Drama around Views program - Maybe just a big misunderstanding?

As someone invited to the first round of the views program I was a bit shocked about all the negative feedback on the forums and on certain SL focused weblogs yesterday. It's not that I did not expect negative feedback. It is hard to imagine a topic - especially a decision by Linden Lab - that won't get a lot of negative feedback on the forums. Still, the amount of drama overwhelmed me a bit.

Browsing through the posts, though, I could not help the impression, that at least some of the commentators seem to have some assumption about the character of this program that are completely different from mine. So I re-read Robins's post on itNowhere in this post I could find the assumption that this would a kind of representative assembly. But exactly this seems to be one the major point of the critiques. The democratic legitimation - or "representative-ness" of this group is questioned, as is the while idea of interacting with residents outside of Second Life at all.

Those 8 (later more) residents have been chosen by Linden Lab to collect opinions, ideas, discuss suggestions and so on. Basically this is a kind of focus group - maybe mixed with the idea of an advisory council. Many companies do focus groups or institute councils like this. This is nothing new - not even the mix. I have been part of a few similar activities in the nineties. And I have rarely seen any attempts to make this a democratic process. Why? Because - for the purpose intended - it would be a bad idea.

Please, let us not forget, that Linden Lab is a company which is selling and developing a service. Many factors influence the development of such a service. A wise management will always include the customers in the decision making process with surveys, polls, focus groups - the whole arsenal of market research. But they won't hand over the decision making to the customers.

Many examples have shown, that letting customers "vote" on the product portfolio or product features does not lead to a better performance of the company - not even to better customer satisfaction. You have to carefully weight what the customers (say that they) want with outside factors, with economic consequences, with assumptions about future trends (of which customers are rarely aware) with competitors actions ... and then decide. That's leadership.

There are many ways to include customers in the research and decision making process. The views program is just one of it. It does not seem like an unusual or obviously bad idea to me. But I don't know what will come out of it. I certainly don't expect to have any direct influence on Linden Labs decisions. But I do expect some very interesting discussions which will certainly lead to some unforeseeable results (a meeting of minds always has this effect).

Will any of these results significantly influence what is happening with Second Life in the Future? Who knows? But maybe the next round of the program will, or the next after that or ... And all these rounds will feature different groups of residents which will be selected through a different set of criteria - not necessarily with the intent of bringing together a representative group of the current user base.

As a company, Second Life promotes diversity, both through the use of their game, and through the 'innovative' management styles. Variety is pushed left, right and centre (or center if you prefer).

Yet when it comes to promotion - and those selected for this special group - all is pushed is money money money, to the exclusion of everyone else.

Those making good money are a tiny % of the playerbase. They cannot and will not ever make the majority if SL is to be successful, and until Linden Labs realise that and start to push all the other opportunities available to the average user, we will never grow properly.

Ever thought *why* such a small percentage of signups are retained, and play regularly? The SL experience they find is NOT what is advertised, and what they expected. So they go elsewhere.

Lewis

I think most people are either just jealous or feel left out whenever something like this happens. Theres some sense of 'why am I not good enough' syndrome nagging them distantly in the background that eats at their character. The same way the recent 'power elite' top ten went.

I think LL chose a good sampling of residents both old and semi old. It is not meant to be a small group of people who are given powers beyond the regular resident, but merely to understand better the needs of the users, however small the sampling may be for the betterment of all.

I've only known Pham for some brief moments, when he was just starting out. But from what I gather he appears to be a person of stable character, worth talking to and discussing matters, even if our views are not of the same direction. I think this can be said of the rest of the chosen team. They are mature people worthy of having a conversation with without freaking out and crying tantrums all over the place like headless wildfowl like the rest of us in the forums.

This may have been expressed in the other thread already so I'm sorry if I'm repeating things. Just did not have the stamina to plough through the drama. But my suggestion is, let this experiment run its course and see how the first batch fare.

Pham Neutra, my apologizes in advance for the grief caused here by certain people who with their paranoia label anyone involved with LL in any way as FIC.

Let see, the threads started here "The Chosen Ones Have Been Announced" and so on are done generally by overly paranoid people who believe any user-LL participation has ulterior motives beyond the usual Occam’s Razor assertion.

