Sling Trebuchet

..... But Cory Linden decided that there could be no "no" vote. In fact, this is a very intensely held view of many a geek, and particularly many geek Lindens. They really don't believe in voting at all. They believe in a kind of democratic centralism in the IRC channel, a kind of tribal consensus building, not up and down voting. Voting undermines that tribal authority, and they as a class don't like it. We see this in many platforms -- you can't "dislike" on Facebook, but only "like," you can only "favour" on Twitter, and not "disfavour". Cory -- like many a geek on the forums -- insisted that there "couldn't" be any "no" vote because it would be "gamed". Why he would think this argument was at all persuasive is totally beyond me, given that rampant way in which "yes" is also gamed. .... The 'supression of contra' is really a preciousness and a *burst into tears and cry "Why can't we all get along"* I heard about the Love Machine in use in LL when I joined. It seemed to me that the culture that it generated would explain some of the strange things that LL did. If someone proposed something, however full of holes or in need of enhancement, it would be seen as bad form to dissent. Somebody arguing against something would make people feel bad, and the person making them cry would not get any votes in the Love Machine. There are brain-storming techniques that acknowledge that there will be dissent, but try to channel that dissent in a constructive way. Suppressing 'No' because one is unable to concieve of anything other than Yes/No polarisation is a cop-out that must end up in bad decisions.

I find that the easiest place to check on progress of JIRAs is the JIRA. A sub-folder of bookmarks works for me. Filtering emails is dishonest!! Poor old LL is sitting there thinkng that Watch=email means interest, and you are giving people advice on how to turn all Watches into Votes for a one-time investment of 30 seconds. Well, tsk !! and tut-tut!!

..... After all, consider that several hundred votes is a high number as jira votes go, but miniscule compared to almost any subset of the customer base you choose. Combine that with the lack of negative votes, ... The negative votes are picked up by reading the postings. The votes overall are an indicator of resident concerns. The people who are of a character that gets them to seek out and post in blogs, JIRA and forums are indeed a minority of the entire population. It would be a fatal mistake to dismiss them as just a vocal minority of the population. When people post about about some issue, they are not "a small percentage of the population" What they actually are is "a small percentage of the people who are exercised about the issue". For every one person venting here about an issue, there are thousands who suffer the issue in silence. The venters at least can gets things off their chests in a forum in which they think they might perhaps have some hope of being heard by someone who can do something about it. The majority of the population who are affected by the issue just bitch to their friends or to themselves about "SL!" They are the ones who are more likely to stop logging in. Us poor fools who post in places like this are doomed to stay in SL. So don't worry too much about us. Worry about the silent ones. (Edited to put manners on the tiny percentage of typos that vented in the original version)(and expand just a tiny bit)

That's not quite right... we'll use "Watching" as a guage of interest, not of support. That's one of the flaws in the Jira voting system that makes it hard to really use to make our choices: you can only vote for something, but not against it. In order to understand why people are interested, we'll read the comments in the issue, and everyone watching will get them too. It's no accident that this will put a premium on thoughtful commentary and will, we hope, provide some disincentive to just flame. I don't see that. Flamers can still just post their flames, leaving all the watchers with the emails in their inboxes. That's a disincentive to watch - which apparently turns out to be a disincetive to express an interest. Voting but not Watching was a way to express an interest but avoid being mail-bombed. Now we'll still have a way to express an interest, but no way of opting out of the emails. I've mostly bookmarked JIRAs that I was interested in. I like to read things in their context. As for the ability to vote against something, nothing is changing. The 'votes against' were always visible in the postings. It will be exactly the same in the future. All the people who used to just Vote will now Watch as it is the only way for them to flag interest. The only thing that will actually change is that more people will be irritated by the emails.

Today, we do not use voting to triage or to make product decisions and the last thing that we want to do is set false expectations. I really have to come back on this insane situation. Right now there are three JIRAs suggesting changes to reduce the damage done by some products that are using in-world devices combined with off-world server to uncover and disclose to anyone who pays, a list of suspected alts for an avatar. It's a serious breach of Data privacy. One JIRA has 440 votes, but only 60 watchers. That's a lot of angry upset people to be ignoring !! Is this <b> listening </b> ? The 60 has only grown recently as word begins to spread that LL indicate a voting mechanism, but actually ignore it.

I wouldn't touch FaceBook with a bargepole. .... not even with somebody else's bargepole ! Twitter? That's like utra-short IM's for people with short attention span ?? Ok. I'll sign up for Twitter (carefully), but only if you promise to Tweet the entire content of your blog posting.

Today, we do not use voting to triage or to make product decisions and the last thing that we want to do is set false expectations. So, when you are interested in what action we will take on a particular JIRA, use the JIRA “Watch” feature so that you will be immediately updated in email when there are new comments on that particular JIRA issue. We will continue to use the number of Watchers as an indication of the level of interest. That's a very novel and intriquing approach. Perhaps countries would be better run if that principle were applied to all elections. Let people vote for whoever they want, but don't tell them that their votes will not be counted unless they can be seen to be keeping an eye on the activities of the candidate that they voted for. Only a minory get the have their votes actually counted, but the downside for them is that they are forced to listen to everything that is ever said about their candidate. No reading newspapers, news sites for them at a time of their choice! There is a flaw in the logic of what you have been doing and what you propose to continue doing. You are assuming that a 'Watch' is a vote in favour. What about the people who hate the idea, and are watching to keep an eye out for arguments in favour that they would come in an speak against? If the method were applied to RL political elections, candidates could get elected on the basis of the number of people who hate them. ---- which is kind of the way it actually turns out in the long run anyway , I suppose. we know that it has sometimes been confusing and difficult to communicate with us and we can always do a better job of listening. .... eh....... dum-di-dum-di-diddly-dum ..mmmm.... no comment?

Itazura Radio wrote: Probably. Lindens take any misuse (or perceived misuse) of the Linden name very seriously. Wasn't her signature something to the effect of "I'm only a Linden in Viewer 2" or something like that? Not smart. Some things you can't joke about because they will take you seriously. You don't say "bomb!" in an airport even as a joke unless you want to spend the next few hours in a very small room with very unamused people. Yes, but the airport security people are humourless bureaucrats with Vogon personalities ---- whereas the Lindens .........eh... Anyhoo... I do remeber that as a freshly born noob in a Welcome Centre, I thought that the people with "Officer" (as their group tag, I later discovered) were some sort of Linden police. So I suppose I would have asked a "SomebodyIinden" for a bear --- if I knew about such things -- and if I actually cared about bears. I'm not sure what I'll say if I come across someone with "Sling Trebuchet" as their Display Name. Probably something like "WOW! What a great name!"

Starchild Magic wrote: .......Whether or not it's easy to find in the TOS, it's common sense not to impersonate a Linden in any way, shape, or form. And the fact that she knew who the Lindens are, knew she should not use "L-i-n-d-e-n" in her display name, and knew that she should put something in her profile saying "I am not really a Linden," shows that she has been around long enough to know that it was a bad idea. There's no excuse for what she did and rightfully was banned for. I was wandering around a new chunk of Corsica sims before they were put on auction. I bumped into Guy Linden. What was it about the group tag he was flying? "I am not a Linden" Something like that

"..., probably on my new alt (username and display name of simply ‘Jack’)." Well, at least you'll still be the one and only Jack. ~ from the one and only SLing