Linden Lab Blog Changes to Give Residents More Choices

Please take a look at our latest blog post: blog.secondlife.com and post below to let us know what you think!

It's not up, Jeska.

It's up now

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/08/27/linden-lab-blog-changes-to-give-residents-more-choices/

Thank you. I just read it, and although the comments are open there, I will comment here.

It sounds like there is new forum software in its entirety, and not vBulletin, if this "elevation of posts" feature works. This sounds like a really good feature, especially for Resident Answers. And I'm a little nervous about contractors as moderators, even though I originally thought they would be okay, in light of Katt's methods of moderation in the Burning Life thread. While Strife wasn't perfect, Strife was generally on target and I found Strife as someone that was always reasonable to talk to regarding moderation.

We have been discussing the proposed forum guidelines, and they need a greater common sense check. But discussion and feedback in there has died, and it has become clear that Katt is not the decisionmaker regarding the forum policy. If Robin is the decisionmaker, we'd like to get the feedback from her.

Outsourced moderators will be interesting since to accurately assess all the comments requires a in depth understanding of the Secondlife community, system, software, and issues. Therefore I hope all the contract moderators have at least one year active in world experience.

Of course obvious off topic, spam, and blatant trolling can be spotted easily so maybe that is what they will limit themselves to.

The comment voting will be gamed and it will be a popularity contest replete with mobs. I'm not sure how you could have arrived at the conclusion this is a good thing. It should be painfully obvious when a comment is well written, concise, in depth, and perfectly accurate enough to be judged as may as well have been written by a Linden. The odds of this are very remote so I doubt a lot of info will be promoted.

The worst aspect of a blog popularity contest is that the percentage of residents that participate in forums and/or blogs is tiny. Perhaps the Lab intends to promote the new blog in world effectively so as to get more eyes on it.

whew, anything involving more from Ebay scares the livin crap outa me.

I hope they DON'T have any in-world experience. I hope they are total unbiased strangers.

coco

Outside moderators will be there to handle spam, abuse reports and the like.

We're engaging them partly to free up more Linden time to actively participate and engage, here in the forums, in the blog comments and elsewhere.

I know that my experience is that I can't spend as much time as I would like having great discussions with all of you here, as I spend time doing moderation instead.

I'm still participating in the Forum Guidelines thread, and while I don't promise to make specific changes, we are paying careful attention to what everyone has to say, and will take that into account before finalizing the guidelines.

We're aware of the negative possibilities in a rating/voting system, I think you'll be happy with it.

I'll just start moderating myself and save you guys the hassle.

Well what I really really think about current forum moderation is this------------------and I also-----------------edited to Sarah Nerd for graphic language and nasty honesty-----------------url removed. It was in no way abusive or wrong in fact it actually supported the thread topic and helped people get more information but I have moderation power and I will use it----------------------and then theres----------------------------------------------------------------Well I've had my say, Thank You all for listening.

Sarah Nerd

What becomes of old forum content, especially all the SL content creation information that is not available elsewhere? Will if be preserved across this forum change, intact? There has already been content lost in earlier forum changes, and useful things like attachments in surviving posts are corrupted even now. Should residents be making plans to archive this stuff before October?

Funny, that.

Katt, you have a large portion of residents that were willing to moderate, a portion of which were probably qualified to do so, you had resident suggestions (which have been given nothing more than lip service) and these are people who are a part of the community that you attest to be a part of as part of being a Linden and yet you go against all resident advice and suggestion as well as logic (upgrading VBulletin, resident moderation... etc) and decide to switch software to something unknown and that the community isn't used to and outsource the resmodding duties to people who have no sense of this community. Needless to say I am disappointed in Linden Labs and to a certain extent you professionally since if you're ignoring the community then why are they paying you to communicate and listen to the community.

Edit: In regards to Linden free time, entirely regarding the LL do projects you feel like ethos, until you got the job of Linden Community Liason for about a year LL employees had posted so few times I could probably count them on my fingers and toes and possibly just my fingers, as in LL stopped caring until they hired you, so don't give me or the rest of the community that bullshit response. This is a service to us and one that we are not entitled to and that you can pull at any time but if your still going to give it to us at least have the courtesy to be honest with us.

The old feature voting tool had the largest issue in the history of the program: please don't close off topic and general.

I believe it was somewhere around 600 votes if not more than that.

The response was to wipe the issue as invalid, and then scrap that tool entirely in favor of JIRA.

I used to be disappointed in things, now I take a pill for that.

I know its' been said a million times and hasn't happened yet but eventaully residents will get fed up with LL's bullshit when it comes to "community relations" and have a resident community without LL interaction expected or cared about and only the residents who don't know any better will care about interacting with LL any more. I was at that point until Katt came along, here's a Linden that talks to us, that actually intelligently engages us in conversation and brainstorms with us however apparently it was all lies like the cake.

