Should LL Participate in Resident Abuse?

OK.. I haven't had an opinion on the dispute between the IRC moderators and Hank because I don't know enough to have an opinion. I've been reading this thead because I'm home sick and bored.

What is getting old fast is the hyperbole. Let me see if I have this correctly:

- anyone can join the IRC channel
- you are expected to behave civilly, or you will be warned or suspended
- the Lindens are sometimes there

Sounds a lot like the forums.

Oooh. This thread has legs. Somebody even called me names!

What springs to mind in all of this are those occasional news stories you see where a corporate employee falls in love with another corporate employee or a client, and then the corporation fires them. Normally there is an outcry, lawsuits, and concern over corporate america's power over our personal lives.

I usually wonder "who on earth would want a company to run this way?"

Now I know

Lindens should be banned from using the internet PERIOD. And if you see one on the street, quickly duct tape their mouthes shut!

heh.. thanks for the laugh...

And how dare some people live in San Francisco. They can just walk into Linden Labs and have instant access to Lindens!!!

I am discriminated against because I live on the East Coast.

*considers stalking Pathfinder*

How do I say this without sounding flippant and insulting? Maybe I can't. What planet do you live on Coco? Seriously, this is how things work. This corruption, evil or otherwise, is the only method we have of realistically getting things done. Businesses, clubs, churches, governments, and various other human organizations are operated by the few people willing to spend the time and effort to participate in the clique.

Participation necessarily includes sometimes bowing to the will of the clique's majority or to the will of whoever happens to be in charge of the communication channel. We've worked this way for thousands of years. It's not an elusive concept.

The day this happens, is the day I leave SL for good. For the past year I have been getting ill in my stomach reading what some people want LL to turn into. I'd rather pay twice as much money as I am now and keep this company's employees still able to interact with us on the laid back and personal levels that they are on right now.

Those people should be banned from San Francisco.

The link and information is located throughout the forums and has been for well over a year. And when someone remembers the IRC visitors will come in and bump the threads about the channel on patch days. Trying to get more people to come and visit.

People who refuse to search our forums and read the histories and learn about things that go on around this SL world gain little sympathy from me for not knowing about something. Sorry. And I feel that way about anyone who doesn't take that time Dianne. That was not just directed at you personally.

So true. What if a Linden is my pen pal? Does that make me FIC?

As for why Lindens don't spend all their time in SL...

Lindens are people too. People with jobs. How much of an escape can SL really be to a Linden if that's their job? It's like expecting a carnival worker to always ride the ferris wheel.

Just a thought on access to the Lindens...easy access, they do have phones in their offices, and they do, those that wear pants, put them on the proverbially one leg at a time.

Really, does so much mythos need to be attached to the name Linden, it does, still, reference a human being, after all

Well, this is a good starting point. Unfortunately, not a lot of people are up to this point in the dialogue.

I think the Lindens should never enter anyone's parcel of land and speak with anyone there. That would create a temporary "in-crowd" clique! In fact, Lindens should just never interact with residents in any way. They definitely shouldn't be hanging around the welcome area because there are residents who regularly also hang out there while others do not. This clearly gives them an insider advantage!

An announcement of an IRC channel back in March means nothing to people (such as myself) who didn't join until later.

If LL is using the IRC channel for as a defacto official channel, the channel needs to be made very visible to the user community (not just people here on the forums). The moderation and control needs to fall to a LL employee, not someone else. People who are not banned from SL (and I mean entirely, not just a forum ban like {he who must not be named} should not be banned from the channel.

If the IRC channel is basically general bullshit for interested parties, then it doesn't matter who's on it. But for the sake of appearances, it really would be better for Lindens to not participate with their Linden name unless they are in fact speaking in an official capacity. This prevents someone from taking what a Linden might say in an offhand way and construing it as LL policy or plans.

BTW, it seems to me that if LL did a better job communicating via the well advertised official channels, then we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

but the people who go to the IRC channel are a part of the community
I go there once in awhile, I find it interesting but Im often lost cause I dont understand a lot about tech stuff. But wonder of wonders, I have learned a few things about tech I wasnt aware of. I also enjoy chatting there with old friends... and wonder of wonder I do consider some Lindens old friends. I dont know how anyone can berate the channel without having been there. Theirs no conspiracy, no favoritism, just normal people who enjoy chatting

Give it a try before judging, you may have your eyes opened a bit

If I understand that right you are saying that you don't have to go to #secondlife, but just find llPath, etc. and talk right to them, is that correct?

How would you find the Linden staff on IRC if you don't know their handles?

One could check the W-Hat IRC channel to see if there are any Linden staffers there, I suppose.

I wonder why no one ever mentions the permanent Skype conference call, the secret video chat, or the continuous Netmeeting session? I guess those aren't as well known as that old-fashioned #secondlife thing.

This sounds pretty fair to me, but remember the implications of having Lindens socializing with other users under an assumed name. Only the channel regulars will know who they are.

Acutally if the Lindens HAD been socializing under assumed names in IRC all along, I could see an alternate Battle-Cry thread demanding that they identify themselves as Lindens so access to them wouldn't be limited to those "in the know."

If all this nonsense were true, Hank would have been banned immediately upon having his falling out with the Gigas folks.

But that was, what, six months ago?

Uh, it's no different in IRC. Sometimes the Lindens respond and participate, most times they just idle.

Here's a thunk..

LL has rather ignorantly, imo, decided to use the resident-created/now-LL-funded Infonet terminals and spread them throughout SL as part of their "official communications".

How about a way to try to "rehabilitate" LL's use of resident-run whatever for the actual good of the community as opposed to for financial benefit to just a couple of residents...

Why not use the existence of the #secondlife IRC channel to create a "feed" into SL somehow --- tied into the same Infornet terminals if at all possible? I mean, we have streaming RSS feeds and DJ Jeska on the Welcome/Help Island already, right? How hard can it be to essentially create a bot that simply streams the irc conversation into the SL world?

If the channel is all that "benign", the ops/mods should have no issue with this use.

It IS different.

If I send an email to PL and get a response, that's an authoritative response from Linden Labs. On the IRC channel, I presume, one doesn't know if comments from a Linden are just chit chat or ex-cathedra official LL statements.

Probably not hard at all.

But since topics of discussion in #secondlife have included human sexuality, world politics, and other less-than-tame topics, I doubt the Lindens would ever dream of subjecting the users of infohubs to such a thing.

If someone wants to join the discussion, they fire up the IRC client. If not, not.

Then that would be their mistake. Remember the 'ol "when you ASSUME you make an ASS out of U and ME". Words to live by.



Yes we would be, because people need to whine about anything, in vast quantities.

And for those of you who joined recently and didn't know about IRC, how many times have you see this thread posted in the sl forums. If you had no idea what it was about, and decided against investigating, really, who are you going to blame for that?

/108/f3/40490/1.html

There is actually, if memory serves a bot of this nature in Baku, as well as some other spots about SL. Not linked to this irc channel in question however, and some I've seen weren't linked to irc at all but rather mucks.

Actually I was banned for awhile after that. {Removed Group Name due to LL TOS Restrictions} folks are ops there ya know!

Here's a newsflash for you.

The Lindens aren't Jesus. They're just folks. I don't think anyone is holding their genitals and panting for the next official secret declaration from IRC.

If they're going to issue a decree, they're going to do it somewhere with a few more people than a 50-person IRC channel.