Further Conversation... with M Linden

Thanks, the Rivers Run Red Immersive Workspaces project looks interesting. It sounds like the "Zoho 3D" idea I have posted about on my blog. I wonder if there's any way to try it out without have to pay a big bunch of money. It might be nice to see how something like that would work for groups like the Mentors or perhaps NCI or SL businesses.

Kinda cool that it's 3d collaborative workspace meets social network (with the team profiles) but it still has it's limitations it seems partially due to the platform and partially because it still seems to be very dissociative between members of a team since it's assuming that your going to do all your communication through that system and that's also the only way that your going to get information about the project or each other. A pretty cool concept though.

It would be a pretty cool idea for NCI and/or the mentors however I doubt either NCI or LL would want to spend the extravagant amount of money I assume RRR is charging corporations for this "service" when there are better uses for the money and each can and has put together a system that works for them just as well.

Also, because there is no real LAN based grid available yet I don't know how RRR does it but it seems that although their website and all it's nice functions can be entirely secured by authentication methods even if they're using private islands which is the only way to offer security there's no true security as long as it's leaving a LAN / VPN network system since LL can of course know everything that's going on even if it's trade secrets or confidential and if they aren't using private islands than that loosens it up even more.

As RRR does not have a public demo of their immersive space and I won't even waste their time asking for a demo as I am not a part of a large corporation looking to make use of their services I have no firsthand experience with this and no way of gaining first hand experience of this which is a shame because it seems like a great idea.

I wonder if one could make a open source Zimbra - open source SL viewer mashiup of some sort. I pick Zimbra because it's the only one of the open source collaboration programs at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software whose name I recognize.

Maybe access to something like Immersive Workspaces could be a perk for premium members?

I am glad to see that alot of new changes are happening in SL, and for someone new to SL you seem to have grasped what SL needs. The new people you have hired lately should also bring in some fresh air.
I have never seen a CEO answering forums and taking bullets like you, that in my eyes is extremly cool.
One of my main concerns is the way search results are showing now, its very irrelevant, you search for furniture and you get skin ads this is just a example, in a place where you have so many business it needs to be redone and this time done right.

My other main concern is that after so many faulty deployes and so many mistakes later there is still no proper beta test program, all the software companies use them, you do not, and that causes alot of problems to the users.

I hope you see this is a positive critisim of SL because I work in SL most of the day and by the end of the year I will devote all my time to SL.

Now on the lighter side, can I get a bear?

Thanks in advance and I wish you the best in the months ahead

Hmm maybe it's better not everyone can rez them otherwise we'd have physical 100m spheres rolling around all the welcome areas.
Other than the fact I end up finding find sizes that don't exist, in some ways it's handy to store prims rather than make them, I want a 40x20, I just type 40x20 in inventory search and there it is, I even do the same with 10x10x.5 rather than keep making new ones

The only way I can see a merge working is 3 or 4 seperate continents, a teens only one, a mixed continent and a 18+ rated mature and an extreme "anything goes" continent.

Hello M, thank you for your blog post and answers here. In general I agree with the improvements over the last few months, still I think there is some serious trouble in other areas, communication and dealing with abuse reports. This has a *big* impact especially on longtime residents who push lots of money your way and expect to be dealed with the respect a loyal and paying customer deserves.

Examples:

- Dealing with jira reports. When a new viewer makes a $100 piece of hardware (and it's not outdated one) useless that was only bought for Second Life and worked perfectly fine up to then, and this is reported as a bug in the jira, a closing of the report with a "won't finish" without any explaination is simply not enough - and I see it disrespectful to your customers.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8553


- Dealing with abuse reports. Sadly, LL has a long history of wild west manner reactions to some kinds of abuse reports. There seems to be a strategy of shooting first and never asking questions later in place. How else is it to explain, that even concierge level customers with proof of age on file will get suspended within minutes of a false underage AR, without any investigation, without checking the data LL already HAS on file? It takes days to weeks to get such a suspended account unsuspended again, usually by sending in the same proof of age LL already HAS on file - how stupid is that?

Another prime example, this time with a false ageplay AR, is to find here in this forum thread from yesterday. A well known resident was falsely AR'd for "ageplay" while participating in a building contest on a PG region with lots of witnesses around - without any investigation. Logged out in the middle of the contest. It wasn't even a kid avatar! (Funnily, with the new AR categories - including the one word category "Ageplay" - stuff like that will most likely happen more and more. Ageplay is NOT forbidden in Second Life, only SEXUAL ageplay is - why the heck isn't THAT used as AR category? This lack of clarity will cause more and more ARs of kid avatars just because they are exactly that: kid avatars, without doing anything wrong.)

