[A Farewell From Jack]

I will enlighten you LazerXXX, Jack Linden did a lot for Second Life, he also lied to a lot of people, and promised things that either he had no right to promise, or were things that he didn't really have a clue about. As a direct result of some of Jack's actions, many people lost thousands upon thousands of real dollars as well as lost their love of Second Life.

Sure, Jack wasn't perfect, nor did most people expect him to be, however as a front man for Linden Labs in a number of areas it was Jack's responsibility to communicate as well as help develop policy. As many here have said, Jack certainly gets kudos for being at the front line and holding regular office hours, he also gets credit for some of the policies that did help improve some things in Second Life. However, and a BIG however, the good things that Jack did do not make up for some of the huge mistakes that were made, and there is certainly no excuse for the lies and mistruths that were told, not to mention some of the downright shady and underhanded things that were done that were supposedly (at least by Jacks own admission) under his control or influence.

Telling people to stfu is certainly not productive nor appreciated on the forums and will certainly draw ire from people.

Many people in Second Life have tried to make things better, from well thought out action plans that have been drawn up and submitted to Linden Labs, to the countless people that attended all the Linden Office Hours and group meetings that were made available and voiced their opinions and ideas to Linden Labs, not to mention all the people who have contributed to the actual coding of the Second Life client and server. It is some of these people who have vented their frustrations in this thread as they certainly have a right to. Also there are people who spend huge amounts of money in Second Life and who have contributed much to the content and the economy of Second Life, these people also have been touched by the things that Jack did and have a right to praise or condemn as they see it.

 

Also, I think you may be backazzwards regarding Lindens - if it weren't for US none of THEM would be here as it is the community and the people inside of Second Life that make it what it is. As it is, many of the best Lindens are gone, to be replaced by ones we never see or interact with. Only a few of the originals remain, and of those only one or two actually interact with the public directly very much. Hopefully Second Life and Linden Labs can return to some of what made it great to begin with, inspiring innovation and a sense of community.

Peace

[A Farewell From Jack]

Jack, I will give you credit for being one of the few Lindens willing to face the masses, even when the majority of those masses were screaming at you - who can forget the 4 corner multi-sim meetings held for the Openspace/homestead fiasco.

Thank you for keeping to your word on removing ad-farms and the majority of microplots on the mainland (it took a while, but it was one of the better mainland policies that worked).

I am still wondering about a few things though:

December 2006 "We are aware of the problem of landbots and are working to make it so that they do not have an effect on the buying and selling of land" - kind of dropped the ball on that one Jack - in fact, that one thing is a major factor in why the state of mainland is the way it is now.

January 2009 "We hope to start full mainland sim auctions again shortly and are actively working at removing the backlog of land waiting to be auctioned" - that ball got completely lost somewhere. Mainland is now a wasteland of abandoned parcels, many with ban lines left on them or object spam everywhere.

March 2009 "The upcoming search has been greatly enhanced for land sales" by greatly enhanced, I am taking it that enhanced means totally screwed up, worthless and back to the stone age. This move is another which has spelled the death of mainland. Try to find a parcel on the mainland with the new search ... but oh wait, that's right, the landbots are still using the old search and cleaning up and keeping the market in the toilet.

Hopefully your successor will learn from both the wins and losses that you had Jack and also be as open to meeting with residents as you were (even under threat of much screaming).

Good luck with your future/