1523 did you really expect different?

Linden Labs has already made their decision they made that clear by acting on it, their response to 1503, and 1505 amongst numerous other points. You may not be aware of it but the feature voting tool is NOT a method for turning LL into a democracy. The feature voting tool is used and as far as I know has always been used to allow users to push what they are most interested in to top visiblity. It's to let LL see what interests us most, not to make LL act on it. The feature voting tool makes us the polls NOT the legislature. You raised your concerns and desires with 1503 LL responded politely, but didn't change their plans. With 1523 you brought it back up and told them do NOT acknowledge this unless you intend to do it. What possible response could LL give you besides marking it Can't Do? Did none of you see that one coming a mile away?

I think they just wanted to highlight that acknowledging the feature for development while saying "actually we'll do something entirely different" was not satisfactory.

As to why they waste their time and energy bothering to appeal to LL any more, that I can't say

A "head in sand" brush off remark is not the same as a considered answer.

However, as I've said before, us players who pay and create content for their world are the most important thing they have - sure, without them there would be no Second Life, but without us there would just be a barren landscape full of a few abandoned plywood cubes, and probably a couple of clubs and casinos, nothing else.

What's that old saying, don't bite the hand that feeds you? LL would do well to remember that. Residents are losing faith in LL's ability to manage their product with any level of competence, and people are quitting daily.

Perhaps you and others who make money off of SL should also remember that without people staying, there won't be anyone to make money from either.

Lewis

I suppose the cynic in me didn't really expect a commited response that would answer any of the concerns raised. That doesn't mean we can't hope though does it? Most companies don't even create a channel for communication with their customers to the extent that LL has done, and I give them credit for that. Unfortunately, this channel is reaching the stage where it is demonstrably ineffective in communicating the concerns of LL's customers. And I believe that having no channel, same as most companies, would be better for customer relations than a channel that is openly considered useless by the customers.

Kris nailed it - it wasn't so much that they said they weren't going to do what 1503 asked for, as the fact that they marked it Acknowledged but then put in the Linden Note field that, actually, they weren't going to go along with it. That's why I picked up on the "let's have another prop vote" vibe a few people had given out, and started 1523 off.

I'm not really surprised that they "Can't Do"'d 1523, after the nagging I gave about not "Acknowledging" it in the way they treated 1503.

We do run the risk of never getting this changed back to how we want it, but it certainly won't be due to Linden Labs being unaware of our thoughts on the matter!

This is all true for Second Life, however, once the software is developed enough to be marketable, Linden Lab won't need Second Life anymore. They'll make far more money, hopefully in the near future, by licensing the server code to companies and schools and even individuals that want to run their own grids.

Before everyone hyperventilates let me clarify that LL won't have to close Second Life. It's as neat a toy for them to play with as it is for us. In fact, they get to play with us as that much more primmage to push around the map so I doubt they'll be giving it up.

But SL isn't going to ever be a cash cow for them. In fact, it'll likely never be very, if at all, profitable. The short version, too late, is that they don't have to care what we think. They don't have to care if we leave; they already have the accounts totaled into the magic subscription number and copies of our content. What more do they need?

Or of course it could be a There.com style "well, we've learned what we needed to, so fuck you guys! we've got a big assed contract now and we shall be letting Second Life rot from here on out. bai!"

And why is this supposed to stop us from expressing our opinions?

I don't care if they close it down or not, I'm still showing up on the boards to express my outrage at the way they implemented the changes and I'm still going to attend the birthday celebration holding my sign today. I can't control their reaction to our appeals, but I can do something so that I can live with myself. Standing idly by, silent, is not the way I'm going to do it.