/120/e2/59836/24.html#post627436
OK, is it possible that this is the longest thread ever in the forums?
Let me give a little Linden perspective on this that is hopefully helpful:
People IM me pretty frequently and ask if they can meet in world and talk to me. Ditto for Robin, etc. I always say yes, time allowing - seems like the right policy to always accept meetings. I've found that when people take the time to specifically ask me for a meeting, I usually learn something when I go. In this case I think I got an email from one of the people who was at this meeting asking if a bunch of folks could get together with Robin and I. I said yes like always. When I meet people in-world, I don't put it in the event calendar.
I didn't know that the people at the meeting had formed an in-world group with any sort of membership rules. Anyway I don't think that all the folks there were in the same group - at least from the titles on their AV names.
The big topic that these folks asked about (read the transcript) was to review the internal policies that Linden has it's employees abide by regarding currency, alts, and other stuff related to in-world behavior. I thought that it seemed like a really good idea that Linden make that stuff available to everyone to review. We've discussed various points of those policies in forums or in-world, but it does seem like a really important thing to be transparent about - everyone in SL should be able to read and comment on the policies that Linden Lab has employees abide by in this regard. So Robin is going to get this stuff together and send it around. We always abide by the idea that any data we give out is given out to the entire community - so we will be sure and post that stuff in the forums in it's entirety.
Beyond that, I suggested that if this group wanted to publically bring us a specific recommendation regarding policy or features or whatever, we would be happy to come to an in-world meeting and listen. As it said in the transcript, I conditioned this on a couple things:
* That any such meetings (and their transcripts, docs, etc) be public.
* That if a 'group' was asking for the meeting, that group should not create some form of exclusivity in it's membership that wasn't broadly inclusive of the SL community. (In thinking further about this, I'm not really sure I should have even applied this constraint, given the idea that I'm just there to listen and the meeting is public - I don't see why all the 'car builders' or whatever in SL can't come and talk to me a a group)
I'm happy to extend this opportunity to meet in a resident-driven way (as opposed to the Linden town halls) with any other group of people who ask. I guess if lots of people take us up on that offer, we might at some point run out of time to attend, but again history has generally tought me that people who take the time to organize thoughts and ask for a meeting are usually worth taking the time to meet with. Hopefully that won't change!
Finally, let me offer some thoughts on this general ideas of meetings and petitions and representation:
It seems to me that one very important thing SL offers is a degree of openness, transparency, and an ease of collective dialog that makes conventional real-world ideas of representative democracy unnecessary. Inotherwards, it really isn't any harder in SL to find out how EVERYONE feels about something, rather than trusting than some sort of representative is presenting a position which is consistent with the feelings of a larger group. So I think that to the extent that LL policy is driven by opinions of many people in SL, representation is not necessary in the conventional sense.
A central and powerful appeal of SL is freedom, and as many people have asserted, SL is really a lot like the internet (at least we want it to become that way) in the sense that it will ultimately be a huge set of different places that are locally 'governed'. The internet is like that today - there really isn't any sort of central authority or set of rules beyond IP protocols and large diffuse groups like service providers. There isn't any internet 'police' or even an internet 'government'. We think SL should work the same way - with as little central control as possible. So regardless of what suggestions are made, we aren't contemplating increasing the number of policies or the amount of control.
I think a good way to work on new ideas for SL is the sort of 'working group' that is so common with the internet - a group of people who get together and try to craft a standard for something. For example I remember there were some people in SL working together on a 'seal program' for sellers of content, that would offer some promise that the seller was trustworthy, etc. If a group like that comes and says "hey if you guys add the following scripting call (or whatever), we could create this sort of program.
Given the above-mentioned restriction on moving toward less government rather than more, what I think LL could really use help from the community on is thinking through new ideas and presenting them to us in the form of features or actions we could take that would broadly enable stuff in a good way. So when I get a group of people (like this one) that comes to me, I tell them "go and try and think something through that LL hasn't had the time and energy to think about, and come back with a good design." There are only about 50 of us, and there are 40,000 of you. So this seems like a good idea.
