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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

:matte-motes-agape:

Looks like they are trying to hide then number of bugs there are!

The timing is easy to understand.

It's a pretty transparent attempt hide the bugs from Valve´s legal department; an attempt the audacity of which might almost be admirable if it were not already way too late for that.

(You're welcome)

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

Next is the part where they claim it's due to people asking for it, or because of the lack of participation.

Yes. And after that, the arbitrary destruction either of the accounts or of the utility of the accounts of people on CTL's personal blacklist.

But no one should imagine that at least some of us have not already thought at least 2 steps ahead of that.

There's actually no problem for some of us to telegraph at least certain moves in this process, provided that all we do is provide an incentive to LL to start respecting its customers. Any time now would be just great.

Meanwhile...

CTL's OODA loop is dilating while the loops of others continue to contract.

One way or another, LL will soon face the end game.

Of course, LL could just start being transparent and acting like adult professionals or something, instead.

That might have been easier from the start, but I guess there's just no helping some people.

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Trix Braveheart wrote:

Just unbelievable.

The support we could give each other when reporting, following and watching a JIRA has been lost, or at least that's how I read it. Now, you're just a voice in the wilderness. 

Yes. And especially after playing CTL's game all this time by using a bug forum within her control rather than doing it externally and linking the content.

But, y'know - I bet someone has all the JIRA stuff backed up outside LL.

Wouldn't that be interesting.

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

At any rate, It just flabbergasts me that anyone at LL could even begin to think this "improvement" will have anything other than massively negative consequences.

I think you may have missed the point that the only result that matters to CTL in this change is to prevent Valve's people from seeing the bugs and deciding they can't risk the Steam deal.

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Over the past year since Rod's influence has started to become visible in the company's plans, decisions, and operations, anyone that loves to watch the evolution (or in the case of LL - the devolution) of a company's lifecycle has been realizing that "The Emperor has no clothes". 

When Rod appeared on the scene, there was an overwhelming consensus that since Rod was this TOP DOG from EA, what better selection could LL have made for a CEO to save LL from its years of lost wondering in the woods to corporate maturity than to pick renowned expert in one of the industry's top gaming companies.  I will admit that even I was actually excited that maybe ROD WILL UNDERSTAND AND RIGHT-SIZE WHAT SL IS ALL ABOUT.  Although his roots is "gaming", he would have intelligence to quickly realize the technology / market space that LL's SecondLife exists.  That its not another player in the crowded "gaming" market. And that with some infusion of mature sr. management guidance, LL's could finally find its way out of the woods, stop the heavy bleeding of SecondLife and re-establish it as "THE" 3D virtual world community to participate in.

But again, Rod's questionable decisions at LL over the past year and his inability to resolve the biggest on-going issues with the grid (lag and stability and a collapsing economy and horrendous customer support etc) are showing that "ROD DONT GET IT"

Its clear now that Rod's plans from Day 1 has always been to turn SecondLife into another GAMING PLATFORM with maybe a few unique aspects to the platform which SL offers and no other Gaming world has.  Even though his first 100 days he put up a great show to the community that he wanted to learn what LL was all about and grasp the unique aspects of what makes SecondLife so addictive to the members of the community and use his talents to improve the platform that this community thrives on,  IT WAS JUST A PR SHOW. 

Rod clearly doesn't understand the SL community.  He is clearly not a business savvy person that grasps the idea to improve the satisfaction of service for your loyal customers before you seek out and look for more.  He doesn't grasp that the SL Community has always been and moreso not continues to be LL's largest crutch is provide the actual support of the platform that LL's developers constantly de-stabilize with their constant desire to add new shiny features.

In that light, ROD doesn't understand that the JIRA process as it has been set up is one of the most power support arms that LL's limited resources have to solving problems.

He only see the community based JIRA process as a huge exposure to his bid to turn SL into a competing GAMING PLATFORM.  I am sure in his mind, Rod looked that the JIRA and said:

"OMG - how will we be taken serious by the STEAM / GAMING community if they see in the JIRA system how bug-ridden out platform is - how many un-resolved technical problems SL has???  THIS HAS TO BE HIDDEN!! "

So despite what I am sure to predict was a lot of "OMG ROD YOU CANT DO THIS - OUR RESIDENTS FIND MOST OF OUR PROBLEMS AND DIAGNOSE MOST OF OUR PROBLEMS VIA JIRA" from the LL tech staff, Rod has other plans and has a single-minded mission to turn SL into the next gaming platform and to be accepted by the leaders in the gaming industry.

