My 2 L Worth on a Variety of Issues

These are MY opinions only. This is how I see things at this specific point in time. Let me preface this by stating that in the past, I have been scathingly critical, [but in a civil way] of certain LL policies. When they do things which I believe are right, in all fairness I feel obligated to comment.

1. Age verification: I am 100% for the idea, less so with their planned implementation, which seems to be overkill. They HAVE to do something about this or seriously risk damaging SL. They need to further restrict access of minors to the main grid. Its just that simple. Will it be 100% effective? No, of course not. I have hopes that it will help cure the ridiculous [and Linden created] overpopulation problem which has seriously effected Grid Stability. I believe age verication will do two things in addition to keeping MOST minors off the grid. (a) We in SL will lose many,many talented, creative and wonderul people over this. This saddens me. (b) we will also lose a lot of idiotic jerk griefers who are interested only in pixel grinding and harrassing people. We won't lose all of them or maybe even most of them, but we will lose a LOT! Good!!

Grade: B+

2. Grid Stability/Technical Issues: I have noticed that it seems to be getting better. Is there room for improvement? YES! However, it looks to me like (a) they are actually working on it and (b) things are getting better - at least for me.
Grade: B

3. Voice: Its a totally stupid and unnecessary "feature" which will enhance the game for some, totally ruin it for others and for which most of the SL population seems ambivilant to. We already have Skype and other tools to use when we just HAVE to vocally chat with others. Since I have an 8 year old at home and a certain amount of background noise, I probably will use it very little, if at all. I doubt if its going to be all that great anyway, except for the most avid of Voice supporters. I anticipate it will be aminor irritation to me.

Grade: C-

4. Help: LL has come up with a sensible, rational and sane solution. Is it perfect for everyone? No. I do think it suits the needs and expectations of a majority of SLers. I am premium but not anywhere near concierge level. It could use some tweeking to bring a better levelof help to those who are not premium but contribute vastly to SL. It will HAVE to be adequately staffed.

Grade: A

5. Communications: Despite my negative view of the Town Hall meeting re POL, I am now convinced LL actually LISTENED! They seem to be moving forward on ways to make SL better for most of us. I don't know if I am just getting used to "Linden Speak" or if they are actually communicating better, but there seems to be less vagueness, double talk and obfuscation in their recent Blog announcements. The one on Help was clear, concise, and informative. They have a ways to go yet, but I am being generous in my grading on this point, due largely to effort.

Grade: A-

6. Scam-bots: This includes, but is not limited to land bots and the infamous ESC sheep bot. They have done nothing about this and there is no indication they are contemplating doing anything, other than a few rumors floating around. I have no doubt they WILL do something about it as soon as some negative press on this issue hits...and it will, it seriously will. Its just a matter of time.

Grade: F

Overall, LL seems to be listening, communicating with the customers better and actually TRYING to fix problems. I am more optimistic than I have been in a loooooong time! Keep up the good work LL, I honestly think we turned a corner recently. If I am wrong, then I look like a fool, but what the heck? Been there, done that before.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

I was also impressed with how the Support Post was written.

It would be nice is Dan Linden and Robin Linden wrote their blog posts more like Cyn Linden (the apherent author of the support piece)

It would have been far better for everyone.

I'd give Cyn the A- and Dan and Robin a lower grade. Unless we're grading on a curve.

Cyn L. did a great job. Its a group grade however. ALSO, I should have mentioned in theOP that this is a PROGRESS REPORT only. It is not a final grade.

I wouldn't be so quick to give them an A on the support thing. Unless Cyn's outline was incomplete, I think some of Ceera's comments over in one of the RA threads are worthy of consideration. The meat and potatoes portion:


These are major show stoppers for the experiences of many residents who choose not to become premium members, for whatever reason. Her comments in general, in contrast with the way Cyn outlined the support plans, seem to expose just a bit too much bias toward premium membership perks, a concept which I generally embrace whole-heartedly.

I do agree with Ceera that there certainly needs to be a channel available for the above mentioned issues. A previous blog indicated that there is in fact an email address to submit in-world issues to. Perhaps that will be included in the basic support plan, and linked to from that portal. Submissions to this queue definately should be triaged and prioritized against service level committments to premium plans, but they still need to be handled time-sensitively.

Cyn's post reads to me as though I, as a premium member, get access to Lindens in the form of live chat via the portal, while basic memberships get access to Help Island Public, which is an estate manned mostly if not entirely by the volunteer team, none of which would be able to assist in any of the scenarios laid out by Ceera.

It's an awesome start, but it needs some fine tuning or some clarification. We can argue until the moo cows come home over the various "entitlement" points of view, but retention of those basic accounts as regular, active participants in the community is crucial. My own business depends substantially on them, as do hundreds or more other businesses.