It is not up to me to say that that FIC does not exist, but I am quite confident that the FOC (not to be said aloud) aka "Feted Outer Core" does indeed exist and is probably a worse group of people than the FIC.

Lets see, the FOC are generally the loud, ill-tempered, quickly aggitated group of rabid elitist who in their own jealousy would go around pointing and labeling anyone associated with LL as FIC.

The FOC is generally a terroist group, they claim to work for the masses, but their elitism has made them quite seperate from the general group of people and most often, the masses would ignore their rabid rumbling or get amusement out of it.

Anyways, I wish you the best on your trip and hope you bring important points raised by non-FOC people to the Lindens.

You realize, once you start talking in acronyms - all rational debate is lost. Why categorize? We'll never get rid of the term now, thanks to the neverending paranoia-fest from select sources. The views program, user input, whatever you want to call it - focus groups, etc.. this is employed all over the world for various products.

Yet somehow, here and now, it is the tool of ultimate evil causing a massive focus of 'power' (yeah, what power? We make stuff and script...whatever....last I checked, I don't have the 'god' bit set in my profile.) that will shift SL into a downward slide towards DAMNATION AND HELLFIRE.

I mean, really, all this about a focus group.

Are you all just slowly losing your minds?

Hi Pham, and congrats for being "chosen"

Although I'm pretty sure that the time is running out, I would like to ask you a few questions (I've deliberately avoided the "drama" threads*— destructivism is rampant on those) just to understand what you personally expect from the Second Views programme, and how you view it to become a sort of a "forum" (not an online one!) to gather information and opinions from all residents, to be presented at Linden Lab.

1) Do you have an agenda for the meeting?

All we know it that it's about "discussing feature design and policy" (see Robin's blog). So, naturally, the questions are:

1. What design features are being evaluated (ie. only server-side, only client-side, both...)?
   
2. What policy issues are being brought forward to be discussed, and in how far is LL willing to change their own policy based on your opinion and comments?
   

Understanding what exactly is being required from you guys will enable you to prepare for the meeting much better.

2) Would you be willing to discuss publicly, in public in-world meetings, those very same questions with other residents?

The way I see this is that you could host a series of in-world discussions, let people come with their feedback on the several agenda items, let them discuss and come with proposals (and even defend their proposals publicly), with full transcripts for the ones who couldn't attend. Eventually, if there are many topics on the agenda, you'd be able to set different meetings for each topic, and thus gather opinions from the ones only wishing to discuss one or two points.

This would give many people the opportunity to participate, in some sort of "hierarchical" sense, by presenting a bunch of ideas, suggestions and opinions, and entrusting you to carry them on towards the meeting with LL. It would also give great strength to your argumentation. You'd sit at the roundtable and say things like "Robin, on the issue of the new group tools, I have talked to about 200 residents, and here are their opinions and suggestions..." and forward her a nicely created document with a summary of all suggestions. And naturally enough, if there were any doubts, LL would be able to look upon posted transcripts to verify that this indeed was the kind of opinions that were presented to you.

An alternative to in-world meetings (which I understand that not everybody likes) are heavilly moderated forums (certainly much stricter than the LL forums!) and eventually "voting booths" in-world or the equivalent thingies on the Web. The latter are perhaps easier to set up to get a lot of input from several residents, although it has a disadvantage — you just get simply yes/no answers to agenda topics, but not the why. Still, it's a compromise. And there is not enough time anyway, with the 3rd Anniversary Celebrations coming up and all...

3) Did you get any hints on what happens with a log/transcript of the Second Views meetings?

I imagine that it'll be next to impossible to require much more than a list of agenda items discussed and what each and everyone's opinion on them were. It would be much nicer to have an ongoing video of the meeting being streamed into SL! Failing that, an audio stream? And failing that all... well... a transcript would be nice. Have you had any feedback on either of those possibilities?

I'd imagine that there could be an "after-meeting" in-world roundtable, ie. you guys presenting your views on what was discussed and how opinions were argued/defended, and see what kind of "after-meeting" feedback you could get from residents, and send it back to LL for analysis.

Wow! You said a mouthful there and I couldn't agree more.