All Logistics aside, in Rod's mind, "We must hide the fact that SL is riddled with countless unsolved bugs and more new ones as Rod infuses all these great new technologies like Mesh, PathFinder, Material Systems, etc..

Sadly, this move will pretty much overwhelm LL's tech team as they will no longer have the continual flow of uncalculating I.T. technology and Business and Community skills and talents that they were able to tap into by letting the SL community openly participate in the Resident JIRA.  LL's staff can no long even reference JIRA's when talking to their most talented tech residents that freely and willingly participate in LL's user groups and beta's and forums to resolve show stopping grid-impacting problems that LL creates.

As such, I would have to agree with many in the SL community that this has to be the single most prominent bone-head move made by Rod.  The buck stops at Rod so its very safe to say that a decision of this magnitude has to have been at minimum blessed by Rod but I am pretty sure it was MADE by Rod.

There is no doubt that SL's business model has been slide to demise over the past 2ish years (1800 sims abandoned last year and recent report that 800 sims abandoned in the last 2 months is a clear sign).  This decision by Rod just through a gallon of bacon fat on the slide.

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Oh yes, and the end result will be further further deterioration of the concurrency level, more estate sims cancelled, etc.

M Linden had his day when he gamed the game and raised tier levels by 67% on Open Space Sims; and now Rodvik had his day. The trouble is, it takes about a full year for the fallout to be finally realized, then it will be bye, bye Rod; and Philip will look again for another CEO. Second LIfe goes on, spiraling down, down; it is time to enjoy it while we can.

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Clearly LL wants to run the platform the way games are run. No public bug tracker, etc.

 

Except... those companies are competent, with solid beta testing and active on community forums and actively investing in up to date server infrastructure...

 

I really think LL would just be happier if they sold the platform to one of said competent companies.

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Rodvik oversaw the winddown of 'The Sims Online' product. A winddown must be expertly managed to go smooth & not be a disaster ending with monstrous liabilities and bad PR at the end of the line. Rodvik did the job expertly to disassemble & dismantle 'The Sims Online' slowly & shut it down at minimal cost to the company. All with nice PR to make it all look not like a product failure.

It is my belief this is why he was hired, because SL's profits & growth -- by corporate thinking -- have always been disappointing. The logic is that SL equals a boring level of profits as of running a small town plaza, not the enormous cash cow of a cutting edge tech firm the investors targetted. So this is what the top execs & VCs are looking to be done. Scrap it & develop new products. Rodvik is their man.

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OK Merchant Folks.....

I attended one of the LL User Group meetings and I brought up the stupidity of the recent JIRA changes.  The LL staff managing the UG were already expecting the questions were gonna be asked and had a response prepared.  In fact, if you havent gone to a UG meeting, the whole meeting involves posting JIRA's that all attendees can click on and read and then discuss and then even post updates.

They pointed out that this decision on the JIRA was not made by anyone at the UG and they strongly recommended that any SL residents that want to provide feedback to the decision makers of this recent JIRA change should fill out and submit the survey.

 

http://lindensurvey.force.com/support/JIRASurvey

 

So Submit and submit often and tell others to submit.

My suspicion is pretty strong - as I mentioned in my blog - that this decision was not one that the LL staff wanted.  I mean, LL staff used the community often to interact with problems on the SL grid.

In order for these LL execs reading this survey to take us serious - we should post survey results with actual examples of WHY the new system is bogus.

 

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I think Wade's contributions to this forum are great.

Meanwhile, wind-down or not...

FACT:

At least one Linden not normally assigned to do such things recently began testing the reliability of listing enhancements.

Is Rod not doing much else just because he's been too busy preparing legal action against the individual self-identifying as "the product owner for the Marketplace"?

One can only hope, eh.

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Huh? Why would I pull my stuff when people still buy my stuff every day & enjoy? I choose to continue serving my customers, not let people down. That's why I'm upset is I have a good little thing going here & it sucks seeing Linden give up on the platform it sits within one step at a time. I know enough about how corporations work to know this is an immutable process --[disregarding the unlikelyhood of a miracle turn around, a philanthropic angel investor, or some such]-- they will not reverse their decision.

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And now we're seeing the same old hopeless bag of tricks being applied to try to keep certain users too busy to tighten the snares.

