Op/Ed: Why The Lindens Won’t Listen
by Pixeleen Mistral on 21/05/07 at 9:54 pm
And why nobody else will, either
by Tenshi Vielle, Thoughtful Fashionista
Many residents have been asking, “Why won’t they listen to us?” …With all the in-world problems, programming bugs, and general nuisance issues, the Open Letter Project was introduced and thousands ran to sign it. I decided to take another look and figure out exactly why it was that we were having such a hard time communicating with the Lindens.
I spent some time the past few weeks attempting to contribute to the Second Citizen forums, a place created when the Lindens chose to shut down their Official discussion forums. I’ve heard it quoted as the best Second Life forum out there; I’ve seen it featured in Wired magazine. Those few weeks were, for the most part, a good schooling in the worst human beings I have ever had the misfortune of coming into contact with. I’d had friends tell me that it was a form of suicide to visit there; I can’t say they’re wrong. The most active forum users in there are well schooled in Drama (with a capital D) and carry a big spoon to dish it out. Dozens lurk, avoiding participation or any conversation, and with good reason. It’s even gone to the point where people are threatening the reputation of my good friends in Second Life. (You sick jerks.) These, my friends, are the people we associate with simply by signing up for a game.
Speaking of lurking, do you like children in that not-so-wonderful way? We’ve also seen this week that there’s a significant issue with ageplay in-world. The German media nabbed on that like a starving lion, and I’m not sure they’ll be letting up any time soon. Some people think that the ageplay is okay – but would you want a sexual ageplayer babysitting your own real-life children? There is a far difference between having a child avatar, and then having a child avatar to draw in a few lindens by some digital pedophile. Who, by the way, you lack the name of. Total anonymity – isn’t that what we came to Second Life for?
Add that to the fact that Linden Lab has been closing their comments section nearly every blog (and with good reason) and you’re starting to get a pretty good picture why Linden Lab refuses to speak to most of their residents. Blog comments such as, “Ummm, you know, you just KILLED shopping in SL until Monday with this, right?” in regards to ||GiveInventoryList bugs just *scream* “I’d love to help you develop your game further! Let me see if I can help you!” Not to mention it’s a waste of space for those of us that might wish to make a constructive comment now that support is waning. Also, please learn spelling and punctuation. The internet is not a giant text message. Thanks so much!
Is this really what we want to give off as Second Life residents? A backbiting, horribly nasty community that takes anything that’s thrown at it without a please or a thank you? Some of you do know your manners; thank you for that. Unfortunately, the loudest and most rude ones seem to be the ones that get heard first.
If all the world is introduced into Second Life by way of ageplay – what’s that say for our morals?
If Wired magazine readers are encouraged to join the Second Citizen forum, what does that say about the people here?
If all the world hears about Second Life is adult avatars having sex with child avatars, what does that say about the people here?
If all the potential big-name customers see on the Linden blog is nearly incoherent complaints, what does that say about the people here?
Are we sensing a trend?
Take a good look. Oh, and then try to program a multi-user platform which anyone can log into and build on. Then deal with bug issues and bitchy customers.
See if you’ll want to reply after all that’s said and done.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
It’s been having server problems today because the host has it on a box with some e-commerce sites. It’ll be back shortly.
nyx divine
May 22nd, 2007
Oh crap…..the board is temporarily down.
*SIGH* We’ll all just have to pile on over here *evil laugh*
Vivianne Draper
May 22nd, 2007
its back
Brenda Archer
May 22nd, 2007
Joshua,
Thanks for the heads up. I was in the process of subscribing, to a thread about sculpties, when I saw the Account Suspended message. I was as panicked as an addict without her crack pipe!
I’ve seen some stuff posted on Second Citizen that made me cringe, but I’m grateful it’s there and that it’s a free speech zone, which is absolutely necessary.
Any such zone on the intarwebs gets a little rough at times. It’s been like that since Usenet and before that. No news here.
