Socially|Mundane

Jeff Linden posted a notice about an issue with updating your credit card information on the Second Life® web site. Yes, the Second Life Grid itself has many an issue, but it is improving. The web site has far fewer issues, but it does have issues. Such as the friends listing being borked for literally three months.

Many residents unfortunately waste their breath and time, and the time of the many of the readers of these notice posts. And it simply incites further ranting as others who also are frustrated are egged-on to also vent.

For example, in a notice about how the updating of credit card information is non-functional for the time being, the very first talkback by Lillie Yifu reads:

The recent problems should be a lesson that the most important thing is infrastructure. Please pull work on non-critical pixel pushing such as
Dazzle
“Facelift” of forums
“Facelift” of blog

And focus instead on getting underlying issues such as

Asset Server
Payment processing, including stipends and credit cards
Server stability
Client stability

Yes, I know these people are frustrated and simply venting or, in some cases, outright lashing out. Hey, I get frustrated, too. But I don't complain to my tire salesman that my car is losing acceleration, either.

The point is that there are many people at Linden Lab who owns and runs Second Life. Certainly, of the 250 employees, they all are not doing the same job. Each has their own expertise.

Is it silly of me to expect others to figure out that if one of these employees posts a notice about a particular subject, that they are likely within their duty area and expertise and likely not having anything to do with other areas of company operations?

For example: Jeff Linden being on the web site side of things and not having anything to do with the grid side of things? I know, I know - perhaps it is the hope of these posters, such as Lillie that either the right people will see the notice, or that any other employee who happens to spot it will pass the information on.

However, do they really have the time to sit and read blog posts that they themselves have not posted? And even if one does notice the post - there s nothing specific in the request. It is too general, so it becomes a simple waste of space and effort and does nothing but to bring everyone's morale down.

I don't intend to pick on Lillie. I see a lot of her posts and they are far from all being rants. I am only using this one as an example (so my apologies if you feel picked-on, Lillie) ;)

My point is this: use the bug tracker at jira.secondlife.com to file your complaints. Everyone at Linden Lab is working hard to improve our experience in Second Life. I really do believe that. yes, there are major 'hot-head' issues with things like intellectual property and copyright marks (which was and still is a really hot one for this author.)

But if you are going to post feedback to a notice in the Second Life blog, at least try to keep it on-topic and it would be nice if you at least try to keep it nice. To be clear: Lillie's post is nice. Some of the other vents can be downright stinging. Being a Linden lab employee - it's no wonder they rarely read the feedback on their own blog. Some of the comments can make for a really bad day.

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