We invite you to share your perspective and help us improve the Second Life experience!

[Rowan Amore]

Any survey should always include, Other or Prefer not to Answer, IMHO.  

[CaithLynnSayes]

Interesting read this thread... It also clearly shows a couple of blatant racists here. Not that it surprises me really

 

If you now feel the need to violently react to me, then i probably mean you  

[Innula Zenovka]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

It would be helpful if you produced samples of such typical surveys you see in your country.

They're generally based on the categories used in the most recent census.   Last year's census used these categories

There was a separate (optional) question for religion, which is relevant, since both Jews and Sikhs are regarded a members of distinct ethnic groups for legal purposes (controversially, Muslims aren't, though they are, of course, covered by laws against religious discrimination).

There was also a separate question on national identity

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Innula Zenovka

[Tama Suki]

34 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

Interesting read this thread... It also clearly shows a couple of blatant racists here. Not that it surprises me really

 

If you now feel the need to violently react to me, then i probably mean you  

Luckily I lost them otherwise I would have been banned for life from this forum.

[Prokofy Neva]

50 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

They're generally based on the categories used in the most recent census.   Last year's census used these categories

There was a separate (optional) question for religion, which is relevant, since both Jews and Sikhs are regarded a members of distinct ethnic groups for legal purposes (controversially, Muslims aren't, though they are, of course, covered by laws against religious discrimination).

There was also a separate question on national identity

 

Gypsy is considered outdated and pejorative now even in Europe. The term is "Roma."

Read our census, which is more elaborate than the NYS forms I indicated because the purposes are more granulated. So it's not that different from your census, really.

And here it is helpful to recall that for the US, the term "nationality" generally means only "citizenship." So everyone with citizenship has the nationality "American". 

It's not like Russia, where "nationality" means "ethnicity" as ethnicity was historically tied to actual nations, some of which still exist. So you can have the Tatars and the Tatar Republic within the Russian Federation with its own titular nationality, the Tatars, although they are Russian citizens.

All that your form has done has made more granular questions based on the fact that various people with a legacy from British colonialism now live in the UK, Indians and Pakistanis. 

So I don't see it as that different, and there is no Indian or Pakistani lobby in the US trying to get the standard forms changed to differentiate "Asians". 

You would also have to indicate what social good you get out of such granulation. For example if my neighbour can put down Pakistani and I can put down Irish, what changes about our social services? The pork is kept out of the cafeteria and the fish is supplied on Fridays during Lent? But that is done anyway by every single practical business establishment. My local grocery store has towers of food called "Hispanic" whether anyone likes that term or not, including Goya black beans which some want to boycott as a way of defeating Trump, although there are better ways that can be used and were used. They tower up the kosher food around Jewish holidays, and stock up on the fish for Lent. There are now Czech krustalniki because there were more Czechs in the building as there are a lot of UN people. There are more frozen Indian dinners because a lot of Indian IT guys moved in. Etc. This is the ethnic restaurant approach to interracial relations in NYC which works pretty well, better than parts of French cities, for example. But ultimately, you have to ask what is it that you want to get out of the Lindens by non-American differentiation? And I think I've answered that it's mainly about economics: for the rest of the world to participate, it has to be cheaper. That doesn't seem very virtuous or very glorious; so I need you to spell out that virtuous act that would mean for you that the Lindens had jumped over their own knees and supplied that global perspective that you think they are lacking. Kinder eggs with real toys inside the chocolate egg, which are banned here as a choking hazard?

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

Interesting read this thread... It also clearly shows a couple of blatant racists here. Not that it surprises me really

 

If you now feel the need to violently react to me, then i probably mean you  

So you say.

The following statement has no content or meaning in it. It is merely supplied as a tabula rasa for you to react to, in anyway you like, and take the opportunity to AR this statement, and whistle to your Moles to come running to ban authors or remove statements and/or close the thread.

[Statement]

[Innula Zenovka]

1 minute ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Gypsy is considered outdated and pejorative now even in Europe. The term is "Roma."

Read our census, which is more elaborate than the NYS forms I indicated because the purposes are more granulated.

And here it is helpful to recall that for the US, the term "nationality" generally means only "citizenship." So everyone with citizenship has the nationality "American". 

