Should LL Participate in Resident Abuse?

Ask and ye shall receive:

/140/82/77800/1.html#post804610

The ironic thing is that sometimes you don't have to be looking for a Linden to find one and talk

Often times I go putzing around SL looking to get inspired by the creativity I find here and will try to say hi to people I meet along the way including Lindens. Once, I even ran into Phillip pre 1.7 as he was doing some testing for the final leg of the transition. He was totally not what I expected, I was expecting a CEO who was too busy to talk (he was busy at that moment running both 1.6 and 1.7 on diff systems at once comparing frame rates mind you) but he still spent some time with myself and a few others just flapping the breeze about things not even related to SL for the most part. Being an employee in a technical position, I can totally understand how it feels to be working on a project only to get interrupted by someone wanting to chat with you at the water cooler. It is this reason that I try to refrain from taking up too much of their time, even though I would love to get to know them or any other resident better, I don't like feeling that I am intruding on their time when they are working on something. Usually it is a quick hello, with some idle chat and I leave them be, even with a Linden. Not that I wouldn't mind being FIC mind you

I did take part in it once.

At the time, I had the idea that it was the official Linden IRC channel, kind of like the one TSO had, via Stratics, which was listed on the Stratics web site, which was the official TSO web site. The TSO channel was moderated only by moderators, the same moderators that moderated the forums. If the IRC channel were moderated by Lindens, and Lindens decided who would be banned from the channel, then this would be an entirely different matter.

But it is not - it is moderated and controlled by an individual resident. As such, it is not an official linden channel, and should not be frequented by Lindens as a quasi-official channel.

While I appreciate Ben's attempt to join Blaze's channel as well, the Lindens should confine their communication and thought-gathering processes to ones which are democratically open to everyone (and there are a number of such), and not under the control of another individual resident, who can exclude people at will.

People can say this is just Hank "throwing a temper tantrum" all they want, but it is not just about Hank. It's about Hank, the next Hank, the previous Hank, and anyone else after Hank. It is about YOU. It's about Lindens hanging out with exclusive groups, whose members are only there at the suffrage of another resident.

It's unnecessary, and should be against Linden policy.

coco

Cocoanut.

Linden Lab isn't your daddy.

This isn't about being nice and fair to everybody. This is about keeping fingers on the pulse of the user base. Cutting yourself off from that intelligence to appease five paranoid people isn't really worth the bargain.

That's your opinion, Coco - one that I do not share.

Let me ask you this: did the fact that it is a publicly-accessible channel, run by a fellow resident stop you from gaining access to the Lindens who were also on that channel?

This is a simple matter. If they want to use an IRC channel to keep their fingers on the pulse of the user base, obviously they should open their own IRC channel, and administer it themselves in terms of banning anyone from it. Nothing and no one is stopping them from doing that.

coco

Exclusive groups? You mean everyone on the Internet that can join the channel, and remain there as long as they are not repeatedly abusive to the channel? Tough group to get into. You know, if you had paid to go to the SLCC conference, and then heckled all the speakers, you would have been asked (and probably forceably removed). The Lindens were there, but it was not their conference - it was run by residents.

BTW, the word suffrage is ridiculous to use.

That's a different pulise, Coco. The Lindens have strict rules about what can/cannot be said on official LL channels. Using an alternate channel, one not run by LL, offers a chance to guage and compare the pulses.

Again - did this prohibit you from gaining access to a Linden?

It isn't that Hank and others can't access Lindens. It's that there are Lindens engaging in game conversations, on a regular basis, with other residents, yet Hank and others can't join.

And they can't join because another resident(s) decided they can't. That isn't right.

coco

I think you meant sufferance. Suffrage means the right to vote.

I should have looked up that word - but I think it has the meaning I was intending.

coco

P.S. Yeah, sufferance is what I meant, I think!

Are you telling me there is an official Linden IRC channel?

coco

You've never actually used the channel. You don't really know what you're talking about by your own admission.