Anonymous
May 22nd, 2007
> I love that. So . . . who decides who is an ass?
>
> Well, it works just like any other dumbass high clique running the highschool, or trying to.
>
> coco
The point is that the “dumbass highschool clique” is completely emergent. I’ll take a few forum superstars and sycophants over the massive amounts of hubris that moderation can generate.
Jimbo
May 22nd, 2007
I’ve lurked around the Second Citizen forums and I have to say that I haven’t had much urge to post. The ones running the show seem very far left, some to the point of hating the USA, and seem completely intolerant of people who have any leanings towards spirituality and/or religion. Specifically Christianity.
I’d love to see a forum emerge that represents much more of a cross section of Second Life rather than a clique of friends who don’t appreciate having their opinions challenged. As for the Lindens not listening to us, I’m afraid I don’t blame them. The forum that seems to get the most traffic is also the one that’s the most bile-filled, the others get nearly no activity at all. Where’s a “resident” supposed to post?
Susanne Pascale
May 22nd, 2007
I have been reading [lurking] the SC comments since POL came out. I found it to be an informative site and a great resource. I was so impressed with SC as a source of information and intelligent commentary that I joined and have even posted a couple of times.
SC is made of human beings. Like all human beings everywhere, some are more invested in drama than others, they tend to form cliques, there are some pretty intense arguments there too. This is just human nature and it is everywhere, not just in SC.
I noticed a couple of things though. I try very hard tomake my posts civil, reasonable and polite. EVERYONE, without exception, in SC [even those I disagree with] have treated me with civility, warmth and cordiality.
I’m glad I joined SC and am proud to be even a small and relatively insignificant part of it.
Many of the frequent posters there give wonderfully intelligent and sensitive insight to many SL issues.
Kaylie
May 22nd, 2007
I’ve seen some pretty hardcore name calling at Second Citizen. Not my bag. There are other alternative forums, they’re not as easy to find.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
“I’ve lurked around the Second Citizen forums and I have to say that I haven’t had much urge to post. The ones running the show seem very far left, some to the point of hating the USA, and seem completely intolerant of people who have any leanings towards spirituality and/or religion. Specifically Christianity.”
The demographics of SC are very similar to the demographics of SL. A good percentage of the userbase are from other countries; England, Germany, Asia, Europe, etc. I’ve never really read anything that struck me as “hating the USA.” Disapproving of the Bush administration, sure. That’s a given, it’s a horrible farce of a presidency. But disapproving of the administration isn’t the same as hating the US.
As for religion, it’s the same thing. Demographics go across the gambit. There are people there who are deeply Christian and have their beliefs respected by everyone.
Unless you’re the type of Christian that hates gays, abortion, believes Bush is instilled in office by Jesus and basically epitomizes the type of hypocrisies destroying the country at the moment. Then yeah, you won’t find yourself welcomed there with open arms.
I don’t know you, but it strikes me that you probably fall into that group, and if so your presence isn’t missed.
Soleil
May 22nd, 2007
Who filed the abuse report? Hmmm?
Alexa Lioncourt
May 22nd, 2007
I’ve been a member of SC since October of last year. I too have found that the forums are very much like Karma…. What you put out, you get back. I don’t tend to get into the shit flinging and prefer teh funny. But I do know that when I do voice a strong opinion, I have always been treated fairly by people. When I’ve made a uninformed post, I’ve also been told that too. Look for the bad, you’ll find it. Look for the good and you’ll find that too. I guess it really depends on you
Anonymous
May 22nd, 2007
“Unless you’re the type of Christian that hates gays, abortion, believes Bush is instilled in office by Jesus and basically epitomizes the type of hypocrisies destroying the country at the moment. Then yeah, you won’t find yourself welcomed there with open arms. I don’t know you, but it strikes me that you probably fall into that group, and if so your presence isn’t missed” Joshua
This guilty until proven innocent routine is exactly what I was talking about.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
Pobrecito. You don’t have to post there if you don’t want to.
