The March of Folly*

* The Lindens should really read the excellent book by the historian, Barabra Tuchman - The March of Folly. Tuchman outlines four historical instances where the powers that be resolutely ignored warning cries and advice from trusted advisors and plunged headlong into a lemminglike race to disaster. The four instances are the fall of Troy, the pre Martin Luther papacy, the British loss of theAmerican colonies and the US disaster in Vietnam. It strikes a familiar chord.

Here's my take in the "Town Hall Meeting." On a scale of 1-100, I give it a 5 or maybe a 10. If I were giving it aletter grade, I will call it an F.

Much of the discussion was in technical mumbo jumbo, which I don't understand and will not comment on. Others can do that.

Here's what I see as the main points which I was capable of understanding.

1. Voice is good and will improve SL without effectiing performance.
Yawn!!!

2. They're not goint to throttle non verifieds when the grid is loaded with people.
My translation: "We will TALK about performance but sheer numbers are more important to us right now.

3. Backing inventory is a good idea, they're working on it and they are sorry about inventory losses.
My translation: "Don't hold your breath."

4. Probably going to eliminate traffic.
Yay!!!

5. The land data base issues are symptoms of broader stresses.
Translation: We know what is causing this but aren't going to do diddly about it. See #1 and #7.

6. Do they put bug fixing ahead of introducing features? Yes or no? Answer: 69% of development is on bugs and scaling.
Translation: We don't want to tell you so we will dodge this question.

7. No time limits for free accounts.
Translation: We dont give a darn about performance issues. The numbers are what is important. See # 1.

Basically, its totally irelevant what they say. Its what they do that matters. Competition IS coming, sooner or later. WHEN it comes [not "if" but when] LL will either have these problems fixed, whether they want to or not or the competition will eat them alive and SL will fade away into being a minor footnote of good plans and ideas gone bad.

I am very, very sad about this. I do hope I am wrong!!!!

It's simple then. Of the 75714, how many of us have to cancel or downgrade before they REALLY start answering questions rather than just trying to put out little fires and patronizing us with spectacular failures such as the THM?

If the system eats our money, crushes our spirit and generally doesn't work, it will fail. Period.

My comments are in blue.

Zaphod, I hope you're right in your comments. Nothing on this topic would make me happier than for you to be right and me to be wrong. A year from now, I HOPE you have the opportunity to say, "I told you so."

I assumed that anyone who read my comment would have also read the transcript of the THM. If I abridged and interpreted too much, it was to save time and space.

From my admittedly limited perspective, I see the rapid increase in numbers of residents as being one of the major causes, if not THE major cause of many of the problems. Phil Rosedale himself said in the Rolling stone interview that SL could not sustain the present levels of growth. I believe that Rosedale's Rolling Stone comment combined with Cory's comments at the THM seem to indicate tome that numbers ARE more important than performance to them.

Once again, I REALLY hope you're right on this. Thanks for the intelligent, articulate and well reasoned discussion on this.

Not a bad choice of reference material, Sue. I should revisit that book, along with The Proud Tower, and The Guns of August.

All three are good, Brenda. Interestingly enough, I made a similar but shorter post in the Official blog about the Town Hall. IT GOT DELETED!!! Most of you have read my various posts know full well, that I am very civil, reasoned and even if you believe me to 100% wrong, I don't resort to vitriolic tirades, profanity or name calling. I can see no reason for my post being deleted except....the truth hurts?? Deleting my post speaks VOLUMES to me about where they're going.

Interesting interesting.

Did you post in the transcript blog post? A cursory glance through all the vitriol there indicates that it isn't Linden Lab's (usual) style to squelch unfavorable speech. I don't often read through the comments any more there, so I don't know if you've posted before, but first time commenters will see their comment flagged as "awaiting moderation".. If that's not the issue, then either a technical glitch occurred, or maybe you said something that was read by a moderator as just a bit over the top? I dunno. They're pretty liberal about what they allow to be posted in the forums and blog commentary. I'm sorry your comment didn't get in though. Nothing to stop you from resubmitting it, and if perhaps there was something that could have been phrased differently, you have that opportunity. These are intense times for the Second Life community, with everything that's happening. I've never seen more passionate discourse in any online community, and the net effect of all of it, whether I agree or disagree with a given position, is encouraging to me. I've found "home".

