It has been a while since anything was published on this blog and even longer since it was used for its intended purpose of critiquing Linden Lab. Unfortunately, a situation has finally reached the point I need to address it here.
Over the last several months a number of "personals" on various dating sites have been formed using images stolen from my Facebook and Twitter account. Some of these personals were made using my "real life" name and others using my two most well known internet handles.
These profiles have been popping up on everything from dating sites aimed at Christian Fundamentalists to those on fetish websites. All of them have three things in common:
1) They all list me as being into Human Trafficking and "rap" music.
2) They were made to be as damaging to my name as possible.
3) Anyone that gets a response is always either asked for money or for explicit pictures of themselves.
Not only are these profiles creepy as fuck, but they are also obvious scams.
For the morons out there that have threatened me, called the cops on me, or even those that just are stupid enough to believe these profiles are mine let me point out a few things:
I have not dated anyone or really been interested in dating anyone since the operation that left me unable to have intercourse almost three years ago. I cancelled the dating websites I was a member of well before that because I was in a relationship. I have not, nor would I ever ask for money from people on a dating site. Lastly, I have never been involved in human trafficking.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Saturday, March 26, 2011
An apology
I'm sorry for keeping this blog on moderation only. There are two reasons for this.
Willilicious Georgette
Wayfinder Wishbringer
The constant abuse of our staff and followers from these two individuals means until I can figure out how to ban them all comments are moderated, and posts from these two users go straight to trash!
Willilicious Georgette
Wayfinder Wishbringer
The constant abuse of our staff and followers from these two individuals means until I can figure out how to ban them all comments are moderated, and posts from these two users go straight to trash!
Friday, March 25, 2011
not dead yet
LindenWatch is still around folks. The staff have had a really hectic month but we are working on two projects that we hope will make the wait worthwhile...
Saturday, March 12, 2011
In case you haven't heard
Alphaville Herald broke the latest of a saga. Rather then steal Pixeleen's work I'm linking you there..
http://alphavilleherald.com/2011/03/zf-redzone-security-breached-sl-passwords-compromised.html
http://alphavilleherald.com/2011/03/zf-redzone-security-breached-sl-passwords-compromised.html
Friday, March 4, 2011
My Redzone story and why I am glad to see Storm-1037
By Cummere Mayo
(x-posted)
For over a month now Redzone has been coming under attack. I myself entered the mix when a woman hating griefer named Willilicious Georgette told me to fuck myself and worse. The full conversation was posted without my consent into the “neighborhood watch” that Redzone watches. At the time that was posted it wasn’t a violation to post it elsewhere, however it became such since then so I cannot post it here…
That conversation happened because I dared to point out that Soft Linden told the Redzone members to stop “monkeying around” with jira number vwr-24746. I decided at that time to educate myself about Redzone, CDS, Quickware, etc. The product advertisements and my subsequent treatment by Skills, Zfire, and their ilk let me when I told them in no uncertain terms I wanted opted out galvanized me. The stories and accounts of countless victims including many I knew personally drew out a vicious streak that know me well know I reserve for those that dare fuck with my friends.
Since then I have been maliciously accused of harassment for posting on the jira and closing out jiras that were either thinly veiled attempts to circumvent the TOS, or ideas that simply are ludicrous and ignorant, like the idea of making everyone use a credit card and linking alts via credit card. I have had my sim, my store, even my linden home (yes I actually have one and LIKE it), griefed. I have had numerous false abuse reports filed against me and those who stood up for me. I have had someone attempt to spoof my name in a horrible attempt to frame me for greifing a Redzone sim. I have been accused of trolling the Redzone forums where I do not and will never have an account. Ive had threats in world and sent to my email with promises that I will be banned from Second Life or bodily harm.
Through it all I have put up with it only losing my temper a few times. You know why?
