The Alphaville Herald

Have the Lindens Stopped Talking?

by prokofy on 29/10/06 at 1:17 am

By Prokofy Neva, Community Affairs Desk

A new resident by the name of Gargling Ginsburg asks about the features voting system, on the now-restricted official LL forums:

“I noticed that features were acknowledged and commented on fairly frequently until 2006-08-24. Since then, not a single acknowledgement or comment. That’s over 2 months ago!” he exclaims.

“Have you decided to abandon this system of listenning to your customers? What is the preferred method now?”

Robin Linden has explained that the Lindens are reviewing the voting system and contemplating using an open-sourced management system to improve proposal searching. That’s likely why the Lindens aren’t reading and commenting on proposals — but then where *do* they comment? They’ve been strangely silent on their previously voluble and voluminous blog, affectionately known as the Blob. Another odd thing is that Live Help just doesn’t answer — although previously, you had a good chance that a Linden would reply.

Several commenters on the Linden Answers section of the official forums have expressed puzzlement about the failure of Live Help to answer at all. This *is* unusal. I found it out myself trying to reach Live Help.

“We are working on several improvements to our IM system which you should see in the coming weeks,” Jesse Linden replied to a resident named Landing Normandy who sent a query in a post titled “Silent Life Help” yesterday.

Perhaps the Lindens want to increase the appreciation of LH by having it unavailable for a time, before charging for a help-desk?

Meanwhile, on their official Blog, the Lindens appear to have grown more and more terse after their initial burst of expression. Of the 30 entries above the fold, 17 merely concern technical messages about the grid having to be taken down due to bugs or crashes; or about problems with loading the webpage or the need to go to the new download server for the client (amazon.com); 3 concern contests (machinima, railroads, Busy Ben’s and Luna Gallery lottery for stores). The most recent entry, the Concierge Town Hall Transcript, has simply been closed for comments.

Substantive conceptual entries about features, the future of SL, the community, Linden polices, etc. are far and few between. There’s just Philip’s blog about reaching a million, and Robin Linden’s recent entry inquiring bravely, “Got ideas to improve customer service?” which actually seems to be a sugar-coated pill containing the bitter news that LL will likely start charging for troubleshooting.

Makes you miss the days when Blue was talking about world peace and Torley was exclaiming her workarounds for carpel tunnel.