An open Letter to Philip Rosedale

Is this how you envisioned Second Life, is this the legacy you wanted to leave? Is this the shape you wanted to leave the company in?

A forum run on software that has been declared at EOL by it's own creator? A forum where we have to login to a non secure site (http not https) with the same user name and password as our Second Life account. A Blog where now Torley can not even post his instructional videos????

http://www.massively.com/2008/08/27/linden-lab-staff-gagged-unable-to-post-to-official-blog/

A forum where the new Linden is completely whacked. Don't believe me then please explain what is happening in this thread:

/347/7e/277342/5.html#post2125832

We waited patiently and then eventually this turned into begging for help here in the forums. THERE IS SO MUCH GOOD THAT HAPPENS HERE EVERYDAY and yet the Lindens never noticed, We teach each other to script, we teach each other how to texture and sculpt and build. We encourage each other and create software for others to use. We individualy spend hundreds of hours here helping others each year. We help noobs take thier first baby steps with new skill sets and continue helping as they grow and flourish and watch in awe as they start to help others themselves.

SHAME, SHAME on you and hope you enjoy the money you made off of us and then dumped us.

Now go ahead and disemvowel it or eviscerate it or destroy this thread and hurry up before another Linden sees it Katt.

/me signs the open letter

Agreed!

Hire a real administrator for the vBulletin software
Get an experienced moderator

signed.

signed.

Remember soon we'll have to talk constantly in the 3rd person and refer to all people as "he, she, it's" only and places can be referred to as "over there, over yonder, you know that place over by that tree" and such

it's the SLapocalypse!

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
The dead rising from the grave!
Human sacrifice, furries and gorean's living together... mass hysteria!

pretty much all the bad parts of the bible...

Probably I should have said something yesterday, after I asked at Robin's office hour about the timeline for the "software review" process for the Forums software. Her response was a surprise: they are issuing an RFP for an integrated forums and blog, and have identified multiple companies to receive the RFP.

I admit that I intentionally didn't say anything because I've already earned a "boy who cried wolf" label for the number of optimistic things I've relayed about this matter before. And an RFP is a far cry from tested and operational software that we can use. But, FWIW, it's information, of a sort.

This hardly addresses whatever the heck is going on with Torley's situation, or exactly how one is to interpret the wildly different kinds of moderation on the different subforums here. (Incidentally, I don't even think it's necessarily *wrong* to moderate different forums to different standards, as long as it's not a guessing game as to which standard applies to which threads. Right now it's just bizarre.)

So something else is wildly amiss--or, at least, afoot.

Signed

Dear Uncle Phil,

Get well soon.

Signed,
Me

I fully support the ---name of company members removed--- with everything they do right.

Katt's irresponsible editing of posts in the burning life discussion aside, I'd still like to have some clarification about moderators closing threads due to "requests from residents". What criteria is in place and applied to such actions? When Millie just gets tired of reading a particular thread? Or when she gets tired of all the gripes? Considering that the "ignore and let this one die" thread is now at almost 32,000 posts, and isn't without its own healthy dose of heated drama, when does that one get closed?

My casual observation of the current state of moderation tells me that there are issues at play that go well beyond choices for forum software. Upgrading and improving the forum and blog software won't fix these issues. Getting RID of the Resident Moderator program is probably going to need to be the first step. They reached out to us a while back on that, they received an overwhelming response, which they completely ignored. Stick a fork in resmod. It's over cooked.

When neither Katt nor Millie seem to think my questions to them deserve a response, my confidence in Katt's professionalism as a "Communications Manager" and in Millie's ability to moderate the forums with reasonable restraint is diminished. Katt, Millie, if you don't feel the need to respond to private messages from Residents - if you feel you're above that level of accountability to your customers and your peers, then turn off your ability to receive them in the first place.

/me waits for this post to be edited because he named names. Sorry ladies, you have a public responsibility within these forums, and you should be prepared to be called out onto the carpet publicly when you do inexplicable things, and get called on them.

Feel free to start a new thread if ever they do.

Signed

Thanks for linking to the Massively article. I hadn't noticed the bottleneck in communications. It'll be interesting to see what this change in communications policy will entail. One would hope that it would signal a return to some better web oriented dialog. I find it irritating in the extreme that to be able to voice any opinions and have them heard or find out what's under development you have to attend various Linden's office hours in world. I think it's great that they have them, but unless you have the time to attend you're effectively shut out of the conversation. I enjoy the blog but that's not dialog. That's just being talked at. I fear we're probably headed for the opposite where communications are going to be more strictly vetted, and the heavy handed moderation in that Burning Life thread isn't exactly encouraging. I've always thought it's a huge compliment to the character of the forum community how civil and useful these forums are with such minimal moderation. I hope they're not suddenly going all corporate on us.

Errrm what was it your begging for help with exactley ?

Im gonna go out on a limb here with this without actualy knowing too much about the whole story ( Not something i often do due to not wanting tolook like a total idiot ) But you seem to raise a few issues here ... Ranging From Security to Gagging and Censorship to not getting support and help from LL .

Really, I'm not being rude or trying to flame this in any way ... But what is your point ? ( I want to understand )

LL own all of this .. We agree to that when we sign up .. They have the right to control ..make changes and to do what they think is right for SL ....WE don'thave to agree with it or like it ..But bottom line is i'm sure they ( whoever they are ) are not sitting round a table and saying " Ok ... how can we fluff this all up and make it totaly suck so that everyone goes away ? "

just my thoughts ...

There is a new blog post about the blog and forum overhaul.

Thank you

That must have happened while i was typing my post .... Damn LL are quick to respond to this thread !

Kind of supports what i said ... they are working on it ... and the NEW blog post is proof of that ...i think

Wow, the first line of the blog is the exact same as what Phil used to describe the forum! *falls over laughing*

Wait, wait.. they're finally hiring out the moderation of the forums? After HOW long and how many times it was brought up when they closed General Discussions?

Gah, LL get with the times a little faster.

I hate PR!.

I was happy to see Linden Lab pull up the drawbridge and STFU. It's annoying to see them pretend that they're listening.

and they don't need noobs telling them how to do their job.

Except you, 2k (just kidding)

Dear Phillip,
I dislike this new crap moderation, the forum software, and the fact that even though I love sl you guys tend to make crappy choices. A lot.

I'd still have sex with you any day.

Sarah Nerd

Oh, we aren't going to have to suffer through another contest, will we? I am not taking my picture with that Codpiece. *shakes fist.

more involvement with Ebay scares the bejebbus outa me!!