Why isn't there a Linden Embassy?

[AlexandriaBrangwin]

We often hear the lindens roam around SL interacting with residents as they go about their business.

So, why is that such a rare occurrence?

We used to have meet the lindens events in random sims around the place but that's more of a meet & greet, not a customer service situation.

We always heard SL was the golden new frontier of work & how businesses can interact with their user base so why has one of the central tenets of virtual worlds seemingly been squandered?

[Maryanne Solo]

For fear of virtual Stinky Rebellion protesters perhaps? 🙄 

[cheesecurd]

It’s a really neat concept and it works ok in moderation when you have a more mature userbase, running into staff occasionally can be the same as running into anyone else except you can maybe discuss stuff more meta to the game than anything else.

The problem is that you can’t make that the norm, you can’t have a way for your users to instantly talk to staff in a casual setting because they will become reliant on it. If you have a place full of lindens where anyone and everyone can show up just to whine about whatever, anyone and everyone is gonna show up to whine about whatever.

I used to play a lot of Smallworlds, my spouse in fact worked for them briefly as a backend moderator. They rarely even allowed their moderation and administration teams to enter the game with “staff” accounts. It was pretty much reserved exclusively for hyping up new staff created locations and content or pre scheduled meet and greets with a select audience of mainly oldschool users. Nobody knew who the staff were off of their staff accounts, they never stuck around long when they were on staff accounts. Because they get pestered constantly with questions and they can’t just stand there all day and handle questions in game chat. They have other things to do and also want to enjoy the game themselves on their personal account. 
LL is a bit different in that the lindens are much more public but it’s very intentional that they be a rare occurrence to find and talk to, they have their own things to do and don’t need and endless chain of game chat to respond to.

[Beth Macbain]

I'm all for more Meet the Linden type meetings, or more user groups with the Lindens and Moles, but I think an inworld embassy or office location constantly staffed is just asking for a super-dooper huge big ton of trouble and harassment and griefing because some people are just horrible.

Regularly scheduled, more frequent, more varied, hour long open discussions, though? Absolutely. And at different times so people from all around the globe can make it to at least some of them. I completely understand why the current ones are all held during SLT office hour time, but it would be great to see them spread out. I can't make it to any of them because they're also during my regular office hours, and I would love, love, love to be able to sit in on some of the governance meetings. 

But, yeah... having a spot where anyone can go scream at a Linden about anything 24/7 is just asking for trouble. 

 

[Whirly Fizzle]

There are multiple Linden user groups held weekly: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:User_Groups

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

7 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

But, yeah... having a spot where anyone can go scream at a Linden about anything 24/7 is just asking for trouble. 

 

And when a Linden goes to a club or something, sometimes they bombarded in PMs about "can you help me, my blah blah" left and right. The Linden guy that told me about SL mentioned the same thing too.

One night there was on in my club listening to a live performer and he PMed me that he wanted to stay, but was getting PMed like mad. I finally went to open chat and said let the dude enjoy the show and lodge any issues via the help desk on the SL website.  When he left he said he only got one PM after my announcement.

I think the weekly meetings work better.....

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

If there was a Linden Embassy we'd likely find Julian Assange taking up residence there

[Mollymews]

the Linden Village Office is on Kirkby region. Is still a few Lindens who have their own parcels in the surrounding village regions. Not sure if he still has, but Phillip (Rosedale) Linden had his home parcel on Waterhead region

altho some Lindens who run User Group meetings have their own regions now.  Like Oz Linden has Hippotropolis. Michael Linden when he was the boss of LDPW had the island on Shamon. Not sure if Patch Linden has his own region now. Char Linden still has the island on Pooley

