to make meetings closed captioned for the non-Voicers.

However, It also means voice is a little bit less than completely Optional. Its Optional to the point that you dont need it. But if you want to attend certain activities run by LL it is not truly optional, Since non-voicers' ability to participate are limited.

I agree is LL wants to have their meetings support voice only - thats their right. But you have to understand how that means Mari is right, Voice wasnt really "Optional" in that specific circumstance.

Merely because a majority of participants - even if this was not the case here - wish to use voice does not mean that that should be the given medium, certainly for a public meeting; there are plenty of not using voice due to ability, circumstance and/or preference, but everybody can use text.

I am sure that there are private groups who will decide that they prefer to use voice for their meetings, and they are of course quite free to do so, but I would not expect a Linden-sponsored meeting to insist on it.

Well I'd love to attend a voice enabled office hours with a Linden. Then we can see the pros and cons with the people who are behind all of this.

Zaphod? Let's put this in another framework. Let's say all LL meetings will now be typed or spoken in Swahili. You don't speak Swahili? Well, you can pay extra to get special hardware for your system to enable you to access a second audio channel to hear it in English... Or you can read maybe one sentance in 20 that someone bothers to translate and transcribe, as people chatter away in Swahili.

Would you be pleased? When the meeting could just as easily be held in English?

My computer hardware *will not* support Voice. My Mac Mini does not have a sound input circuit, so I can't activate Voice without additional hardware being installed. I don't own and have no intention of purchasing a USB headset with a mic, or any other special hardware to support Voice. As far as I can tell, I can't HEAR SL unless I plug in a headset and then activate Voice, because SL doesn't detect a valid sound input device on my system. So I have to purchase or borrow additional hardware, or obtain a different computer, to even *hear* Voice in SL. I have no interest in Voice and am not thrilled with having to upgrade my hardware to listen to a feature I don't want to use in the first place.

Well, for purely selfish reasons I would prefer people not use voice for group discussions, because the voice client locks up my teeny laptop. And believe me, I'm a pro at getting the most out of my little guy. I can use Skype etc. just fine, but not not SL's spatial stuff. Hoping that SL or Nicholaz's next client will have options that permit me to use it, even if it's not particularly 'spatial' it would be nice to be able to participate.