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"And my anonymity and privacy are being compromised." --  Sirius Selona

 

Um.... how?

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"GRIEFING THE DATABASE USING DISPLAY NAMES: If you had 100 people or more changing their name weekly on 1000's of objects, the database could be thrashed and strained." -- ralph

Compared to the load created when regions get backed up or when large assets get cached... this is utterly an insignificant additional load.

If it does it on an object by object basis... instead of once per affected region, they're doing it wrong.

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Ceera-

I've heard that new users will not be allowed to put dots in the usernames they create.  (and obviously, not allowed to put spaces in, either).

That leaves a-z, 0-9 and *MAYBE* underscores, and, even less likely, hyphens, and very likely nothing else will be permitted.

I do hope that neither underscore nor hyphen are allowed, for the reasons you illustrated above... 

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@Jack-   Thanks for the excellent update on the project!

It sounds like several of the concerns I shared with others are being addressed... even if several are still unresolved.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks in the new project viewer.

Due to the changeable nature of display names, if you haven't already...   please do consider making this jira part of the display names project so that gifts/acquisitions from people who then change their display name can be more easily tracked back to an existing resident rather than to an abandoned display name.

VWR-4199 user interface: add a field "Received From" to an item's properties

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Bring on the direct democracy!  I've got my ballot initiatives all lined up and ready to go!

1. Every resident gets L$5000 a week.
2. Eliminate membership fees and tier fees.

The people have spoken.  Our will is known.  Let no tyrant stand against us! 

"I don't fear democracy " -- Prokofy

Of course not.  You believe you're in the majority.

Seriously though... I live in a state where "the will of the people" has clearly shown no interest in respecting the freedom and equality of its minorities.

At least a "Tyranny by a Minority" must always respect the threat of all those they represent, at the peril of losing either their lives, their power or the very thing over which they have power.

Tyranny of the Majority has no such counter-balance.   Minority interests (and minorities themselves) compete against "the will of the people."   The majority's interests are nearly always better served by extorting concessions, alienating, marginalizing, objectifying, scapegoating, exploiting, even exiling their opponents.   "Screw equality!  If they're not part of our solution, they're part of our problem."

So when you snidely imply that the "amen corner" fears democracy?

In my case.... lately, yes I do.

But I doubt LL views a resident democracy as anything more daunting than merely "impractical".

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To be fair, the only meaningful thing that can be concluded from this sample set of 29 votes is that Prokofy isn't rigging her own poll. =)

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"That the majority of normal people attracted to this game are marginalized by the very development process and its fierce claque of geek cheerleaders -- even though they are in the majority! -- is proven by the very fact that NINE OUT OF TEN PEOPLE DON'T RETAIN."

I will only partially agree..  and see it differently, and if I were to break it down:

First, you say that like it's a bad thing.   Flip it around.   SL's marketing machine attracts more people than are interested in the service.  If the abandonment rate was 10% instead of 90%, it could easily be concluded that SL's marketing efforts were too constrained and likely missing many potential residents.

So people take SL for a test drive and decide it's not for them.  Blame geeks IF YOU MUST, but I think you're exaggerating.

Abandonment is a spectrum from day one through venerability.  Every stage of advancement has some degree of attrition, preventing people from moving on to the next.   Improving the ratio of retention at one level does nothing to guarantee they'll survive the next.

"arrival abandonment" because SL simply looks old, clunky and after little more than a glance, dismissed as 'not what I expected'.   Every system has a learning curve, and rather than deal with it, they just give up.  Nothing ventured, nothing lost.   (highest volume, high attrition rate.)