Linden Lab also has 4 regions as their inworld corporate office. Linden Lab HQ 1 thru 4.  We residents can't go there anymore.  We used to be able to. When we could, I remember that in the center was a office building and some Lindens had actual offices in it.  What I remember the most about it was all the Linden bears.  Some offices had quite large collections of Linden bears

the other thing residents used to do at the HQ, was organise inworld protests against some action that the Lab had taken or were intending.  I think the last big inworld protest at the HQ was when A-rating (Zindra) was proposed. The protest there went on for weeks.  People coming every day wearing all kinds of signs. Blondin Linden, who was the boss of that community aspect in those days, would front there to the protesters.  Jack Linden (the old mainland boss) fronted the resident protests there also when the ad-farming began to ravage the mainland

is pretty interesting that back in the day, Linden were quite encouraging of this kind of resident inworld activity.  Most of this resident activity has largely left the inworld today tho. Linden today lean more toward curating this kind of resident sharing activity. Blog posts, more frequent and regular inworld user groups meetings, Meet-The-Lindens formals, etc

[Erwin Solo]

The Lindens don't really know the SL culture anymore. Linden inworld interaction was dying after Philip left the first time, and the layoffs of 2010 reduced staff such that they just couldn't anymore.  Torley was the last to have a bit of tie to the old world, and now he's off doing something else. 

If you are part of beta testing one of the new features, you meet developers, but they don't play in the world. Recently they hired Strawberry, and so they have at least one person that knows something if the game. 

I know people that were married inworld by Lindens. I used to use a HUD that would find an online Linden if you had a griefer. Lindens used to play the combat game over on region Jessie. 

Today, to use an analogy, we are golfers and the Lindens are the ones who tend the grass on the fairways and greens, and sell tickets. They don't however play golf anymore. Discussing golf with them would not be a conversation among players. 

[Beth Macbain]

7 minutes ago, Erwin Solo said:

Today, to use an analogy, we are golfers and the Lindens are the ones who tend the grass on the fairways and greens, and sell tickets. They don't however play golf anymore. Discussing golf with them would not be a conversation among players. 

That may be your experience, but it’s not mine. The Lindens I know are residents as well. Not necessarily under their work account, but why would they want to do that during their off hours? I’m 

[Parhelion Palou]

1 hour ago, Erwin Solo said:

The Lindens don't really know the SL culture anymore. Linden inworld interaction was dying after Philip left the first time, and the layoffs of 2010 reduced staff such that they just couldn't anymore.  Torley was the last to have a bit of tie to the old world, and now he's off doing something else. 

As @Beth Macbain said, the Lindens are still out & about in SL, both under their own accounts and  using their Linden accounts. I've seen Lindens in-world several times this year. Some of the existing Lindens were in SL before they were hired.

[Mollymews]

i think that Linden is far more disciplined and consistent in its relationship with residents than it was in earlier times

from a user's perspective  then I find this curated approach more useful to me. As I mentioned elsewhere on here, I have had timely responses and good outcomes from my support tickets, whereas back in the day it was all a little bit hit and miss. So in this respect I think it is a good thing and would not like to see a return to the old ways

[rasterscan]

Rubbing shoulders with the Lindens and Moles is quite an experience. The blue writing is awesome.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

4 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

As @Beth Macbain said, the Lindens are still out & about in SL, both under their own accounts and  using their Linden accounts. I've seen Lindens in-world several times this year. Some of the existing Lindens were in SL before they were hired.

Had one a while back at my older club and listened to a few songs from a performer I had booked. Since it was a slow night no one bothered him and PMed me "I"m catching a few songs while I wait for a co-worker to bring back lunch and not mess it up this time."  I giggled on that.

[Pixie Kobichenko]

23 hours ago, AlexandriaBrangwin said:

heard SL was the golden new frontier of work & how businesses can interact with their user ba

Yeaaaaaaah but LL isn't really a business we interact with.  Aside from buying  premium memberships & purchasing lindens from the MP & the fairly new culture of Linden interactions with Bellisseria what mingling with Lindens do the vast majority of SLers really need?  They provide the backdrop to a user content created world.  

If you have a need or a problem that requires assistance from LL the quickest way to get the problem solved is to file a ticket.  I don't think going to an embassy standing in a queue with others mingling around is going to expedite problem solving.  

If you just want to rub shoulders with a Linden or Mole there are activities that go on that they attend- a lot of that information can be found beforehand from the blogs....