I had never posted there before. It was flagged as "waiting modreation." It was there for several hours,,,somewhere between number 30 and number 40. I don't think it was any mor eover the top thanmy posts in the forum, which have been pretty civil. BTW, there ar eposts left onthe blog much more hostile than mine. Frankly, I see little uses in trying to re post. If those people don't want to hear ne, they don't want to and there is really nothing I can do about it.

despite the very fine efforts by Heretic and others, they do not listen.

thanks for your very reasonable commentary on this Zaphod. I am not offended when people differ with me. Often, that is how I learn.

thanks

I don't even bother reading the Town Hall minutes any more. I just read Suzanne's commentary. It seems like I agree with most everything she writes and I value her opinion on many topics. They are consistently mature, researched and well thought out. I think she is a credit to SL and SL Forums.

Way to go girl ... good job.

( I am only posting this because I think she deserves the compliment - not to start a debate)

Same. Which is why I requested that someone post the answers from the Town Hall into the relevant threads on this forum.
That way if I'm only interested in one issue I can find the answer quickly.

Thank you, draco and farley. Your supportive comments are very appreciated. However, remember that I am just one person and my opinions are colored by my experiences and attitudes. I encourage all to read whatever information LL gives out and draw your own conclusions. I try, but I am very far from perfect or 100% accurate.

I read the minutes. You are not off the mark. I was hopeful when it was announced but seems to be the usual doubletalk to me.

On at least this subject, I agree with Susanne's take. However, there's nothing about it that comes as a surprise, as I fully expected it beforehand.

At least LL didn't disappoint me....

I'm sorry that you felt the recent Town Hall was ineffective. (I will check out The March of Folly. Thanks for the rec.)

@Zaphod- Thanks for your comments. I agree with much of what you wrote, but I'm concerned that no one else here seems to concur.

@Susanne- I think your comments are really important. We most certainly care about performance. As you noted, Cory commented that 69% of our developers are working on bugs and scaling and we are hiring more developers to work on more bugs and more scaling. I was at the Town Hall, and it seemed to me that Cory wanted to give Residents the most accurate picture of what LL developers actually do on a day to day basis, thus the percentage. You now know that 69% of our developers are working on bugs and scaling. You understood this as avoiding the question.

As a Linden and a member of the Community Team, I can tell you that I often think about performance, a pervading concern in your thread. (Despite the rumors, when your friends list doesn't work, mine doesn't work either. When your group notice fails, so does mine.) I'm so disappointed that you felt Town Hall was a failure, and I would be very interested to hear your suggestions regarding improvement of communication lines between Residents and Lindens, because I'm certain that Cory would never agree to your assertion that "We dont give a darn about performance issues." Somehow, that message didn't come across. /me is sad.

Suggestions, feedback, suggestions, feedback, suggestions.

For what it may be worth.

I work in technical support and I find that many people don't hear any of the words when an explanation is the least bit technical or mathematical. Instead they parse it as "We're filing your problem away and doing nothing."

At first, I hoped that increasing sophistication in the user base would solve this problem, but that does not seem to be happening any time soon. I think there are different levels in user ability with computers generally; and while many in SL are very high on that scale, the number who are not really technical is increasing.

I read the Town Hall transcript and both understood and appreciated what Cory was saying. To my ears, 69% of anything is a lot, and I get that. I'm not sure everyone visualizes it that way.

Please hang in there. I think Cory made a good effort and I am very glad to see your replies here in the forums.

It's a rare and wonderful thing when a company, that has to make a living, is still willing to let its customers look under the hood and even tinker with things. I hope this will never change, even if it means sometimes having to make explanations that only the tinkerers will get.

Possibly appointing a person who can translate from technical to consumer-speak and back again, might help, if such a person even exists!

There seems to be a lot of communication on a truly technical level going on, and a small amount of communication on the tech lite level of the Town Hall transcript, but there is almost none on the non techy level. So separate communications aimed at the three different levels would cover everyone. If someone wants to understand the next level up, they'll have to work a little, just as in RL.

Hope this is of help. Take care.

Heretic, as always I appreciate your response. I agree that 69% of staff working on a problem is a lot. However, this is a complex problem, not just technically but socially as well. I am the first to admit that I do not understand the technical aspects of the problems that we as a community are facing. From my admittedly limited viewpoint we, the customers and LL, have ahuge and ongoing communication problem. Many of us feel, rightly or wrongly, that LL's lack of communication in the past makes the present attempts to be suspect.