Here it is: I am one of a number of people taking this fight to everyone. I’ve sent emails to Rodvik, Alexa, Soft, Sue, Amanda, Blondin, and several other lindens on this. Not all of them answered but the ones that did so sometimes in rather spectacular ways…
I’ve been ported to linden only areas to discuss what Redzone does, how Zfire planned to get around the adjusted community standards, some of the pitfalls of how LL could handle things. I was one of a few residents that knew that the media urls are going to no longer be masked specifically because of Redzone, CDS, etc. (If you don’t believe me check out https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1037 where oz put the process into the Snowstorm backlog and assigned it to this sprint which means it should be implemented soon.) I was asked then to supply screens of everything I could and send them to Amanda, Soft, and Blondin, and to direct others to do the same.
I was one of the few that was aware that LL is actively wanting to take on the Media Filter that Cool Viewer and the Phoenix viewers have. Snowstorm told me if I could find a dev to implement a viewer cookie filtration system they would be interested. I approached Tonya from Phoenix and literally begged her on the SLU forum to look into it and I am hoping she will have the time to do it soon. Allot of this I couldn’t talk about till today because I was specifically told not to, but Amanda gave me the okay today.
Constantly I was told by Redzone users that I was trash, a copybotter, a stalker, a griefer, a whore, even a terrorist. Yes that’s right I’m a terrorist because I fought to destroy Redzone! Constantly I’ve been told I would be banned from Second Life.
Through it all, I’ve watched principled Redzone user after principled Redzone user start to realize what Redzone really was and what the core of the Redzone user group was like walk away and scrap Redzone. I’ve even suggested combinations of land settings, scripts, and orbs that did a far better job at copybot detection and protection (as much as can be done) to some of them.
I watched someone that I was convinced was attacking my roleplay half-sim walk away from Redzone. For the record, much as I don’t want to say it I no longer think Srilania really was the griefer. So Sri if you read this I apologize for that (and you should thank your partner and Jessica who both convinced me to keep an open mind. If they hadn’t I wouldn’t have seen past my dislike for you and, I admit, my sincere desire that it was you.)
I watched Zfire’s promises and predictions turn to ash, as LL pulled his product down off the marketplace twice, and blacklisted it in world, rewrote the CS, and pretty much publicly repudiated Zfire’s claims. I watched the Redzoners attack the TVPS that installed the Media Filter and watched Zfire add a ban by viewer feature. I watched LL respond with Storm-1037 as well as adopt the Media Filter as well.
I suspect I will be the target of allot more abuse from Redzoners. Some of them seem to think I am one of the causes of them falling down. Some FIC conspiracy taken right from a page in Prok’s book… I welcome it and all the AR’s they intend to throw at me. If LL actually listens to their garbage and bans me, so be it. After all, I intend to fully take Zfire down if he follows through on making his database public. However, it won’t be in world, it will be in the criminal justice system. I’ve already been asked to serve, and have agreed to do so, as a prosecution witness in a criminal case if he does make the database public.
Further changes are coming and it will interesting to see how Redzone, CDS, and Quickware users respond. Already they are whining about how implementing https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1037 will destroy their privacy. Rather ironic don’t you think?
The only ones Storm-1037 might hurt are DJs but allot of DJs really don’t mind if people listen to their streams from afar. However, the two actual Djs responding to the forum, and the partner of a third DJ are all for it. In fact I have two DJ streams that are entered into my radios that I have been told I can listen to whenever I want (assuming they are broadcasting) from my home or sim. They feel it to be free advertising and a way to share with friends. And if privacy is really an issue you can always feed the stream through a proxy and then something like dyndns. There will be a half second delay or so but eh…
What the Redzone users fear—and rightly so—is that this is simply the next step in driving tracking systems and alt detection systems off the grid. And it is…
(x-posted)
For over a month now Redzone has been coming under attack. I myself entered the mix when a woman hating griefer named Willilicious Georgette told me to fuck myself and worse. The full conversation was posted without my consent into the “neighborhood watch” that Redzone watches. At the time that was posted it wasn’t a violation to post it elsewhere, however it became such since then so I cannot post it here…
That conversation happened because I dared to point out that Soft Linden told the Redzone members to stop “monkeying around” with jira number vwr-24746. I decided at that time to educate myself about Redzone, CDS, Quickware, etc. The product advertisements and my subsequent treatment by Skills, Zfire, and their ilk let me when I told them in no uncertain terms I wanted opted out galvanized me. The stories and accounts of countless victims including many I knew personally drew out a vicious streak that know me well know I reserve for those that dare fuck with my friends.
