Complaint: Second Life Views

I am somewhat disturbed to see that 8 residents are being chosen for special treatment (at our expense) and to be given the opportunity to shape the future of SL. (http://secondlife.blogs.com/change/)

How can 8 people possibly be representative of the broad spectrum of the community, and give advice that benefits everyone?

This is a seriously bad idea, and I would ask you to reconsider this idea. Focus groups should be much much bigger in a population of a quarter of a million residents.

Important decisions should be put to a vote of the wider population - facilities do exist already after all - and not based on the thoughts of 8 individuals who will most likely have their own agenda.

Why were these individuals selected? What made them special? Why were many others who may have a much better way forward for SL not chosen?

Someone say FIC?

Lewis

First, Lewis, a clarification: Second Life Views isn't meant to be representative of "the whole community". No Linden has ever said that. We'll continue to keep other means of feedback ongoing, recognizing that there are different--and perfectly legit--styles of communication. SL Views is in addition to those other channels.

Any Resident can still use the Feature Voting Tool, for example. And again, I must emphasize that any vote which has garnered over 500 votes of support gets a Linden comment.

No matter what decision is made, there are always points and counterpoints (and countercounterpoints, etc.) to it. Just like Second Life is an open-ended world, these are open-ended questions which involve continued dialog, but do not have a "final answer". Someone's always bound to have a different point of... view.

It is always a problem with "all or nothing" that leads to no action getting taken. Too many words can stall action, and we don't want that, because enough Residents are concerned--and I hear this on a daily basis--that Linden Lab is getting out of touch and growing too fast. So, back to grassroots: face-to-face conversations, live and direct.

This is exactly the point of SL Views.

As for... agendas... these are your fellow Residents. You can ask them what their perspectives on SL are. Which again, comes back to being personal, as opposed to treating "community" as an abstract, amorphous cloud--something we want to deal with before it's too late.

By all means, we're eager listeners: if you have a better plan, bring it up on these very forums and get your fellow Residents interested. Thanx!