I believed, and quite frankly still believe, that performance is less important to LL than the numbers. Phillip Rosedale admitted in the Rolling Stone interview that LL could not sustain the present level of growth. Even non technical people like me are aware that SL gets increasingly more difficult to use once the numbers of logged in users hit the low 30,000 mark and gets increasingly and visibly more problematic as the amount of logged in users increases over that low 30,000s mark. I may be 100% wrong but it seems to me that the present system, as configured, just won't handle those numbers. I believe, as do many, that one solution to this, is to start limiting the amounts and/or terms of non payment verified users. When Corey Linden brushed off that idea, it made me believe that performance will be continually be sacrificed for the sake of numbers. If I am wrong on this, I certainly welcome the opportunity to listen to a different point of view, especially if it is backed up by facts.

As far as communication, Brenda Archer raised some excellent points:

"I work in technical support and I find that many people don't hear any of the words when an explanation is the least bit technical or mathematical. Instead they parse it as 'We're filing your problem away and doing nothing.'"

[paragraphs deleted]

She continues:

"At first, I hoped that increasing sophistication in the user base would solve this problem, but that does not seem to be happening any time soon. I think there are different levels in user ability with computers generally; and while many in SL are very high on that scale, the number who are not really technical is increasing.


Possibly appointing a person who can translate from technical to consumer-speak and back again, might help, if such a person even exists!"

This is an excellent idea!! Often it seems that the technical and non technical people are speaking different languages.

Let me address the Town Hall specifically. If I deliberately wanted to pick a form of communication which has failure guaranteed, I could do no better than the Town Hall format. Attendance is limited do to the usual technical problems [which were rife], work schedules, RL concerns and the sheer numbers of people who are interested in attending. It would be like having a town hall meeting for the City of Los Angeles. It just won't work. In a Town Hall venue, especialy one as crowded as this one was, it is too easy to "cherry pick" the questions you want to answer, ignore the ones you don't want to answer and brush off legitimate follow ups. This is compounded by a group of people who probably don't want questions answered but just want to throw bombs [verbal or otherwise] at LL.

A much better way to this would include the folowing: (1) Written answers which respond in DETAIL to each of the issues raised by the Open Letter with an opportunity for follow ups if or when the answers provided are not completely responsive and/or (2) A public and well publicized meeting with several of the creators of the Open Letter addressing their concerns.

Either of the above would have given LL a far better way to communicate your thoughts on these issues, given the customers a far better vision of how thier concerns are being adressed, a much better opportunity for mutual feedback and a HUGE decrease in customer suspicion, disbelief and paranoia.

I will be the first to admit that I am a bit jaded at having my comments deleted from the Blog. That does NOT assist me in believing that LL gives two cents for my opinions. Nonetheless, I WANT SL to succeed. I WANT it to do well. I WANT it to grow and do even better. If LL is not serious about fixing the problems, they have to start getting serious, REALLY serious right away. Also, LL really needs to develop some basic communications skills. I'm a lawyer. I have to communicate points relevant to a case to the opposition, to a judge and eventually to a jury. Often this communication involves translating technical and highly boring information into understandable information that regualr folks can get.

And finally...hey...thanks for listening to me.

Susanne-

Just a few thoughts

"A much better way to this would include the folowing: (1) Written answers which respond in DETAIL to each of the issues raised by the Open Letter with an opportunity for follow ups if or when the answers provided are not completely responsive and/or (2) A public and well publicized meeting with several of the creators of the Open Letter addressing their concerns."

I think Cory's pre townhall blog post actually provide some pretty detailed insight as to how they are tackling the issues raised in the open letter. There was a fair amount of followup as well during the town hall. So I think the transcript, and his blog post, taken together, leave us with a pretty good idea of where things are at. Frankly, there aren't very many companies who actually put their CTO before their customers, and allow him to go into such detail about architecture, vulnerabilities, etc. Linden Lab is actually pretty generous in that regard.

Meeting with the authors of the open letter? As if the issues they raise belong to them alone, and not the community at large? Again, I think too much credit is being given to this Open Letter endeavor, however admirable it may have been.

