New Zindra Blog Post

I think we are beginning to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. (Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in abducted hostages, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which they have been placed.)

These frontline Lindens went along with the entire 'system' without concern for the customer. They are definitely apart of the problem. Y9ou have long term Lindens like Michael promoted t more supervisory positions after being with LL for many years. So after years of dealing with the customer base -this is the decision they all agree to to. It sucks all around and none of them are heroes in this scenario.

I am all for shutting up and keeping your job. It must be Hell-on-Earth scary in the Lab if everyone gagged up and went along with this nonsense.

I don't think I've ever agreed with anything I've read from you before, but I am with you on this one. Individually, most of them are nice people I'm sure. I bet some are as upset over this as we are, but collectively they are part of LL and entity that I have little respect for anymore. Of course they have to cowboy up and do their job, i would do the same no doubt. And many are just following their marching orders. But as part of LL they have to bear the brunt for this just as much as M or M or any of the other high muckey mucks.. They all deserve the finger, as far as I am concerned.

Congratulations Lord!

Not sure what the audience with Blondin Linden was about today. Not sure we accomplished anything. We all agreed glow needs to be turned off in Zindra. Blondin allowed me to make up one answer for him (two weeks after the date each individual claims their land is when they start paying tier on it - sounds good).

But what else did we accomplish? And what is our agreed upon agenda for the next meeting ( Someone said Zindra landowners meet every two weeks at that time). Will Blondin Linden be made a officer of the Zindra Alliance so he can send out his own notices to the land owners?

I think this is about right atm with the economic climate I am sure the Lindens that disagreed with all this just shut up to keep their jobs so I can understand that as I was in the same boat with Adobe when I stood up for my colleagues in an instance I was right and I got suspended then sacked and had to take Adobe to court here in Holland. I won the case but didn't get my job back. However I would do it again if I had to as to me its about principles, and after many years in the military, I am used to people watching my back. So in a way I can empathize with the front line staff wanting to keep working as not all people have the balls to stand up and be counted when it is needed if it meant losing your only source of income.

Just my thoughts though

I worked in a place like that. Everything was politics and public appearance. Nothing was real. Internally, keeping your job was all about not getting on the wrong side of the "executive leadership" (hah). You could be be brilliant at what you did but if you weren't on the right side, your working life would turn sucky. People just sort of burn out in that environment. The good ones get reborn somewhere else.

I dunno. Seems to me that the Lindens in the trenches are just trying to make the best of a bad situation, for themselves and for the customers, and probably waiting out this batch of management until the next lot take over when these squander enough money on hare-brained schemes to get booted by the board.

I fear Zindra is not the worst waste we'll see from this bunch, although probably (one hopes) the most disruptive to residents' experience. There's something brewing in Engineering that's sucking the life out of developers. I finally heard one developer refer to direction of "the new management" in the context of why we're just not seeing any new features lately. Others have expressed frustration at not being able to talk about what they're working on. I don't know what's consuming all the resources, but it has to be something big. Bigger, I think (and hope) than that goofy new SL09 newbie-viewer thing that an outside firm is building for them.

Long-time LL employees have weathered a lot of phenomenally bad ideas from both generations of management. This current bunch in charge is even less adept than the last at selling their "vision" to residents, but they might be more effective in communicating it to employees. Or, more likely I think, the employees just figure "this too shall pass"--as pretty much all Lab management initiatives have faded to irrelevance over time.

Maybe they could stand up to their bosses. Maybe they're choosing their battles and even Zindra isn't the worst-case scenario currently in play. And maybe they're just biding their time, trying to make the best of a bad situation.

If we have to lay blame, I'd lay it on the thought police and their social push to control peoples sex lives and the sex trolls who are so out of control that it could be classed as necessary. In other words far sides and extreme POV and actions. (in SL and RL).

I swear any sane person had a predictable experience in SL as it was and didn't need this moral babysitting.

Or..... LL might be gonna make a bucket of money out of charging for sex.

Either way it's not the fault of their employees or the majority of the SL members.

I really don't see the point in blaming the support staff for policy decisions taken by others. Yeah, if they disagreed with it strongly enough, they could quit, just as could we quit SL if we felt equally strongly.

I'm upset and annoyed about the changes, but I certainly don't feel strongly enough to chuck it in, tier down and walk away from my sims and my businesses, and, self-evidently, neither does anyone who's applied to move to Zindra, so I very much doubt any of us would feel strongly enough to quit our RL jobs over it, either.

Instead, I'm biting the bullet and concentrating on making the changes as smooth and painless as possible for my tenants, customers and, of course, myself. And I am very glad indeed when the support staff's assistance does something to make this bad situation better rather than worse.

There's doing your job, and then there's doing your job, I guess.

My problem with these people (LL management) is that they don't have the business sense that God gave oatmeal.

There are so many different ways to do what they want to do- ways that don't throw their entire customer base into upheaval. Surely they could have picked one of *them*?

As for the "front line people", surely they could have suggested alternatives to the absolute *worst* way to do it in such a way as to highlight that it was a *better* way to achieve LL's objective, and not just a good cry about banning the sex business from the (then) mainland.
There are a lot of good *business* reasons for LL to be doing this in practically *any* other way. You would think that LL would *reward* an employee that said "we can do this with a lot less ill will on the part of our residents, and a lot more effectively besides. here's my suggested plan, what do you think?"

However, at this point, it is too late for there to be major changes in the way this is being handled. there is only time for *changes*, not major revisions of goals or direction.

The fact that we didn't get something better than what is happening indicates one of three things. Either nobody thought of anything better, Lots of people thought of something better but didn't (or felt like they *couldn't*) say anything to the decision-makers, or the decision-makers ignored a lot of better ideas from the rest of LL and bulled ahead with their own toxic plan.

