Is changing Robin Linden the change that is needed...?

I have just read the message from Robin Linden about the "Bad Luck" they are having with the releases in SL... O.o BAD LUCK?!?! This is a business response from the Linden Management about how they are running a business? What happened to good old fashioned beta testing and doing a slow rollout? These recent release flurries feel like they are trying to quickly fix the last problem and then creating more issues and it is snowballing. and implying that they have to find a fine line between long waits, then quick ones... Seems to me this latest snafu is one of the worst yet, and it was a series of quick releases. Didn't we just get into 1.10 a little while ago?
I love this game and and I am a big cheerleader, but when Torly Linden is having to post reports on bug problems, you know there is a BIIIIIG issue. Show us that Linden Labs is serious about the problem and let's make the change in the SL World that shows LL is committed in providing a world class platform to it's builders and residents.

Jules Delacroix

You naughty Neko! *mews* Where have you been?

Leyla Firefly: I crash every 5 min, Sir, it's driving me nuts! I reinstalled and updated all my drivers, im desperate! *bats eyelashes*
Customer Service Linden: Ah, let me see... AHA! You have a huge crash on Luna thats why!
Leyla Firefly:

Get rid of half the lindens, maybe they can then afford good developers, i mean what do we need all these lindens for? what do they do?

Personal experience, i havent found more then about five helpful that ive delt with, and ive delt with many. Most helpful has to go to Guy.

I too like the game, and i have yet to read the bad luck post, which i will get right to reading as soon as i click submit reply, provided i dont get another crash notification which will probably happen when i try to unminimize sl, and it wont come back up, and it'll crash and i'll be even more delighted.

If this bad luck post is what i think it may be, tomorrow morning im definitly calling a management staff at linden, my buttons have been pushed and i think ive put enough into secondlife to deal with the crap im dealing with right now, or we are all dealing with.

Im going to go read that post, bbs

Edit ---

Just read it and frankly, im speachless, trully speachless and my sl did crash, again (im jumping up and down with excitement).

Anyone else feel like calling? www.lindenlab.com/management.

Personally, im going to wake up nice and early before i have to head in tomorrow, and have a nice long talk as im also quite irritated with the underage issue, which someone in my field of study and career, i am extremely disturbed and really not happy about the underage on main grid, so im taking advice and calling.

Have to agree Jules, perhaps our screaming and whining and bitching all weekend about the seriousness of these hasty updates without enough testing hit a mark..and i hope that in doing so we let the Lindens know how the performance of SL has been less than steller for some time, and i agree with her last line..

"You must Be the Change you wish to see in the world." but im adding one of my own
"You make your own luck in this world"

Weve had some fantastic changes in the past few months, i dont know what we ever did before point to point Teleportation, but again the bugs must be worked out so that all may benefit and not be victimized time and time again by a hole in the system that either takes away things that used to work, and or allows what we call "griefers" here, i call hoolligans to reak havoc in the game. Thats the end of my rants for this weekends epidsode, i am delighted that more testing will take place and updates will be less frequent, we do most surely appreciate that, thank you LL !

Honestly think they'll follow through with that? Thats like asking them to close registrations and require verification again.

They are just trying to make us angry people happy for a while, then next release, more bugs, instability, etc.

No! However, I need changing. I prefer pampers, please.

yer from moove arent ya... id recognise you anywhere...lmao

Ok you maybe right, but im willing to give them a chance to keep their word, if not...all gloves off on the next round...smile

I've spent some time talking to Robin recently over a couple of issues, and found her to be quite pleasant actually.

I'm not sure there are "too many Lindens" considering the size and complexity of the game... personally I'd rather have a few more Lindens in customer service, dealing directly with in-world issues and talking to players. I can't think of many Lindens who started life as 'regular players', and I am sure that many of them don't actually use their 'product' in the same way that many of us do, day in day out.

Some Lindens should be more visible, and more easily found in-world, rather than simply having to file abuse reports, bug reports and suchlike... wouldn't it be so much easier if, when we found a bug, we could just explain directly to a Linden who could come over, see the problem, then yell for a Linden in that department to come have a look, instead of filing a bug report and hearing nothing more about it.