An observation that I find interesting..

" I believed, and quite frankly still believe, that performance is less important to LL than the numbers."

..snip stuff about limiting unverifieds will help performance..

" If I am wrong on this, I certainly welcome the opportunity to listen to a different point of view, especially if it is backed up by facts."

I personally welcome the opportunity to listen to the facts you have to back up the above assertion

Every time someone insists, yet again, that basic accounts need restrictions so us paying residents can have a better experience, there is going to be a strong and vocal opposition to the idea, both at Linden Lab and here in the community. It is simply not the answer to the problem. The answer to the problem lies in Cory's remarks which I will paste in closing - I think this was a very insightful question posed during the meeting: (emphasis mine)

GreeterDan Godel: people are here expecting answers to their big questions. But it is clear that a lot of people’s big concerns don’t have immediate answers. Should people accept SL as it is and hope for slow change? Or is there reason to expect fundamental changes to the biggest problems any time soon?

Cory Linden: The answer, of course, lies somewhere in between. We are working to fix bugs and enable incremental improvement. At the same time, we are building the foundations for the next gen architecture that will radically improve our ability to scale.

We also expect that some changes that might seem incremental, such as voice, will actually be transformative in terms of the avaialble design space for residents.

Zaphod, as usual a very intelligent, reasoned and well thought out post. I think we disagree on things but our disagreements are probably related to a fundamental difference in over all philosophy plus my lack of understanding in the technical realm. Nonethelss I appreciate your civil and polite discourse. Thanks.

I put my comments to his comments in bold...


Zaphod, I guess this is one area where we will continue to disagree. Perhaps its because youhave aclearer understanding of what LL is doing and how they are doing it, you are content with words, promises and projections. Fine, there is nothing wrong with that. For myself, I am more interested in empirical results. One result that we DO have now is that they really seem to be improving their communication skills. I think some at LL are really listening. I dont think this is indicative of a huge change in their corporate culture but it IS a large step in the right direction. the more I see them listening and responding to concerns the greater my trust and comfort level is.

Also, Zaphod, your posts give me alittle more confidence in LL. You are someone I respect and I don't believe youhave an agenda or a particular axe to grind.

Two questions Zaphod?

1. Do you think fixing the problems so that most customers can use SL without widespread inventory loss, tp problems, and in world communications problems is feasible?

2. Do you think LL is REALLY committed to doing the above?

Yes, and absolutely. It's very unfortunate that at this point, when directly confronted with the inventory loss issue, Cory had to pointedly refer back to the ToS, that bit about not being responsible for lost data. I'm sure it was as uncomfortable for him to have to say it as it was for the rest of us to have to hear it.

As Rusty Satyr pointed out in a different thread, much of this inventory loss isn't about objects actually being lost, just your "proof of ownership" of that item. We're not talking about something as trivial as asking your network admin to restore that word document from the tape backup that was accidentally deleted. What we seem to have here is a transaction that isn't succeeding, yet is still committing to the database as if it did succeed, with no parallel transaction log or event log to show the state of the inventory prior to the failed transaction. In other words, no rollback capability that's characteristic of a true transactional database system. (You did not lose this inventory item, nothing to restore, please move along)

This is where Cory's reference to a "more robust transaction system" comes into play. The current system, when put under stress, is anything but failsafe. What they will end up with in this "next generation" transaction system, I don't know, but they've got two internal teams, as well as outside consultants knowledgable in building transactional database systems, all looking at how to make this thing actually work. I have confidence that they will be successful.

I would encourage you to go back and read Cory's blog again, as well as the Town Hall transcript, and take to heart what he says. He's pretty forthcoming with it all. Philip's the one running around talking it up, which is his job. Check out the last line in the "About" section of his Second Life profile in-world when you get a chance, it says it all.

Cheers

Okay, Zaphod, while I WISH I shared your confidence in LL the fact that YOU have that confidence and seem to know what you're talking about helps. It really does. I am probably over suspicious to the point of near paranoia and many readers will probably take issue with the word "near."