Hundreds of items have become unavailable from the SLM and just don't want to seem to be made available.

Really, the last time we saw something like this was right after a bunch of threads got deleted from this forum, and the people who contributed to them were banned.

And the time before that was pretty similar, too.

It's almost like the deletions and bannings were causing the items to become unavailable.

But that's impossible... right?

 

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Kampu Oyen wrote:

And now we're seeing the same old hopeless bag of tricks being applied to try to keep certain users too busy to tighten the snares.

Hundreds of items have become unavailable from the SLM and just don't want to seem to be made available.

Really, the last time we saw something like this was right after a bunch of threads got deleted from this forum, and the people who contributed to them were banned.

And the time before that was pretty similar, too.

It's almost like the deletions and bannings were
causing
the items to become unavailable.

But that's impossible... right?

 

1. What bunch of ppl? I can think of two. And hardly a big surprise to anyone.

2. I bet I am not the only one who has only the vaguest idea what this conspiracy is that you harp on in every thread, and wishes it would stop.

 

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Pamela Galli wrote:



1. What bunch of ppl? I can think of two. And hardly a big surprise to anyone.

2. I bet I am not the only one who has only the vaguest idea what this conspiracy is that you harp on in every thread, and wishes it would stop.

 

1) The one someone apparently had banned opportunistically for being their competitor and at least 3 others unrelated, if they might like to come forward since th ban has been lifted.

2) You're the one talking about a conspiracy. I'm talking about one bad egg at LL gradually infecting everyone around her with complicity in her bad decisions. Probably because the revenue losses she has caused puts them in a bad place to try to contest her legal position with them; a legal position in which she "owns" a bunch of code on the basis that she has decided how to make them try to modify it for her after it she decided to buy it off the rack, either without really thinking things through like a mentally healthy tech professional, or with an intention to do deliberate harm to LL.

Why are you continuing to subtly side with this person instead of with her critics?

What's in it for you, exactly?

 

 

 

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Jacob Cagney wrote:

I am not sure why anyone is surprised, stunned, whatever.

Rod is a gamer.  Rod comes from a gamer backbround. Rod hired gamers when he took over as CEO.

99.9999999% of gamer companies do not have public bug reports.

 

I agree with this. The way SL has been going lately, it wasn't long before they started adopting the ways of other gaming companies. To be honest...as a gamer...I've VERY rarely used the Jira. I tend to file support tickets or post something in the forums, since that's what I do with other games. Sure when someone posts a link and wants me to go vote on it, I will just to be supportive. But this change, really won't affect me, since it's not a system I use regularly. I'm not saying I agree with it and I honestly think it sucks...but I guess I just don't see the same "the sky is falling" attitude about this. I guess maybe it's more or less going to affect people who have had major bug issues to report or who regularly follow jira's?

 

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Hey, Deja :)

I think one of the reasons many people are outraged is because this decision cuts off an avenue of communication from resident to Lindens.  From reading most of the posts on this decision, both here, on the SLU forums and various blogs, it appears that the Lindens, or more likely Rod, are saying, "Go away, you're bothering us."

Then there's the whole technical side where many bugs/issues within SL were noticed first by residents, a jira was submitted, others perhaps contributed to the issue, and a resolution was found either sooner than it would have been if a Linden just happened on the issue or at all.  In Toy's VLM thread he lists the URL for the most recent UG meeting he attended and, from reading that, one can see even some Lindens are clueless about why this happened and they also concur that a lot of great "group think" in debugging came from the jiras.

 

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I'm not unsympathetic to the idea of making SL more gamelike.

But hiding the JIRAs is too weird a thing to select as a first step (toward making SL more gamelike) that we can't easily think it's merely coincidental that Valve had been specifically directed by two or more SLM merchants to see the JIRAs before agreeing to the Steam deal.

That the sudden unexplained urgency is more than coincidence is an idea not exactly unsupported by the fact that someone would be permanently banned from this very forum merely for mentioning that Valve should look at the JIRAs first.

But I don't think Rod is behind this.

Rod 1) is not a moderator of this forum, 2) is assigned no open JIRA's , and 3) has no documented record of straight-up lying to merchants [as 1) is 2) has and 3) does the person I think is behind this].

Moreover, there's no compelling reason for Rod either to hide the JIRAs or to ban merchants for talking about Valve looking at the JIRA's....

