The answers are: Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now”, and “Blowin’ In The Wind” by Bob Dylan. What do I win? What do I win?

Loved the infomercial moment there too. You’re funny today!

Disclosure: I use Jira for issue tracking and small project management at work and it ROCKS in my opinion. I was very pleased to see LL implement it. Set up well, and coordinated properly this little software app is extremely good for making development work visible, for reporting issues and for prioritising work.

I am in no way a Linden apologist, however I have used the LL Jira system to comment on a reported issue, communicate with Lindens and it did help to get an issue prioritised as critical, and into the development queue. I still use it to keep up to date with its progress. (See MISC-37 “Continued breakdowns in group notice popup functionality” if you’re interested). This tool proved highly effective in highlighting the exact issue, the scenarios to reproduce and its appropriate priority by the severity and number of people voting for the issue/s. The software also has a fab feature that allows you to link issues as duplicates, a defect of another issue, or the root cause of another issue which can only help LL organised their efforts more efficiently.

First, as to unassigned issues people have commented upon: remember this tool is still in beta and hasn’t been set up with optimal information and configuration. Torley notes in comments on one of the issues I was involved in, that they haven’t got to the stage of assigning issues to specific people yet, as they’re still working out how to do it best. Most of the time it’s multiple people working on something and they’re still designing how they will set up the system to best work for their way of working. So don’t assume something isn’t being worked on just because it’s unassigned in Jira. Remember this tool is still in beta. It would be unreasonable to expect it to be perfect, however it blows the feature voting tool out of the water as far as I’m concerned, even with less-than optimal configuration.

Here are my tips:

Don’t use the List of issues by votes – get used to browsing the Projects from the left-hand side of the dashboard and then drill down again by component. This allows you to drill down and check out related issues that have been raised in certain categories. This will make far more sense than a huge list of unrelated things about which you might understand very little from the subject line (I tend to skip the http request component category for example, as the issues in there may as well be written in greek as far as I can understand them If you browse the projects and components you will also be more likely to see sets of issues that are related and therefore find things that are of importance to you, that you can comment upon and vote for.

So, once you open a Project (let’s take MISC for example, as the least arcane) you can view issues according to various preset filters – outstanding, reported by me, resolved recently, updated recently (very handy!) etc. You also have a handy project summary and list of open issues. Or you can check the link to Popular Issues in that project to see who’s voting for what.

You can still see popular issues by project, and when LL get a little more sophisticated (remember this is still in beta) I’m sure they’ll assign versions to fixes and so on, and you’ll be able to use the cool Project Road Map feature.

And finally, (yes I am repeating myself deliberately) remember this tool is still in beta and LL are still working out how to configure it and use it to achieve the best outcomes. It seems to me that Torley is doing a lot of analysis of what works and what doesn’t and putting ideas into practice. I think it’s a great idea to highlight the availability of this tool and if it’s important to you, take some time to familiarise yourself with it. It’s of necessity a technical tool, and sometimes it’s worth spending some time to get to know how to use a tool in order to get the benefits you want out of it.

That was before I found the Linden Method (TM).

I think this method could help you, too.

http://www.anxietyonline.org/books/linden.php?gclid=CJHBzbvb8IsCFQsIFQodKAYWpA

Why am I arguing with you. I was just jabbing at Prokofy using her own terminology.

I’ve experienced lag, inability to teleport, and most of the other problems that people have complained about. I’m using a dual-processor machine with 1.5 GB of memory and a high-end ATI video card, and when I’m playing SL I don’t have other applications open. So I think that shoots down the “unreasonable load” theory.

And your answer when something doesn’t work is . . . play somewhere else? Not “let’s get this fixed so everyone can enjoy it?” How sad.

2) I’ll assume you’re kidding here or haven’t read the official forums or worked in Live Help. A good number of problems are caused by people placing unreasonable loads on their clients, their connections or their local hardware.

3) Play somewhere else. This software isn’t ready to support fun and games for the masses. I understand that LL advertise it as such but they’re lying. Nothing the massive user base can do will change that fact. Investing your time and money in SL for any purpose other than helping to test solutions or puttting feathers in a real life virtual world career hat is wasteful at best.

And to Prokofy — second prize for pointing out that SL really IS a technocrat’s dream. Imagine if any of those LL employees had to work in an actual IT department, with a 99% uptime requirement and users who couldn’t be pushed aside or ignored by just closing comments or shutting down the helpdesk . . . .

And finally to Khamon — I’d venture to guess the typical SL user isn’t either of the extremes you present. I’d picture him/her as a person with:
(1) a set idea of how much disposable income he/she is willing to spend in/on SL activities (no one wants to throw their money away on clubs & shops that are inaccessible due to crashes & lag, or on inventory that disappears)
(2) a decent internet connection and a decent computer (because odds are a user wouldn’t be voicing concerns if he/she had a lousy connection and a lousy computer — the source of his/her problems would be pretty obvious if that were the case)
(3) enough intelligence and technical know-how to navigate the web and sim activities and resolve BASIC issues using limited tech support and knowledgebase articles.

Remember — the marjority of us are in this to have FUN, not to beta-test the system for the next generation. We don’t want to spend our time wading through a slow helpdesk system (because that’s what JIRA is) only to discover that over 90% of the issues haven’t even been reviewed yet. Are we capable of understanding JIRA? Are we capable of understanding WHY we keep experiencing problems? Yep, I think we are. The many posts I’ve seen from users in the LL blog indicate they have a good understanding of why things are failing. But it isn’t our job to fix things or keep things running — that’s what the LL people are supposed to do. And as consumers/customers, we have the right to expect that the people who put this “world” out there care enough about their customers to keep the lines of communication open, and to keep things running smoothly from day-to-day.

The questions were rhetorical Prokofy, the questions were rhetorical.

>How many times must you be reminded of the pot calling the kettle black?

>How many times must you be reminded that no one person can speak for anyone else?

>How many times must you be reminded that a group can only speak for itself?

>How many times must you be reminded that it is impossible for any one person to speak for all of Second Life’s users?

>How many times must you be reminded that – above all else – you do not speak for everyone, let alone your imagined majority?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.