Since then I have been maliciously accused of harassment for posting on the jira and closing out jiras that were either thinly veiled attempts to circumvent the TOS, or ideas that simply are ludicrous and ignorant, like the idea of making everyone use a credit card and linking alts via credit card. I have had my sim, my store, even my linden home (yes I actually have one and LIKE it), griefed. I have had numerous false abuse reports filed against me and those who stood up for me. I have had someone attempt to spoof my name in a horrible attempt to frame me for greifing a Redzone sim. I have been accused of trolling the Redzone forums where I do not and will never have an account. Ive had threats in world and sent to my email with promises that I will be banned from Second Life or bodily harm.
Through it all I have put up with it only losing my temper a few times. You know why?
Here it is: I am one of a number of people taking this fight to everyone. I’ve sent emails to Rodvik, Alexa, Soft, Sue, Amanda, Blondin, and several other lindens on this. Not all of them answered but the ones that did so sometimes in rather spectacular ways…
I’ve been ported to linden only areas to discuss what Redzone does, how Zfire planned to get around the adjusted community standards, some of the pitfalls of how LL could handle things. I was one of a few residents that knew that the media urls are going to no longer be masked specifically because of Redzone, CDS, etc. (If you don’t believe me check out https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1037 where oz put the process into the Snowstorm backlog and assigned it to this sprint which means it should be implemented soon.) I was asked then to supply screens of everything I could and send them to Amanda, Soft, and Blondin, and to direct others to do the same.
I was one of the few that was aware that LL is actively wanting to take on the Media Filter that Cool Viewer and the Phoenix viewers have. Snowstorm told me if I could find a dev to implement a viewer cookie filtration system they would be interested. I approached Tonya from Phoenix and literally begged her on the SLU forum to look into it and I am hoping she will have the time to do it soon. Allot of this I couldn’t talk about till today because I was specifically told not to, but Amanda gave me the okay today.
Constantly I was told by Redzone users that I was trash, a copybotter, a stalker, a griefer, a whore, even a terrorist. Yes that’s right I’m a terrorist because I fought to destroy Redzone! Constantly I’ve been told I would be banned from Second Life.
Through it all, I’ve watched principled Redzone user after principled Redzone user start to realize what Redzone really was and what the core of the Redzone user group was like walk away and scrap Redzone. I’ve even suggested combinations of land settings, scripts, and orbs that did a far better job at copybot detection and protection (as much as can be done) to some of them.
I watched someone that I was convinced was attacking my roleplay half-sim walk away from Redzone. For the record, much as I don’t want to say it I no longer think Srilania really was the griefer. So Sri if you read this I apologize for that (and you should thank your partner and Jessica who both convinced me to keep an open mind. If they hadn’t I wouldn’t have seen past my dislike for you and, I admit, my sincere desire that it was you.)
I watched Zfire’s promises and predictions turn to ash, as LL pulled his product down off the marketplace twice, and blacklisted it in world, rewrote the CS, and pretty much publicly repudiated Zfire’s claims. I watched the Redzoners attack the TVPS that installed the Media Filter and watched Zfire add a ban by viewer feature. I watched LL respond with Storm-1037 as well as adopt the Media Filter as well.
I suspect I will be the target of allot more abuse from Redzoners. Some of them seem to think I am one of the causes of them falling down. Some FIC conspiracy taken right from a page in Prok’s book… I welcome it and all the AR’s they intend to throw at me. If LL actually listens to their garbage and bans me, so be it. After all, I intend to fully take Zfire down if he follows through on making his database public. However, it won’t be in world, it will be in the criminal justice system. I’ve already been asked to serve, and have agreed to do so, as a prosecution witness in a criminal case if he does make the database public.
