Phil Deakins

@Ossian. Thank you for the link. As you said, it just looks like gold stars and nothing of any substance or concern to users. To be honest, I don't understand the reason for this discussion - it's not as though a few people are given any power or authority in the forums.

What ranks are you all talking about? And is there somewhere that I can read about them? If they do bestow some extra 'powers' over other users, then they'll be abused. It will be very much like something I recently came across in an LL commerce group. LL wasn't moderating the group and it was sometimes spammed with ads. So a few of the members asked if they could moderate it to cover the spam, and they were allowed to. But as soon as they'd been given moderating powers, one or two of them decided that they could now control the topics of discussion in the group - something that they weren't given moderating powers for but something that they decided they could do anyway. (One of them even has a most vulgar name that is against the ToS). What happens is that, when some people are allowed to do something, and they find that can do other things with their new abilities, they go ahead and do it - because they can - and it makes them feel powerful - they like to be in charge. And example was one day when redzone had been discussed. Later in the day, the topic came up again but one 'moderator' decided that it had been discussed enough for the day and s/he insisted on it not being discussed, to the extent of removing a person from the group. S/he'd been given moderating abilities to protect against spam - that's all. Some people can be real children given the opportunity.

What's the point in discussing inworld marketing strategies when LL is hell bent on killing off inworld sales by pushing everyone at their own website mall, where they get a cut of sales - even when their system fails to deliver items! - and never ever pointing anyone to inworld stores? Is that good enough to stay in this thread and not be deleted like my last post was? Or isn't justified criticism of Linden Lab allowed in these forums any more?

You are mistaken as to what relevance is. If you do a search on "houses", for instance, then all houses are equally relevant to the searchterm, regardless of the price, quality, popularity, or anything else, and there can be no justified complaint about the order in which the houses are listed. Search engines have to list results in some order or other, even if it's merely the order in which they were found in the index. Whichever way the results are ordered is down to the engine and, as long as each result is a house, all the results are relevant - none more relevant than others, and none less relevant than others - and there can be no justified complaint. Price, popularity, whatever does not add to a house's relevancy for the searchterm.

I think you'll be waiting a long time for what you want, Lexbot. LL hasn't yet produced even a completed basic system for selling stuff; i.e. there has never been a way for a seller to know that an item has been delivered - and there never will be because LL isn't interested in the merchant - they are only interested in them getting a cut from sales. That's why they are intentionally killing inworld stores off, so that all sales will go through the marketplace and LL will get a cut.

InsanelyPure Macpherson wrote: Full region / Estate for sale Full Transfer 400 us$ Seller pays transfer Tire date: 27th Contact: InsanelyPure Machpherson or Thorvan Druart for further information Mail: thelighttowersc@gmail.com Is that the date when the new owner will become tired of the sim? If it is, it doesn't have much of a shelf life, does it? :smileyvery-happy:

This flaw must have been reported but just in case it hasn't... The tabs are wrongly positioned - that's the ANSWERS FORUMS BLOGS and KNOWLEDGE BASE tabs. They cover most of the breadcrumb links, leaving very little that can be clicked on, and part of the search box.

Nany - a few points:- 1. I agree with you that LL did a great job in creating Second Life. But that was a long time ago and the people who created it are no longer around. It's not that LL can't do anything right - it's that they can't run Second Life because they are incompetent at running it. Specifically, SL requires customers or it's completely dead, but LL refuses to even care about their customers and literally drives many away. 2. I also agree with you that LL does not have any responsibility to ensure that people can continue to make money from SL. That's nothing to do with this discussion. They do, however, have a great responsibility to treat their paying customers fairly, and to provide their paying customers with a reasonable level of customer support. Unfortunately, they won't do either of those things. They even resort to making false accusations against their paying customers when it is they who are totally in the wrong by cheating some people out of significant amounts of money. I'm refering to the homestead fiasco, of course. 3. Any competent company would take notice of what its customers say, but LL won't do that. Instead they shuffle things a bit (e.g. this new communications thing) and hope that it will pacify customers. But it never does, because nothing ever changes except a bit of shuffling. Whatever they shuffle, they steadfastly continue to provide the barest minimum of customer support, and they continue to ignore what customers say - in the forums and in these blogs, for instance. In other words, they take precious little notice of their own paying customers - the very people they *need* - and just carry in their own incompetent way. 4. If Linden Lab was competent to run SL, they would seek out the reasons why people leave, especially those who have been successful in SL over the years. If I uninstall a program from my computer, I am often asked to tell the program producers why. They want to know why people don't want their program any more. Unlike Linden Lab, they are competent companies. People are returning sims and abandoning land all over the grid and what does LL do? They fiddle with things. They shuffle things a bit. They ignore their paying customers, who are the only ones who *know* what's wrong because they actually *use* SL.