A) There's no compelling reason for Rod to do such things, because, if the Steam deal doesn't go through, Rod can also blame a bunch of other stuff on the individual he will then be in a position to show caused damages to LL, thus protecting himself from some degree of scrutiny on those other points, provided he can get everything smoothed out quickly enough.

OTOH... maybe we shouldn't rule out Rod so quickly...

B) There's no compelling reason for Rod NOT to do such things because if the Steam deal goes through, he'll finally have enough revenue flowing to sue the pants off of the individual currently identifying as CTL, thus solving the same problem for Rod, if perhaps not as quickly.

And now that (User Name) already has CTL desperately scrambling to do futile and inciminating things like ban people and hide JIRAs in order to get the Steam deal to go through, it is here, finally, pointed out that maybe she shouldn't want it to go through anyway if it means both more incriminating evidence and more money for Rod's legal people to sue her with.

Congratulations to her for the overreaction.

Maybe she can fix it by unhiding the JIRA's?

I doubt it, but what can it hurt at this point?

Maybe she can try to convince everyone that they were never hidden in the first place.

Maybe?

 

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Kampu Oyen wrote:

......

But I don't think Rod is behind this.

Rod 1) is not a moderator of this forum, 2) is assigned no open JIRA's , and 3) has no documented record of straight-up lying to merchants [as 1) is 2) has and 3) does the person I think is behind this].

Moreover, there's no compelling reason for Rod either to hide the JIRAs or to ban merchants for talking about Valve looking at the JIRA's....

A) There's no compelling reason for Rod to do such things, because, if the Steam deal doesn't go through, Rod can also blame a bunch of other stuff on the individual he will then be in a position to show caused damages to LL, thus protecting himself from some degree of scrutiny on those other points, provided he can get everything smoothed out quickly enough.

OTOH... maybe we shouldn't rule out Rod so quickly...

B) There's no compelling reason for Rod NOT to do such things because if the Steam deal goes through, he'll finally have enough revenue flowing to sue the pants off of the individual currently identifying as CTL, thus solving the same problem for Rod, if perhaps not as quickly.

And now that (User Name) already has CTL desperately scrambling to do futile and inciminating things like ban people and hide JIRAs in order to get the Steam deal to go through, it is here, finally, pointed out that maybe she shouldn't want it to go through anyway if it means both more incriminating evidence and more money for Rod's legal people to sue her with.

Congratulations to her for the overreaction.

Maybe she can fix it by unhiding the JIRA's?

I doubt it, but what can it hurt at this point?

Maybe she can try to convince everyone that they were never hidden in the first place.

Maybe?

 

Kampu,

THERE IS AMPLE REASON to know that clearly Rodvik is behind this stupid move of JIRA GAGGING.

I dont even know where to begin on the evidence that this clearly a Rodvik directive.  I am surprised you would even suspect otherwise and it has been mentioned in many discussions as to why its Rodvik.

 
  1. The question I will ask you is to turn your statement around - after all these years of having jira, now would anyone else at LL be behind this?  What would compel any other LL staffer "with enough authority" to execute this stupid move?  Do you honestly believe that the general LL staff want to see jira gagged? 

     

    LL has used the resident jira and all the vounteer efforts / participation from their own customers for years to help them identify and solve their problems faster and more effectively.  LL staff has often used the jira as a way to sluff off annoying customer problems, bugs. and proposed features by telling customers to "file a jira" and then go and ever look at the jira.  LL effectively uses it as one of the most effective direct open methods of LL / Customer communications.  In fact I see it often in the LL User Group meetings where the entire agenda is based on local chat referencing JIRA # for the group to talk about.

     

    So..... why would any other LL staffer NOW want to gag it?  It must be someone new to the game at LL and someone with motives that do not relate to years and years of current operations and a person with high enough authority to be able to veto all the LL staff at lower levels that would have been against gagging jira.... RODVIK.
  2. Rodvik is from EA and in his old world - the entire concept of
    direct open communications and interactivity with their customers is a huge no-no
    .  EA would not allow a customer to see as much of the inner workings of their operations.  EA would not allow customers to have so many direct personal multi-lateral communications with their customers like what has been the entrenched culture at LL since its inception.  

     

    Rodvik has taken his entrenched EA culture to LL.  It must make Rodvik's skin crawl to see all his staff having so many direct communications with its customers.  In the first 100 days of Rodvik's rule at LL he came in and pretended to be an open book and join the LL culture by directly communicating with all his customers is so many ways.  But it was only an act so that he could "learn".