Zaph

I really like this idea, Susanne, and enjoy reading your posts! I offer a slightly less rosey set of grades, and will explain. I do not bash Linden, but I do challenge them to set the bar high...and they must choose to either strive to be on the cutting edge in customer satisfaction (as well as they are in technology development), or end up with a terrific product that nobody will use...


Sorry, minors on the grid is a consistent problem, and one which we will be forced to endure consistently. No measure of age verification will change that. Nor, do I think, can anyone point to any way in which that has potential to damage SL...if there were inceasing problems, given the proclivity of LL PR to wear their hearts on their sleeves, I'm betting we'd have been told. I lean more toward a conduct grade on this one..."U" unsatisfactory effort, wasted energy.



Wasteful expenditure of manpower and programming resources critically needed in other areas...and needing much more planning before implementation than has been represented, because not only are there 8 year olds in the room, there are also adults in the grid that dont want to give up the incredible value of environmental sounds and music streams to avoid hearing "F*** This" and "F*** that" from their now-actually-loud neighbors. Yes, I know about mute, but has anyone actually tried to mute 3 or 4 people while in the middle of building or an important conversation with others? My Grade: D-


Sensible and rational for whom? Is not an online LiveHelp sim-down or lethal bug shout to LL from a "non-premium" (and therefore less-deserving?) avatar just as valuable, and incredibly more timely than an automated and/or queue-locked similar report from anyone else? Response-to-resolution time hinges on TIME, not on the source of the information. My Grade: C-


Exceedingly generous...a critical component of communications is Public Relations and Customer Relations. Since you only give one grade, these two components must be factored in...so...Tech-support Grade: A- Public Relations Grade: B- Customer Relations Grade: C-....overall grade: B- ((On the basis of one Community Service Linden's efforts alone, and in honor of that (huge shout out to Heretic Linden!!!), I am raising the Customer Relations grade to an "honorary" C+ (sorry, one person can't run the whole ship, not even if she were Scotty on the Enterprise) ))

My report card on the same issues:

1. Age verification: It's about time they did something to "fix" the mess they started on 6/6/6, but it is sooo long after the horse has gone, closing the barn door will likely cause the entire ramshackle to collapse. Very few places are going to bother checking or setting age restrictions, and there will be plenty of smart kids who easily fool the verification process, so it is unlikely that it will make a significant enough dent in the problem to make the hassle (and expense) worthwhile. I am also NOT impressed with "Integrity's" (talk about irony in naming a company) reputation and history. I'll likely go through with it because it isn't a big deal for me to prove my age; however, the first time my info leaks out, I'll be making calls to the state and federal AG offices to press charges.

Grade: C (mainly because of the reputation of the company they hooked up with)

2. Grid Stability/Technical Issues: Things have gotten worse for me. My viewer crashes out regularly, several times a day where, before the last update, I got maybe one or two crashes since the update before it. Our regions still crash constantly. They do rolling restarts which bork up critical operations on a FRIDAY afternoon and say "sorry, we'll fix it on Monday!", which will most likely be Tuesday, or Wednesday, if we are lucky.

Grade: D- (lowest grade I can give above an F, since they actually HAVE fixed a few things, even though they are offset by serious bugs introduced, and the fact that the service, in its current form, is atrocious by any measure of performance and stability)

3. Voice: Superfluous. There are already a plethora of voluntary services out there we can use for voice. Having a universal voice service thrust upon us involuntarily is as odious as instituting a state religion. No one needs to hear my voice, and I don't need to hear theirs. Worse, this is often followed up by people using peer pressure on others to use it; something which I can't stand in other online games, and something I *WILL* AR people over for harassment. It is divisive and discriminatory, and I want nothing to do with it.

It was a complete waste of time to implement compared to all the other, more critical and useful things they SHOULD be working on. If anything all they should have done was the same thing as what they did with streaming media; made a modular interface so that SL integrated with existing voice tools, like TeamSpeak and Skype, or whatever we want to use.

Grade: F

4. Help: Talk talk talk. Yeah, Cyn makes it sound wonderful. Everyone will have to excuse me for this, but I will wait-and-see until it is actually rolled out (the whole enchilada, not just the "beginnings" and working for several months before I give a real grade. I've seen a lot of these "initiatives" going out for a year now, and I am still waiting for them to arrive in some satisfactory fashion.

Grade: D (would be D-, but Jack Linden finally got us the number to concierge support, so I will be kind and at least up a partial grade for the effort; thanks, Jack!)

5. Communications: I have yet to see any real evidence that anything significant is coming as a result of our pleas for communication. Yes, Heretic makes the effort, which I laud him for; however, it is still a token one when HE is the only one making it. Communications is a two-way street, and there's still nowhere near enough response coming out of LL on MANY issues that deserve a response from them, yesterday.