This is one of my worries also. This accumulated information is SL gold and should be treated as such.

I think overall, this could be good. Could.

Some thoughts:



- I presume this will eradicate all the old forum bans, as the forum is changing?

Unless someone is bound and determined to re-enter all of them from the old software to the new?

It would be very, very scary to my mind, if anyone took the trouble to maintain those bans.



- The outsourcing of moderators seems to be a professional step... but also I'd love to see an example of the outsourced moderation elsewhere.

Best case: impartial and *fair* moderation.

Worst case: good cop/bad cop scenario with Lindens/Moderators.

Ultimate Fail: Permaban on some arcane, highly serious but laughably inane technicalities, like certain forms of disclosure.

Imagine what a clueless rookie moderator might do. "Desmond Shang, 3 day suspension: disclosure of resident Philip Linden as real life person Philip Rosedale." Hey, it's disclosure, got me dead to rights! What could I possibly say, to a guy with 'the rules' clearly laid out in front of him? I pray these guys come with a clue.



- Which brings me to inworld bans tied to forum infractions.

Anyone with any stake on the grid; be it hundreds of thousands of dollars, be it loved ones, be it freedom from their real life handicap... must strongly reconsider ever posting here. The grid's most ardent supporters, believers - the people who made this world compelling in the first place would bear the highest penalty.

Honestly, a 1000 USD fine would hurt me less than a 2 week inworld suspension due to an inappropriate forum comment. Because of this, I'm very, very concerned. I don't want special dispensation, but the risks for me posting here could be just astronomical - and arguably very unfair.

A 2 week suspension for a new resident might just mean they go read a book. For me - it would affect mortgage payments and saving up for the kid's college funds. I post here a lot - sooner or later I'll say *something* bad no matter how hard I try. I'm human.



- I'll never be uncivil, I'll never make threats nor shall I ever try to leverage any sort of advantage I might have. That's a promise. It's just not fair and no way to treat a partner, for every resident and every Linden Research employee is, loosely, a de facto business partner.

That said, residents deserve the exact same five star treatment in return. If someone is treating Linden Research unfairly, or causing trouble, people know it. Show strength and class by taking the high road, when someone is being tactless. As residents we can use mute and ignore tools if someone is being plainly awful. A few temporary forum suspensions goes a long way - there is no need to *ever* permaban anyone.

Walk into the Peninsula, or the Shangri La or the Ritz Carlton. Sure, they've got security staff. But the first thing meeting your eyes is what they can do for you, not a list of "Do Not's" with possible horrific penalties. (well okay, the Oriental has a big sign saying "No Backpackers" but that's a rarity).

Such treatment goes a long long way. It *especially* works with residents on the grid - I've been running that way for years. Right now there is literally no one on my estate ban list, and no problems.



- The moderators, like everyone else, should have a #1 mission: retain residents, not drive them off. Morality, tact, lifestyle aside.

Yes well, and apologies for singling Katt out, but that really highlights an obvious ethos issue at Linden Lab.

Torley was appointed from resident to liaison to manage the forums. It became something time-consuming, so off-topic and general were closed.

Katt is hired as "communications manager," and after a brief amount of time when frankly the forums have been moderated to such extremes even beyond Strife, even beyond what other Lindens before have done, apparently the entire system is going to be scrapped in favor of something else.

You guys keep trying to redefine the wheel. Over. And over. And over. And over. And over.

When if really you made even a base effort in transparency, honesty and willingness you wouldn't have to keep GOING through this. It really isn't difficult.

I know it's probably more fun to use adjectives to make us think there's some care involved but we didn't join yesterday.

Is it really that difficult to aim for transparency? I know you've said that's what you're going to do, but if you started I guess it was so transparent it just turned invisible. I really don't understand it, I really don't.

So LL gets rid of in-world ratings and voting box systems because they completely didn't work and were gamed to hell and back.

Now LL decides to bring that same kind of failed system to the forums.

Has the person in charge of making these decisions suffered some form of massive head injury?

Not editing since if I did it would be lost but to clarify my comment in one of my (many) above posts I'm not calling for Katt's job here and I'm guessing that someone higher up is the mastermind behind this and she's being overruled and that's why while I'm disappointed and upset at LL and her professionally I'm trying not to attack her personally. That and I don't particularly like the thought of being banished to the cornfield

I know, I can't wait to see the threads about people getting their groups and friends to bump posts up with votes.

Desmond for president!

Or king, emperor, czar, uberboobah-for-life, whatever.

Liveworld looks like a PR firm of sorts. In a way just what LL needs.

oh and I second Des as Grand uberboobah-for-life. =)

Des, I don't know why everyone is making a big deal about the inworld-outworld ban tie untill now, it's not new policy it was just brought to everyone's attention. It's existed for as long as I have known (although rarely used) and if someone who's been around longer can confirm I think it's been around as long as the forums. Most people didn't know about it though before it was brought up because it was so rarely used.