"acclimation abandonment" due to 'technical design issues'.   They have trouble learning how to navigate, control the camera and/or how to use things in their inventory.  That can be rather a lot to expect a newbie to grapple with all at once (not that the cheerleader geeks had any direct input on viewer1 or viewer2 design, unfortunately).  (High volume, moderately high attrition rate)

"newbie abandonment" - "where's the 'game' in this game?"  Even you can't deny that most people think of SL as "a game" when they come here.  That brings expectations like "I should be able to earn the game money I need by playing 'the game'... buying money is for losers and cheaters".   What they find is:  no jobs, no pre-defined series of achievable objectives, ultimately no idea what they're "supposed" to be do in SL.  It's like telling someone "Hey, come play monopoly with me" and then giving them a blank tablet of paper and crayons.   (moderate volume, moderate abandonment)

"post-newbie abandonment" -  They're done being a 'tourist' and are trying to settle in and find their 'place' in our world.  Do they start a business?  Do they take on a meaningful role in some community of interest?   There's fierce 'professional' level competition in these areas.  An amateur quickly recognizes they can't compete.  Unless they can find an engaging hobby or enduring clique that values them as a person rather than a consumer, they get bored and eventually drift away.  (moderate volume, high eventual attrition)

But that's okay.  SL is a touristy place... people come, spend money, play and then leave.   It works as long as people believe that SL holds the potential to deliver "new experiences".   Once they discover it's mostly just malls, clubs, and vanity residences, with variations that "potential for new experiences" withers, and they move on.

"late abandonment" due to technology or policy changes they object to, lack of LL support for their requirements, burnout, failure to attain or maintain profitability, financial reasons, etc.  And yes, probably the "fierce claque of geek cheerleaders" may actually have the highest degree of influence in this area.    Naturally oldbies tend to be more heavily invested in SL and their loss is felt proportionately. But due to the expansion and growth, the population eligible for late abandonment is a very small. (very low volume, moderate attrition, but spread over a very long period of time)

Were the founding principles upon which SL has evolved developed by geeks and those premises to blame for the 9 out of 10 rate of abandonment?  Sure, fine.  Whatever.   Blame us for everything.  Of course... that also means that geeks are responsible for having a world that retains an astoundingly high 10% of the huge number of random visitors that try it not knowing what to expect.  

 

LamdaMOO had anarchistic unaccountability welded into it just like SL did. -- Prokofy

No, it did not.   If we had that, the #1 demand would be "fix lag".   And LL would have no choice but to take whatever action was necessary.   And they'd likely respond with "Okay... all textures are limited to 128x128, limited to 2 per prim, parcel prim quotas are being reduced to 25%, number of prims in an object is being reduced to 16, you're limited to 2 attachments, and you can no longer see across a region edge into another.  There.  Your lag problem is fixed."    "

What??  NOOOO!!!!  We meant Fix is without taking anything away!"

When a true democracy DEMANDS the impossible... and is unwilling to pay more or make necessary sacrifices for what they want... who shoulders the burden?   LL?    They can can print L$, but that won't keep SL online if they're otherwise bankrupt.

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"*Marginalizing* geeks? Jopsy, you have GOT to be kidding. The geeks are in charge here and have total authoritarian control of the development process." -- Prokofy

Ah, right, sorry, my bad.   It's the rights of the minority to resort to name calling and cutesy belittling nicknames or any tactic available to undermine the collective will of their oppressor.

I do actually agree with that sentiment and sincerely apologize.(and I say this without sarcasm, just to be clear).

That said..  I think you grossly exaggerate the geek communities' influence on LL.   We may speak the same 'geek language' as LL staffers... but their decisions have more to do with money than technology and geeks have no influence over that at all.

Rant away about my demographics -- it's a demographic that geeky game boys need to be paying far, far more attention to because there are lots of us, sometimes majorities in some games, and we have more discretionary income and time than the script kiddies. -- Prokofy

Wait.. hold on... so ... you grossly out-number us, outspend us... and yet you, THE MAJORITY, are marginalized by us?   Hmm.    Well, all I can say is thank goodness we've been granted 'protected minority status' by Linden Lab then.   I'm sure you'd haul the lot of us out back and line us up against the wall for our crimes against humanity if you had the chance.

"There is actually some modicum of democracy on the JIRA, and it is actually less griefed by alts than one would imagine."-  Prokofy

No.  There is not. 

