By the way, the name is Linden Lab

YES!

This is EXACTLY what frustrates most of us the worst. Betas aren't anything but a warning of things to come. They solicit feedback, they make a forum for it, they mutter placating words when there is a veritable flood of negative feedback about a feature, promise changes and fixes, and then go ahead and do EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO DO ALL ALONG. It's not just bad product design, it's incredibly disrespectful towards paying customers who go above and beyond the call of what a paying customer should be required to do and try to help them design a better product, using beta software that is often frustrating to use and takes time out of our otherwise productive and/or entertaining schedule.

We, the customers, go lightyears beyond what our end of the bargain entails to help Second Life improve and prosper. LL couldn't even be bothered to create accurate documentation of their scripting language - that was done by customers. There were no adequate documentation on how to use the building interface in Second Life, so customers did that. When LL put in animations, they promise an in-world free animation editor. Never appeared, but customers created free animation tools to fill in the gap. Hell, you have customers that are literally reprogramming the client to fix the bugs that LL should be fixing. And without fail, every time a beta is released, tons of people use it, submit feedback, try to work the bugs out of it... And while LL fixes bugs people find in beta, sometimes, that's about the best they can do on responding to feedback. Any other feedback? Spitting in the wind. They keep adding un-needed, un-asked for features, introduce new bugs in the process, and never bother to fix bugs that have been an issue for /years/. All sacrificed in the name of "progress" that nobody asked for.

I have to agree, that was is being expressed is frustration and not dissatisfaction. I think that's the way that frustration gets expressed, deplorably.

Most recently,

Sculpted Prims (done deal)
Windlight (in development, will be substantial when mainstream)
Voice (love it or hate it, it's a necessary competetive feature)

The big "advances" are ongoing behind the scenes, and can best be described as rebuilding a 747 while it's cruising at 500 knots at 33,000 feet. "Backbone" communications, transaction systems, etc. These are the most challenging, and when they're ready for prime time, will answer the majority of issues we're seeing on the grid today. The frustrations are mostly born out of the fact that we're not yet seeing results here, because the new infrastructure pieces are still under development, and most people have no idea it's even taking place. Perhaps that's because when Cory does a townhall, people show up with their heads so clouded with personal agendas, looking for opportunities to fire cheap shots at him, that they ignore everything he tries to say.

Sculpted prims: We've been asking for ONE FEATURE to make sculpted prims vastly, infinitely more useful. One feature that would amount to about 3 lines of code. One feature that we were told was coming, soon. It's been, what, two months? Nothing.

Windlight? Unnecessary, and when it was released people pointed out a ton of issues with it - which, mark my words, will be almost entirely un-addressed when it gets released.

Voice? Woulda been fine. But LL used voice as an excuse to break an interface that wasn't broken, for no reason. NO REASON. Voice was working fine with the old interface. The interface change has NOTHING to do with voice, other than that it occoured with the same update.

And you know what else frustrates with voice? Years ago, Phillip promised us that if SL ever did put voice in, it would be with a voice changing package. He wouldn't put voice in until he could do that. Yeah, well, we see what came of that, eh?



And guess what? Nobody rebuilds a 747 in flight. They land it first. Stop adding crap left and right and I'll believe they are trying. Until then? Not so much.

You're being much more specific than I ever intended that statement to be, to the point of putting words in my mouth. At some point, you make a decision to release a product. In this case, voice, probably largely driven by a business decision to bring it mainstream by the next regularly scheduled release date. You realize people aren't terribly excited about certain aspects of the UI, but the product is nonetheless functional and stable (in SL terms anyway) so you release it. Does it incorporate every personal preference expressed in beta? No. Will it evolve over the next few releases to incorporate design ideas that people seem to overwhelmingly desire? I really don't know the answer to that, but I'm willing to bet a fair amount of money that it will.

Clearly, the priority was getting voice released into the main viewer. I've no doubt that Windlight has a priority of its own, and needs to get back into FirstLook, nudging voice into the main viewer.

Sometimes, business decisions and production objectives are at odds with our personal agendas and preferences. We don't always have to agree with them, but our disagreement doesn't always alter reality, either.