It's not like Russia, where "nationality" means "ethnicity" as ethnicity was historically tied to actual nations, some of which still exist. So you can have the Tatars and the Tatar Republic within the Russian Federation with its own titular nationality, the Tatars, although they are Russian citizens.

All that your form has done has made more granular questions based on the fact that various people with a legacy from British colonialism now live in the UK, Indians and Pakistanis. 

So I don't see it as that different, and there is no Indian or Pakistani lobby in the US trying to get the standard forms changed to differentiate "Asians". 

You would also have to indicate what social good you get out of such granulation. For example if my neighbour can put down Pakistani and I can put down Irish, what changes about our social services? The pork is kept out of the cafeteria and the fish is supplied on Fridays during Lent? But that is done anyway by every single practical business establishment. My local grocery store has towers of food called "Hispanic" whether anyone likes that term or not, including Goya black beans which some want to boycott as a way of defeating Trump, although there are better ways that can be used and were used. They tower up the kosher food around Jewish holidays, and stock up on the fish for Lent. There are now Czech krustalniki because there were more Czechs in the building as there are a lot of UN people. There are more frozen Indian dinners because a lot of Indian IT guys moved in. Etc. This is the ethnic restaurant approach to interracial relations in NYC which works pretty well, better than parts of French cities, for example. But ultimately, you have to ask what is it that you want to get out of the Lindens by non-American differentiation? And I think I've answered that it's mainly about economics: for the rest of the world to participate, it has to be cheaper. That doesn't seem very virtuous or very glorious; so I need you to spell out that virtuous act that would mean for you that the Lindens had jumped over their own knees and supplied that global perspective that you think they are lacking. Kinder eggs with real toys inside the chocolate egg, which are banned here due as a choking hazard?

 

You asked me for an example of the kind of questions I'm used to seeing in the UK, and I provided one.    If you want to find out why the Office for National Statistics use the categories they do, you can read more about it here

https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/questiondevelopment/ethnicgroupnationalidentityreligionandlanguage

The ONS' contact details are also there if you want to take it further.

All I said was that the questions weren't what I'd expect to see in a questionnaire aimed at a British cohort, because it isn't, or what I imagine similar questionnaires aimed at French, Russian, Japanese or Nigerian audiences would be like, which made me wonder if, in fact,  it was sent to anyone but Americans.

Any non-US residents here received one?

 

[CaithLynnSayes]

Just now, Prokofy Neva said:

So you say.

The following statement has no content or meaning in it. It is merely supplied as a tabula rasa for you to react to, in anyway you like, and take the opportunity to AR this statement, and whistle to your Moles to come running to ban authors or remove statements and/or close the thread.

[Statement]

Kind of a shame that you would try to rally up people to AR my factual post. but then again, we do live in a society where that kind of thing is normalized, so i won't hold anything against you.

I didn't say this to get a reaction, i'm just pointing out the obvious, and the small print is there purely because i know it will happen.

 

So, i'll try and bring a more productive response to this topic: How about this for a radical idea. How about we stop being freaking offended by pathetic labels and how someone named that label. We are humans, period. some of us aren't sure about their gender or if they even have one, but that's a whole other rabbit hole i won't go into. We are humans, we are people. I don't give a flying flip if you want to put me in the box "white", or whatever. I'm Dutch-Icelandic and foremost a human being, just like the rest of you. Is that such a wild concept? I really don't get why y'all seem to get your panties in such a ridiculous twist over this. It's kind of laughable. And @Prokofy Neva, if you'd be a little honest, you could see that some posts here have a whiff of racism and some are even straight on racist. I won't point them out because i'm not going to be the one that started WWIII. Maybe i went too far even saying it in the first place. I really don't know. You have to walk on eggshells everywhere these days.

[Tama Suki]

I don't think there were shades of racism in the things @Prokofy Neva wrote. At least not in what he wrote to me. Maybe I missed something. I don't know, many times I get lost in translation and don't grasp some concepts. Perhaps I can say that I have noticed a certain note of arrogance and a total closure typical of a thought that can easily be placed in a political context. This one does.