Issues with thousands of votes sit ignored.  Issues with less than ten votes get resolved.  LL looks at them all, sooner or later... considers the merits and costs... makes sure the request fits their vision for SL and *maybe* implements it.   They're better at reviewing all issues submitted to Jira than they have been in the past, which makes the the voting mechanism somewhat vestigial and irrelevant.

"The agenda that is suiting corporations now is the one you are ardently supporting -- no normal and fair voting so that only the corporation and their chosen friends win." -- Prokofy

Ardently supporting?  No, just not deluding myself into pretending this isn't how things work.

If you want a democracy, we need legal recourse for when LL fails to uphold "The Will of the People".   If LL was "resident owned" ... that might actually come to pass. 

Just out of curiosity... did you ever visit a world known as LamdaMOO ?   They were self goverened.  Granted, it had a higher ratio of geek to non-geeks there, but did draw quite a few poli-sci types into their madness.   The world was an insane asylum.

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"One of the things I do constantly is help newbies who have lost things And when I give them this tip, they are confused and don't eve know about this map and don't use it." -- Prokofy

Viewer2 seems to have the mini-map off by default... and without a bottom-bar menu button to toggle it on and off... so I'm not surprised that your newbies are ignorant of it.

Why is it disabled by default?  Because not enough people use it?  Or because LL thought they might be able to improve FPS a little bit by rendering fewer things on the screen?  My money is on the latter.

I spend a great deal of my time helping newbies as well, on a great variety of things, usually slightly more advanced than basic UI controls though.

The UI element is there.  It's not consuming developer time, it doesn't add significantly to the size of the download.  It's not even enabled by default anymore.  What's your beef with it?  Who cares if only 10% or 49% of us actually find value in it... removing it helps no one and adversely affects those that rely on it.

"You and Jopsy using the minimap is a geeky and even oldbie affectation, and a guy thing, too I might add." -- Prokofy

Thanks again for marginalizing us with utterly pointless labels.

How would you feel if I started shouting down the things you like about SL on the grounds that you're a "(cutesy derogatory adjective) with (delusions based on your age) and, after all just a (dismissive gender reference)...  therefore anything you want is stupid selfish and pointless"  ?

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" it's a trivial matter for them to require that people chose one account per unique IP address (not even unique payment form) and help control this" -- Prokofy

Which treats most residents from IBM and students from various universities as a fraction of their total numbers because they're behind firewalls that make them look like they're all coming from the same IP.

It does not stop people from offering incentives to their communities to go and comment or vote on issues they would otherwise not care about.   And it certainly does not help reason prevail over irrationality.

"Populism", frankly, gives us things the likes of which would be inappropriate for me to dredge up in this venue... but you don't have to look far to see people being misled into political action to further an agenda that helps corporations advance their exploitation.

 

" so they *can* invoke it to undermine democracy." -- Prokofy

What democracy?   The governance of SL is a non-democratic republic.

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"And that is to pretend that democratic voting will be "gamed" or "lobbied by special interests" and "can't work"" -- Prokofy

Welcome to the internet, since you seem new here... allow me to point out the lengths to which people will go to 'game' online voting systems

http://blogs.alternet.org/oleoleolson/2010/08/05/massive-censorship-of-digg-uncovered/

Anywhere anyone stands to gain by creating a few extra alt accounts... or a group of people band together to 'get the word out' poll results go haywire.   Conservative vs. Liberal polls get "slashdotted" by communities of a particular interest and often missed entirely by people that feel otherwise.

Since there is no true identity accountability in SL, what do you propose?  Only PREMIUM members get to vote on issues?   How is it fair for such a negligible minority of residents dictate how things are run?

Like it or not this is a non-democratic republic, reliant on LL to represent our interests during their internal decision making process.  You should know by now that the 'voting' mechanism in JIRA is not about whether something should be implemented or not... it's whether something is popular enough to merit being REVIEWED by LL.

