David Linden Post

That's MY native language --- the American version of it, anyway.

It's also how I make my RL living, in fact: I'm a writer and an editor.

And even though I grew up overseas (Africa, Saudi Arabia, Greece) after having been born in NY, I speak no more than a few words of any other language. I'm as home in English as a fish is in water, as birds are in air, as a certain friend of mine is, while naked, in lime Jell-O. And outside of English, I'm ignorant and lost.

Which is why one might assume I'd be behind the "SL should be conducted solely in English" idea.

But I'm not. Because the idea is bullshit. It's restrictive and inconsiderate and arrogant and, I'll bet, also less profitable for LL and less invigorating for SL.

Editorial Hare: If SL were run by a Japanese company instead of American LL, if it were the same unique environment and you couldn't find another one as awesome anywhere else, and the Japanese company opened it up for the world to use BUT INSISTED THAT EVERYONE SPEAK JAPANESE? Well, all us English speakers would be SOL, wouldn't we? And why? Due to, I suggest again, bullshit.

The monolinguistics wouldn't be required because that's an operational necessity but because of someone's desire for restrictive, bigoted, xenophobic bullshit.

(Which is ANOTHER language I prefer not to speak.)

I doubt your agenda will find much sympathy in this forum.

Hare today? Gone tomorrow.

(Oh lord. I slay me.)

HA HA HA HA HA!

Mmm ... that made me laugh.

Maybe you should read instead of writing...


Linden Lab does not appear to have the resources to run this world correctly even in the language the majority of account holders use at the moment. Adding features which would make things even harder to control does not make business sense.

And I certainly would not demand that a foreign language program cater to my English needs before they were able to do so. If a Japanese company were in the position Linden Lab is in now I would advise them to avoid supporting other languages until all other core functionality issues were delt with.

Well, yes, I see that that's how YOU would do it ~ and I suppose I could refrain from ascribing any ulterior motives at all to your suggestions. As grueling as such attempts at refraining would prove, I'm sure I could accomplish it, grit & determination & alla that, and be all the better a person for it.



Luckily, though, you're not the one who gets to decide what makes or doesn't make business sense for LL. Luckily, LL is already doing that.

Let's hear it ~ in this instance, at least ~ for the status quo! (So much easier to argue for; and thus is one's energy reserved for more important activities. Like dancing!)

And-a cha cha cha ...

They should be listening to what their current customer base has to say. At the moment what we are saying is fix Second Life to be what we were promised it would be when we signed up before going off and adding more features.

Adding support for other languages before you are supporting your current customers is not a good desicion. That is certainly not a "lucky" thing for those of us paying hundreds of dollars a month now.

Oh please - English is the international language of commerce...



_/_/

I agree with E. Hare's core argument - LL should cover what they have sufficiently before they run off adding new features or (over)extending their current staff roster.

The new toys certainly do bring in new residents, but at the same time the lack of a consistent, long-term vision for the product sacrifices several of the older residents that are more likely to look at things with a discerning eye.

Again, it's better to maintain a stable base for the long term than look to prod every niche with a fickle eye. When Second Life is ready to go global from a language standpoint, it shall. This has nothing to do with bigotted interests IMO, but rather is another example of a "nifty feature" being chosen over working on the core.



And, in this respect, the core essentials are pretty simple here:

- Extend searchability and balance incentives so the Events Browser will work again.
- Fix the core building system, especially Edit Linked Parts.
- Reign in on the economy and place less emphasis on it.
- Place more emphasis on creative incentives.
- Give us all a long-term reality check that doesn't involve "how great this will be as a virtual goldmine."
- Give us concrete assurances that customer support will be there when we need them.

Ironically, I feel a lot of this is waiting for the ultimate "nifty features" of 1.7 to be added first.

------

And now, an anecdote to E. H's earlier point. Honestly, I think the Liason and Mentoring system does work, seeing as the average IM-to-response turnover rate is much better than you would find with a traditional MMO.

The Abuse Report system, however, lacks an adequate feedback mechanism when requests have been handled. Even a simple "this request has been closed" would go great lengths toward improving this system.

Dealing with land interests has been quite swift for me. On two separate occasions, I required Game Dev 3 to be restarted and rolled back due to a pretty nasty bug in the system. The turnover for the first request was less than an hour, at roughly 10 PM EST. The second took six hours, but occured at around midnight to 2am on a weekend (after hours).

Yet, land transfer issue reports abound, largely stemming from permissions (like group land), and less assertive residents suffer their own problems.