Jimbo
May 22nd, 2007
I don’t post there, and I’m simply explaining why. Anyone who’s already pigeonholded me as a religious zealot without having ever spoken to me (*as you just have) is really not worth discussing anything with.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
I didn’t pigeonhole you as anything. I said I didn’t know you; based on the two complaints you made, both of which were made with no actual experience at SC, I surmised as to why you would dislike it.
Was I wrong?
Cocoanut Koala
May 22nd, 2007
“The point is that the ‘dumbass highschool clique’ is completely emergent. I’ll take a few forum superstars and sycophants over the massive amounts of hubris that moderation can generate.”
The problem is, we have a choice between a rock and a hard place. Between tyranny and anarchy, basically.
The best thing about SC is that you won’t get banned or suspended for what you say. LL will ban or suspend you from the game itself for what you say.
There is actually a middle ground that neither of these forums reaches.
That middle ground requires paying attention to the official forums, hiring enough moderators, having oversight of those moderators, and having a decent rule set.
And never, ever confiscating people’s SL property and real-life money because someone didn’t like something they said on the forums. LL is a joke as a platform for business as long as they do that.
We need a place that neither frightens good people from posting by threatening their accounts, nor allows good people to be run off by foul-mouthed bullies who happen to be friends of Lindens.
LL had more of the latter at first; now it has more of the former.
There is a middle ground which, though never perfect, can be achieved, and is in fact achieved all the time by forums all over the internet.
LL doesn’t achieve it because they are too stingy to do it right; because they let employees make things personal; and because they believe in the managerial system of not requiring anyone to do anything, while at the same time letting favored individuals have full rein over something if they want it.
Yet they’re also too controlling to pay someone else (like Stratics)to take the forums and do them right.
We have a situation now where the forums are run by someone who truly believes that the populace needs to “earn” their right to speak. (Unlike himself.) When the problem is not bad posters, but bad forum management.
Heavens – a forum where the primary rule is “no discussion” is an absurd place on the face of it.
Philip once said that they were bad at running forums, and they failed at running forums, and that the forums depressed his staff.
I agree with that, but I disagree with the idea that this means it can’t be done, or that they can’t afford to let someone like Stratics do it.
coco
Cocoanut Koala
May 22nd, 2007
P.S. SC is now the place where foul-mouthed bullies run off whoever they don’t like.
Soleil
May 22nd, 2007
But we didn’t run you off Coco.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
Coco and Prokofy remain posting habitually at SC, when Prokofy especially is one of the most reviled people in SL. If we run people away I think we failed since you both refresh it repeatedly.
Soleil
May 22nd, 2007
Get out of my head Joshy.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
But it’s sexy in here.
Soleil
May 22nd, 2007
Sexy time? Ahhh yes!
Cocoanut Koala
May 22nd, 2007
That’s true, Josh and Soleil – no amount of name-calling ever suffices to silence me, though on occasion I get truly tired of wallowing in the pigpen and leave.
But – not everyone is capable of that.
Or wants to even bother.
As I’ve said before on SC, don’t you want to know what people think? Or only what a subset of people think?
I don’t really care about it on SC. But I do care about it on an official forums, where everyone should be able to post their thoughts in a reasonable environment, and without fear of losing money for doing so, or being bullied and called vile names.
coco
Jimbo
May 22nd, 2007
“I don’t know you, but it strikes me that you probably fall into that group” – Joshua Nightshade.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
Coco, the issue with you, which you fail to take accountability for, is that people get tired of hearing you prop up the same lying shit bag over and over. We know what you think, and eventually we stop caring.
Like when you repeatedly help to propagate rumors not only that Aimee has a drinking problem but that she ever threatened to sue Prokofy for talking about it.