I think I've probably only seen about 5 Lindens 'in the pixel' in-world out of however many there are. Even then it comes across very much as an 'us and them' attitude. If we are ever truly to be a community, that would be a great barrier to break to start it rolling.

Lewis

Moove? Never heard of it, but we cherubs tend to look alike.

I agree. SL is a highly complex environment and it is actually nice to see a company spokesperson not act like there is a stick up their arse. Living on the East Coast, business here is rude, crude and ....lost my rhyming streak there... but in a nutshell, no one is.... well loose, every business person I have delt with here is wound up tight, I like the loosy goosy aspect of how they interact with us although I dislike the fettish they have with providing "bling" updates, the new snapshot feature most likely would be worth having if we actually had an updated rendering engine to go along with it *hint, hint*

I have run into Phillip in-world and had a nice conversation, the poor guy was busy testing current version and new version on 2 diff machines at once, pre 1.6 update...I am sure many here remember back then...brain hurting from painful memories...lagggggggggggggggg....so much lag my avatar turned into a primitar trying to log in, my SL client was downgrading itself to the beta days due to how slow things were...

But to call for getting rid of half of the Lindens? I agree there are problems but to call for that kind of action? How many of them are liasions (sp?) not only in the USA but in other countries? Getting rid of that customer interface would be just as bad as getting rid of say Andrew who is busy coding in the new Havok 4 engine *hint, hint,hint*

Although I would like to talk to the ones behind this enviroment more often, they have more important things to deal with than riff-raff such as myself. I do find what I have read from Robin to be more than company lip-service, Robin does seem to be genuine about her job and interfacing with the community. I would rather have Robin tell us that pink fluffy rabbits took a poo in the server room causing a short in the UPS rack which in turn caused the main "Godswitch" to trip thereby bringing SL down than to hear nothing at all.

Oh yeah, for those who have no idea how complex SL is (considering how I hear how complex it is but never see any examples as to why), look into Physics engines, then look into how to incorporate the graphical elements into it then wrap the scripting support then the streaming support....here is a physics engine to try that is free as well --
http://www.tokamakphysics.com/ it has great joint and ragdoll physics support and even some cool demo appletts with it, but try getting OpenGL to wrap into it then scripting support then media streaming, then an avatar then avatar meshes then clothing support, then being able to reach into the physics engine and pull a prim out of it then mod it with a building widget (hell any widgets at all) then support linking multiple prims then add the ability to toggle their characteristics via UI or scripts then add the asset system then add the terrain abilities of SL (terraforming) then add the weather system (may be cheesy but we have it) then make it multi-player...then make it cross platform ( I know I missed a lot and SL's architecture may be different but an example anyway).... I am not an LL lacky nor an apologist but an environment such as this is cutting edge, the underlying technology may not be but the incorporation of it all into one whole is, quite a feat from my point of view, and I have been into gaming and other computer apps such as AutoCAD(first program I actually learned) since I was in college in the mid 90's (go Doom and Duke Nukem 3D!), and so far, SL is the first to wrap it all into one. I tried AW and almost puked at the crappyness of it, my old (yes first for you youngins) Gameboy had better playability...

forgive my poor spelling and grammar, I have a splitting headache at this moment remembering the good ole days of lag ...

<frowns>

I find this thread, though not all posts in it, distasteful.

Posting on a company website the name of an employee to abuse them is never a good thing.

<walks off>

The world is having bad luck right now, lets get rid of God. Just kidding, but I like Robin. I also think it's funny when people ask for openess, then when they say "bad luck" someone freaks out.

.....wahhhh wahhhhh wahhhhh.


People need to get over themselves and STFU.

Play SL or Don't. Whoever said fire lindens and hire developers is retarded. What do you think they become once they are hired?....... LINDENS!

Jerkoff!

<Takes dump on you for putting imaginary actions in quotes to make a statement, which is lame>

Agreed. As unhappy as I am with the most recent update, and though I felt that Robin's comments did nothing to address the fact that this update was severely flawed, it is not right to single her out for scorn. Robin is an extremely thoughtful, dedicated, and professional person who has been a tremendous part of the growth and success of SL. Is she perfect? No, but then no one is or can be expected to be. She deserves more than to just be ridiculed in the forums.