I reject you.

Not only was I on the channel once, I don't need to be a regular on it - as Jake already pointed out - to realize the problem in using it as a quasi-official Linden IRC channel.

coco

(a) Then getting that particular pulse is less important than having a policy which allows you to communicate with some residents, but NOT other residents, due to the sufferance (!) or lack thereof by an individual resident; and

(b) if they want that particular pulse that badly, they can go in as an alt, without telling ANYONE who they are.

coco

You do need to be a regular to understand that the scope of conversations going on their before speaking about the evils of them. The Lindens who are there, which are mainly Ben and Vektor, sometimes Kelly, don't speak very often, and when they do, it is innocuous stuff about the grid being back up or a particular scripting function is acting weird. A little perspective is important if you are going to argue about something, Cocoanut.

*wipes blood from eyes*

I haven't spoken of any evils. I have spoken about policy. The Lindens absolutely should not be hanging out in a "public" forum to which some residents cannot have access due to the decisions of other, individual residents.

coco

Ya - SL.

You know I've come to your defense before, but you do have a poor record in choosing which battles to fight.

If the IRC thing was an official Linden run thing, I'd agree that people who are not banned from SL shouldn't be banned from IRC.

But this isn't "official LL", it's something someone set up privately. And whoever is running it is the final arbiter of who plays and who doesn't. It seems to me that people are being treated fairly (again from what I've read) so it doesn't seem to me to be a problem that _5_ people are banned.

I can't speak to Hank's issue. But I assume {he who must not be named} is also banned. And from what I've
seen {hwmnbn} write and others write about {hwmnbn}, it's a good thing, too. You may disagree, as is your right, but if I were running an IRC channel or a message board, I wouldn't want that bullshit either.

It seems clear from what I've read here that Lindens participate on IRC in a strictly unofficial way. Not as representatives of Linden Labs, but as any other participant would. Ben Linden's post was very clear on this point.

I honestly think you've chosen a poor battle to fight.

Cris, hurry back over here /140/82/77800/1.html it is weaving quite splendidly.

Again - this is not the ONLY channel available for those discussions, so I think your argument is a non-issue. If Hank was banned from the private channel for abuse (I have no first-hand knowledge of this, but it was mentioned earlier) then, what is the issue again? If that was the case, he should have stopped with the abuse - no?

You posted a tirade about how corrupt the Lindens are.

Well this is an interesting debate. While I do concur that the real danger of linden back dealing on an IRC channel getting somene banned from SL is pretty small. I think the main point is that we are dealing with appearances. And it does not take very much for the appearance of something to become a major problem.

There are a number of good reasons to discourage this sort of quasi-official dealings. If LL were my cleint I would advise them to have a policy regarding official communications in place. They have the forums to serve as a vehicle for comunication with the residents and they have SL itself. In order to enoucrage use of the product, involvement in the community, and allay discussions like this, I would advise them to madate that coomunication occur through the offcial channels.

Any linden wishing to have unoffcial comunication with a resident through IRC or another mesager service should do it under an idenity that does no identify then in connection with linden labs.

Lets just as a hypothetical situation suggest that perhaps the discussion in the IRC concerens so potentially illegal downloads by a user. Just say, hypothetically, that this user was under investigation for IP piracy by the Feds. Now I promise you that whatever agency is investigation this, identifying this person as a linden just gave the agent probable cause to take a tour through LL and the serves and e-mails.

It may seem far fetched, but this is the same fexeral governemnt that shut Steve Jackson Games Down in a raid over the GURPS cyberpunk RPG. The cost of avoiding such a situation is much less to LL than the cost of becoming a user's rights martyr in the EFF bulletins.

In this day and age especially, its not about the rational and sane arguments. Its about worst-case scenarios. Loot at the flap over janet jackson's nipple. Sure it may seem silly to think about worst-case scenarios. But when the impossible becomes the real, you'll be damned glad you did. Noone likes their lawyer until after they win thier trial.