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"No, there's no sizeable population that "needs" double-click to move on the ground or "teleport". -- Prokofy

There is no sizable population that "needs" Second Life either, and by extension nothing in it.  We WANT Second Life.  We WANT it to behave in ways that are familiar to us. 

This style of movement is very common among certain MMO's, mostly those created by Korean shops like NCsoft (Aion, Guildwars, etc) ...  (though they've usually learned to make it optional for their American subscribers).  Blue Mars uses it too.  

I, personally, don't like click-to-move navigation... but feel that SL would be more welcoming to residents if they had the option to use it.  It certainly was a very popular feature among the numerous emerald users.

When someone speaks, and you don't know where they are... the mini-map is invauable for finding out where they are around you, and whether they're above or below you.   This is particularly necessary inside buildings and for people whose camera mastery isn't strong enough to go scanning through walls around them.

I'm sorry you find it a useless part of the viewer....  but kindly stop painting it as something that can be removed and replaced by bulky in-world scripted large multi-purpose, lag-generating, teleport-delaying, region-crossing-affecting scripted attachments.

 

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"I didn't post about double-clicks so we can talk about it here. I posted it as an example. Let's not dilute this thread any further :-)" -- Pentasis

Considering how utterly ineffective asking people to stay on topic is in these blogs... one could say that posts asking not to dilute the thread ... also dilute the thread. ;-) ;-)

The point is... whether LL will embrace adding options... or stick to a "We know best, you get what we give you." model of viewer that forces us to adapt or resort to TPV's. 

Double-click-move or double-click-teleport is a perfect example of the kind of feature that if implemented MUST be made "optional" because many people want it... and many people DON'T want it.  It's relatively trivial to implement, but the sticking point relevant to this debate... "Does the viewer need yet another option that requires LL to forever support both click-to-tp and no-click-to-tp?"   And whether or not adding simple optional features like this makes viewer development too costly in terms of development, testing, etc.

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• When a user double-clicks on ground, one of three things can happen:
• The user teleports      to that location.
• The user walks to      that location (or flies if the user is flying).
• Nothing happens.
• How do we make it so that we have this functionality and still don't overcomplicate the interface or introduce unnecessary steps/clicks in the UI.

By making it so that if you 'double-click'  WON'T teleport (or walk) the avatar if their mouse is over something with a scripted Touch Action or some other default click action like sit, pay, open, etc.    I tried this feature in emerald and rapidly turned it off because it failed to make this distinction.

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"We need new tools, but *not* at the expense of the old ones." -- Darien

Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that anything has to be removed so that SL can move forward. =)

Problems like search and groupchat are heinous blemishes on our SL experience, they simply must be fixed.   They drive us nuts daily, and a few residents find them sufficient cause to abandon SL.   No where near the number of potential residents that turn away because SL just looks increasingly... well... old.

Windlight was a great step forward, but was never fully deployed.    Mesh is almost here... but way behind schedule.  

I've heard stories from MS Excel developers that, I swear, gave me nightmares.

Ugh... the inventory browser itself...  Hideous.   It doesn't matter what OS someone uses, windows, mac or linux, they each have file browsers, desktops, multiple views, intra-folder sorting, advanced search, "Open Folder in New Window" ... people that use their computer some how manage to figure out their "Pictures Folder" from their "Documents" folder and manage just fine.    Our inventory in SL should follow those exact same familiar and standard conventions, not this massive tree that looks like it was copied out of some old windows registry editor. Grrrrrr. =)

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So I'm as annoyed as anyone when I can no longer right-click on the ground and start the "create" process, but have to scroll through a menu selecting two or three options. -- Prokofy

Hmm.... being someone that tends to build at altitude and then lower things to ground level when ready I didn't notice this was gone... but it seems to be back in Viewer2.1.1 now.  Right-click on a prim or on the ground, select and presto. =)

(being the hot-key nut that I am... I've always used ctrl-4 to create prims.  (ctrl-1 through 5 map to the buttons across the top of the edit/build tool:  1=focus, 2=move, 3=edit, 4=create, 5=land/terraform, I never use use ctrl to access the others though)

The problem with enabling grid vs. disabling it if it's not wanted is that newbies would otherwise almost certainly never notice it was there.  As a visual indicator of where objects are in relation to each other... it is very useful, especially for people that are just finding their "XYZ legs".