Grade: D+ (mainly due to Heretic)

6. Scam-bots: They actually seem to be working on the landbot issue, as many landbot accounts have been suspended or banned of late. The SheepBot is as close to a non-issue to me as possible, but I also would like them to take a public stand on it to end the silly debate about privacy in the Resident Deba.. err.. Answers forum. However, as someone already pointed out, they haven't taken a stand on the issue after it being hotly debated in the forums for years already, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Bots are going to be allowed unless they exploit the system or unduly load it; there won't be any "bot registration" schemes, and they will use the ToS as it stands to punish offenders for misusing bots or the info they gain for violating it. I support this stance, and there is likely very little real fallout that will come from it outside of mass hysteria (a la CopyBot).

Grade: B+ (would be A if they had jumped on the landbot issue sooner, and A+ if they would at least say something about the Privacy issue, even if it is something as simple as "working as intended"

Points welltaken by all of you. I posted mine based on my own viewpoint and exprerience in hopes I would get the intelligent, reasonable and differing viewpoints.

I may have been too generous in some of my grades, but it is a "progress report" and I wanted to reward effort and what I see as steps in the right direction.

Voice is the very logical next-step in making corporate customers happy. If you didn't see this coming, you weren't looking. Don't like voice? Don't use it. Just don't trash LL for wanting corporate cash.

If things like voice are what LL needs to do to be able to afford hiring another 50 code monkeys and another 100 phone weasels - stuff needed to make our parts of the world happy - I'm all for it.

no, most copporate customers already have extinsive viop systems, most small local companys have it too, the next logical step would be to expand on what they havent fully implemented and system performance / stability

la-de-da we have voice, but if you want to show your customers a simple document you have to leave this 3d toy and load up your web browser

so if your a big wig why waste your time on a propiteary unstable slow system that cannot handle even the simplest of business tasks, if you really wanted a 3d conference room why wouldnt you just use open systems like vrml or java, and just host your own server ? you get almost to better quality, you dont have to wait YEARS for html and other basic text handling, you dont have to muddle tru miles of grey textures, or some diptard comming in with the ubergun 5000 crashing your sim

im glad LL is trying to make this place something more, but its original design is ill suited for anything more than what it is now

this thing called SecondLife is going on 8 years old, and altho its improved alot since then, theres not really anything new going on inside the world, its peaked and somewhat stagnent

altho still highly amusing as a toy

Shouldn't these issues be handled by Abuse Report now?

Part of the problem with Support and Customer Service in the past is that it was inundated with misdirected issues. File an AR when an AR is due. Contact a CSR when CSR communication is needed. They probably aren't the same groups.

I don't disagree with that at all.. I really just used her list to illustrate that there are a number of in-world issues where basic accounts really do need a somewhat direct channel for assistance, and the way Cyn outlined the plan, which for the most part looks encouraging, seems to leave them out in the cold in certain scenarios.

What's that got to do with companies hosting meetings or mini-tradeshows inworld?

I do a lot of conference calls, frequently with other companies.. Having these in SL, where it's clear(er) who's talking and people have nametags and such would be a lot nicer. If LL wants to start getting this kind of business, voice is a must.

1. Age verification: It's voluntary. The griefers and pixel grinders will still be around, the people who get a smack in the face economy wise (and that's likely to be people well over 1 will be the ones who get hurt by this . The trickle down economy effect is something people are missing over this issue. The mistake they made was before my time, allowing people to verify without a CC. They should be working with CC companies over this. A CC leaves a trail.

Grade F

2. Grid Stability/Technical Issues: I haven't seen many grid issues and a lot of new land has arrived, there are one or two itches but generally I am happy with stability.
Grade: B

3. Voice: I'm not sure how this will pan out. If i'm hearing other people's voices everywhere it will annoy me. If you can chat one on one with people it has potential but I'm hoping it will be like music streams and not intrusive. I feel it's a positive step.

Grade: B-

4. Help: I feel the step to a tiered help system is sensible, it's how many companies work. I'd give them an A if they hadn't taken so long and withdrawn other support issues before getting the new system in place.

Grade: B

5. Communications: I'm not impressed with what I see, they do try and listen but it's so haphazard and the meetings are a nightmare to follow. They deserve credit for making the effort and being available but meetings need to be chaired not allowing people to fire questions from everwhere.

Grade: C+

6. Scam-bots: Scary times and it's difficult to know why this has been allowed to get to this situation, seems a minor concern for the devs when it's a major concern for customers. However I have read reports that suggest they are doing something about it.

Grade: D

My main bugbear is id verification and I don't think they're listening or open to suggestion on it, indeed they appear to have rushed in with both feet and this is a big big issue that could undermine businesses all over the world. I don't like the way it's being implemented and I feel they should have held meetings before going ahead with it.