Will say it would be neat if the lindens that give out bears updated theirs to mesh.  Unless you own a region, really can't display a collection of 50+ prim each stuffies.  🐻

[Bree Giffen]

It would be inefficient to have a customer service hub for the Lindens. They'd be sitting around doing nothing or helping the first person that walks up. But that's good right? No, the next person in line might have a more serious issue. There's no way to triage problems or document anything. 

[Hunny Bunny]

Since the days of the pony express, mail, telephone and now internet people have been moving away from going to a place to do business. Why would we go backward now?

[Amanda Crisp]

I like this idea, we *should* have a Linden embassy 🙂

[Alyona Su]

There already is a Linden Embassy: https://secondlife.com/destination/governor-linden-s-mansion

[Lindal Kidd]

No, there is not a Linden Embassy.  There never will be one, for the same reason that the Greek gods didn't have one:

Gods have temples.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

Just had an evil thought --- plop an Embassy down somewhere and put a bot there, have it named like "AskMeAnything Linden" and when it responds, it shoots back the link to the help desk!

Edited October 19, 2019 by Kimmi Zehetbauer
Extra typo.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 10/16/2019 at 5:54 AM, AlexandriaBrangwin said:

We often hear the lindens roam around SL interacting with residents as they go about their business.

So, why is that such a rare occurrence?

We used to have meet the lindens events in random sims around the place but that's more of a meet & greet, not a customer service situation.

We always heard SL was the golden new frontier of work & how businesses can interact with their user base so why has one of the central tenets of virtual worlds seemingly been squandered?

Have you ever tried to wander around the world and talk to people? It can be hard work and also, if you are the ruler of the world, I imagine you'll be in for a lot of complaints. There's nothing in it for them to do that. They never said they were the new golden frontier of work, where did you hear that?! I've never seen that anywhere. They also have never said that businesses interacting with their customers in a virtual world is a thing they encourage, either. If anything, they're more on the side of bots and algorithms as the tools of business and that's what has resulted in the world.

[Prokofy Neva]

52 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

No, there is not a Linden Embassy.  There never will be one, for the same reason that the Greek gods didn't have one:

Gods have temples.

Here's the house altar where you may pray to Patch Linden, with animations.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 10/17/2019 at 6:00 AM, Pixie Kobichenko said:

Yeaaaaaaah but LL isn't really a business we interact with.  Aside from buying  premium memberships & purchasing lindens from the MP & the fairly new culture of Linden interactions with Bellisseria what mingling with Lindens do the vast majority of SLers really need?  They provide the backdrop to a user content created world.  

If you have a need or a problem that requires assistance from LL the quickest way to get the problem solved is to file a ticket.  I don't think going to an embassy standing in a queue with others mingling around is going to expedite problem solving.  

If you just want to rub shoulders with a Linden or Mole there are activities that go on that they attend- a lot of that information can be found beforehand from the blogs....

Will say it would be neat if the lindens that give out bears updated theirs to mesh.  Unless you own a region, really can't display a collection of 50+ prim each stuffies.  🐻

No, it's not a new culture, it's an old culture. They used to be inworld much more heavily and interacted much more intensively. They would build things like inworld games or plant trees and residents would watch and talk. Jack Linden used to stand around at the telehubs chatting with regulars. They had town halls and office hours galore. Some of them came to live music. Their staff was drawn more from the user base then (something that I didn't think was such a great idea, due to favouritism and clientitis, and the more they began to draw from the big IT companies in later years, the more professional they became). They departed from this over-fraternization and I think it's probably a good thing. It's not a relationship of equals.

[Hunny Bunny]

28 minutes ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Just had an evil thought --- plop an Embassy down somewhere and put a bot there, have it named like "AskMeAnything Linden" and when it responds, it shoots back the link to the help desk! it

Programmed with answers like:

Signs point to yes.

Yes.

Reply hazy, try again.

Without a doubt.

My sources say no.

As I see it, yes.

You may rely on it.

Concentrate and ask again.

Outlook not so good.

It is decidedly so.

Better not tell you now.

Very doubtful.

Yes - definitely.

It is certain.

Cannot predict now.

Most likely.

Ask again later.

My reply is no.

Outlook good.

Don't count on it.