If anything, the ultimate responsibility rises all the way to the top with Philip, but even so, finger pointing is not going to do much to solve this problem, as they are quite systemic. Are there fundamental problems with the ongoing stability and development of Second Life? Absolutely. I hope the backlash regarding this update, and the seriousness of the sit exploit and other problems is a wakeup call to them that their processes are failing. Demeaning the very people tasked with fixing these problems isn't going to help. I hope that Linden Lab does take the steps necessary to correct these problems immediately - all the growth in the world won't matter if they destroy the platform in the process.

Yeah I agree. It may be one thing to question policies, development path etc, but singling out someone responsible for making a statement on behalf of the company in this way doesn't sit right with me at all.

While I agree this was a pretty bad and annoying patch, I have a question for all the complainers.

How many of you actually spent a decent amount of time on the test server to try this out?

I didn't so I'm really not going to complain too much.

I've seen this happen before in other games where less than 1/2 a percent of the playerbase logs on to test and when something goes wrong everyone whines. Not that I'm a programmer, but it's virtually impossible to test out every possible bug or error w/o having a large number of beta testers.

my 2 cents

You know. I really am not one to say a whole lot. And, yes I have been known to complain at times. I however don't feel the need to be upset at what Robin has told us. In fact I'm pleased to know why the grid was shut down.

Robin or any other Linden for that matter didn't HAVE to say anything to us. She did it so that we would know the reason(s) for things happening. True Second Life does have its flaws and I can't say I'm always 100% happy about the way it is all the time. I can say however that I am happy with the way we were told why and what was going on.

I'd much rather have Second Life down to fix "Bad Luck" that any griefer could had taken HIGH advantage of. Then lose a whole lot of nice things to said "Bad Luck". I can't say that I'm at all upset that they did things the way they did.

I am very happy also to know that they are working on better ways to do updates and such. Why so many of us feel the need to complain I can't say. I mean I know that a lot of us have business in Second Life. Sure none of us like to lose money in anyway, shape or form.

Sometimes though. Maybe too often to some of us. Unexpected tihngs happen. True it will never make things right in some of our eyes to be told the truth about why things were they way they were. I think though it very admirable to be told up front and honestly what is/was going on to make the grid have to be taken down. This too though is just another persons L$0.02 worth of rant.

What Cristiano, Foolish, Fade, and others said.

I'll add - that everytime I have been in attendance at any function with Robin participating, or dealt with her in emails, or other methods of communication, she has gone above and beyond to be helpful, courteous, and professional.

We could use MORE Robins, not less.

I know that many people are frustrated. I am too. I think this update was one of the worst, but, remember that Robin is not a robot. She is a human like all the rest of us, and has feelings.

This was a series of bumbles by LL, not any one employee of theirs, so tying one to the whipping post and having at just doesn't make much sense, IMHO.

This post deserved a better thread to call home though.

Totally agree about Robin, and I think she does a great job too. The OP of this thread is WAY out of line.

From skimming around the forums, it looks as though the Lindens are working to get things back on track after this update. The last one sucked but let's not forget the ones that were successful. 1.10 was great, for example.

I'll make one.

Lewis

It's also funny when people ask for incremental rollouts, because they're tired of dealing with days worth of downtime and bugs after major upgrades, then have to deal with days worth of downtime and bugs after incremental rollouts.

Just cracks me up that does.

Robin has saved this project from financial ruin more than once. We need her.

The greater cadre of Lindens are liasons payed to perform the sole duty of supporting Philip's Precious Fucking Community. They're inworld on regularly scheduled shifts, generally several at a time. We can't have it both ways. We either rely on the Lindens to be our kindergarten cops, or we start acting like adults so they can shift liason pay to the developer pool.

Open registration and little to no accountability, backed up by no particular commitment, pretty much killed off the "we are all adults here and can behave like adults" opportunity. At least paying something a month, even if it's only the $10 premium fee, means that you have an 'investment' and 'stake' in your future, and cuts back on griefing because griefers won't pay for their actions.

I'm all for more volunteers in more capacities, and I for one would love to be involved in an official capacity in shaping 'our' world and its future.

Lewis