Further changes are coming and it will interesting to see how Redzone, CDS, and Quickware users respond. Already they are whining about how implementing https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1037 will destroy their privacy. Rather ironic don’t you think?
The only ones Storm-1037 might hurt are DJs but allot of DJs really don’t mind if people listen to their streams from afar. However, the two actual Djs responding to the forum, and the partner of a third DJ are all for it. In fact I have two DJ streams that are entered into my radios that I have been told I can listen to whenever I want (assuming they are broadcasting) from my home or sim. They feel it to be free advertising and a way to share with friends. And if privacy is really an issue you can always feed the stream through a proxy and then something like dyndns. There will be a half second delay or so but eh…
What the Redzone users fear—and rightly so—is that this is simply the next step in driving tracking systems and alt detection systems off the grid. And it is…
Friday, February 25, 2011
Linden Watch is holding off on C&D to LL readying one for RZ
~by Cummere Mayo
Due to three very significant events that happened today Linden Watch is switching its strategy.
We had a Cease and Desist letter being looked over by an attorney and were making the final changes when three events happened back to back that have caused us to hold off.
First event, the harassment of several NON-greenzone users by redzone users such as a certain phoenix dev (who ironically lies about how her sim is under constant greifing attacks) and the adamant claims that the majority of content creators support their cause. (Most content creators I know either quit using Redzone or never did and I know well over 1000.)
Second Event, Major change in LL TOS that now makes alt disclosure an explicit violation AND makes disclosing anything on ANY site a violation.
Third event we cannot talk about YET, but has given Linden Watch cause for cautious optimism that LL isn't done with this issue just yet.
These events have caused us to decide we will instead be sending a cease and desist letter to Redzone's creator from Linden Watch. signed only by Linden Watch members and possibly accompanied by a court order to enforce it...
Due to three very significant events that happened today Linden Watch is switching its strategy.
We had a Cease and Desist letter being looked over by an attorney and were making the final changes when three events happened back to back that have caused us to hold off.
First event, the harassment of several NON-greenzone users by redzone users such as a certain phoenix dev (who ironically lies about how her sim is under constant greifing attacks) and the adamant claims that the majority of content creators support their cause. (Most content creators I know either quit using Redzone or never did and I know well over 1000.)
Second Event, Major change in LL TOS that now makes alt disclosure an explicit violation AND makes disclosing anything on ANY site a violation.
Third event we cannot talk about YET, but has given Linden Watch cause for cautious optimism that LL isn't done with this issue just yet.
These events have caused us to decide we will instead be sending a cease and desist letter to Redzone's creator from Linden Watch. signed only by Linden Watch members and possibly accompanied by a court order to enforce it...
Interesting update...
I've been quiet on the blogs lately, but this just was brought to my attention and its too good not to share...
Seems a certain maker of a certain security system has a FTA out on him... Hmmm don't see this mentioned on his forums...
Seems a certain maker of a certain security system has a FTA out on him... Hmmm don't see this mentioned on his forums...
Thursday, February 17, 2011
An invitation
Due to Linden Lab being unreasonably slow in making Facebook and Twitter share widgets opt-in only, and due to Linden Lab's refusal to take down CDS, Redzone, and other privacy violating malware systems, Linden Watch is putting together a Cease and Desist Letter to send to Linden Lab in the attempt to force them to act on these issues.
The Cease and Desist Letter will be the first step in a series of actions that will include possibly filing a lawsuit against Linden Lab as a direct defendant for violating certain California and Federal Privacy laws regarding the sharing of private information connected with Web Profiles and the in ability to opt-in or opt out, and as an accessory in breaking various harassment, privacy laws regarding what amounts to illegal gathering and selling of private information, illegal wiretapping (because many systems allow the monitoring of text or voice chat without consent), libel and defamation of character and other things.
We at Linden Watch believe strongly in privacy.
Those that would be intrested in being included in this cease and desist letter please put your Username in the comments along with if you wish your username to be shown or not. Thank you!