The only other problem area I can point out is dealings with money (surprise!). We still lack a cohesive system for dispute resolution involving contracts and virtual money, due in part to the lack of these mechanisms in the real world. I feel this is par for the course unless LL wants to make itself a huge target from a liability standpoint, though.


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Pretty handy hijack, but it raises one relevant point: If we are to push forward, we should make sure what we have is up to par first. Because as they say, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

So until they arrive, you might want to step away from your boo-hoo-everything-should-be-as-hi-rez-and-speedy-as-Halo-II critical assessment of the merely bothersome and relatively few problems with SL ...

Step away, to where this guy is:



... and take a fat eyeball's worth of the Bigger Picture. Yeah, there's lag to be overcome. Duh. But unless I'm totally misunderstanding (possibility? granted), one of the main reasons for lag and such is the very nature of SL: its freedom to create new stuffs, infinite new stuffs, constantly.

And LL must work diligently to technically counter that situation; and bless 'em, they probably are. But they must also build the Metaverse; I mean, that's their driving mantra, and it IS also the obvious next step when one leaves the more restrictive arena of *fnord* games behind. So what can one do ~ since one is not just the U.S., but a whole variegated WORLD of people ~ but go global as quickly as feasible, thus establishing a common, rudimentary landscape on (and through) which the entire meatspace world can build its own networks and communities and virtual objects.

By your reasoning, Hare, there shouldn't be an Internet at all. We shouldn't have had textbased Darpanet, we shouldn't have had chatrooms, nor anything-less-than-Google, we shouldn't have had ANY of the preliminary steps it took to get to where we are now, because It Just Wasn't Good Enough, right? It should've all been debugged completely and released or made available only when it functioned at the high-speed, kinetic GUI level it does now? Hell, maybe we should go ahead & shut down the Net completely, until it's possible to jack in a la Snowcrash, until teledildonics work well enough to replace the current state of erotic activity, until I can stand face to face with you in a virtual room and count the clotted pores on your nose and smell the tang of curmudgeonly disappointment rising from your avatar?

I think not.

I think this:



Seldon: We must get together for coffee, yes? See you inworld sometime ...

it would be a pleasure. tomorrow maybe?

While I won't speak to much of what you just laid out, as it's clearly pointed at Editorial Hare, you both do have a point. However, I feel that point relies on one major paradigm that I don't see happening.

That being, for the community to grow this much, the Lindens will need to equally give that much control over to the community, or the end result will be a logistical nightmare that will make no one's future any brighter. The current mentality of "let's make this a killer app and keep all of the (admin) control to ourselves" is really something that I feel is not in our best interests, long term.

This current mindset flies in the face of a few older quotes from some choice Lindens, discussing how Second Life needs to begin forming standards and eventually become open source.



I feel that the right answer, then, will be both to diversify the community and to begin giving us far more control over our environment than we currently have. Again, in the longer term. This would require a system that accurately guages our impact on the world (read: bandwidth, cycles, and storage instead of prim use).

I've written several hundred posts on the various things I feel we, as residents, should be able to accomplish, so I will not repeat them here. However, I will state simply that before we are ready to take on the world, the world should be able to take on Second Life itself. And, in this phase of its existance, I feel it is not yet ready for the latter.

I feel there is a valid point to the idea of opening control, and there needs to be more emphasis on curtailing the things that most affect the expierience like the asset server and active scripts. I'm not disputing these points, as they are very real problems, and need to be addressed as soon as possible. I just feel, like you seem to, that they can't afford to ignore their customers, both existing and potential, while they improve the in-world expierience, and attacking the admins for any change that isn't the one *you* want is just petty and counter-productive.

Totally. The ultimate answer on the "feature" front has been my defense for a while, even if many residents hate hearing it. Ironically, it's the basis of Second Life. That being:

We should be able to design these features ourselves within, or parallel to, Second Life.

After all, that's the crux of a world built and owned by its users, ya?



... when are you meeting for coffee again?

Tomorrow (Saturday) morning? At around 7 or 8am, Lindentime? I should be inworld 'round then ... Or, hells, most ANYtime Sunday (after noon, Lindentime).

one language?? why not Esperanto!?

Yeah, and I seriously doubt that the former David Linden could have said SL "allow residents to monetize their efforts by selling their content and/or services" with a straight face.

I went to the forum archives and tried to find the original David's forum avatar, the RL pic of him where he turns his head and sticks his tongue out... but, alas, it is gone, and he is listed as "guest."