"SL Voters" / "SL Voter Awareness"

My idea is to create a group called "SL Voting Awareness", with a charter of "This group is for people who always have their 10 votes on secondlife.com/vote allocated to proposals they think will improve Second Life" and the purpose of encouraging people to use the SL.com/vote system.

It would encourage people to use the SL voting system more, like the proposals to give more votes per person in the secondlife.com voting system, redirect people to voting system when grid is down, and link from feature suggestions forum to voting system.

I'm aware that as this group is very general, it could get spammy. I also realise Lindens, being very busy, are probably even more spam-averse then normal people are. I also anticipate that people might try to use the group to promote their own particular proposals.
Therefore, if I did set up this group it would have a "group IMs/votes by officers only" rule. As soon as the new group roles system is in place and has 'can call group vote' and 'can send group IM' permissions these would be unchecked for normal members. I'd definately try to keep the spam to a minimum - I think, say, one group vote (or after roles are in place, newsletter) per week or month would be the limit for group communication. Not due to a lack of good ideas, but rather to prevent spam. People who've proposed great ideas for SL and Lindens would be officers, and would be able to eject anyone who did spam the group.


The advantage of this group would be that it'd be a visible, in-world encouragement to use the voting system. Currently, we don't have much in the way of in-world encouragement. The primary goal of this group would ]be to encourage *constructive* feedback to Lindens via *managable* official channels like the voting system. To raise awareness of the voting system and to encourage people to submit helpful feedback / information to LL in a way which is managable and constructive. Due to the large number of people who'd potentially join it, we'd keep group chat to an absolute minimum, and the only communication in the group would be the occasional (weekly or monthly) notice drawing attention to new / very good proposals that need more discussion by residents. Lindens would *not* be expected to participate much in the group, and when the group roles system arrives I might stop people from getting a list of all the Lindens in the group, in order to stop people getting the Lindens' names from the group and then sending feature stuff to them personally which should go on the forum or on the secondlife.com/vote system.

In a nutshell : the group would be to encourage a culture of constructive, managable feedback to LL and participation in the SL.com/vote system.

My questions to the Lindens about this proposed group are :
1) Do the Lindens think it is a good idea?
2) If they think it is a good idea, will any of them join it? Obviously they'd be exempt from the "must keep your 10 votes allocated" rule (I'm not even sure they can vote on secondlife.com/vote), and would be invited as officers. I'm also taking steps to minimise the amount of spam they'd get from the group.
3) Would Lindens promote awareness of such a group if it existed, for example by letting people know it existed via a sticky forum topic in the 'Feature Suggestions' forum, or reminding people who IM Lindens with feature suggestions about the voting awareness group?

I ask these questions because :
1) I'd appreciate Linden feedback on the idea, as it is designed to help SL's culture.
2) If Lindens endorsed the idea and linked to it in some key places, it would be MUCH easier to get people participating in the group, and thus, make the group effective. Thus the success of this idea depends to a great extent on Linden support. I want to make sure that if I make this group, it has public and Linden support.

Angel,

First and foremost I'd like to emphasize--reemphasize, rather--your ardent passion for helping boost the voting system. I've said it publicly before, and will say it again, that your combing through every single dang proposal in the works, including but not limited to this and classifying them is what Second Life needs more of. Benefiting the Residents and empowering them in a more clear, concise way.

*clapclapclap*

I've got your post starred and I'm going to share this with more Lindens to get their opinions! Personally, 1) I do think it's a good idea (I have also requested that a Feature Voting Tool link be added from the Help menu as you spec'ed earlier), and 2) I would certainly freakin' join it, and while the future's a big place, I'd definitely commit to exploring its potential to see what it can become. 3) I'd do this too. HECK YES.

Bonus since the new Groups system has 25 groups, I'm sure I can find room.