The Cease and Desist Letter will be the first step in a series of actions that will include possibly filing a lawsuit against Linden Lab as a direct defendant for violating certain California and Federal Privacy laws regarding the sharing of private information connected with Web Profiles and the in ability to opt-in or opt out, and as an accessory in breaking various harassment, privacy laws regarding what amounts to illegal gathering and selling of private information, illegal wiretapping (because many systems allow the monitoring of text or voice chat without consent), libel and defamation of character and other things.
We at Linden Watch believe strongly in privacy.
Those that would be intrested in being included in this cease and desist letter please put your Username in the comments along with if you wish your username to be shown or not. Thank you!
Monday, February 14, 2011
Why A Purely Web Feature Based Viewer 2 Will Always Fail
by Cummere Mayo, Mythoes Llewellyn, Bitterly Sweet
It would be awesome if this post could start out with "It came upon a dark and dismal night" however the truth is none of us really remember what kind of day/night it was when the first web based features crept into v1. There they were implemented with care, but still had a high fail rate. This would be a powerful potent of things to come...
When Viewer 2 was introduced to the community it certainly felt like a dark day had come upon us. The viewer 2 was built with the look and feel of a third rate web-site. (Some people argue a web browser, but browsers have far more customization, and tend to follow basic industry standards like having file and edit menus.) Integrated (unknown to most) were the first generation web profiles. These were clearly usable and editable from within the viewer with little or no wait, and no real loss of function if the website hosting the profiles went down other then display of the information that the user put in, and the user pictures.
Most people never knew that these profiles were web based because Linden Lab never advertised that fact and because they were extremely well integrated into the system with the ability to edit the information without the use of a browser (whether built in or external.) Furthermore, this system didn't seem to rely on cookie caching, nor were critical functions like pay, teleport, online status, etc. mapped through the web page but instead were directly embedded in the viewer and worked regardless of the profile.
Other web technologies that were put in either from the start or very early on were a "enhanced" web mapping and teleport system (it should be noted the 1.x viewers also had a web based system for mapping and teleport), a web based search system, web based classified system, and a few other "behind the hood" odds and ends.
Of these, the only one that reliably worked was the mapping/teleport system.
Search routinely fails to load for many users, and then--because of the Search team's opinion they obviously pulled out of their asses that most people that use search don't need it to visit more then one place--would close AND reset annoying the vast majority of users. It should be noted that the jira on that was closed out despite unanimous request for that behavior to change, based on the on an opinion that the Search team was never able to back up, and in fact that public stats another department published decently contradicted. This along with bugs in the coding of the search itself has left this a permanently broken feature and a massive failure on LL's part.
The web based classified also simply don't work, as anyone that has ever bought one can tell you. This is true for both the ones in search and the ones in marketplace. In both cases even if they do actually show up (most times they don't) its usually not in any context relevant enough to actually do the person buying the classified any good. And good luck getting a refund...
Now, the web profiles have been changed again, and group and object profiles are due to follow. In the new profiles, not only are there privacy concerns that have been addressed on this and other blogs that still aren't resolved, but the system is bulky and slow when it does load, and fails to load at all for many users.
If it does load, the layout is filled with useless white space that social team insists is critical, has share and like buttons that you cannot get rid of whether they are on your profile or someone else's, and may have ads displayed that are to a direct competitor of the profile you are looking at (which seems to violate a lot of unfair business practice laws). Another Fail.
If they don't load and you don't have that person on your list, in a group you're in, or otherwise near you, attempting to pay them, teleport them, add them as a friend, or send them an IM is all but impossible and can only be done if they are in search (Assuming search loads). These options are no longer in the UI otherwise, not even as a backup. Again another fail.
If you dare turn off cookies to protect your privacy, then you are shit out of luck. There is no option in the V2 browser to only allow cookies from LL owned sites or even from trusted sites and turning off cookies causes profiles, and often search to fail badly.
By this time frustration for new users is through the roof and many simply quit by this point. For older residents this becomes yet another massive source of seething anger, frustration, and resentment directed at Linden Lab as a whole and at various Lindens specifically, even when often those lindens had no say. And both Search and Social the teams in charge of search and web profiles collectively continue to mostly ignore the users with the attitude they know our needs better then we do! Epic Fail!
