This Saturday at The Science Circle

 

 

Saturday March 22

 

    ~*~

 

    At 10 AM PST   

    Open Forum and Programing Feedback

    https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/open-forum-and-programming-feedback/

    Organized by Stephen Gasior

    Auditorium

 

    ~*~

 

    NOTE: Non-members required to register once

    IM Jes Cobalt or Nymf Hathaway

╚══════════════════════════════ The Science Circle (72,129,30) ═╝

 

 

EOTB: "Community Roundtable" Tomorrow, Monday May 20

 

Tomorrow at 9:30 AM SL time is the "Community Roundtable" with Linden Lab.  This is a chance for residents to discuss concerns and other matters with two of the Lindens, preferably those sent over in advance. 

We take all feedback (good and bad) from the community seriously. That’s why we’re excited to begin a new initiative that allows Residents to share their thoughts and interact directly with top executives at Second Life. 

We hope you’ll join us for the first of many Community Roundtables with Second Life Leadership – it will be held on Monday, May 20 from 9:30-11 a.m. SLT. For this inaugural session, you’ll have a chance to meet and interact directly with Linden Lab Executive Chairman Oberwolf Linden and Senior VP of Product & Engineering Grumpity Linden.

The Lab would state "We encourage community members to submit questions in advance ... and we’ll do our best to address as many as we can," asking them to use this google doc (link). 

 

While no doubt there are a variety of concerns, it's expected many of the questions will be about the changes in the policies about child avatars announced earlier this month.

The suggested SURLs were

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Linden Estate Services4/237/19/27
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Linden Estate Services2/26/229/28  

 

For the blog post in full, (click here). 

EOTB: Second Life "Moving From Jira"

 

 Most Second Life users are probably aware if JIRA, even if they themselves don't use it. This system for technical support has been used for reporting bugs and requested features for most of the virtual world's history. But, this won't be the case for much longer. In the official blog on Friday January 12, Linden Lab announced that they are in the process of moving away from the system. 

Unfortunately, Jira Server, the software and license agreement we use to host Second Life's jira.secondlife.com site, is being discontinued and its official replacement cannot handle the number of users (over 300,000) that Second Life needs. Long story short: we need to move off of Jira before support ends in early February, 2024.

 

The Lab announced they were opening "a new community portal," https://feedback.secondlife.com/ saying, "This site will host feature requests, bug reports and ultimately replace the public BUG project on jira.secondlife.com ." But for now, https://support.secondlife.com/ is still the place to report support issues, "We will keep using Freshdesk for all personal and content-sensitive tickets."

 

The Lab did post a timetable, which stated the process had started in December, and will conclude next month in February with the shutdown of JIRA. 

 

The Lindens stated the new system has a new software called Canny, "Part of the rationale for moving to Canny, the software behind feedback.secondlife.com, as opposed to alternative issue tracking solutions is that it is a very focused product that is tailor made for responding to user feedback and prioritizing ideas."

The Lab also reminded there are a couple differences between the new system and JIRA, "which may require changes to behavior." There will be limited attachment support, and no private posts can be done, "If your report contains sensitive information then please redact/censor private information. If this is not possible, because it is material to the issue being filed, then please file a support ticket if it is personal in nature or security report if it represents a vulnerability."

 

The Lindens admitted these changes will be a big thing to some residents, "Making a significant change like this is no small task. Staff and residents alike have grown deeply familiar with jira.secondlife.com through countless hours spent using the site. We hope you will have patience as we migrate data, build documentation, develop new muscle memory and smooth out wrinkles in tools and processes."

 

As the post was named "Part One," it's a sure thing more information is forthcoming.

 

Source: Linden blog.

 

Bixyl Shuftan

A Reader Responds on Linden Lab's Price and Fee Hikes, Group Limit Cuts

On June 4, yours truly made a commentary about Linden Lab's decision on May 29 to raise Premium account prices by 37% (or a little over 25% for those paying monthly), the doubling of the fee to cash out Linden dollars (2.5% to 5%), and their decision to cut the group limits on basic accounts from 42 to 35. While the Lindens canceled the last part of their plans due to feedback, I questioned why the Lab made that move to begin with while also raising prices and fees while their successful Linden homes were already bringing in more money.

Some people felt the commentary was overreacting to Linden Lab's move. Most of those comments on Facebook were simple ones to the tune of "If you don't want to pay, you don't have to play." But one reader, an Elizabeth Jarvinen, took the time to explain why she felt the comments were a little harsh.

I've been one of very few residents who routinely helps out both the Lindens and the third party viewer devs with bug reports and problem solving on SL. There's been talk for years about how group size and group numbers have been problematic. Whether people believe it or not, the facts remain the same. Group membership, particularly very large groups really weigh down the SL system. That's also why they limited viewing group members / roles to groups with (under) 5000 members. 

Balancing Public Relations with Technical Solutions is not easy. It's one of the hardest things with doing anything 'on the internet' in this era~ people can always construct a narrative that has conspiracy and ill intentions, marked with corporate greed and personal gain for~ well~ pretty much any situation really. That being said, I also condemned the notion of cutting basic groups, and I'm glad they listened.