This has almost never been the case in SL's history. What makes you think it will be now?

you are right about one thing, this forum has become the bitch fest and why? beacuse LL has taken away the forum where we used to have them, telling us that they are to busy to have a place for their customers to have a place to comm unicate with eachother or with LL, They refered us to 3rd party forums again this was done dispite a great deal of resident feedback.
The fact that Resident Answers has become the Bitch Fest points to the need for the general forum to be reopened to give residents atr least the illusion of haveing a voice!

i have not lost faith in LL, LL has broken faith with me!

Yeah! What did LL say, 70% of their programmers are chasing bugs.

That is all well and good, but the majority of bugs that are being fixed are not being fixed by that 70% but by the open sourcers.

Also why its it that one person working on the viewer, in his spare time, has been able to get more bugs fixed in a few days or even hours in some cases, than that 70% haven't been able to get fixed in months and sometimes even longer.

Explain that.

I agree 110%. I see no reason at all to NOT have a general discussion forum. As long as it's reasonably well moderated, for the sake of civility.

Which is funny. You're hitting on something that is symptomatic of why people are bitching now, the very thing you are complaining about.

We HAD such a forum. LL took it away for no adequately explained reason and some bull about wanting to concentrate more on in-world communications. We complained. That was more or less the start of it, in fact. We complained. We pointed out the problems. We made suggestions. NOTHING got listened to. They went ahead and did it anyways. And from about that point, that sums up our interaction with LL.

You're talking entirely about issues in the viewer, which is the only component currently in open source status. I would sincerely hope that those 70% or so Linden developers are focused on grid/server/database infrastructure, which is where most of the bigger problems are. The best written (or best repaired) client cannot ever solve problems that exist server side.

You can't ignore either half - the best server in the world won't make a dysfunctional, buggy client fun or useful.

I think you're talking about Linden Answers here. General forum was non existent when I joined in October 06 (I think). And from what I recall about Linden Answers, the ugliness and nasty commentary we see here in RA today was very much alive and well in LA before its closure. It is not a result of the closure of any specific forum. Now, I'm with you on the in-world communications improvements. I'm still wondering when and how that will happen.

Then again, from what I've been told about many of the "office hours" sessions, those too have been seized as opportunities to burn Linden employees at the stake. So there ya go. How DO you build effective communications channels with your customers when every time you try, you are continually subjected to verbal assault and lynch mobs?

Of course.

well i sorta disagree, that it was in LA was because they had closed General, they have taken away the residents venting places so not the pressure builds to a higher point before it explodes, yes i was often dismayed by the nastiness of some of teh posts in General, but in the long run, i think it was a very much needed place for us to vent our frustrations, and LL by just deciding that it was important left a very large number of us feeling that our voices do not matter. i personally began to lose a great deal of my emotional connection to SL the day they closed the forums, they were the real town hall meetings for SL not some hour set aside buy teh powers that be to tell us how lucky we are that they are doing what is good for us!

No, I'm talking about General. Check my join date, I just slightly predate you. The attitude in LA was because that was all we had.

Thank you for pointing out your join date, that makes you so much more important than I.

I was simply wondering if you were possibly referring to LA, as the reason you cited was precisely their rationale for closing that forum as well.

So let's see...

Resident Answers: ugly/nasty/vindictive posting. Check.
Linden Answers: ugly/nasty/vindictive posting. Check.
General Forums: ugly/nasty/vindictive posting. Check.

Which closed forum predates General, where civility ruled the day, giving rise to the incivility in General Forums? The argument that it is created and fostered by Linden closing previous forums is kinda falling apart here.

You felt the need to point out you joined after General had closed. I was pointing out that I joined when General was in full swing.