Even the Linden housing has had issues with its web based controls not properly triggering the in world houses, further furstrating users both new and old!
And LL has plans to make this situation worse!
Group profiles which have also been web based are about to be revamped with all of their tools also going into a web site. Most of these tools don't even have redundancy within the viewer; things like Notices, group invites, roles, permissions, ejection tools and just about everything else that you currently do in the floater do not have redundancy anywhere.
Can you imagine the mess that will make when you cannot create, join, manage, or possibly even leave a group if you cannot get to the group page? What new user is going to stick around in this case? And what are the existing users supposed to do? Especially the business owners for which groups are a huge part of their ability to connect with their customers?
Furthermore, the more of these features pushed through websites, even if LL owned, the less secure the system is. Each is one more connection that can be spoofed, hacked, monitored, or hijacked. In case you have missed the message, across SL users are lashing back at things they feel invade their privacy, whether things like web profiles that LL is directly responsible for, things like Redzone that are run by other users.
Because someone will invariably ask what about features like social network integration, web inventory management (a much requested feature), the desire for web profiles by many people etc. The thing is that none of those features needs or should be implemented in a way that precludes easy access from the ui with the sole exception of the web management which is simply meant to be an additional tool to manage inventory and NOT a replacement for any of the inworld tools.
LL cannot afford to keep investing in moving the viewer to purely web feature based. It is too unreliable, too insecure, and relies on too many factors to work to ever be tenable.
It would be awesome if this post could start out with "It came upon a dark and dismal night" however the truth is none of us really remember what kind of day/night it was when the first web based features crept into v1. There they were implemented with care, but still had a high fail rate. This would be a powerful potent of things to come...
When Viewer 2 was introduced to the community it certainly felt like a dark day had come upon us. The viewer 2 was built with the look and feel of a third rate web-site. (Some people argue a web browser, but browsers have far more customization, and tend to follow basic industry standards like having file and edit menus.) Integrated (unknown to most) were the first generation web profiles. These were clearly usable and editable from within the viewer with little or no wait, and no real loss of function if the website hosting the profiles went down other then display of the information that the user put in, and the user pictures.
Most people never knew that these profiles were web based because Linden Lab never advertised that fact and because they were extremely well integrated into the system with the ability to edit the information without the use of a browser (whether built in or external.) Furthermore, this system didn't seem to rely on cookie caching, nor were critical functions like pay, teleport, online status, etc. mapped through the web page but instead were directly embedded in the viewer and worked regardless of the profile.
Other web technologies that were put in either from the start or very early on were a "enhanced" web mapping and teleport system (it should be noted the 1.x viewers also had a web based system for mapping and teleport), a web based search system, web based classified system, and a few other "behind the hood" odds and ends.
Of these, the only one that reliably worked was the mapping/teleport system.
Search routinely fails to load for many users, and then--because of the Search team's opinion they obviously pulled out of their asses that most people that use search don't need it to visit more then one place--would close AND reset annoying the vast majority of users. It should be noted that the jira on that was closed out despite unanimous request for that behavior to change, based on the on an opinion that the Search team was never able to back up, and in fact that public stats another department published decently contradicted. This along with bugs in the coding of the search itself has left this a permanently broken feature and a massive failure on LL's part.
The web based classified also simply don't work, as anyone that has ever bought one can tell you. This is true for both the ones in search and the ones in marketplace. In both cases even if they do actually show up (most times they don't) its usually not in any context relevant enough to actually do the person buying the classified any good. And good luck getting a refund...
Now, the web profiles have been changed again, and group and object profiles are due to follow. In the new profiles, not only are there privacy concerns that have been addressed on this and other blogs that still aren't resolved, but the system is bulky and slow when it does load, and fails to load at all for many users.
If it does load, the layout is filled with useless white space that social team insists is critical, has share and like buttons that you cannot get rid of whether they are on your profile or someone else's, and may have ads displayed that are to a direct competitor of the profile you are looking at (which seems to violate a lot of unfair business practice laws). Another Fail.