One big problem I have is LL's [to me anyway] perceived lack of commitment to any sort of corporate ethics. Their abject failure to do ANYTHNG to protect their customers from a multitude of scams, including but not limited to the land bot scams, the sheep bot scam, accounts being hacked, banking/ponzi scams etc. I'm sorry but actions [or inaction] to me speak louder than words. I have a very hard time believing much of anything they say. This really tears me up more than any of you know because I WANT to believe them. I WANT to believe they are both competent and honest. Yet they do so much, perhaps unintentionally, to make me believe they are incompetent [e.g. the technical problems they had during the Town Hall Meeeting], less than candid [e.g. the santized transcript of the Town Hall Meeting which would lead the uninformed to believe that it just swimmingly] and their inability or unwillingness to clean house of the variuous and sundry scams which make victims of their customers.

Okay, I am going to try a little patience and hope for the best. Its irrelevent anyway. They either get the technical problems and social problems fixed or they are going to crash and burn when decent competition comes along. Nothing any of us say or do will change that. They either get it working in ways that most customers want, or they don't. They will reap the rewards or the penalties depending on their level of success with that.

Personally, I hope they succeed and you can say, "See...I told you so."

She isn't the only one, by far. Many people expected it to be fluff, and we weren't disappointed in that expectation.

The problem is (and many folks said it and echoed it prior to the Town Hall) that a Town Hall is NOT an effective means of engaging and communicating with the Greater Userbase on such a wide-ranging subject. ESPECIALLY with the WELL-KNOWN technical problems manifesting themselves. I found it rather ironic that one of the sims crashed during the event as well. Kind of a punctuation to the feeling of hopelessness. I mean, what, 200 people got to participate in the event overall? Even less got to ask questions, and even less got ANY answers at all, let alone poor ones?

No, there are three REAL problems at work here which need to be addressed, and LL is REALLY REALLY doing AWFUL in all three, IMNSHO.

1) Communication - Heretic, your efforts to be here and to respond personally to our issues are an awesome effort, but they are still a token one. That feeling of "empowerment through proper communication" just doesn't feel genuine, since a) we have no idea who you really are in terms of the LL "food chain", and b) we have yet to see any correlated results of any communication with you making a significant difference in the overall philosophy as presented through effort by those of you at LL charged with such.
You all have effectively abandoned one of the most powerful and useful forms of communicating with your customer base -- the forums -- and I found it quite ironic that this forum appeared almost in response to a dig I posted in another forum. This single-minded obsession with tossing the baby out with the bathwater in favor of the next new "fad toy" (i.e., the blog) is quite telling of the fundamental problem you all are having effectively communicating with the residents. It is no big secret that successful companies have VERY GOOD customer support organizations, even when their products/services have significant issues. It usually requires knowledge of how to properly run one and a true commitment to doing so; something I have yet to see from LL in earnest (and, yes, I have done it before, albeit for smaller organizations; however, the principles and philosophy don't change significantly with scale, only the specifics of the implementation do).

2) Results - At the end of the day, what matters is what gets done. You and everyone else at LL can talk talk talk all day long, but as long as our WORLD keeps crashing, our inventory keeps disappearing, our "user experience" keeps turning to garbage, and Nero Linden keeps fiddling while SL burns, NOTHING is going to change about our perceptions of Linden Lab and SL in general.
Every release that comes out making things worse (and, no, contrary to Cory's claims, a significant percentage of these problems were well-known and reported on the BETA grid prior to going live; another serious pet peeve of mine), every day that passes with no real, lasting resolution to problems just proves that, in the results department, LL gets another failing grade.

Simply put, communication without results is nothing more than "paying lip service to the problem(s)", and there's been quite a lot of that in the last year.



Anyone can spew numbers and say they are "doing everything they can to make it better". Numbers are irrelevant. I am sure you are familiar with the well-known physics law Work equals Force times Distance. There's a similar archetypal metric in the working world that I like to point out: Work equals Effort times Results. No matter how much Effort you are putting into something (or claim to), as long as the Results are nil (or, as can be in the working world, negative), you have done NO WORK (or, worse, NEGATIVE work!). So, that 69% (or 99% or whatever percent) is effectively ZERO percent.