Actually, Generally wasn't really all that nasty or vindictive. Sandbox was, but general was pretty civil, except when a select crowd deliberately tried to stir up Dhrama.

constructive intelligent suggestions ignored by LL. Check



constructive intelligent suggestions ignored by LL. Check



constructive intelligent suggestions ignored by LL. Check



WRONG
it was not about being more important it was about your statement that he must have ment LA because general was closed when YOU joined, sorry i
said General and ih ment general as for how uncivil it was? well while i won't say it couldn't be a little uncivil, as you have said we are all adult's and so if the poor poor people at LL got their feelings hurt once in awhile, so be it. it is still more important to have a honest place for residents to have a voice in "our" community.
LL has steadily taken away any kind of meaningful communication between us and them, i have been trying fdor a month to get someone to come clear litter out of the sim i live in, but gee , there is no way to actually talk to someone ,...oh wait, if i buy a island..well whatta ya know NOW some one actually may get back to me in a week or so

lol sorry i have gone off on a tangent, but at least it is a related one,
until LL takes they "Your World Your Imagination" off it's website, they have a obligation in my opinion to actually listen to us.

Either you're misreading my statement, or I mis-stated it, or perhaps a little of both. My pointing out that General was closed when I joined was just an aside, wasn't even necessary or material to my general point. I incorrectly assumed he was referring to Linden Answers due to the specific reasoning he cited for General being closed, of which Linden Answers was apparently a rinse/lather/repeat.

Constructive, intelligent suggestions are just that.. suggestions.

And there's a marked difference between honesty/candor and the increasingly vindictive rants in RA today. Many people didn't buy the official reason for closing Linden Answers - that it was not a scaleable communications tool, and thus no longer effective.

Instead, we believed they closed it because of the nature of the posts. I don't remember who it was, it may have been Kelly, but one of the Lindens even hinted at that toward the end. There comes a point where no matter how valid the complaint, it loses all constructive credibility when it's presented as a personal, vindictive attack. This is where I think we are at with "venting" in Resident Answers today. Don't be suprised if tomorrow, it closes.

You're mistaking cause for effect, Zaphod.

Go back far enough, we were a pretty decent bunch. Then LL decided to start closing down venues of communication.

We are a monster at least in part of their own creation.

I think that we sometimes need to remind ourselves that there is a difference between "listening" and "taking direction". It seems to me that LL spends a huge amount of resources (compared to most small companies) listening to us. We shouldn't be surprised, however, when they don't do as we say It is, ultimately, their product. Personally, I think the "Your world, your imagination" tag was meant to refer to the degree to which we can modify SL given the tools they provide, even up to open sourcing the client. I doubt they ever meant to cede management of their engineering team to the community, lol!

The currency in Second Life is the "Linden."

So in all actuality, we should call it "Money Lab"

-which explains the "work on features first, bugs second" philosphy.

Zaphod, Just a suggestion here;
If you Really want people to take the latter half of your Posting seriously (As i fully agree with you they should) you shouldn't lead in to it with a tirade on a matter of the purest indifference to people, No matter whether people text "Linden Labs" or "Linden Lab", or LL EVERYBODY here Knows to whom we are referring. It Really is a matter of No consequence what-so-ever. You masked a Valid Point with a bit of needless nit-picking.

As I said, I agree with the second portion of your post. I also find it hard to be patient with the multitude of Armchair Quarterbacks questioning in the most insulting terms possible things that they demonstrate little understanding of. IF one doesn't Understand an action by LL, instead of launching into full "Don Rickles" mode wouldn't it be better to Politely ask for Clarification, and having done so actually LISTEN to the response instead of making up your mind ahead of time and dismissing everything else said to you as Lies, Conspiracy, or Incompetance?. Maybe it's just me but i find calmly getting the facts more useful than venting my emotions all over the Web. Anger, or annoyance is No excuse for rudeness.

Angel.

which will cause yet more dissatisfaction leading to yet more uncivil behavior so, where does it end? in the long term i do not believe that it is in LL's best interest to continue to isolate themselves from their customers, and as i typed the word customers i think i hit on part of the frustration , at least from a lot of us who have been around for awhile, we we joined we were not customers, we were residents and we had a community and Lindens regularly interacted with us. Now, we are a account number and to get a Linden to pat attention to you you either have to drape yourself in a Nazi flag and and hold hands with child avies or buy several islands