I don't see how the board can be absolved in *any* of those scenarios. Either they are a pack of fools, or a pack of *malevolent* fools. The front-line people are either a pack of fools, or they are a pack of *frightened* fools (who think that going along with a customer service *disaster* is a good way to preserve their job- anyone see the flaw in that logic? No customers=No job)

I'm not saying that it's all the front-line people's *fault* though. But there *is* an opportunity here for anyone with a good idea to process swaps *faster*.

the way that they have been working on the swaps that they *have* been working on indicates to me that these aren't very senior people, who have to keep checking back with the "home office" before making a decision. The rate of swaps being processed seems to me to indicate extreme caution, or a severe staff shortage.

Especially given that the non-English speaking customers will only be finding out about this in dribs and drabs, they will be processing swap requests until *doomsday*.

And that's not even considering the *other* mature landowners (or even PG landowners) who deserve to swap their land for something that has a content rating at least *close* to what they signed up for.

I think that LL will eventually have to do something for them too, otherwise, they will simply have too many cheesed-off customers, and lose too much money.

In any case, it would be the right thing to do, and would insulate LL from legal action- which the LL board seems to be doing back flips to try to accomplish of late.


My point isn't that I'm some sort of marketing/business genius whose advice LL needs to take to survive.

My point is that I'm *not* a marketing/business genius, and even *I* thought of this stuff. which means that LL must be staffed and run by people with less business acumen than *I* have. A frightening thought indeed.

^V^

Mmmm....oatmeal. In pie. Oatmeal pie.

Sorry....thread hijack over. Carry on.

Can someone explain to me the 4 digit ticket #'s I am seeing? ie: 4500 Mine is 4051-6534338 and requested migration on July 9th. My first 3 choices are gone. I have twice now added comment for new choices. Ticket still shows NEW online. I have not found reference as to how many days out they are. Thanks and sorry to change topic.

Mmm... Oatmeal...

I wonder if Management Linden is just stuck in a crappy position.

Idiots like Kirk are jumping up and down, youtubing about how SL is predator-central for those looking to hook up with kids, congressional panels talking about this stuff, etc, etc..

So what would you do if you were LL? On one hand, you know it's mostly BS and are tempted to speak up about just how stupid congressmen can be. On the other hand, you don't really want to go anywhere near this subject of RL kids, let alone acknowledge that you're sick of the bad PR (even though it's BS)..

After watching Kirks youtube crap, I'm thinking less that LL managment is totally stupid and more that they're making one of the few moves available to them, or at least one that is least-damaging to them in a PR way.

And before people start going all rabid on me, I ain't saying they did well on this project or that I'm happy with it or anything like that. Just that Management Linden might not be as brain-dead as people are thinking..

SVC-205

/me tries to look surprised at this but can't pull it off.

That does nothing to appear to keep RL kids out of SL. Try again.

Nothing short of rolling back to June 2006 and getting rid of NPIOF accounts will "appear to keep RL kids out of SL".

If all you're going to do is keep some of the RL kids out of the porns, you're better off with a skybox zone privacy pocket that you can set "payment only", and require the porns to be in such skyboxes. It would be less disruptive to residents and clear up the ground for Auntie Kirk to bless.

You're thinking like a rational human that knows SL, not like a congressman or press person..

Didn't we already see a bunch of good press about LL's move?

(Again, ain't happy with any of this plan - just not sure they're as stoopid as they pretend.)

well for a reference .. we are 6485751 which was filed on June 29th at 1:39 and ours is still classified as new as well ...we asked for a migration to a private island which was a separate category ..however concierge continues with the LL line that they are doing all Zindra migrations in order so we are out of luck until they get to the afternoon

The last time i tried to ask where they were .. i spent 43 minutes on hold with Dee and then with Mia who made a statement she was checking and thenjust shut it off with no answer or anything after 1 hour and a minute ..then 5 minutes with Molly who said they'd been having trouble with live support but she couldn't help us

I'm actually on vacation with friends and now it's a running joke about how none of us have ever had a company be so uninterested in taking our money before

It'll come - too bad the new spot couldn't come when i actually had plenty of time to work on it but hey ..i work better under pressure anyway

Good Luck with yours

I would tout the virtues of the Teen Grid, and point out that it does a very good job of keeping predators away from children.

I would also point out that even if teenagers do get onto the main grid, it's not exactly predator central because those teens risk being kicked off if they tell anyone how old they are.

The verification system does at least attempt to make the appearance of keeping children away from porn in SL. While its effectiveness is certainly questionable, it's much more than many other sites with much more explicit content do.

They'd get good press from my scheme too ("Second Life locks porn up"...) without causing nearly as much disruption.

They must not know that (kids). We routinely get kids on our orientation sim, and they tell you right out, yeah I am 10. (insta-AR). But I do find it interesting that it's usually the younger ones, say, 10-14 or so that will tell you how old they are, either we don't actually get older ones trying to sneak in, or they aren't telling...

Why when we are ALL having a bloody hard enough time in being "forced" to make this move trading land for less equal land am I seeing things as;

We buy, sell, and rent land for all needs.

- Residential
- Commercial
On prime land locations in the adult continent?

And that's the whole point, right there.

LL seems very, very reluctant to frame this plan as anything but something they're proactively doing. I think Lawyer Linden has even said at least once or twice that it's not a reaction to some RL pressure.

If you are seen to react to pressure, does that leave you open to be pressured even more later?

edit: anyway... /me concludes that Management Linden is probably at least as smart as oatmeal.

There is no land for sale on the adult region?

Not until the trades are done.