Linden group discussions

Since Katt essentially did a midnight veto of the above thread here is my response to her closing in full that I was writing as she closed the thread but after her closing post:


Umm wait Katt, that's it then? Thanks for the comments and the discussions with only a few Linden responses and fewer on topic. I think I'll be the first but hopefully not the last to say that I feel like I've been shafted by this not that you give a damn what we think but still that's absolute bullshit if this is how your ending it and of course doing so at 1am PST when of course nobody is going to be on to complain about it while you may still be watching the thread. I'm sure this thread will mysteriously either become locked or just disappear and I'll probably be banned for this but this really smacks of Linden cowardice in fact that we have gotten almost no actual on topic linden responses despite that being the main selling point you and Zee sold us about this discussion makes me very angry and disappointed at LL.

Hey Gordon and others interested in the VAT discussion -- I closed the thread for comments because it's late, I'm turning in for the evening, and we'd originally said this thread would be closed today --

But I do apologize if that was too sudden! Please put it down to my being tired!

One of the "issues" with forum threads is that they do go on until closed -- it's a fine thing, but we are attempting to open discussions that we will be able to participate in, and not leave you wondering if we're reading or paying attention.

The "close" is because Zee and I can't commit to an open ended response time, but we wanted to be here talking with you all about this issue for a reasonable length of time.

So, requesting your patience and understanding!

More discussions on other topics -- and with other Lindens -- on the way.

-- Katt

Sweet dreams, Katt!

If I may make a suggestion Katt, having the weekends not fall on weekends and holidays if they're short or long enough that it doesn't matter might help since I think one of the major issues between you and Zee being able to comment is that you were out for several days of the discussion because of when the start and close times fell.

I totally agree, next time we won't select a weekend for this type of discussion.

I know it's much more satisfying to see our slightly-more-consistent participation than to see gaps of time and bursts of posts.


Thanks!

-- Katt Linden

Ok, now go to bed the rabble rousers and the troublemakers (myself included) will still be here in the morning.

What discussion? There was no discussion. Zee replying to a few selected posts, sometimes with incorrect replies, and that's a discussion? The discussion was plugged as being between Zee and us, and that thread wasn't one.

What a load of rubbish. I shouldn't bother trying to do it again in the fututre, Katt. It was a dismal failure. Gordon was right - we have been shafted. I guess we were stupid for thinking that the thread would actually be what was plugged.

I think it would be better if these sort of discusion threads were kept open for 3 working days, so if a weekend fell in between, it stayed open the following week. LL employees should deal with this sort of communication during their normal working day and not be expected to keep up with the posts over the weekend.

What if we leave the thread(s) open but state when the time comes, after 3 days, that we're no longer monitoring and participating?

That would at least leave things open for Residents to continue to discuss the issues, and of course be more proper forum activity (to not close a thread.)

I'd hate for later readers to think we're not paying attention, that's one concern I have about such threads.

What do you all think?

-- Katt

So long as these are not done over weekends or holidays, sure. I had a feeling that this was going to happen. I'm happy that Zee took the time he did to respond, but that was on Friday night, not to be seen again. Whether or not you leave it open for griping doesn't matter if there is no feedback given each business day. Granted, this subject wasn't conducive to giving actual feedback beyond a certain point, but still... 3 days should mean 3 business days.

When you promote a 3 day discussion with a specific Linden, please make sure that the Linden in question will actually be available to take part in the discussion. Zee Linden was only a participant from 2:31-5:01. 2.5 hours out of the 3 days. There were a lot of people asking serious questions that only someone like Zee can answer, and they've just been completely ignored. If you're not going to actually do it right, don't even bother. If you're not going to provide the answers, why stir up all the trouble?

I'd rather it was a week.. Fire up new topic on Friday and give us a week to fight amongst ourselves. Lock the thread up the following Friday then digest the issues and reply over the next week - forum mods can reply to locked threads, right? If y'all think it'd be helpful, open it back up after you've replied and we can do another round.

Some suggestions for future topics:
- gteam: we've had a few more "I was banned and have no idea why" posts than usual lately. Some were even by seemingly-coherent people, too ( )

- iteam/conceirge: I'm conceirge tier and had a support ticket get closed about a week ago - it was open for 4 months and got closed without comment. You're kidding, right?? I know Jack was talking about getting more people on board a few months ago but it seems to me like something is broken here

- tech stuff: there's many old avatar wives tales, urban geek-legands, stuff that hasn't been true in 3 years, etc regarding how SL works.. Giving us a common place to ask all the questions we can think of then maybe seeing if Andrew/Kelly/etc can visit the thread and answer what they can would be nice

- bots in-general, traffic, ad farms, Philip's hair, 193 ideas for redoing tier (just on page 1)...

My impression of the current discussion process is that it's MOSTly fine as it is: a thread is labeled as Linden-monitored chat, then closed at the end of the official discussion period for the conversation to continue in another, unmonitored, resident-to-resident chat thread. It might help for the former thread to link to the latter thread at the closing post, to keep things tied together. Anyhow Cristalle and Deira have a point: try to measure any discussion length in business days.
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As the thread came to a close, I had quite the impression that a few interesting things came out of this discussion.
•I think the biggest point comes from Terra Box: a cultural divide. What looks like customers on either side of the Atlantic greedily asking for a system in their favor can really just be each side doing what they're more familiar with. In America, we slap a price-before-tax label on any product, then tack on your local sales tax (varying depending on where you are) at the time of purchase. Apparently in Europe it's more of the opposite, charging a flat, tax-included price all around. Taking a position on this may be challenging, although middle ground certainly also exists somewhere.
•There are recurring factual misunderstandings. The simplest mistake to correct is the idea that the Linden offices in Europe have any identifiable bearing on the tax situation. So far it seems the only legal difference that any European Linden office could make is how some strategically-located servers could re-open gambling to the citizens of countries wherein it is legal. Other misunderstandings involve the complications of the legal code, especially where some exchanges are charged VAT while others are not. Someone may need to come along and lay out the facts and numbers on that one, but then again, legal code, like computer code, can get surprisingly messy.

Well that just about sums it up for me. However, as I said, it certainly is complicated.

Yep.. Not sure what happened there.

I agree that this didn't quite turn out to have the level of interaction/participation that I had expected for but remember that it is just round one. It was good to have done, TY Zee and Katt & all!!, but I'm hoping that future rounds have a bit more discussion to them.

He's participating, over the course of three days, we're trying to take into account your suggestions!

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Good topic ideas, I'll see what I can do about them

-- Katt

What do you think of the proposed guidelines? I'll be participating in this thread, on and off, until Tuesday August 12.

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-- Katt Linden

I am enjoying them. Thank you, Katt, and Jack, and Zee (so far!).