If you don't want the grid, planar-pull-tabs or axis-drag-arrows... (and I know this is going to sound far too obvious) ... just use the mode in the edit/build tool (my way: ctrl-2, otherwise click the icon in the top of the edit widget).   It will move laterally.  If you hold ctrl, it will move perpendicularly to the camera. =)

Personally, in all my years of being in SL.. the only new feature I've managed to wring out of them was the tab for inventory items... and they sorta claimed they were "already" working on that when I begged for it. 

Getting LL to do what WE want them to do is like every other game of politics.  Being "right" is not sufficient... or sadly... even required.   Being in the right place, at the right time to plant the right seed in the right ear... *SOMETIMES* works, but usually backfires as it grows wild once planted.  Compromises are made, deals are struck, people with influence demand arbitrary changes so that it will fit their 'vision', or just on a whim, the final product looks nothing like what was needed or wanted... but, for whatever reason, it was what managed to make it through the process.

Humans are a deeply flawed species filled with self-confounding tendencies.

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Why is THIS PARTICULAR option the cause of so much angst from Linden Lab? -- Argent

... The WASD option reminds me of another thing we lost moving from viewer1x to viewer2x...

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-19700 Give focus to search field when opening inventory

Instead of ctrl-i tab tab tab... like it was in viewer2.0, in viewer2.1.1 it's now ctrl-i shift-tab to get your cursor into the inventory search field.  *grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr* fiiiiix ittttt.

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"Like Prokovfy said, we have to remember that in fact builders and the like are only a very small community compared to the rest of the users. When you look at it this way, LL is already giving us a lot of attention, and we're getting more and more of it." -- Snippy

"Professional content creators" are relatively few in number... yes.  They are not the only people that use build tools.  We all use them, to some degree or another.  And if the tools suck, we all suffer.

What makes SL unique is the fact that everyone can create.

Every other strength that SL has there's another type of MMO out there that has something similar, from land ownership, to content sales, to music sharing and socializing, ...

It is this "Everyone can create" thing that sets the SL type of MMO apart.

And the tools we have for content creation are STALE.  We need mesh, we need windlight finished, and we need a viewer UI that is less baffling spacially and semantically.

If SL continues to lag behind other Networked Recreational Immersive platforms... people like Prok will have only a small fraction of their customer base to worry about within 2 years.

And the only people hanging around to kvetch about group chat problems and broken search... will be die-hard oldbies like me paying for our land out of pocket.

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Prok-

Curb the hate, eh?   I'm not asking LL to rip out the things you like about SL, so leave the things I like alone, eh?

Geez.

You'd think a geek ran over your puppy or something.

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There will always be "newbies" and there will always be "power users", and serving both with the same piece of software is *DIFFICULT*.

Newbies want something simple, easy to learn, intuitively placed functions and, more than anything they don't want to spend all their time learning, they want to DO something.

Power users want hot-keys so they can quickly access the functions they want to use without having to navigate down two sub-menus over and over.

Options ARE important, everything from relative UI interface size to default camera behaviors, because our ability to interact with the world is vastly different.  Some people have smaller lower-rez screens or poor eyesight, others have massive monitors running at very high resolution.  The UI must be customizeable to suit our different situations.

Many of us use other applications with different chat behaviors... and have trouble going back and forth between them.  Having the option to close-chat-after-enter is as important to some people as having it NOT set is to others, just so they don't go crazy while attempting to control the interface.

I'd probably stop using LL's viewers permanently if I couldn't turn off mini-map rotation, I hate it that much. =)

Anyway... yes, extra options are a pain to regression test in production, but you serve us better by being more inclusive than by saying "only 2% of SL using this feature... we're gonna just bury it in the debug settings and forget about it" =)