If they don't load and you don't have that person on your list, in a group you're in, or otherwise near you, attempting to pay them, teleport them, add them as a friend, or send them an IM is all but impossible and can only be done if they are in search (Assuming search loads). These options are no longer in the UI otherwise, not even as a backup. Again another fail.
If you dare turn off cookies to protect your privacy, then you are shit out of luck. There is no option in the V2 browser to only allow cookies from LL owned sites or even from trusted sites and turning off cookies causes profiles, and often search to fail badly.
By this time frustration for new users is through the roof and many simply quit by this point. For older residents this becomes yet another massive source of seething anger, frustration, and resentment directed at Linden Lab as a whole and at various Lindens specifically, even when often those lindens had no say. And both Search and Social the teams in charge of search and web profiles collectively continue to mostly ignore the users with the attitude they know our needs better then we do! Epic Fail!
Even the Linden housing has had issues with its web based controls not properly triggering the in world houses, further furstrating users both new and old!
And LL has plans to make this situation worse!
Group profiles which have also been web based are about to be revamped with all of their tools also going into a web site. Most of these tools don't even have redundancy within the viewer; things like Notices, group invites, roles, permissions, ejection tools and just about everything else that you currently do in the floater do not have redundancy anywhere.
Can you imagine the mess that will make when you cannot create, join, manage, or possibly even leave a group if you cannot get to the group page? What new user is going to stick around in this case? And what are the existing users supposed to do? Especially the business owners for which groups are a huge part of their ability to connect with their customers?
Furthermore, the more of these features pushed through websites, even if LL owned, the less secure the system is. Each is one more connection that can be spoofed, hacked, monitored, or hijacked. In case you have missed the message, across SL users are lashing back at things they feel invade their privacy, whether things like web profiles that LL is directly responsible for, things like Redzone that are run by other users.
Because someone will invariably ask what about features like social network integration, web inventory management (a much requested feature), the desire for web profiles by many people etc. The thing is that none of those features needs or should be implemented in a way that precludes easy access from the ui with the sole exception of the web management which is simply meant to be an additional tool to manage inventory and NOT a replacement for any of the inworld tools.
LL cannot afford to keep investing in moving the viewer to purely web feature based. It is too unreliable, too insecure, and relies on too many factors to work to ever be tenable.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
LL: Let's Communicate about Second Life Everywhere but Second Life
By Cummere Mayo
Amanda Linden released a new post on the official blog today. In it she laid out the new rules for use on the forums, blogs, and elsewhere. These rules are both more strict about speaking about topics that don't involve SL, supposedly will end the massive abuse agaisnt other residents found throughout the forums. One of the worst bits about the new guidelines is that criticism of LL will be invariably termed under the flaming guidelines, and that we are not allowed to question the moderation of posts which means that the moderators, some of which already abuse their positions, will be more free to do so.
In addition despite the intense oposition of both SL members and of Facebook members, Amanda anounced that Facebook is still the place to get some of the best updates about Second Life. Additionally she provides a long list of twitter threads to follow. An entire fricken list!
In facebook there are roughly 115,000 fans of the second life facebook page. Scanning through the first 50 pages of fans, almost 4/5 are accounts made using SL names, a blatent violation of Facebook TOS. Whats even more insane is more then a few of those accounts are from people that have multiple accounts on facebook, one for each Second Life alt.
This has not gone unnoticed in facebook. There are groups devoted to petitioning to get all Second Life linked or named accounts banned, to IP ban Linden Lab, to getting the Second Life fan page removed, and even one to get listing Second Life anywhere in your account automatic grounds for account termination. These groups combined have more then three times the number of fans of the Second Life page. And one of them is within a few thousand of passing Second Life on its own.
If telling us to watch facebook wasn't bad enough, Amanda provides an entire list of twitter accounts we should watch. Not one, not even two, but an entire list. And in addition, we should follow e-mail lists, a half dozen forums, the knoweldge base AND the blogs. All told we need to watch almost two dozen differant channels just to stay caught up with whats going on. (Thats just taking the five main blog channels, the five main forums, Facebook, the six most useful email lists, only the main twitter channel, and the usergroups.)