No, throwing more bodies onto the pyre isn't going to put it out; you all have to work SMARTER, not HARDER. Your overall SYSTEM and METHOD of working needs an overhaul, just as your overall communications philosophy does. Ultimately the mandates to do what is necessary to correct these gross oversights has to come from executive management, and that leads to the final jewel in the crown (or turd in the punchbowl, as it were):

3) Management competence. When it comes down to brass tacks, all problems and issues with a company are SOLELY the responsibility of those in charge; i.e., those who CAN make a difference. The customers, employees, and even outsiders may have and contribute all the best answers and effort in the world to resolve the company's (and, thus, the service's) issues, but it requires competent and insightful executive management to make it happen. To put it simply, the state of the company and the product/service reflects directly on those calling the shots, and ultimately identifies the most responsible parties for their remedy and mitigation.



I am sure you do. However, the part I question is how much of it you experience, and in what capacity? We experience it all the time, when we are trying to get work done, to when we are trying to relax and have fun, to when we are trying to socialize. Unless your job REQUIRES you to be in-world and use the service all the time to do your job (i.e., not in the forums, blog, RL meeting rooms, et cetera), I don't think you have the complete dimension of the frustration and ennui your customers are experiencing. I don't know, you might, but somehow I doubt it.

As I indicated above, the Town Hall wasn't a failure so much because of its content (though that was rather vacuous and repetitive), but because it was the WRONG tool for the job. Even though your response is to Susanne, I am going to interject my suggestions, since I don't figure it was meant to be selective. The very first thing I would do is hire a Community Manager; a very visible and high-profile position. The primary job responsibility is being the Customer's Advocate, and hiring/deploying a well-trained and focused team whose job it is to obtain, triage, consolidate, and present all customer feedback, problems, and issues to the most appropriate person in the organization. Their roles are to be very visible and engaging to any/all the customers. This can be integrated with the Support organization, but needs to be separate enough to avoid getting entangled in the challenges that department faces getting itself organized and working effectively. The CM role REQUIRES the authority to stroll into Philip's (or any Linden's) office at any timeto kick his butt around with the issues, making SURE they are effectively communicated, and also takes any/all responses back to the community. In addition, it is charged with the scheduling and managing of direct interactions between the folks behind the scenes and the general customer base.

The next thing I would do is consolidate, prioritize, and properly utilize EACH and EVERY communications tool you have available, taking into account its strengths and weaknesses for each and every form/type of communication. A bunch of poorly selected and ineffective tools, used improperly, does more to hurt communications than to help them. THIS FACT has been borne out repeatedly since I have joined SL, and likely far earlier than even my appearance on the virtual scene.

The next thing I would do after that, though it is in a different area, is CLEAN UP the support organization. There are WAY too many channels for any one kind of issue, and NONE of them are effective at getting results on a consistent basis. You all sound like you are trying to attack this issue now, but the approach sounds more like whack-a-mole, rather than a more holistic approach to the situation. Could be a perception issue, but that is understandable since the community communications efforts are so broken or non-existent and have been for a long, long time.



Better: Suggestions, Feedback, Results, Repeat.

WOW!! Talarus and I have disagreed vehemently on another thread regarding another issue. This is an important sign however of the nature of the problems we are dealing with when my only response to his post is APPLAUSE!!!!

Well said Talarus!! Well said indeed!!

Yay!!

Blah. I think you and Talarus need to go back and re-read my post.

You say you "don't understand" the technical stuff, but that is where the answers that you want are waiting for you. When the subject matter is databases, they cannot be found anywhere else.

By selectively ignoring everything that sounds technical to you, you've turned away from one of the avenues the Lindens are trying to use to communicate to you. If Second Life had a simple interface like a telephone it wouldn't matter much. But SL is never going to be simple, and some things will never have black and white nontechnical explanations.

Whoever does find a way to explain this to non-technical users will be a millionaire.

I still prefer LL's open approach to the MS approach, which is to lock everything up in a black box and leave you mystified. I'm afraid, though, that with non-technical users it's the other way around. They want you to tell them it's fixed. They don't seem to care how, but that's a mistake in the long run.

It matters a lot HOW things will be fixed, especially in terms of the amount of freedom the code permits us as residents.

If you don't get it, find someone who does and ask them.

Tal actually does understand the technical stuff, keenly. I read his post several times and cannot find an opportunity to disagree. For the most part. His points are perfectly valid. They transcend the technical nuances of the format of a "Technical Town Hall". They speak to the human aspect to all of this. Candid, harsh, but stuff that needs to get onto the table.

Thanks for all of your feedback. It has been extremely helpful. Hopefully, we'll all see some results and changes based on your comments here.