Feedback on ResMod Program

I'm not against ResMods.

The equivalent system, where players of the games moderate the forums, works fine on Stratics - which, I think, is the largest online multi games forums website out there.

I'm not saying what has been developed so far is perfect - but certainly I support the principle, and would be happy to help guide the forum community to a higher standard of posting should I be selected at some point in the future.

Lewis

Ditto. Personally, it appears to me that the forums are not completely "united" in either direction. Which seems perfectly logical, given the diverse group of personalities and level-of-informedness (yes, I just made up a word... ) that makes up this community of ours.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, though I highly doubt LL can match what I make today as a 3rd Shift UNIX Admin. They can always try of course, but it also brings up more complications than you'd think for a diehard Urufugee. Especially today...

I said 'sort of' as I would probably leave most of SL for UU and Uru and Cyan's future, not Linden Lab's. But everything has not yet played out, so I still wait on that decision.

Why is LL unable to get a grasp on the community and guide it appropriately? Second Life is Linden Lab’s baby and it should be the support and the nanny, not the customer. Linden Lab has a vested interest in making Second Life succeed more than any customer. Customers will come and go, but hopefully the company vision (whatever that may be these days) will continue. You can’t turn your product over to residents for direction and expect that to be a sustainable model for future advancement. This has been the downfall of the world and the grid. There is no constant sustainable content in Second Life that is compelling and Linden created which is a major gap in the ability to recruit and maintain casual social customers (you know the people that are going to buy all the crap from the people who are here to get rich). Linden Lab needs to take some responsibility for their customer base and allocate the proper resources to supporting it and stop pushing customer support off to other customers. No company can successfully push across a corporate vision with continuity with a plan like this.


The PR pitch of community is just being used here as a guise to get free work from paying customers. It is simply a method to take advantage of the kindness and willingness of people to help when asked, while praying on their need of a sense of belonging in community. Ethical businesses do not treat their customers in this manner. They do not exploit their customers to support their product to protect their bottom line because they are unable or unwilling to allocate the proper resources to a solution.


Beyond the fact I believe the ResMod program is unethical and exploitive, it has proven itself to be entirely ineffective. Here is an example from yesterday. This thread was derailed onpost #9, and the thread continues being derailed until post #140 when a Res Mod finally steps in. Then Jeska responds at post #147. The derail started at 11:21 PM CST and went unaddressed by moderators for 8 hours and was responded to at 7:01 PM CST. This type of response or lack there of is no improvement over the moderation prior to to the ResMod program.


This is just one example from one thread but there are many more examples that could be highlighted here. How is this benefiting the community? Where is the improvement in moderation?

I like what you've said about corporate vision and continuity, but on the above point, we diverge.

Yes, well that is my personal opinion. I will continue to be vocal about it even if no one agrees.

I agree. I'd hate to think what the world would be like if the customers of all companies were responsible for support. What if your under-warranty Honda broke down and you were told by Honda that in order to get it fixed, you'd have to take it to some random Honda owner who was chosen by some mysterious way to be the repair guy in your town. He has no formal training that Honda knows of, but he expressed some interest, or maybe he didn't, but they still picked him, regardless of his credentials, knowledge, and ability to even do the job.

Sound like good customer support? Of course not, but that's what LL's doing.

What if Honda created a mailing list and allowed people to hold Honda Fans meetings in their cafe, asking only that they don't break the furniture and respect each other, noting that if anyone broke the law or was harrassing people that the rotating keeper of the mailing list notify them so that Honda could decide if they should remove the offenders from the Honda property.

You can keep spinning it how you want it, as I have above, but neither one is an apples to apples comparison with what is going on here.

Why should Jeska receive a salary for what paying customers are being asked to do for free? And again, if customers are taking on roles of leadership, why do other customers have no voice in who those leaders or representatives are?

Eboni is dead on in her analysis. The moderation of the forums has not gotten any more effective. I don't understand why it is so horribly difficult in the first place. Just casually reading the forums you can see a thread go to hell and then languish sometimes for days even after that, with no intervention or moderation. I see absolutely no reason why a small team of employees at LL cannot moderate these forums effectively. This is not brain surgery. I recognize getting generous customers to help you is appealing, but it is just ethically wrong to be paying people at your company to do something, and then get customers to make up the slack because your employees are not doing their jobs effectively and you are not willing to put the correct amount of resources there to do so. Why shouldn't the ResMods, if they are going to be used, receive compensation? Linden Lab is not a charity.

You, Cristiano, are dead on as well!

I would like to add another concern to my list, not that it will make a difference (hello? is this mic on? *tap tap tap* hello?)

Subjective and inconsistent interpretation of the TOS/CS by ResMod business owners provides an unfair business advantage.
So Electric Sheep's The Happening event was listed in General and it was the interpretation of the ResMods (including Electric Sheep's Director of Services AND Resident Moderator Satchmo Prototype) that the thread was NOT about an event. There are arguments why this would be a correct or incorrect decision but in the end, I can't really argue with it. It's fine by me.