Out of those onlyy the usergroups arre actually IN Second Life. In fact Twitter and Facebook aren't even owned or hosted by Second Life.
Finally, even our one outlet for getting bugs and feature requests addressed is being made less useful. Instead of asking the makers of jira to add a feature to vote against items, LL is deciding to force us to watch items we are intrested in the outcome in order to get any intrest. Which is designed not to allow better guage what is important as it is to discourage users from using the Jira.
After all the progress in communication that has been made by Linden Lab in communications, this is a huge step backwards. In fact, this almost single handedly destroys any real hope of good communication through the use of information overload.
If LL was serious about communciation they would consolidate soem of their methods of communication, they would drop the fiasco of Twitter and Facebook and start opening lines of communication within Second Life itself. Chat groups within SL to get direct user feedback, forcing lindens to actually spend even just an hour a day on an alt inside of one or more of the communities within SL, and making each linden hold office hours in addition to the new user groups would go a LONG way towards truely meaningful communications...
Crossposted in both Lindenwatch and SecondLife Technologist
Amanda Linden released a new post on the official blog today. In it she laid out the new rules for use on the forums, blogs, and elsewhere. These rules are both more strict about speaking about topics that don't involve SL, supposedly will end the massive abuse agaisnt other residents found throughout the forums. One of the worst bits about the new guidelines is that criticism of LL will be invariably termed under the flaming guidelines, and that we are not allowed to question the moderation of posts which means that the moderators, some of which already abuse their positions, will be more free to do so.
In addition despite the intense oposition of both SL members and of Facebook members, Amanda anounced that Facebook is still the place to get some of the best updates about Second Life. Additionally she provides a long list of twitter threads to follow. An entire fricken list!
In facebook there are roughly 115,000 fans of the second life facebook page. Scanning through the first 50 pages of fans, almost 4/5 are accounts made using SL names, a blatent violation of Facebook TOS. Whats even more insane is more then a few of those accounts are from people that have multiple accounts on facebook, one for each Second Life alt.
This has not gone unnoticed in facebook. There are groups devoted to petitioning to get all Second Life linked or named accounts banned, to IP ban Linden Lab, to getting the Second Life fan page removed, and even one to get listing Second Life anywhere in your account automatic grounds for account termination. These groups combined have more then three times the number of fans of the Second Life page. And one of them is within a few thousand of passing Second Life on its own.
If telling us to watch facebook wasn't bad enough, Amanda provides an entire list of twitter accounts we should watch. Not one, not even two, but an entire list. And in addition, we should follow e-mail lists, a half dozen forums, the knoweldge base AND the blogs. All told we need to watch almost two dozen differant channels just to stay caught up with whats going on. (Thats just taking the five main blog channels, the five main forums, Facebook, the six most useful email lists, only the main twitter channel, and the usergroups.)
Out of those onlyy the usergroups arre actually IN Second Life. In fact Twitter and Facebook aren't even owned or hosted by Second Life.
Finally, even our one outlet for getting bugs and feature requests addressed is being made less useful. Instead of asking the makers of jira to add a feature to vote against items, LL is deciding to force us to watch items we are intrested in the outcome in order to get any intrest. Which is designed not to allow better guage what is important as it is to discourage users from using the Jira.
After all the progress in communication that has been made by Linden Lab in communications, this is a huge step backwards. In fact, this almost single handedly destroys any real hope of good communication through the use of information overload.
If LL was serious about communciation they would consolidate soem of their methods of communication, they would drop the fiasco of Twitter and Facebook and start opening lines of communication within Second Life itself. Chat groups within SL to get direct user feedback, forcing lindens to actually spend even just an hour a day on an alt inside of one or more of the communities within SL, and making each linden hold office hours in addition to the new user groups would go a LONG way towards truely meaningful communications...
Crossposted in both Lindenwatch and SecondLife Technologist
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