You and Prok aren’t a reliable cross-section of this issue. Nobody has ever been run off from SC for “saying what they think.” The only people ever to have left are generally those who insulted others and were yelled at for it. We don’t have the power to make anyone vanish, and for those leeches like Prokofy who refuse to leave they exist as a testament to that fact. But if you say something offensive to others and get shocked that someone’s offended you can’t cry that you’re being persecuted for your opinions.
You can say whatever you’d like, either on SC or the official forum. Each carries its own repercussions. At SC you might get yelled at if you upset someone. Not a bad price to pay, I think, when the alternative is getting banned from SL.
Thicken your skin, stop trying to hoist yourself onto the cross beside Prokofy, and have some :pie:.
Tenshi Vielle
May 22nd, 2007
Looks to me like Second Citizen should have paid their bill. “This Account Has Been Suspended
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.”
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
Jimbo: You’re not answering the question. Am I wrong?
Lorelei Patel
May 22nd, 2007
“I’ve lurked around the Second Citizen forums and I have to say that I haven’t had much urge to post. The ones running the show seem very far left, some to the point of hating the USA, and seem completely intolerant of people who have any leanings towards spirituality and/or religion. Specifically Christianity.”
I’d agree that the majority are left leaning. Not all are. Some lean right and there are many in the middle.
You’re walking away without even trying. Sad.
What’s to lose? So, you post your thoughts. Some will agree. Some will debate. Some will be crude. Ignore the crude ones and have a discussion.
But you won’t even try. That’s what I don’t respect.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
Tenshi: Someone filed a frivolous abuse report against SC. I’d hope for your sake it’s not you, I’d like to believe you aren’t that incredibly stupid but I might be wrong.
Soleil
May 22nd, 2007
heh heh
Cocoanut Koala
May 22nd, 2007
You don’t know that it’s frivolous.
And it’s thuggish to threaten Tenshi that way.
coco
Vivianne Draper
May 22nd, 2007
Everyone is over at SLUniverse in the drama forum right now. Well people are coming over — I suspect there are many SLU accounts being created right now. They were on the official forums but then I pointed out that people get banned from there for making innocuous comments and everyone got scared and is leaving.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
Coco,
Having seen the abuse report, I know that it’s frivolous and was done maliciously today to spite FIC and SC. The person who filed it did so completely out of an attempt to abuse the system and the site.
Soleil
May 22nd, 2007
That comment is worthless without pi…err…names…
Cocoanut Koala
May 22nd, 2007
Well, spill then, Josh! What thread did it concern?
coco
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
Someone posted a thread some time back suggesting that one way to get around the age verification system was to use social security #s from an online database of dead people.
We pointed out in the thread that this was a felony, the person who posted it originally (I believe they didn’t even live in the US) said “oh oops,” and that was that.
The abuse report made it out that this thread was promotion said felony and was disseminating ways to do it, but it was obvious from the entire spectrum of the letter that it was meant to be intimidating and harassing to get the site shut off. From the full letter it was clear that the person was using it to strong-arm FIC and SC out of a clear grudge.
When SC comes back FIC is going to post it in its entirety with any relevant details about the sender.
Soleil
May 22nd, 2007
they must be exterminated.
Cocoanut Koala
May 22nd, 2007
Goodness.
coco
Cocoanut Koala
May 22nd, 2007
*as in “my goodness!”
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
Hello ,
We have received an abuse complaint about your account and so it has been suspended:
========================================================================
Abuse Department:
Your client located at http://www.secondcitizen.com maintains a forum on which there is a lot of harassment and slander of other people. This forum currenly contains a post advocating the commission of the felony of stealing and using the social security numbers of dead people.
The post for this is located at: http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=12386 in a thread entitled “A sneaky way around age verification” which is contained in the General Discussion forum for the online game Second Life.
Please advise the owner of this forum that this post advocates the commission of a felony under the laws of the US and that the post must be removed immediately,
If this warning is not issued and the post not removed as quickly as possible this will be reported to the appropriate federal justice authorites and department of homeland security.