The way these AR's are dealed with makes these AR's the ultimate griefer tool. I'm not afraid of someone trying to crash my sim - I have to be afraid of someone abusing the AR process and LL employees abusing their power. How sad is that?

/327/5c/284505/1.html


Stuff like that is not acceptable. You not only have to care about the first hour experience of new users, you also have to take care of the experience of all others. All of you at LL are payed by US, you work for US - show us the respect we deserve, please. A few more words from those who answer jira reports. A fair and rational governance team which members who don't see themselfs as game gods but really do their job, including investigating before shooting. Second Life is not a simple, free webforum where moderators can run amok.

Best regards
Daniel Regenbogen

note : talking about visions, you have the vision of the company itself, but loads of people forget that the vision is mostly determined by its customers ! >50 % of the inhabitants of SL are people who have problems in rl, relational, whatever = drama.... try to built a vision on that !! Give us back the old days in sl where people used SL to create things ! SECOND LIFE = CREATING LIFE ! (if I would obset people with my statement <I am not sorry>, SL is a place to enjoy, not a place to bring your RL probs into !


Yes there have been improvements, I agree, but we must keep pushing forward. Following I find also a thought worth it ;

*bots
bots can be used as long if they are used as models in shops, etc ....and to solve this issue make bot alts go premium (this would immediately reduce the #bots levels with 60 %)

*banlines
I love to fly around in my planes or helis and find it very frustrating to hit banlines on the mainland
solution : banlines should be as a box with a maximum height of +/- 75 meters (that would allow pilots to pass along the whole mainland without being crushed to walls and people still can ban people out there premises !

*new residents (maximum 14 days exploring time)
why dont you force people to go for premium after 14 days ? I am fed up with people begging for money (lindens) and when you do a commercial action with a piggysplodern money tree or camping, you see all the 'money wolfs' jumping on the free money instead than taking the chance to explore your sim (despite the fact that so many people really do their best to make the grid look fantastic), is it because of the rl economics (my ass), we talk here about peanuts in sl!

*allow rl children in sl (only IF accompagnied by there rl parents)
this is a good one, I am in rl many times away from home for business trips, I own a 1/2 mainland sim, it would be fantastic if I could meet my daughter in sl while being away from my RL home, she would love it. As long if parents own properties it would be an idea that they could let there kids in (under parental control), there is more shit happening in rl than in sl anyhow ! I only see benefits in this and it would boost the grid again.

for the rest, keep the good work up M and TEAM !
xxx
Wildcat

Perhaps, now is the time to start all of this. If LL can eat GOM, crush the banks and casino, if it can raze the ad farms, it can make a list of bannee's that would hold thousands of names.

Can you tell me when the jira's that have sat untouched on the shelf for 120-180 + days are going to be resolved?

Yeah that. Transparency, and an actual working appeals process HAS to be put in place.. when a simple forum dispute or sandbox altercation can turn into a unfounded ageplay AR that can potentially deprive someone of their entire RL livelihood. It's simply not a very smart legal position for Linden Lab.

Linden Lab never asks the accused for their side of the story. This needs to change.

(I haven't finished to read the thread yet, but I wanna post this before I forget)

isn't that waht PG (Parent Guidance) is supposed to be?

Hi M! I think its time LL stopped competing against its own customers. The mainland is an outdated model, its flaws are obvious, why not just sell off each sim as a separate estate and be done with it. The motto was always "Your World, Your Imagination". This no longer seems possible with the mainland estate and the manner in which the Lindens enforce the rules. The Lindens only find it possible to communicate through the AR system. This is sad. Linden Lab needs to show more humanity in the way they deal with their customers.

Thanks for the blog post M, and you have made a great start on the comments here in the forums. It goes a long way in customer relations to see the responses to what the members of Second Life have to say.

While many may disagree with the current implementation of some of the things you outlined in your blog post, the direction of them is a good thing.

New User Experience is certainly an important one as there is a lot of improvement that can be done there. The new plans for welcome areas are long overdue, and the current process of sending new residents from the initial Help Island to the often grief prone WA's that are also full of many people looking to exploit new members is certainly something that needs to be changed.

