Phil Deakins
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Posts posted by Phil Deakins
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Boudicca Littlebird wrote:My own view is that there is no goodwill, whether there was once I don't know, but I am reminded of a linden statement over the homesteads, "added value", they saw homesteads were selling well and upped the tier, I like many others just abandoned my Sims, estate owners had no choice, most tried but only those with grandfather agreements survived and undercut all others, that is now part of sl history.
That was the single largest thing that turned me against LL. It didn't affect me (financially) in the slightest, but it showed the nature of LL. They did plenty of things against their customers that made my heart sink (for want of a better description of the effect) and that was the biggest of them.
But I disagree when you say that "there is no goodwill". There is none from me but that's because I've seen, over time, how they've treated their customers. Before I saw it time after time, I had a great deal of goodwill towards the company, as tends to be normal with a compies we are new to. Most current users haven't seen it over time because they haven't been here very long, so I would guess that there is plenty of goodwill towards LL, albeit unjustified.
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I think it still works in the same way.
@the OP
The auctions are run in perfectly fair way. They are done the same as RL auction rooms; i.e. people can leave their maximum bid with the auctioneer who will bid on their behalf up to that maximum. The difference between those RL auctions and online ones is that things can happen so fast at the end that they can't be followed. If a piece of land is a must have, as it was in this case, you ought to have used the provided system and set your maximum bid. That way, you would have got it, probably at much less than your max, unless someone else was willing to pay more, in which case you wouldn't have wanted it.
It was unfortunate that your connection froze at the wrong time but, even if it hadn't, things could have moved so quickly that you'd have missed the land anyway. If the other person put a maximum in, you wouldn't have got the land. Even without the other person putting a maximum in, his/her bid may have been so late that you wouldn't have had time to bid again.
If you're going to bid on auction land, and you really want a particular piece, you must enter a maximum bid or there's a very good chance you won't get it. There's a reasonable chance that your maximum won't get it either but you wouldn't want to pay more than your maximum, so that would be ok.
Incidentally, last second bidding ("auction sniping", as you puit it) is a very valid and sensible way of bidding, because it can work very well, as you found out. It may "suck" when you're on the wrong end of it but the practise doesn't suck at all. It's the losing feeling/frustration that actually sucks.
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Griffin Ceawlin wrote:There are people who still use IE? :smileyfrustrated:
Probably most people.
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Shockwave Yareach wrote:IP bans are simple to evade -- just unplug the cable modem from power and the coax for an hour, then plug it all back together again. The cable modem will get a new IP address at this point.
As jwenting said, it depends on your ISP. I don't have a fixed IP but it takes a lot more than an hour unplugged (cable modem) for it to change. It takes quite a few days of being unpowered before it will change the next time I power up - perhaps a week or so.
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Madelaine McMasters wrote:5-24-2016The remains of Amelia Earhart and an unidentified male are discovered locked in an embrace under a palm tree on an uncharted desert isle. A heart is found carved in the tree's trunk, enveloping the letters G and A.
I watched a documentary not too long ago, about some human remains that had been found on an island. Apparently, there was evidence therre to suggest that it could have been Amelia Earhart and another but nothing definitive was established.
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Ceka Cianci wrote:i don't need to be in constant communication with LL..infact i don't want to be in a position where i have to worry why they haven't spoken to me..i don't need updated constantly..
I don't mean "constant communication". I just mean communication when it's needed. The grossly faulty marketplace is just an example of the lack of it. The faults (described in detail a few posts back) have customers tearing their hair out. Those customers aren't just chatting amongst themselves about it. As customers, they want the company to communicate with them about it and keep them informed as to progress, etc., but they don't get more that "we know there's a problem and we're dealing with it". Apparently, they've "known about and are dealing with" some of the faults a lot longer than the customers realised. It would be fine if the fix was reasonably quick but it's been many months and they are being told nothing. They are paying customers, and they are treated like that!
I'm sorry, Ceka, but I see nothing about Rodvik that is improving users' SL experience. You gave the tools that may come from Realms as something positive, which it is, but it's only a small improvement. There have been big changes in the past - sculpties, mesh (started before Rodvik, I think), etc. - under previous CEOs, so Rodvik's small 'tools' change isn't anything to his great credit. Making the company treat its customers as actual customers would be greatly to his credit, but he has overseen a decline in that particular aspect. I'm sorry, but I see nothing good from him at all, and I do see a decline.
People, including me, actually want to feel like the company and the users are on the same side in the SL venture, just like it is with normal companies and their customers, but it's a 'them and us' situation and I see no signs of it changing. It didn't used to be like that but it's like that now.