What makes me sad is that their techniques have been successful in bullying LL into rewarding thier piss-poor behavior. The formula is simple, a tiny number of residents produce volumes of vemonous posts and blogs accusing LL of favoritism, and LL will reward them with opportunities in a vain hope of placating them. Well, as LL's marketing department has discovered, it doesn't EVER work. Putting an FOC in Fortune Magazine for their 100 doller a month profit (!!!) didn't even break their victim-status stride.

Well the community team seems like a different animal than the marketing department so there's hope. But if, in the next round of the views, LL invites somebody from the FOC as part of some reward-venom-so-you'll-like-us program I'm going to be ill.

Before you get too attached to the FOC acronym... I'm an offic, uh, I mean I know someo...em, well, they really do exist and they're very sweet people I can assure you.

Thank you, Gwyneth! I am not sure, I deserve the congrats, though, as I don't feel "chosen", simply picked out of a larger group where many others could have been selected.

You put up a lot of very thoughtful questions, that are not easily answered, though. And I am not sure, that I understand the intention behind all of them correctly.

But let me just try as best as I can.

1. There is - or will be - an aganda for the meetings. And, if I am not mistaken, Robin promised to post that agenda on her weblog. I am rather certain that there will an outcry again on the forums as soon as that happens because "the really important topics are missing" or "the whole agenda is biased in this or that direction".
   
   I would assume that Robin is the right person to answer this question.
   
   
   
2. Please excuse me, Gwyneth, but this question seems to imply the assumption again, that this group of people will act in some way as a representative assembly for the residents of SL. I thought I made it clear, that this is not my understanding of the job at hand.
   From: someone

   You'd sit at the roundtable and say things like "Robin, on the issue of the new group tools, I have talked to about 200 residents, and here are their opinions and suggestions..." and forward her a nicely created document with a summary of all suggestions.
   It is certainly not intended as an "audience at the court of King Philip", either. Forgive me the pun. I see that your intentions have a lot of merit. It just seems to me, that what you are interpreting into this event is not what is intended by those organizing it. And it would seem grossly impolite to me, to not accept this when I accept such an invitation.
   
   Members of a focus group are usually selected on the basis of certain criteria, which are not allways disclosed to them. The company initiating such a focus group usually does not want members of such a group to "prepare" much in advance for such a meeting because that can be contra-productive to the whole effort. Members of a focus groups are certainly not selected as spokespersons for a larger group of people.
   
   If the Lindens see this differently, they would have to tell us. I don't know. We have not talked about that because this question did not come up yet. What I said was just my experience with focus groups I had on both sides of the table in the past years.
   
   I have to admit that should anyone expect of me to act as a spokesperson or representative, that this would be a burden I am not willing to accept. I am not especially good at representing other peoples ideas and opinions.
   
   
   
3. Personally I would have no problem at all with discussing the proceedings of the meetings. It is not uncommon to sign an NDA before going into a focus group or an advisory council, though. At least I had to do that a few times before. I don't know if this will be the case here. As for question 1.) Robin would probably the better person to ask.
   

Eh the drama is a lolocaust - I mean half the folks kicking up a storm, if it were raining silver dollars would bitch that one hit them in the forehead.

Equally funny is the biggest deriders of the whole thing were also founders of the 'Metaverse Justice Watch' -- we remember that one dont we? Thats right, a small group of picked people who wanted to have meetings with the lindens to set policy etc.

Of course the big difference is that these 8 haven't denigrated the rest of the population by calling them peons (although I do beleive the term was 'tourist').

Aint it funny how the world turns?

To summarise - I think they're just pissed they weren't picked.

Oh - and congrats... I'm glad that Catherine Omega is in there too... unlike what some people say, I look that as proof that it's not 'all about the money'.. Anyone who's into scripting knows her - drop dead smart.

Another side note - I think its funny that on one blog site the only thing they could say about her was she's Aimees partner... whats that? Wealth by proxy?

Addendum:

I don't consider the idea of a representative assembly a bad one, Gwyneth. It is just, that I am not up to the job. I would vote for you as a member of such an assembly anytime!

Maybe you should petition / lobby the Lindens in that direction? I am not sure, if this could ever work or how much influence such an assembly should or could have on the decisions of a company's management, which is responsible to its shareholders first.