Maybe they decided to implement at least part of my old feature suggestion at /13/ec/78708/1.html from 12-21-2005:

well if i have to wait 15 min for a image of the product and leave SL to see some documentation you can talk all day long and it wont matter much

besides have you actually used a system like this on a onlne world? even if they did have id tags to show who is talking it wont do much good with 30+ av's talking and icons blinking in and out a thousand times a second

YES!! This is exactly what they [LL] needs to start doing. Lately, I have noticed an improvement in their efforts to communicate clearly.

We will have an opportunity to see, and grade, their performance as this age verification thing becomes implemented. It is VITAL that LL clearly, and unambiguously defines what constitutes "adult" and what behavior and/or displays can result in action taken by LL. This is not difficult. I could write it myself, and so could most of you. If they offer a CLEAR, CONCISE and NON OBFUSCATING definition, they will gain consumer confidence.

Next, the implementation of this cannot be arbitrary and capricious. It simply MUST be fair, measured, reasoned and even handed.

We'll see. I continue to hope for the best, but am prepared forthe worst.

A part of the method by which LL runs their organization is that workers record what they do, and these reports are visible to others, the idea being that people will thus in some fashion be motivated to do good work.

Perhaps LL should make these reports viewable by the general public. If scrutiny by co-workers motivates good work, maybe scrutiny by the world world - especially SL customers - would be an even more powerful motivator.

Now here comes my grading of things:

1. Age verification:
Definitely a step to be taken, CC companys state themselves that owning a credit card doesn't hold up as proof of age any longer, so XXX internet vendors should rather look for another scheme as well instead of thinking 'CC age verification' would suffice in SL.

Though the little downgrade is because of the lack of details given to us... honestly, "Integrity Services" is too commonplace a term as to look for details yourself. An URL of their homepage in the blog would have done much good...

Grade: B

2. Grid Stability/Technical Issues:
With the grid chugging along at 20.000 in Dec/Jan and now running somewhat smoothly at 40.000+ - client problems withhold - this can cound definitely as an improvement. Problem is that this improvement in grid performance has to struggle to keep up with the ever-growing userbase and even more important concurrent logins.
What disappoints me is that the so called 'restricted mode' seems to have become a myth. At rush hours the grid performance still becomes less than optimal - the threshold for switching on the 'restricted mode' should be set even lower.

On the other hand, there are some issues where the technical side is definitely lacking. It starts with the braindead implementation of llGiveMoney() - giving no hint wether the transfer succeeded or failed - and other things which has been done or 'fixed' in a less than optimal way. WarpPos-Hack and llGiveInventoryList() being the most prominent examples. I must ask myself why they do have a Beta grid if such blatant problems aren't seen?

Grade: D-

3. Voice:
Unneccessary. That's what I think of it. I'm already annoyed by that audible crap people use as sounds in gestures and I need another layer of noise just like I need an aching tooth. First thing I'll do after update is to switch off voice, maybe even before logging in.
As far as I've seen I'm definitely not the only one thinking along these lines and there are people who cannot use voice for one reason or another. Problem is, there is much room for misunderstandings if there is no clear indication wether someone has switched sound off (and simply muting audio and listening to the favourite music doesn't give any) or not. Imagine a situation where you try to talk to someone and he doesn't respond simply because he doesn't hear you.

Moreover, resources allocated for voice implementation would have been used better somewhere else.

Grade: C-

4. Help:
With the Live Help being cancelled anyone not knowing a Linden in person and nowhere near Concierge level support is pretty much left hung out to dry. EMail support? Zilch. Abuse report? Automated response "We'll look into it", but nothing happens. If the refuse (feel free to use the four-letter-s-word here) is really about to hit the fan, for example a griefer doing a hit-and-run tactics or really offensive and disruptive object litter lies around you're definitely out of luck.

Grade: E

5. Communications:
The town hall transcript reads as an attempt to simply placate the masses rather than give out actual ways they want to cope with the problems which have been addressed. It could be worse - not listening at all would come to my mind. Blog and status reports tend to considerably lag behind actual events.

Grade: C

6. Scam-bots:
Officially there has been done absolutely nothing. Nor even planned to do that. That is even worse because one land bot is reported to exploit a bug which allows concurrently changing a land transfer while another one is actually trying to purchase the parcel in question (bait-and-switch). Yet on the undercurrent something seems to have happened. Land for sale searches are limited in frequency (seen it myself), landbot alts being banned, and so on. I presume the stance on this is like that if, for example, someone complains why he cannot search for buyable land every minute he must face the question why he would want to do so.

Grade: C


Overall quite a harsh grading, but somehow it boils down to one thing: Not responding to the resident's opinions. Nobody asked for voice. Nobody asked for pretty skies. What was asked for - and for a long time - would be grid stability, inworld transaction safety, inventory safety and lots of other things, as well as to fix the bugs instead of implementing new ones.