The concurrency number certainly are screwed by bots and such, however I also know that there has been a lot of traffic at the initial Help Island locations which shows that SL is attracting more new members. IMO bots of all kinds should be banned on the mainland. If estate owners want to lag out their sims with bots, well then that's on them. But someone who owns a small mainland plot and fills it with bots thus lagging the sim is a major problem (yes, I know it is something that can be AR'd for abuse of region resources, but it needs to be better enforced, and really should be part of TOS)

As a subset of bots, lets talk about the landbots which despite comments from LL employees over the past two years admitting that they were a problem and also stating that "things" were being done to address them, still exist, are still abusing system resources, and are still taking advantage of user and/or viewer errors that end up resulting in people losing a lot of real money. (*note that there are some bot owners that do make an effort to return mistakes, but there is a lot more to it than just that) Any way you look at it, these bots are violating TOS in a number of ways, from improper use of resources (a single bot av can hammer the land database 28,800 times a day, and many of these bots are using multiple avs to bypass the database throttle on number of searches allowed - which is a TOS violation of network access policy) While perhaps not all bot owners are bad people, some definitely are exploiting the system and if you look at the history, LL has lost a lot of high tier paying customers because they have lost their land to a bot and consequently lost hundreds or in some cases thousands of real dollars. What I find most interesting is that despite former promises that the landbot issues were being addressed, LL has continued to let them operate without restriction, this after using arguments in the Bragg court case in favor of LL that LL seems to ignore itself in the case of landbots - in point the comments made in court by LL regarding Bragg's case "Use of the exploit not only harmed Linden Lab, but Second Life Residents as well, by disrupting the in-world economy. If those who used the exploit had succeeded, not only would have they profited unfairly, but they also could have sold their parcels at below-market prices and still made a profit, putting legitimate sellers at a disadvantage." Hmmm have you seen the land market M? have you looked into the fact that on some days upwards of 50% of the lowest priced parcels are being sold by 'bot owners' (basically allowing them to sell their parcels at below market prices and still make a profit, putting legitimate sellers at a disadvantage - those legitimate sellers who abide by TOS and do not abuse resources and rely on the SL viewer to process their transactions) This of course also goes against this statement made by LL: "Other Residents reasonably expect that Second Life’s economic systems will work fairly and transparently. The use of the exploit undermines that expectation, and causes loss of good will among Residents." That pretty much sums up the landbot issue where people have lost their land (sometimes due to an honest mistake, and sometimes due to technical errors), where people who follow the rules once again are put at a disadvantage, and where the system is NOT working fairly and transparently.

Mainland Improvements is certainly headed in the right direction with the new push to remove ad farms and much of the associated blight, however if you look at the number of responses to the ad farm forum thread, this is definitely a heated issue with much more involved than just the removal of some ads. It is now up to LL to actively enforce these policy's and to continue to delve deeper into the problem (such as the extortion plots). While many people will complain about inaction in the past, it is the present and future that most of us are concerned about, and to this end we really hope to see some follow through on the new policies. I have always liked some aspects of the mainland, especially the older continents, but the increasing blight has made it less and less attractive over time. The DPW has been doing an outstanding job with it's projects with many roads completed, more parkland becoming accessible, and more free boatable water, and I look forward to see what else they have in store - there is still hope for the mainland, but only if LL keeps pushing harder to make it better.

The localization project is a very positive one, and one that will certainly help Second Life to grow in it's diversity. Many issues have arisen due to miscommunication and just plain bad translations and hopefully the push in this area will help eliminate many of those.

As for Product focus, I think that just about everyone will agree that while many of the new features are definitley cool, and some of them sorely needed, the biggest and most important issue of all is stability. Viewer stability and grid stability are probably the biggest reason why people leave SL. LL has undertaken, and somewhat accomplished an amazing thing: making a software product that runs on multiple operating system, and a incredible variety of hardware. That SL runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux (albeit with varying levels of success) is quite an accomplishment in itself. However, since LL decided to jump into this multiple OS game, it is expected that things will improve constantly, and in that respect I feel that sometimes things have gotten ahead of themselves and stability has been compromised on one or more of the platforms. Better communication with hardware vendors (especially nvidia and ati branches) is neccessary to help address some of the more common, and annoying issues currently facing users and developers. As the technology improves, so will SL, which usually means that sooner or later people are going to have to upgrade something hardware or software wise - more help with recommending what really does work well with SL would be a good next step to take.

In closing I look forward to seeing your responses to the issues posted in the forum here that members of SL feel are important, and I also hope to see actions follow.

