Consulting with small groups

Hi Phillip et al.

I read your interview on Reuters yesterday with some interest. Can I suggest you're learning the wrong lesson?

Consulting with small groups of people, before consulting more widely will remain unpopular with some elements of society (real, or SL) for many things it is a realitic approach. Discussing what scripting calls might be useful for ragdoll animation when it comes is not likely to be something that provokes a huge amount of interest outside the scripting community (or communities) in SL. Until the actual calls are released on the preview grid the people who have contributed don't get any obvious advantage over anyone. Once there, the animators as well as the scripters can play until release.

The issue arises when money, potentially large amounts of money are involved. Changing the prices for islands in future... well whatever I think of the decision it is certainly one for you make internally. Discussing it with a small group of people at a time they can take advantage (real or perceived) of that information is what rankles.

Can I respectfully suggest you go back over the mistakes and reconsider what was wrong. The mistakes weren't in the general principle of doing it, they were in letting people know there was going to be a major change in one of the costs of their activities whilst they could take advantage of that... unfair because not everyone knew.

Can I also suggest you revisit the "Tao of Linden" Some time ago I suggested you need to consider how that is expanded so you keep openness and communiction with the residents. You talk about openness internally, and manage to mess it up with your greatest resource - us. Finding ways to consult and discuss with the people in SL, to filter out the signal from the noise is always going to be hard. Just occasionally you get it right... the changes to groups being a great example. We didn't get everything we hoped for, but we got a lot and there are some things that got put in that weren't obviously there from the briefing documents. Sometimes you eventually get it right... the grey goo fence came as a shock that killed/hurt a lot of content, but over time it's become a tool that slows if not prevents grey goos, whilst allowing legit content to work. Work out how to roll it out wider, and do it properly on more and more, and eventually all topics, please?!

Eloise, I'm going to forward this to Philip. Thanks for sharing.