[Theresa Tennyson]

27 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

 

Any non-US residents here received one?

 

Alwin's Dutch; that's why this thread exists at all. One of the others who mentioned actually getting it is Canadian.

[Innula Zenovka]

19 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Alwin's Dutch; that's why this thread exists at all. One of the others who mentioned actually getting it is Canadian.

Thanks.   I guess it depends what the survey company is looking for.   It's a mistake, to my mind, to think this kind of survey is intended to build up complete pictures of respondents -- they're more about identifying particular data points that have statistical significance in whatever context it is they're interested in, so if the format works for them, then it works.   

I hope it provides useful answers to whatever questions LL's Marketing Department is trying to answer.

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

Kind of a shame that you would try to rally up people to AR my factual post. but then again, we do live in a society where that kind of thing is normalized, so i won't hold anything against you.

I didn't say this to get a reaction, i'm just pointing out the obvious, and the small print is there purely because i know it will happen.

 

So, i'll try and bring a more productive response to this topic: How about this for a radical idea. How about we stop being freaking offended by pathetic labels and how someone named that label. We are humans, period. some of us aren't sure about their gender or if they even have one, but that's a whole other rabbit hole i won't go into. We are humans, we are people. I don't give a flying flip if you want to put me in the box "white", or whatever. I'm Dutch-Icelandic and foremost a human being, just like the rest of you. Is that such a wild concept? I really don't get why y'all seem to get your panties in such a ridiculous twist over this. It's kind of laughable. And @Prokofy Neva, if you'd be a little honest, you could see that some posts here have a whiff of racism and some are even straight on racist. I won't point them out because i'm not going to be the one that started WWIII. Maybe i went too far even saying it in the first place. I really don't know. You have to walk on eggshells everywhere these days.

I am honest. And no, they aren't racist whatsoever. I am explaining forms that are the products of 25 years of civil rights activism and minority lobbying, and that's a good thing because it has contributed to removing at least in part some disparities in health care and education. And my reference to ARs was you and your friends here ARing me, not me ARing you, because I never AR people on the forums. But see if you can find something there or here:

[Statement]

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Rolig Loon]

The broader the target audience and the more complex the goals of a survey are, the harder it is to create a questionnaire that isn't flawed in some way.  That's why it's important to hand the job to professionals instead of trying to build a questionnaire yourself using boilerplate language. I have no idea where this one came from, so I'm not trying to point a finger at the designer, but it looks like it at least failed to go through a critical review before it was released into the wild.  I feel a bit sorry for whoever will have to make sense of the results.

[CaithLynnSayes]

Ok, let's get one thing very clear. I DON'T AR.... I'm adult and i know i'm on the internet. (Make of that what you will). Also please don't insinuate that i would AR you together with "friends" (none of my friends are active on these forums, FYI). 

 

Let's just agree to disagree and move on. As i said before, i'm not trying to start anything.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

3 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

Ok, let's get one thing very clear. I DON'T AR.... I'm adult and i know i'm on the internet. (Make of that what you will). Also please don't insinuate that i would AR you together with "friends" (none of my friends are active on these forums, FYI). 

 

Let's just agree to disagree and move on. As i said before, i'm not trying to start anything.

Don't take it to personally.  She's accused us all of having moles in our pockets and getting special treatment.   Welcome to the club.

[CaithLynnSayes]

21 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

Don't take it to personally.  She's accused us all of having moles in our pockets and getting special treatment.   Welcome to the club.

Not at all what i was saying or aiming at, but, sure...

Edited January 13, 2022 by CaithLynnSayes

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Tama Suki said:

Luckily I lost them otherwise I would have been banned for life from this forum.

Interesting that you saw yourself in that statement yet emphasize White in a couple posts.  Seems I was correct.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

59 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

And no, they aren't racist whatsoever. I am explaining forms that are the products of 25 years of civil rights activism and minority lobbying, and that's a good thing because it has contributed to removing at least in part some disparities in health care and education.

Prok is dead right on this one.

Survey questions like these aren't about being "woke" or catering to delicate sensibilities -- they are intended to inform government and social policy. If a survey reveals -- as it certainly would -- that First Nations people earn less money, have lower life expectancies, less access to healthcare and educational opportunities, etc. etc. etc., then it is highlighting a social inequity that it is literally the government's job to address.