To add to my wish list on the official blog (since I got in between the 150 first I did not cross-post here):

I wish land for sale would show up on a web page; a Download land for sale to Excel feature would take away load made by land bots just searching, and also place the rest of us not using bots on the same level of competition.

First of all M and Linden Lab workers ... great job...

Indeed, I can't remember my last crash... while that used to be a commonality

I apploud te "first hour experience" project, the "add farming", and "mainland environment" projects...
I know plenty of RL friends, who dropped out in that crusual first hour/day... "too difficult/ hard to grasp" they said.

Add farming is not the only thing making the mainland 'ugly', like Rio Luik mentioned:


I must agee, land cutters/small plots are tormenting neighbours and neighbourhoods... I hope you will do something about that as well.

As far as improving the mainland... Perhaps it is not just a job for Linden Lab... for instance, I have started buying plots around my land, and just placing trees, to create a green belt.
If all landowners (above, say 32000sq.m) would do that... It would help a lot...
Perhaps allowing discount on tier, when landowners manage to keep a certain percentage green (and not just by building all in the sky) this can be promoted.

Finaly I would like to post 1 critical note... a indeed, a lot has improved in many area's I find lag is still an issue... I hoe you will give this some thought as well.

And as I like to end positive, Just let us know how we can contribute in making SL nicer )

Quoted For Truth. (T_T)

Hear Hear!!

"Year-over-year, peak concurrency has grown more than 38%. An even more impressive figure is the number of Residents who logged-in during the prior seven days. For the week ending September 19th, we had 505,839 unique log-ins – another Second Life record."

Can anyone explain the discrepancy between M's quote above and the stats posted by Alexa?
See:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/secondlife.com

Perhaps Alexa has somehow managed to subtract bots from their traffic figures whereas Linden Lab hasn't?

PS: The current Mac viewers, both the official release and the Release Candidates, are still plagued with problems, making the SL experience for some of us nearly unbearable. Why is it that open source developers have managed to cobble together a viewer that works beautifully on Macs while we continue, month after month, to hobble along using crippled LL viewers?

Alexa can only track traffic of Second Life's website. Not usage of the Second Life program itself.

Second Life unfortunatly is not a website, and therefore can not be tracked by Alexa.

Alexa looks at web sites, you won't get much information about usage of the service proper from there.

"505,839 unique log-ins"

Ah, you mean these?

http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=omfgbots001nr4.png

Please do not discard the old mainland as you make new,shiny, well-managed continents for the publicity machine. Remember the people that have paid tier for three years and help keep the lights on. Make good on Jack's vague (empty?) promise of a better mainland for ALL.

.

First I would like to thank everyone at LL for the great job they have done so far. Even though my profile on this id shows one date, I iniitally joined over 3 year and have held positions of mentor and instructor. My SL experience has been an enjoyable one and I have learned a lot and have been able to share that knowledge with a lot of new people coming in. Saying this there are a couple things that still impact me. I live on the East Coast, not sure which server I connect through, however I have a high end computer system which way more exceeds the minimum requirements. I connect through a very high speed DSL connection. With all this I am still experiencing extremely lag, high duration time rezzing even on the class 5 severs and I appear not to be the only one. Can someone explain what I need to do. I have dropped my draw distance down to almost nothing, follow all the recommendations as far a settings is concerned.

P.S. In RL I happen to be a project manager with years of experience. I know what PMs go through.

Thank you, M, for the informative blog post.

I'd welcome hearing a few words about LL's strategy with respect to building your RL corporate customer base. I have long felt that LL would be well served by making it easier for small-midsize companies to hold single-sim meetings in SL, without themselves buying/building a sim. Once a business has successfully done this a few times, they will be ready to invest more time in SL.

Forgive me, but to my eyes Secondlifegrid.net creates the impression that a business would have to itself become expert in SL in order to hold a meeting. The website doesn't even have a pointer to an LL corporate liaison office - it seems to say, "You're on your own, Mr. Marketing Consultancy!". I'm sure you don't want to compete with those who host meetings as part of their business model in SL (most notably IBM), but I do think that LL could profit by more actively facilitating a RL business being able to set up a 40-person meeting in SL with a few website visits and a couple of phone calls.

I don't mean to imply that every midsize business would be capable of holding an SL collaborative session. But there are a lot of technology-savvy businesses out there whose entire staff have SL-capable computers. From smaller accounts come bigger ones!