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JeanneAnne wrote:>>To be honest, I've never used the marketplace, or its predecessors, so all the screw-ups that LL have caused with it haven't affected me in the slightest.<<Then why do you even care?Why do you keep complaining about it? It's like you're obsessingover something that apparently doesn't even concern you.
I care because SL is something that I've enjoyed and I would have liked LL to treat customers as normal companies treat customers. I've observed many things that LL have done that have turned me against the company. Those things never needed to affect me personally. They showed the character/nature of the company, and that's what matters to me.
I don't complain about it. I make statements of what I believe to be facts. I don't obsess about it. I make statements as to what I've observed. When the topic comes up, I'm more than happy to join in, but it's not by way of complaints as such, and it's not obsession.
The way that LL treats customers does concern me because I am a customer. The fact that each individual thing they do against customers doesn't affect me personally is irrelevant.
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Storm Clarence wrote:Either you do it, or you don't.Do you?
You are wrong with your "Either you do it, or you don't" statement. I do it a little - only the essential bits - and I don't think qualifies for the left side of your statement - but it may be me who's wrong.
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PeachJubilee wrote:I think from the patchy communication that LL's stance is that it is a years old problem form the XStreet migration that just seemed worse because of all the DD transition activity. This apparently made the problem much more visible or something.Anyway, more or less, they are aware and always have been aware of this problem. They are and always have been fixing it.In good news, chocolate rations have gone up.
Wow! It really has been going on a long time now and there is no indication of it being fixed. If it came from the XStreet migration, it wasn't very widespread because I don't recall everyone being up in arms about it until the DD switch. Even so, it's such a bad fault that, even if it didn't affect many merchants after the XStreet transfer, it really should have been fixed back then - a very long time ago. But it's indicative of what LL, the decision-makes/company, thinks about their paying customers.
To be honest, I've never used the marketplace, or its predecessors, so all the screw-ups that LL have caused with it haven't affected me in the slightest. Some of the other things I mentioned in this htread, such as the Homestead fiasco, didn't affect me either. But it's years of watching LL's perfoemance towards their paying customers that slowly turned my goodwill towards them into actual ill-will. I'm not neutral. I am positively against LL, the company, and I wouldn't lift a finger to help them in any way.
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When I used the word "novelty" I meant the tools that may come from Realms. You described horses and zombies, for instance. That's novelty to me. Mesh and sculpties are also novelty compared to customer service and relations. Many people pay LL hundreds of US$ each and every month. For that, they can expect reasonable customer service and they don't get it anything like it. Adding 'novelties' isn't an alternative to my way of thinking.
Judging by a post in this thread since we started this mini-dialogue, the marketplace is still badly screwed up. It doesn't matter that someone, like yourself, gets quick deliveries, or that someone who was absent for a couple of weeks notices quicker deliveries when they get back. The thing doesn't work properly, whether everybody notices it or not. Just ask those many merchants who's marketplace stores show the wrong stuff - as described in the post I mentioned. But this isn't about the faulty marketplace. It's about LL's lack of communication to its paying customers (marketplace merchants) about the massive faults. They used to communicate a bit but it stopped. And it stopped during Rodvik's tenure.
Of course different people see things in different ways, as you said, because different people do different things. But just because one person doesn't see a fault, doesn't mean that there isn't a fault. It's the ones who do see the faults who should be listened to, because they do things where the faults actually show up. Unfortunately, LL's policy is not to listen to their own paying customers. They don't talk to customers and they don't listen to customers. Any exceptions prove that rule - because they are exceptions. The company (decision-makers) don't deserve any goodwill from their customers. They don't try to get any and they don't deserve any.
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PeachJubilee wrote:With respect to the market, that's nice for you Ceka but it does not help the person with G rated products who has someone's BDSM gear showing up on their G rated listing, in their G rated store which they are checking up on while they are logged in with their settings set up to only see G rated items, from their place of work in Saudi Arabia. Nor does it help a teen checking their store in similar circumstances while their parent is over their shoulder, and if it comes to that and the parent happens to be particularly "sue-happy" it probably won't help LL much either.
Haven't they fixed that problem yet? It's been quite a while since I read about it happening to a lot of marketplace merchants. It's completely ludicrous that it started happening at all. Has LL said anything worth saying about it or are they still in the 'we don't have to tell you anything' mode?
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Your post was much too big to quote, Ceka, so I'll just write a few thoughts
A well run company caters to the needs of its customers. I don't see any improvement in catering to LL's customers. In fact, I see a deterioration. Some of the things you mentioned are true - Realms, for instance. But I'd much rather have the return of decent customer service than new novelty features.