===================================
Anonymous
May 22nd, 2007
They might have at least capitalized DHS properly before trying to sound all official and stuff. I agree…frivolous. Sucks that your carrier is that quick on the draw, instead of just looking that the thread in question.
I trust you’ll all be up and running again soon.
Joshua Nightshade
May 22nd, 2007
SC’s back now, and I’m trying to pressure him into getting a new ISP. :p
And yeah… it would’ve sounded a lot more intimidating if the correct name of the agency had been used.
Ian Betteridge
May 22nd, 2007
Shockwave says: “But for the customer, the only place any of the services or items purchased can exist is in SL itself. So no, nothing I buy on SL has any RL application or usefulness, any more than magic swords in WoW has.”
Substitute the words “the web” for “SL” in the above, and you’ll see why I think your argument is wrong. Items in SL are intellectual property that exists only in the medium of SL, just as the words I write for the web (and make a living from) are intellectual property that exists only on the web. Both have real world impact…
Ian Betteridge
May 22nd, 2007
Tenshi says: “I never said Mother DELETED anything. I said he had the potential to, which all moderators do, whether they take that initiative or not. He owns the forum, right? Calm down.”
You actually said “…until Mother deletes them” which does in fact imply that he’s going to. If that wasn’t your implication, why say it at all? It’s like me adding here that I’ll post “until Uri bans me”, which suggests I expect him to. That’s just another example of your “oh, I didn’t mean what I said, I mean something totally different!” approach – which is, of course, what got you into trouble in the first place.
Tenshi Vielle
May 22nd, 2007
Ugh, no, you’re taking it two steps further. Amazingly.
I said he had the potential to. I never said he DID.
Tenshi Vielle
May 22nd, 2007
And, Josh, was that a veiled threat? Sheesh.
Yet again, no one has addressed my concerns that people from the SC forum were threatening my friend. Seems to be commonplace over there.
However, if your forum carries threads with posters like that, and it’s ALLOWED… god, the republicans must be going insane right now. I should get Bush on the phone.
Ian Betteridge
May 22nd, 2007
Sorry, Tenshi, that’s not what you said. Maybe you don’t speak English as a first language, but conventionally when someone says “until X does Y” there’s some expectation there that X will, indeed, at some point, do Y.
The phrase you wanted was “*unless* Mother deletes them, which he never has before”.
Ian Betteridge
May 22nd, 2007
Tenshi: “no one has addressed my concerns that people from the SC forum were threatening my friend”
Tenshi again: “It’s even gone to the point where people are threatening the reputation of my good friends in Second Life.”
So which is it? Threatening your friend, or threatening their reputation? And could you please post some links to the offending articles?
Anonymous
May 22nd, 2007
The word to use – if you felt the need to warn of the potential at all, which you didn’t – would be ‘unless’. Until implies an event that will be taking place at some point.
But the question I think you should answer is why you felt the need to bring up that potential at all?
So when people ran over to look at the horror you’re talking about, and instead found a bunch of ‘who the hell is is this tenshi person and why is she leaving in a huff?’ you could then suggest that all the good stuff was deleted, instead of admitting that it’s mostly all in your head and the part that isn’t was spurred on by you in the first place.
Johnboy Walton
May 22nd, 2007
“I’ve lurked around the Second Citizen forums and I have to say that I haven’t had much urge to post. The ones running the show seem very far left, some to the point of hating the USA, and seem completely intolerant of people who have any leanings towards spirituality and/or religion. Specifically Christianity.”
You’re obviously not fulfilling your promise to Christblood. Maybe you should pull out the bible and go preach to them heathens. Think of the grace you’d receive in the big white cloudy heaven in the sky when you convert a bunch of heathenous, librul, non-republican, jesus-killing blog posters. George Bush would be proud of you for being a good patriot among evil!
We’re counting on you boy – go – go forth and convert those heathens over there! You can do it – JesusGod and GWB grants you the POWERRRRR!!
Go get ‘em Tiger!!! Give ‘em one for the Gipper!