I actually forsee a day where that particular person will base all their criticism on some relationship to me.

"Linden Lab's new janitor is the father of a girl who was in the same art history class as the roomate of Aimee's sister. Yet another example of favoritism and the Linden's insular additude!!"

Were you really though? I wasn't. It's all the usual suspects gnashing their teeth.


Just because LL wants to speak to these 8 people doesn't mean they're suddenly in control of the metaverse. LL employees communicate with residents on a daily basis. If you have something to say, hunt down Robin, leave a comment in her blog. Or any of the other Linden blogs around there. I think as far as companies go, LL does an incredible job of keeping in touch with their customers.

I think it boils down to the fact that if you give someone something to complain about - they will in fact complain about it. It just seems like either everyone should have the exact same opportunities and no one should have any opportunities at all.

Second Life is an extent of the real world we live in where anything is possible. I can live out my dreams of being an octopus and hump giant Aimee Weber statues when no one is looking It just seems more and more evident that some people have completely unreal and unattainable expectations of the universe and its quite apparent in situations such as these. Social hierarchies exist no matter how much you deny they do or disagree with the fact that they exist. Some people are more well-known, popular, famous, infamous than others. Some people are just completely miserable and insist on making everyone just as miserable as they are. Some people are afforded more opportunities based on a variety of criteria such as, education, professional skills, human interface skills, knowledge, talent and whatnot. Some people look over those aforementioned qualifiers and kick and scream that its not fair that everyone has not been given the same opportunites or those people got to where they are by unscrupulous means and do not deserve anything at all.

I'm glad to see people chosen to interact with LL. This is just 1 round. I agree with Pham that they are not representatives of the whole playerbase, neither have they accepted to take this daunting responsibility. They are just a small group with their own views participating in one round of discussions.

I hope some interesting points will come out of this, but again, we don't have any right to DEMAND anything.

Next round, other people will get chosen.

There are plenty of other ways to leave feedback outside of that Views program. Use them. Stop the venom.

I hope the forum will prove an interesting experience.

Wendel

Yeah, like turning a computer game into 'the future of the internet', and similar rubbish.

Lewis

Maybe "shocked" was the wrong word - even though I am as naive and mild mannered as they come ...

I read the forums now for more than a year. Sometimes it still saddens me deeply how much anger and hatred is poured out here. I don't deny anyone the right to offer opposing opinions. But do these guys really think insulting each other will have any effect on changing someone elses opinions?

That said, please let us keep the nitpicking and name calling (without actually calling names) out of this thread for a few hours and discuss what it's all about. It will be to late in a few hours, when the world of SL is awake.

Personally I consider Gwyneth's ideas worthwhile of a considerate debate, for example - even though I don't aggree with her 100%.

Or, y'all may have been summoned to participate in a gomming session to discuss how LL will capitalize on the businesses and connections you've built using Second Life. That's a pretty easy selection processes for them.

Be Careful Out There

I think people are forgetting the important questions in all the arguing and whining.

Will the FIC titles be handed over to the new group in a beauty pageant style crowning, or can we hope for some kind of grudge matches where Aimee and Cristiano have to wrestle Pham and Kex to defend their title belts, and Jennyfur and Flipper go in tag-team style against Catherine and Oz?



Have a good time in San Francisco. It's a beautiful city. (Take a sweater.)

as long as we can battle in co-ed naked pudding wrestling matches I'm game.

No you really got me shocked! Jonquille! How can you ...

I am gentleman. I would never fight against Aimee and if I would be pressed to do it, I would make sure, I loose, of course.

Cristiano is another case, though, but to be honest, when it come to violence, I have been a coward all of my life. And he looks quite formidable in the RL pictures disclosed, young, fit ... whereas I am an old man.

Sorry, no chance for a grudge match - at least not with my participation.

So as art imitates life - we have a game called 5 degrees of Aimee Weber? instead of Andy Warhol? (I think Kevin Bacon is a funny guy - but I prefer the original game).

We could all have Weber numbers?

I'm getting a bit tired of the objections of everyone who doesn't think this is a good idea being put down to "jealousy" and "compulsive cynicism" and so on.

How can this possibly be bad? LL is going to sit down and talk to 8 of us. Where is the problem? Is communication suddenly a terrible thing?