I've only heard one interview given by Oz. It was good but where is all the communication? Lindens were instructed to stop communicating. You mentioned the marketplace. Where was the communication when it fell over after the direct delivery switch. Customers were screaming in the marketplace sub-forum but there was nobody there who would answer their screams. One person described it as WW3 breaking out.
I'd love LL to treat customers as customers, so that customers actually feel like real customers, but I have not seen any evidence at all of it happening. All I ever see is the whittling away of what there was.
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Boudicca Littlebird wrote:If you have no problems with the lindens then you have no problem with goodwill, the goodwill I talk of is the goodwill between you and the lindens and if you feel it is balanced, you have said it is, whereas others like Phil says it is not.
That's not quite what I meant, and what I've said numerous times in this forum. Apart from (some of) the Lindens who man the AR system, who simply don't do what LL pays them to do, I have no ill-will towards Lindens. In fact, I have a great deal of goodwill towards some of them. It's the company that I have ill-will for, which means the decision-makers.
It's the decision-makers who instructed Lindens to stop communicating with their customers. Yes, that did happen. It's the decision-makers who decided to cut down so much on customer support, to the extent that hardly any exists any more. It's the decision-makers who screwed their customers (financially) in the Homestead fiasco. It's the decision-makers who totally ignored their customers by pressing on regardless with the V2 viewer, in spite of a 95% vote against it in their own poll. It's the decision-makers who chose to communicate via external systems, wherre their customers wouldn't see it. It's the decision-makers who unscrupulously plugged their own website mall at the expense of SL stores. The company is run by the decision-makers, so it's the company that I have ill-will towards and not the lower down ranks of Lindens..
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I think that LL is only about money - M, Rodvik, whoever. Of course, businesses are about money but most businesses also cater for their customers, if only because ssatisfying customers more profitable, whereas LL turns a blind eye and caters only for the company. That's what I mean when I use the word "care". I sometimes put it another way - LL doesn't give a damn about their customers as customers. They only give a damn about getting as much as they can from them.
You said that "as long as it works...". It doesn't work. It used to work but it hasn't worked for a very long time and Rodvik shows no signs of making it work. The system (SL itself) largely works, of course, but there's more to running a company well than that. Customer service only manages to work sometimes. Also, keeping the customer informed hardly works at all. It's things like that that don't work, and they are very important to the whole
I'm pleased that you haven't had any problems with the marketplace for some time, but it's not many weeks since the whole thing was really b.ggered, and it stayed that way for quite some time. Switching over to direct delivery caused it. Some time ago, those who were dealing with marketplace problems posted about them in the forum, but that came to a stop, and nobody was telling LL's paying customers anything, and the customers had to grin and bear it.
On the whole, LL does not work as a normal company with paying customers. It hasn't worked like one for years, and there are no signs that I'm aware of that anything is about to change. Rodvik has been here for about 1½ years and things between LL and customers have got worse in that time, as others have also pointed out in this thread. It's not that they aren't aware of the customer dissatisfaction. It's that they don't care enough about customers to do anything about it. Rodvik may be marginally successful in improving profits for LL but he's absolutely no good in the customer department and, imo, intentionally keeping the customers dissatisfied is failure on his part.
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The bounding box and faulty security system ideas don't appear to apply as the OP said that friends can walk on the ground without having the problem. I suppose the security idea could be true if the neighbour has the OP on the security device's ban list and its range is too wide. But even then, no security device should be able to eject people that are not "over my land". It can't eject from other people's land. It can issue warnings, of course, but not actually eject. I don't think so, anyway.
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Venus Petrov wrote:Boudicca Littlebird wrote:I have noticed that the goodwill between some and the lindens is very thin, is there two groups here, one that come to SL to be entertained and another group that come here to do business, what I have noticed in these threads is that those that run business are very stressedand on their last legs as regards goodwill,whereas the ones here for just entertainment can see nothing wrong and dismiss the other group out of hand, am I wrong or is this a trend?From my own point of view I am here for business, I find the lindens aloft and out of touch, like they judge all people by how much money they can get from them, directly or indirectly, I have also found they use some residents as spy's just to ask questions while they listen (do I give those a disjointed view on life, lol), the thing about people focused on money is that they are very backward in all other areas, but that is my view do any others share it?
Nearly 100% of the sellers in SL with whom I have had any experience have wonderful customer service and aim to satisfy even the nastiest customers. I do not know what you mean by the bolded statement but I have not experienced this and I have been in SL over five years.I think the OP means goodwill towards LL. If s/he does, then I have no goodwill towards LL. It faded away years ago - entirely due to LL themselves. In fact I have ill-will towards the company.