Let me give a little Linden perspective on this that is hopefully helpful:
People IM me pretty frequently and ask if they can meet in world and talk to me. Ditto for Robin, etc. I always say yes, time allowing - seems like the right policy to always accept meetings. I've found that when people take the time to specifically ask me for a meeting, I usually learn something when I go. In this case I think I got an email from one of the people who was at this meeting asking if a bunch of folks could get together with Robin and I. I said yes like always. When I meet people in-world, I don't put it in the event calendar.
I didn't know that the people at the meeting had formed an in-world group with any sort of membership rules. Anyway I don't think that all the folks there were in the same group - at least from the titles on their AV names.
The big topic that these folks asked about (read the transcript) was to review the internal policies that Linden has it's employees abide by regarding currency, alts, and other stuff related to in-world behavior. I thought that it seemed like a really good idea that Linden make that stuff available to everyone to review. We've discussed various points of those policies in forums or in-world, but it does seem like a really important thing to be transparent about - everyone in SL should be able to read and comment on the policies that Linden Lab has employees abide by in this regard. So Robin is going to get this stuff together and send it around. We always abide by the idea that any data we give out is given out to the entire community - so we will be sure and post that stuff in the forums in it's entirety.
Beyond that, I suggested that if this group wanted to publically bring us a specific recommendation regarding policy or features or whatever, we would be happy to come to an in-world meeting and listen. As it said in the transcript, I conditioned this on a couple things:
* That any such meetings (and their transcripts, docs, etc) be public.
* That if a 'group' was asking for the meeting, that group should not create some form of exclusivity in it's membership that wasn't broadly inclusive of the SL community. (In thinking further about this, I'm not really sure I should have even applied this constraint, given the idea that I'm just there to listen and the meeting is public - I don't see why all the 'car builders' or whatever in SL can't come and talk to me a a group)
I'm happy to extend this opportunity to meet in a resident-driven way (as opposed to the Linden town halls) with any other group of people who ask. I guess if lots of people take us up on that offer, we might at some point run out of time to attend, but again history has generally tought me that people who take the time to organize thoughts and ask for a meeting are usually worth taking the time to meet with. Hopefully that won't change!
Finally, let me offer some thoughts on this general ideas of meetings and petitions and representation:
It seems to me that one very important thing SL offers is a degree of openness, transparency, and an ease of collective dialog that makes conventional real-world ideas of representative democracy unnecessary. Inotherwards, it really isn't any harder in SL to find out how EVERYONE feels about something, rather than trusting than some sort of representative is presenting a position which is consistent with the feelings of a larger group. So I think that to the extent that LL policy is driven by opinions of many people in SL, representation is not necessary in the conventional sense.
A central and powerful appeal of SL is freedom, and as many people have asserted, SL is really a lot like the internet (at least we want it to become that way) in the sense that it will ultimately be a huge set of different places that are locally 'governed'. The internet is like that today - there really isn't any sort of central authority or set of rules beyond IP protocols and large diffuse groups like service providers. There isn't any internet 'police' or even an internet 'government'. We think SL should work the same way - with as little central control as possible. So regardless of what suggestions are made, we aren't contemplating increasing the number of policies or the amount of control.
I think a good way to work on new ideas for SL is the sort of 'working group' that is so common with the internet - a group of people who get together and try to craft a standard for something. For example I remember there were some people in SL working together on a 'seal program' for sellers of content, that would offer some promise that the seller was trustworthy, etc. If a group like that comes and says "hey if you guys add the following scripting call (or whatever), we could create this sort of program.
Given the above-mentioned restriction on moving toward less government rather than more, what I think LL could really use help from the community on is thinking through new ideas and presenting them to us in the form of features or actions we could take that would broadly enable stuff in a good way. So when I get a group of people (like this one) that comes to me, I tell them "go and try and think something through that LL hasn't had the time and energy to think about, and come back with a good design." There are only about 50 of us, and there are 40,000 of you. So this seems like a good idea.
Problem is anytime LL implements something like this (Like the Vote page) it's very unused by LL. I understand that theres 50 Lindens, and that they're all doing the work of 3 people, but some feedback on what we propose is VERY needed in order for the user <-> Linden relationship to work.