I also feel a bit compelled to point out that with regard to "small land owners" a year ago they literally doubled their parcel sizes for FREE. How was that forgotten so quickly? I get that people remember bad things more readily and that Loss Aversion is a human propensity ~ but, I really wish it wasn't.

Also also~ random addendum, the reason there was teleport failures was literally related to the linux version that the servers were running on. Not, as your article suggests, things being moved to the Cloud. Sounds silly, but that's what it was. So the issue was basically an unforeseen consequence of some other software developer that changed a thing that SL uses to exist~ and that caused teleports in SL to change behavior.

The parting words of your post seems to indicate that you believe that the Lindens of old were less greedy somehow~ and that the new ones are putting the screws to the residents just 'cause they can. The fact of the matter is SL is a dinosaur, an aging behemoth. It's made it this far, due to some very good design choices by those early Lindens you revere, but it also is struggling due to some very poor ones that did not age well. Solving these issues may not always have the most socially expedient solutions, and I may not always agree with them. But I'd rather they try than we all get a "June surprise" of Linden Lab closing it's doors and the Second Life we all know and love becoming a footnote of the history of the Internet.

Do you the readers agree? Disagree? Further comments are welcome below, as well as any reader submissions.

Eye on the Blog: New Year's Contest, Xmas Present, and More

While the Newser has been busy reporting on Christmas-themed events across Second Life, Linden Labs has not been inactive. They've posted a few goings-on in their blog, most recently about a New Year's Eve photography contest.

Winter has arrived — and the spirit of the season is evident in every sense — from the snow on the ground in many parts, to the merriment and joy and observances across the world. We want to know how you celebrate the coming of the New Year in our New Year Snapshot Contest. If it’s a whole new look for your avatar, or an inworld party to celebrate — share your snapshots for a chance to win L$10,000,  L$5,000, L$3,000 or L$1,000. Visit the contest in our Official Forums for details and to enter.

There's also a Christmas present from the folks of Linden Lab, just go over to Portal Park 1 and find it.

If you’ve got a sweet tooth — come by one of the Portal Park locations to pick up a free holiday gift. Look for the red gift box and click it to get your copy — and enjoy the seasonally decorated Portal Park while you’re there.

The prize wasn't far from the Portal Park 1 (133/119/23) location provided, just beyond the arch labeled "Social Area." I (as my alt) got a copy of the present, and rezzing it at the office had a gingerbread house, "Happy Holidays from the Linden family!"

Earlier entries from not long ago included an update on "Experience Keys," which Linden Lab first announced they were working on in July, demonstrating it at "The Cornfield" game. This time, they were offering a "Release Candiate" viewer for the feature.

... a new Viewer Release Candidate makes it easy for you to manage all your experience permissions in one place. This new Viewer makes it easy to Block, Unblock, or Reset experiences. Additionally, an Events Tab logs the objects and scripts you encounter in an experience, so every action performed on your avatar will be saved or recorded. Have a problem with an experience? We’ve also integrated a new reporting feature to make it easy to flag bad experiences to our Support team for review. Search is also available in the new Viewer, so you can explore all of the growing number of available experiences that use this feature.

Earlier in the month, they offered a new feedback and suggestions page.

What’s the one thing Linden Lab could do that would have the biggest impact on further improving your Second Life experience? Many Second Life users have thoughts on this - from different approaches for the way things are done today, to brand new features that could dramatically improve their experiences, to seemingly small things that could have a big impact. Today, we’re launching an easier way to share your ideas with us, a new “Feedback & Suggestions” page on SecondLife.com. You can also find this page by going to Help and finding New Feature Suggestions in the drop down.

One can find the suggestions page here: https://support.secondlife.com/suggestions/ .

And if things have seemed wonkier than usual on the Grid, it likely was not your imagination. The Lab posted that there were certain "recent inventory issues" going on with accounts.

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Machinima: SL9B - Give Us Feedback aka "The Angel Of Death #30"

Crap Mariner's 30th video on the SL9B. It was made on Monday June 25th, the day after the last official event. The self-professed "Wackadoodle" invited the others in SL9B group chat over (including a certain fox reporter, whom can be seen near the front), and congratulated them on a job well done before and after the filming of this video, in which the "Prim Reaper" asks for feedback on the Second Life Ninth Birthday, "Tell us what we did right! Tell us what we did wrong! Tell us what you want us to do next year! Tell us you want to join us! GIVE US FEEDBACK OR GIVE US PIE!"

Crap clowned around a little with the Prim Reaper voice, but not much once the filming was done. All those "Angel of Death" videos as the raspy-voiced specter had been a little hard on his voicebox.

"Boogie boogie boogie"

What Do You Want to See Here?

Second Life Newser has the stated goal of covering a variety of topics from across the Grid. So far, we've kept it up and published daily. But there is quite a bit to write about.

So what do you the readers think we need more of? Did you want more locations? More fashion? Religious themes? More games and roleplay? Adult topics (written about in a manner safe for a family newspaper)? More on Redzone and other mischief? Newbie help? More interviews? More humor?

What do we need to show?