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Ceka Cianci wrote:it pretty much seems the same to me..infact it has been worse at some points..especially when the CEO M was around..a lot of the LL doesn't care anymore came from His era..Rodvik is at least putting an effort into trying to fix that...
He is? How long has he been here now? A year or more? It doesn't taker anywhere near that long to show users that they matter to the company as users and not just as dollars. In his time, the marketplace has been very badly screwed up and the Lindens who deal with it, and who did communicate, became silent. In his time, the way that LL communicates to the users has deteriorated from very bad to much worse. I don't see any evidence that Rodvik is trying to show the users that LL cares about them. All he's doing is showing that LL cares about LL's profits, and that's all.
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Coby Foden wrote:Phil Deakins wrote:The short answer is no. The more detailed answer is no.
Phil, you are the master of words. I admire the way you stated the truth, in short way and in detailed way. :matte-motes-big-grin:If something is worth saying, it's worth explaining it in detail, so there can't be any mistakes in interpretation/translation - imo, of course
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Ceka Cianci wrote:what is a sex fiend anyways? someone that really loves to have sex? or someone that makes everything about sex?
... or a typo - "fiend" instead of "friend"
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16 wrote:yesis 2 different problemsthe 2nd one that brenda is describing as well, also happens on my linden homes sim some days. is a pita as well that oneyou try to rez and it just doesnt. so you do again. and again. and again. sometimes nothing happens and have to relog. other times is like a big delay then you get upto one for each time you tried. but sometimes lessdont know why. it just goes like that sometimeswhen is happening combined with the 1st problem then can make you a bit crazy
Maybe it accounts for many of the people who use SL
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It's the green Reply button on the bottom-left of the page that's screwed up. It should reply to the OP but it doesn't unless you're on the first page.
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I read about the two sets of default anims a few posts up. I hadn't heard of it before. So I've just switched to each set and neither affects my AO's walk. If it's a widespread problem, I'm very surprised that we haven't heard anything about it here until your post. How long has it been happening to you?
Helm Anton wrote:Well there are two sets of internal animations now. The new set is the defualt set, it will not over ride even priority 1 animations, therefore they are at priority 0.if you have a stance or stand thats set to prioroty 2 or 3 and you try to walk you will slide locked in that pose, as the sl defualt walk (the new one) is a lower priority..therefore is over riden by the pri 2 or 3 stance, just as a walk in an AO is set to priority 3 and the stands to priority 2 or you wouldnt walk. (the new viewer walk and run is also more animated than the older ones..no more duck walk).The older versions of the SL walk and run are set at a highier priority (3 ), there fore they will over ride a stance or pose set to Pri 2 or 3 allowing you to walk and not slide when you move (Im not talking about AO's here).
That's not true. What you're saying is that, to change animations, you must start a higher, or perhaps equal, priority one than the one you are in. If that were true, you'd soon run out of animations that can be started. Once a priority 4 is started, you're stuck with 4s or slide, and that's not the way it works.
In your example, when you're standing, you are in stand animation - its priority doesn't matter. When you start to walk, the system knows (from your keypresses) to stop that stand animation and start a walk animation. The priority of the previous (stand) animation is irrelevant, so its priority can't cause you to slide in it. Whatever is causing your slides, it can't be the higher priority of the previous stand animation. The system isn't such that only starting a higher or equal priority animation can stop the previous one, or once you'd started a priority 4 animation, you'd have to relog to do anything other than 4s.
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Re-adding the mentor system to SL
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
I came across that effect in SL one, in an LL-owned group. Sometimes spam would be posted in group chat so a few of the members requested to be made moderators to deal with the spam when it came. They were made moderators for that purpose and almost immediately decided that they were in charge, when one of them tried to control what was discussed. Specifically, he'd watched a topic being discussed one day and then later in the day the topic came up again. Thinking himself in charge now, he decided that the topic had been discussed enough for that day, and he tried to stop it, even going to the lengths of chucking one person out of the group. The topic was redzone and wasn't even slightly heated. That same day, another of them said to me, "Do you think we should allow....". In other words, she also thought she was in charge to the extent of controlling what was and was not discussed.
They were made moderators to deal with the spam posts but immediately decided they had authority for everything - even to decide what could and could not be discussed.
Wanting to be 'in charge' of something is a common trait, but many people don't succumb to it. I don't think it would be too difficult to find people who are not so enamoured with self, and who would make good mentors if the system was ever brought back.