     

    But if you look back in the past year, you will see a lot of evidence of Rodvik putting a stop of have his staff directly interact with LL's customers except via "customer classed" restricted formats.  The Commerce Team has been one of the first to be gagged as they do not communicate with Merchant at all.  LL has backed out of more and more SL inworld events - they did not even participate in their own SL8B birthday (which they have in all past years).  And not the Customer JIRA is being gagged because Rodvik does not belive that customers should see - much less actively participate in - LL's product/service bugs.  That is like airing a company's ugly secrets.  Rodvik hates this.

     

    This is not a theory - Rodvik "IS" executing a "close up communications with the customers" policy. 
    The evidence is clear.  It doesnt matter to Rodvik that logistically speaking - his staff has been using the countless person decades of free skills and effort to help LL develop and support its own service.  Rodvik dont grasp that.  Rodvik just wants his customers not to see the inner workings of LL. 

     

    As such, dont be surprised when Rodvik shuts down LL User Groups.  Dont be surprised that a lot of the SL Blog and Forums get removed.  The blogs are rarely used already.  Rodvik will be shutting down any "rogue" communications and at worst replacing them with highly restricted systems. 
  3. Rodvik's "convert SL into a gamers platform" is another critical reason why Rodvik directly executed this move.  He is integrating into STEAM in desperate hope that the performance hungry Gamers will come streaming into the SL grid.  He doesnt want the Gaming community to see any evidence of all the countless service bugs on file at LL.  To Rodvik - this is embarassing. 

I am very confident is saying that not only are LL staff not the ones that suggested gagging the Customer JIRA, but there likely was an intense internal feud / debate between LL staff and Rodvik and his inner circle of cronies that are executing Rodvik's policies.  But that the JIRA Gagging went thru anyway makes it really clear that Rodvik is the one to blame for the gagging of the Jira.

There is only ONE PERSION THAT ALL FINGERS POINT TO......  RODVIK.

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Deja Letov wrote:


Jacob Cagney wrote:

I am not sure why anyone is surprised, stunned, whatever.

Rod is a gamer.  Rod comes from a gamer backbround. Rod hired gamers when he took over as CEO.

99.9999999% of gamer companies do not have public bug reports.

 

I agree with this. The way SL has been going lately, it wasn't long before they started adopting the ways of other gaming companies. To be honest...as a gamer...I've VERY rarely used the Jira. I tend to file support tickets or post something in the forums, since that's what I do with other games. Sure when someone posts a link and wants me to go vote on it, I will just to be supportive.
But this change, really won't affect me, since it's not a system I use regularly.
I'm not saying I agree with it and I honestly think it sucks...but I guess I just don't see the same "the sky is falling" attitude about this. I guess maybe it's more or less going to affect people who have had major bug issues to report or who regularly follow jira's?

Ahhh but Deja.....

This is where you are not correct (statement in red).  Because you personally dont use the JIRA and actively participate in the jira to report bugs and work with LL on jira issues to diagnose and resolve SL grid, Viewer, and Marketplace problems, doesnt mean it doesnt affect you. 

It will.

You might not participate in JIRA's but a smaller but quite dedicated portion of the SL community actively engages in many jira issues and works to identify, report, diagnose, and resolve countless SL-wide problems via the jira.  I have seen many very serious SL / Marketplace issues solved thanks 100% directly because of LL working with this smaller portion of SL residents via the jira.

Many of thes solved bugs directly impacted you.  If the jira did not exist - you would have suffered many times for much much longer from serious bugs on the marketplace when LL deployed DD and maturity filters and search "improvement" and the move from xstreet to MP, etc. etc. etc.

You would have suffered much longer from viewer bugs, and the countless LL created bugs from new server code releases if these SL residents with a lot of skills and talents and problem solving skills did not assist LL staff in isolating the problems and fixing them.

So I hate to be blunt but....

Rodvik gagging the customer jira will 100% affect you in the months to come (as long as SL stays alive).  There is no question about that.

LL staff is very small and their skills talent pool is not deep enough to develop and support the size and complexity of environment that SL has become.  THEY NEED SL STAFF as freebie support staff.   Rodvik has just fired 100's of volunteer staff from LL's support team.  He is just not sharp enough to realize he did this.

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