An Open Comment on an Open Letter
on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 7:06 pmThere’s this open letter to LL making the rounds.
I share the sentiments - just the other day i wanted to smash my keyboard due to the frustration [scroll down a few posts] - LL needs to be more transparent with details of what’s going on, and what’s being done to fix it.
I disagree with a lot of the implications of the letter though: Does anyone really think LL isn’t aware or working on those issues?
Most people in-world have never experienced ghosting. When I joined, it was an ongoing problem. For a good while. Eventually, it got resolved.
I think all of the problems in that letter will go the way of ghosting.
It totally blows that things like friends & notices have busted. Building is an insanely frustrating experience at times. We know though these aren’t permanent features but temporary problems.
And here’s the But™.
But™ I knew getting into SL, and trying to develop there, that it was going to be like this. This is the risk of being tied to this ship.
I don’t get where people had any expectations of it not being like that. Things were going to change. New things come, some things break. I’ve been bit by change in SL before, i expect to be bit by them again.
This is the cost of early adoption - and that’s what this is - make no mistake. The letter implies that phase is over, but i think that’s just because of the echo chamber effect. A buncha oldbies talking to each other. No one knows what platform will become the standard for the sort of experience SL is now uniquely providing. Maybe it will be SL, maybe not.
At the moment, SL is suffering from what some are calling a bubble. Seems more like fear to me. No one wants to miss the boat, the way a lot of companies did when the ‘net came around, while others are having dreams of riches generated by the gross misperception that money is just growing on trees on the grid.
Obviously, I have no special insight into what goes on inside LL. It seems though a general consensus in software development that just throwing more people at a problem doesn’t necessarily fix it any faster, and can often do the opposite. Maybe they need more expertise, but its an open secret that LL has recruiting issues. And the whole she-bag it certainly isn’t made easier by operating on a moving patient.
The simple fact is there’s nothing like SL at the moment, and that shit breaking is just the cost of business. Otherwise, you can always go over There. I hear Laguna Beach is nice this time of year.
[update] cory’s blog post.
my del.icio.us
April 30th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
You’re such a smart guy max case..
May 1st, 2007 at 2:53 am
Well, sure, stuff breaks. But that some highly annoying things are broken now for a lot of months in a row _is_ different. Yesterday was Rob Linden’s office hour. He finally decided to take Jira votes into account to sort bugs for public review. Which essentially means that he didn’t before. When the first look was integrated into main, all bug reports from first look where closed - without even looking at them whether they apply to first look. People should just reopen them.
There are much more little details that blatantly point to the fact that LL currently lost connection to their user base - and so I think a wakeup call _is_ in order. Whether Christianos open letter is the right way to do it - no idea (the fact that he doesn’t check entries in any way makes it quite easily gamed and so I guess rather worthless on the technical side). But it is there.
This repeated “LL knows about the issues” - I am not that sure any more. Far too many details speak a different language. Sure, some of them scramble for time to get back into contact - I don’t say they do it deliberately. But it’s a fact that even as a concierge customer you don’t get to see a linden comment on problems you have. And I’m a private island owner - friends with lots of mainland tier are totally lost, since they don’t even have the estate tools to for example restart the sim.
May 1st, 2007 at 4:52 am
@barney I pretty much agree with what you’re saying, except for the “This repeated “LL knows about the issues” - I am not that sure any more”. I think what you describe isn’t them not knowing about the issues, but just managing them them poorly.
@baba - i agree with most of your argument ;P
May 7th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I don’t get why complaining about a problem somehow isn’t supposed to be part of the fixing process.
How are the Lindens supposed to be aware of the problems, if no-one tells them? Or aware of what’s important to us residents.
One of the things that’s severely broken at LL is the notion of customer relations. Things have moved on from when you were a newbie helping to develop this new environment, old-timer. Not only have new people joined since your day — not unreasonably expecting simple things like IMing and friends lists to work reliably in a virtuality that’s been around for so many years — but there are also a lot of us. You guys may have had an easy feedback with the lindens back when, say, ghosting was a problem, but the sheer mass of residents these days has caused a bottleneck (or maybe a logjam, I’m not sure) in communications that should have been anticipated. Scaling problems don’t only affect databases.
From where I’m sitting, it looks like the Lindens have recently choked the input so much that it is now very difficult to contact them with regular problems, never mind more abstract issues. And even worse, they’ve choked their output to nearly nothing. There is now hardly any lindenresident feedback at all, certainly not enough to dignify with calling a loop. The fact of the Town Meeting seemed indicative of the surprise the lindens felt that so many people were so upset with the present situation. And the anodyne responses were indicative of a defensive posture typical of a management that had lost contact with its customers.
LL really needs to take stock, and realise that its relations with its customers need to be taken as seriously as its software problems.
May 8th, 2007 at 4:08 am
Max, that is one of the best comments I have heard on the open letter. I think it may kick LL into better communication about bugs and fixes though, at least I hope it does.