Mike Arabello: You asked, "Why are there so few posters offering a reasoned defense of LL's policies?" It's because there are no defenses for much of what LL does. There is no defense for their continuing with viewer 2, for instance, when 95% of voters in their own poll said "no" to viewer 2. There is no defense for screwing their own customers on homesteads. There is no defense for their continued use of this crap blog software for the forum. There is no defense for their reduction of live support to the extremely low level that it is now. There is no defense for the AR team's continual ignoring of genuine ARs. There is no defense for LL's continual failure to back up their own rules; e.g. the ban on traffic manipulation. There is no defense for LL's continual failure to incorporate a 'confirmation of delivery' into the SL system. Customers knew better than LL about all of those things, and a myriad of others, and customers told LL where they were wrong - loud and clear. So there is no defense at all for LL. There is a reason for LL's failings, of course - sheer incompetence - but that's not an acceptable defense.

Why not?

That's astonishing, Eddie. It's just another in the huge list of indefensible things that LL does. You pay a *lot* of money to LL every month and they refuse to provide you with customer support. It's all the more astonishing and indefensible because it's not something that would take more than a few seconds to do. It's just that they don't fancy providing you with the support you pay a lot for. 18 months ago, I decided that LL is no good - incapable of running SL and intentionally going against their own paying customers - and I decided to close my store. I'm not stupid enough to turn off the flow of money while it's worth having, so I've been allowing the store to run down ever since then. What I won't do is allow LL to have a penny that isn't absolutely necessary. So I've never participated in the marketplace, as I see it as LL greedily grabbing a cut of the commerce while they still can. My sales have naturally deteriorated since I decided to close down - not just because I've allowed it to run down, but also because of LL's unscrupulous behaviour in pushing everyone to their own website mall (the marketplace) at the direct expense of inworld stores. I recently abandoned half my land (half a mainland sim). I didn't even try to sell it because, if it sold, LL would continue to receive money (tier) for it. So I abandoned it to prevent them from getting any more money from it for the forseeable future. If what happened to you, happened to me, I'd be spitting nails and I'd be demanding service in no uncertain terms - and I'd be *very* loud about, right in front of everyone's face who mattered. To be honest, that's the only way I've ever got ARs dealt with - getting right in the face of those who matter and demanding the customer service that I pay for.

Amanda Linden said: But, Facebook is where we share some of the ones that we're excited about. That has to be one of the most idiotic things that I've ever seen a Linden write. If you're excited about something concerning SL, be excited IN SL - on the forum, for instance. Word soon gets round from the forum and it will be read by many more people than on Facebook or Twitter. THIS is Second Life - remember? It is not Facebook, Twitter, or any other such thing. If you want to make announcements concerning Second Life, make them IN Second Life.

This is just LL switching stuff around a bit and hoping that customers will be fooled. It will fail - just like all their similar tamperings fail. The idea of make it look shiny and they'll be happy, even though nothing has actually changed stopped working with LL's customers a very long time ago - or it should have stopped working. LL came up with the JIRA a few years ago, which included the feature of being able to vote, so that, the more votes there are for an issue, the more important it is to customers. Now they tell us that they don't even consider the number votes at all. To get a JIRA noticed, it has to have plenty of people watching it. But they didn't tell us that. It's typical of LL though and we shouldn't expect anything straight or sensible from them - including this blog. They'll do anything to avoid satisfying the customers, or even taking any notice at all of what customers are saying. I'm sorry folks but, if you expect any positive results or improvements from anything in Amanda's blog, you'll be very disappointed. It's just a smokescreen. It's merely LL putting on a fresh coat of paint to something, with the intention of sidetracking genuine customer needs and, thereby, fobbing them off. It really doesn't need a new coat of paint on the communication front to know what customers think and want, or to know what major bugs exist. It doesn't need a new system to know, for instance, that in LL's own poll, 95% of users said "no" to viewer 2 - a reasounding NO. It doesn't need a new communications system to know that there are various big problems with the Marketplace. There are highly suitable places for customers to communicate these things with LL, and they use them. All it needs is an LL attitude to hear what customers are saying AND to be open to them. But that's something that won't happen - not because it can't happen, but because there is no will at LL for it to happen.

I remember what I think was a recent blog about limiting the countries where LL will pay out to PayPal, but I can't find it. Can somebody point me to it please? I went through the "Process Credit" pages but found no link to it and no information about it. If my memory and understanding are correct, LL now only pays via PayPal to U.S. people but I'd like to read what they said about it.