Or, if the idea of righting inequities "offends" you, it simply means that governments -- as well as NGOs and social programs -- are able to make better informed and more intelligent policy decisions.

About 10 years ago, the Conservative government in Canada abolished the "long census form" which collected much of this kind of granularity. (It's been reinstated since.) They argued it was about "cost cutting," but the reality is that they didn't want to know about the inequities -- and more importantly, they didn't want anyone else to know about them.

Arguably, it's more complicated when it is not a government but rather a marketing firm that is asking this information. But if LL determines, for instance, that SL is not diverse enough -- or, perhaps, that men aren't as well represented as they demographically should be -- then this arms them with the information they might need to make the platform more diverse, and include a more representative sampling of genders.

It's legit to discuss the particulars of the language used, or the categories identified. But arguing that we should consciously choose to be more poorly informed is just dumb.

Edited January 13, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Nick0678]

6 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

It is the standard list used in any form or survey of any type anywhere.etc etc

 

Prok.. seriously you don't have to write 500 word essays on everything, personally i never read them cause life is too sort and i get sleepy, facts are facts THEY COPIED IT LETTER BY LETTER simple as that. (..even caps probably some kindergarten graduate made it.)

Ridiculous Essay

 

VeryWellMind Inc

Edited January 13, 2022 by Nick0678

[Prokofy Neva]

12 minutes ago, Nick0678 said:

Prok.. seriously you don't have to write 500 word essays on everything, personally i never read them cause life is too sort and i get sleepy, facts are facts THEY COPIED IT LETTER BY LETTER simple as that. (..even caps probably some kindergarten graduate made it.)

Ridiculous Essay

 

VeryWellMind Inc

They didn't copy it because it is the standard template EVERYWHERE. And I mean EVERYWHERE. I have explained it multiple times, and at length. If you didn't want to read it, fine, but do give up your notion that this company "copied it" from some random site you found on the Internet "word for word" because it already exists EVERYWHERE in just that form, as it is government approved.

Now give it up and find something better to do that actually helps diminish racism and discrimination in our world, real and virtual or actually helps LL to plan for the future rationally.

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

Don't take it to personally.  She's accused us all of having moles in our pockets and getting special treatment.   Welcome to the club.

 

[Tama Suki]

45 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Interesting that you saw yourself in that statement yet emphasize White in a couple posts.  Seems I was correct.

Huh? What? Sorry i really don't get you this time. Can explain what do you mean?

[Nick0678]

18 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

They didn't copy it because it is the standard template EVERYWHERE. And I mean EVERYWHERE. I have explained it multiple times, and at length. If you didn't want to read it, fine, but do give up your notion that this company "copied it" from some random site you found on the Internet "word for word" because it already exists EVERYWHERE in just that form, as it is government approved.

Now give it up and find something better to do that actually helps diminish racism and discrimination in our world, real and virtual or actually helps LL to plan for the future rationally.

Racism? Ahahaha, my PARTNER is a fine sexy black woman from the UK and she laughs with this too!

Edited January 13, 2022 by Nick0678

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

The broader the target audience and the more complex the goals of a survey are, the harder it is to create a questionnaire that isn't flawed in some way.  That's why it's important to hand the job to professionals instead of trying to build a questionnaire yourself using boilerplate language. I have no idea where this one came from, so I'm not trying to point a finger at the designer, but it looks like it at least failed to go through a critical review before it was released into the wild.  I feel a bit sorry for whoever will have to make sense of the results.

You can be sure it *did* get a critical view, as it is extremely rare for the Lindens to poll their customers in this way. I can remember once when they had focus groups where they selected power users and flew them all-expense paid to San Francisco for a confab. I don't know whether they go their money's worth with that. With COVID, they can't do that now. So it is what it is.

It didn't raise any uproar within their offices because -- once again -- this form is absolutely standard and the norm everywhere. If they *didn't* put a race/ethnicity section on their survey, you can be sure that all the Americans reading the survey, and even Canadians would say "But why aren't I polled on my race and ethnicity so I can be represented?!"