Now if a direct competitor such as Tiny Seadog, or *gasp* Aimee Weber posted about their SL/RW simulcast event in General, it COULD be interpreted by the ResMods as an event, and then wisked away to the events section (which as far as sections go is about as starved for traffic as the SL Volunteers & Education section.) Just like The Happening thread, it's a gray area. But in the end it would be hard for me to argue that my thread didn't BELONG in events. It's the ResMod's call, not mine.

While I'm using a specific example here, this is not a criticism of the ethics of the current ResMod team (and personally I think Satchmo is a great guy!) But as far as the system goes, there is an ENORMOUS amount of wiggle room where business owners could (deliberately or subconsciously) dish out inconsistent administration in their own favor and to the detriment of their competitors.

Out of all my grievances, this is by far the most important, because we are now talking about real life financial damages that could eventually lead to real life lawsuits!

Since the Lindens are making it loud and clear that our community WILL be empowered by this ResMod program and the community is powerless to stop it, then SL business ownership NEEDS to be a disqualifying factor for Resident Moderators.

But Aimee...


If you don't own a business in SL and dedicate countless hours to making minimum wage in SL you are just a welfare slacker tourist that brings nothing to the community. If we exclude the business owners we will be left with nothing but the tourist! Think about it! The people LL and the community value the absolute least could be in charge! We can't have that.



Really Aimee I think all of our complaints shall fall on deaf ears, there is a reason this thread is in this traffic forsaken forum.


Why is the thread about the electric sheep event still in general with private conversations going back and forth? I am not talking about this one.

Like I said before, I think the Linden strategy is to weather the storm until the program is well established and no longer generating "phases" that provoke discussion. In fact, I suspect Phase III will be ushered in without an announcement.

You are probably right, I am still in complete disgust of this whole thing.

Let me add another bit of feedback that just occurred to me.

ResMods, as I understand it, will be rotated on and off for two weeks at a time. If that is correct, how can they possibly learn their jobs well enough to moderate with any degree of consistancy.

Either Linden Labs would have to develop an iron clad set of rules covering almost everthing... which I hope means we will get them too, or live with the fact that the moderation will vary wildly based on each individual's learning curve.

Will LL really end up spending less resources trying to manage this program than they would hiring a couple of part timers to just DO it.

Welcome new ResMods!!!

(And no, I do NOT use sorcery to make these predictions)

Same reason this is in Land & Economy instead of Classifieds and still includes a slam on a very untouristy SL resident.
/130/f7/89326/1.html

so uh... why didn't barbara blair know she shouldn't edit posts?

could we see what the resmods are told when they start?

Those who wish to abuse the forums by engaging in a constrant stream of personal attacks, expletive use, private bickerig, and the other violations of the community standards and forum guidelines that occur with annoying frequency will never be happy with any system that attempts to keep them from acting like poorly raised children, so the fact that the badly behaved babies whine a lot about attempts to make the follow the simple, easy to follow rules and goals should not be taken as indicating any sort of problem with the resident moderator program. Quite possibly the reverse.

Best wishes to the resident moderators.

I think its gotten worse since the resmods became a program. Of course your ATTACK on thsoe who complain can easily be reversed. Sinc eyou attacked first then you can't claim abuse on this one.

Theres always those stuck of children who always act like teachers pet..the 'perfect' child who always says yes maam and yes sir. They don't like it when people contridict teacher or mummy dearest. Even if the contridiction is logical, clear, concise and given in a respectable manner.

These kinds of people are the one who enjoy the resmod program, since they can now 'stop the people saying my mummy is wrong!'

I will report my issues with the resmod program, and add one here.



Adding:

Volunteering: Alot of the original resmods were 'elected' and didn't know about until they had to REMOVE AND OPT OUT of resmod status. They were never asked if they wanted the position.

Now.. is this the whining of a child who wants a constant stream of swearing? Not really. This is actually how most people are responding to the resmod program when they complain. Don't let Suzeanne's 'teachers pet' attitude tell you otherwise.

Edit: Good luck and best wishes on the resmod program coming down asap.

any lindens going to reply again?

there are several points that have been raise... and as someone noted... only moot points have been addressed.

hello? you wanted feedback... is anyone listening?

Yes... I'm going to ask Jeska about some of this, which I do not know.

I am also continuing to read to be receptive to what's in here. It's important I understand.

It was asked what ResMods are shown. The ResMod Manual, published in the open of course, is the bulk of it. Within the ResMod forum, there's also Q&A and discussion, and something else that's shown is a "best practices" list, growing, which is garnered from actual experiences that've been come across. An example is the usage of profanity on here, which has been talked about at great length.

It occurred to me that thus, continued development publication of such info not only helps ResMods, but helps each and every participant on the forums know more about what's alright here.

Related, there was not one point saying "THOU SHALT NOT EDIT POSTS" because that was a mistake. The ResMod permissions didn't save right, so I did it again, and again to be sure. I like to prevent when possible instead of picking up afterwards--for what happened, I am sorry.

This, in turn, will be communicated clearer in the future... now that we know.

the problem isn't that the document doesn't say "don't edit posts". the problem is that the document didn't sufficiently explain the intention of the resmod program so the resmods could deduce that editing would be inappropriate (regardless of their ability to edit or not).

that is to say... the guidelines aren't clear enough. because clearly they aren't/weren't guiding the resmods in the right direction.

Feedback on the resmod program in my signature..

2 independent polls

same result