LazerXXX. You wrote "OK, first off, Phil, I'll take my own advice when I see YOU do anything close to what Jack or any of the Lindens have done. Have you created your own virtual world?". Jack didn't create the SL virtual world, but he did his best to undermine it. That's why he got such flack in this farewell blog. To answer your question, yes I have created a virtual world - not a 3D one, but a 2D graphic multi-user one that I programmed from scratch - alone, although I really know why you asked the question. It predated 3D ones. As I said before, most people could do Jack's job. It's just that most people don't get the opportuinity that Jack had. You really should keep quiet about things you don't know. If you want to wish him well, wish him, but never find fault with those who criticise when you really don't know why they are criticising. ETA: I hadn't read your posts that came after the one I quoted from when I wrote this reply. I'm not trying to keep this little bit going.

LazerXXX. You have no idea what you are talking about or why people are so down on Jack, so you need to take you own advice - and shut the f up. You also haven't put much thought into your post. First, most people could do Jack's job but most people don't get the opportunity to "go do something about it", so your comment was written without any thought. Second, It didn't take the Lindens, or "any of them", to create SL, so that comment was written without knowledge. It took a very small number of people and "any of them " made no difference whatsoever to whether or not we are here. I can understand the feeling that people shouldn't be posting all the negative stuff about Jack at a time when he's been sacked, but it's posted because he deserves it, and has done for a very long time. A lot of people don't know about it, of course, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't deserve it. So it's better to keep your thoughtless comments to yourself when you don't know what you are talking about.

I wonder if Rod has the guts to listen to the actual customers or if he will continue LL's long-time practise and ignore them completely. Kingdon wrote an article about how necessary it is to listen to customers but that was before he joined LL. Upon joining, those thoughts went out of the window and he slotted in perfectly with the way things work here - ignore existing customers, who actually *have* a wealth of SL experience, and hope that salvation lies in the acquisitoon of new ones. Kingdon failed. I wonder how Rod will fair here. I'll hold back any "welcome" for him until I see how he does things.

"I will be leaving behind a Linden Lab that is in great shape. A Lab that is more focused on fixing the core features, more open and productive, and that remains on course for a very bright future indeed." *That* is typical of the reason why it is good for everyone that you're going, Jack. In that statement, you are either lying to us or you are incredibly blind. Either way, SL will be better when you've gone.

Grabbing one-word names to "protect" a brand wasn't an unreasonable idea because it's the name that shows up in the results and not the display name. That was until wednesday when LL dealt with it. Those one-word names are no longer listed at the top. I doubt that any searcher would have clicked on an avatar's listing for say, "sex", when plenty of place listings were immedately below it but, if they were of any benefit in the results, the benefit was short-lived. If Jack, as the manager of the searchteam, did anything to create a need for his existance, he's run out of luck. He's been given his notice and will be gone soon.

Those #1 rankings won't do them any good, so let them play with their new toy. Ask yourself this:- if you were searching for shoes, would you click on an avatar link or on a store link?

I wouldn't worry about those names ranking #1. I can't believe that LL will leave it like that. Also, they aren't going to help those people's sales. Nobody will follow a trail via an avatar to find a place that sells what they are looking for when there are plenty of listings of such places immediately below the name's listing. Grabbing names for that purpose is and was a waste of time.

Jack: about the spam filter part:- You say that "Edits are typically reflected on the World page in a few minutes ..." but you are wrong. Edits used to be reflected on the page in a few minutes but not now. It now takes hours for an edit to be viewable in the page, and sometimes not until the next day. That alone makes your new system virtually unworkable for place owners. To start with, all the biases will be included in the one "boost" figure, so we won't know if a negative boost is caused by page content or by something else. We could work with that if we could do as you suggested - experiment with the words on the page and see the updated page and boost in minutes. But, since it takes at least hours for any edit, and its effect on the boost, to be seen, the new system will be virtually impossible for users to work with. It could take goodness knows how many days of testng to find out which part of the page is causing the negative boost, when it may not even be the content at all. That's *really* bad. Do you really want people to empty their pages altogether and spend goodness knows how many days of adding bit by bit to find out which bit causes a negative boost? Judging by your blog, you didn't know that pages now take such a long time before any edits are viewable. Get that back to minutes and it will be workable but, as long as an edit takes hours to be reflected in the page, the new boost system will be virtually unworkable for users. You say that "the nature of the objects on your parcel" can be a negative factor, but you don't say what the "natures" are and we will be blind. I can only come up with three "natures" - normal, not-for-sale and html in the line. Normal objects can't be faulted and html is stripped out of the data that's fed to the GSA, so there's no need to penalise that. That only leaves not-for-sale items and they can't be penalised because there are lots of freebie items around. Perhaps you'd like to tell us what you mean by "object natures" and what types of objects will cause a negative value. Even if there are types of objects that cause a negative value, why not simply leave them out of the page data that's fed to the GSA instead of giving the page a negative boost value because of them?