So if you think that it's Amero-centric, that's fine, but then I would encourage you to analyze what you think they could actually yield by making a different/more granular/more European/more Asian survey or no survey. These boxes are the product of decades of anti-discrimination lobbying, and they work because programs are then instated by governments to address the imbalance. 

If this survey was for the purpose of providing education or health care, and it had NO boxes like this, you would worry whether they would be sensitive to real disparity and differences among populations in their access to health care and treatment. If this survey had "Pakistani" or "Japanese" or "Colombian" or "Peruvian" or "First Nations" among the boxes, what *different thing* would you get for the purposes of surveying *a virtual world*? 

After all, the virtual world isn't the real world; in some ways it is better, some ways it is worth. Since you're smart and free of reactionary forums posts, I ask you in all sincerity: what *different thing* would you hope to get out of this survey if it did the things you want? If it had that special non-Americo-centric stance? And we've already pretty much agreed that the ready answer is "more responses about how it's all too expensive or doesn't accept payments from many countries' banks".

So what ELSE would you say could be captured by a more sensitive and granular survey? Better Japanese buildings in Jeogeot?  The Lindens have given up building such things on the old Mainland; they only do them for Bellisseria? Should we ask for more dojas and yurts and izbas and adobes in future Bellisseria iterations? I mean, let's try to be practical here. Let's say the Lindens ignore their non-American customers. What is it that these customers want that LL does not provide other than cheaper costs?

Every day and in every way, I deal with non-American customers; I dare say they make up the majority of my hundreds of customers. I use Google translate; I use my deep knowledge of certain cultures and languages and superficial knowledge of other cultures and knowledges to try to give them what they want, which usually consists of a house, a sky platform, some trees, and maybe some furniture. Some people want a house that goes with their actual RL culture, let's say Japanese or ranch American. Others are subject to mass taste and mass media and want something exactly like a ranch they saw on "Dallas". Most humans and furries and other avatars are universal in their desire for cheap rent, more prims, security, and safety for their friends and family to live their lives as they wish. Did I miss anything here?

I once checked into a hotel in Vienna, Austria and the hotel clerk got to chatting and then asked me in puzzlement and exasperation. "Why would you give your daughter a Ferrari for her birthday? Isn't that kind of spoiling the child?" I said I didn't give my daughter a Ferrari for her birthday. I gave her a book and a sweater. He stared in disbelief. He had formed an opinion that "all Americans" are rich and give lavish gifts because he watched "Dallas" or one of these sit-coms; even "Roseanne" would give the impression of absolute luxury for many countries because the children had their own rooms all to themselves, with computers in them.

There is a universal desire for security and peace and they want orbs; I don't allow them, but they can find another landlord who will. They want control, and they have it, with ban powers, etc. That is universal human nature. I replicate LL sometimes in my little communities to see "how it works" and I can tell you unambiguously that the more surveys, notecards, billboards that you have around, the more you attempt to somehow "solicit feedback," the more you will be ignored. The feedback comes either in a refund or payment of another month, the end.

Typically my newsletter to some 2000 people in my 14 groups, probably 500 of whom haven't logged on in recent months, will be ignored by nearly all of them; it's like that 2% return that junk mail gives marketers.

So in all absolute seriousness: what could this survey, if done better, yield to change LL's menu? What is the "ask", as we say in New York? 

There is one overall thing I have learned about differences among cultures and nationalities through my rentals. People from big countries -- Texas, Brazilians, Russians, what have you -- tend to spread out and overprim, perhaps because their sense of themselves is that they are in a large space they should dominate. People from smaller countries -- UK, Japan, Costa Rica, tend to stay within boundaries, not use up their prims, and make intricate gardens. If you find these generalizations offensive, well, run a rentals company and get back to me.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

16 minutes ago, Nick0678 said:

Racism? Ahahaha, my PARTNER is a fine sexy black woman from the UK and she laughs with this too!

That's good. I don't know if you're familiar with the American realization long ago that the worst way to win an argument regarding race relations is to invoke the phrase "Some of my best friends are..."

It's a dead giveaway in every argument.

That's why I personally don't use that style of argumentation in this thread.