Philip Rosedale Office Hour Meeting - Stripped Down
One of my favorite Second Life related websites is Your2ndPlace. It’s this chaotic mashup of raw data, personal drama, and insight into the life of the small business person. The other day Sarah Nerd posted Philip Linden Office Hour Meeting September 10th 2007, a completely unabridged transcript of an open meeting held in-world by the current king of the metaverse.
Now, it was a lot of text and will be pretty time consuming to absorb taken as-is. All I really wanted to know was what hard questions got answered. So, what I’ve decided to do is cut out everything but what Philip said and annotate a bit to let you know what they were talking about. I’ve refrained entirely from editorial comment, although some of this is begging for it. Anyhow, topics include:
- Settling in.
- The griefing crisis.
- Auto-Return
- “Being Ruthed” (where your avatar apears female instead of male occasionally)
- The wider metaverse
- Second Life architecture
- Chat functionality
- Tweaking the user interface
Details after the jump.
- Settling in.
[9:01] Philip Linden: Hi there
[9:01] Philip Linden: Where can I sit?
[9:02] Philip Linden: Taking off gun
[9:02] Philip Linden: OK!
[9:02] Philip Linden: What shall we talk about today?
[9:03] Philip Linden: I know that is true… I will get all these chairs fixed for next time.
- The griefing crisis.
[9:03] Philip Linden: there isn’t a specific way to turn off self-replication, though.
[9:03] Philip Linden: is there?
[9:04] Philip Linden: I don’t think there is a way to limit it that isn’t trivially beatable,
[9:04] Philip Linden: unless we stop all RezObject calls.
[9:04] Philip Linden: which means nothing can rez anything.
[9:04] Philip Linden: i think the current method for self-replication is to rez and object, and then give it a copy of yourself.
[9:05] Philip Linden: yes but if we turn up the fence numbers many many other things you guys have will break.
[9:05] Philip Linden: prok what about a fish rez script in a pond
[9:06] Philip Linden: I don’t know baba… it is way more complex than a single setting
[9:06] Philip Linden: wait… how about if you guys explain exactly what the big griefers are doing.
[9:07] Philip Linden: wait wait slow down.
[9:07] Philip Linden: i am trying to understand.
[9:07] Philip Linden: give me more details. step by step.
[9:08] Philip Linden: OK now you are helping a little.
[9:08] Philip Linden: So step 1 is you make a new account, basic, unverified.
[9:09] Philip Linden: step 2 is you find a piece of land with rez and autoreturn in the same sim, right?
[9:09] Philip Linden: prok what is an anonymizer?
[9:10] Philip Linden: What if we made entry to SL from all the big anonymizers illegal?
[9:10] Philip Linden: We could simply ban the IP addresses of the major IP redirectors. This is something I have been thinking about.
[9:11] Philip Linden: I think that we could ban a lot of them, because they use well know IP ranges.
[9:11] Philip Linden: Well that is the question… would we be harming legit users?
[9:12] Philip Linden: That is true, possibly we could require more stringent identity checks if you are coming from anonymizer IP ranges.
[9:13] Philip Linden: so physics enabled objects can cross into parcels… hmm… that seems fixeable.
[9:15] Philip Linden: otak do you think that everyone banned who is back uses an anonymizing service?
[9:16] Philip Linden: yes, but, on the internet I can’t disturb other browers of a site.
[9:16] Philip Linden: whereas in SL i easily can.
[9:17] Philip Linden: It is an interesting problem, to say the least. We need some sort of new thinking here.
[9:18] Philip Linden: so how do we solve it socially and politically?
[9:19] Philip Linden: 5 more minutes on griefing then let’s move on.
[9:19] Philip Linden: OK?
[9:21] Philip Linden: 2 more minutes. You guys are talking too fast.
[9:22] Philip Linden: I’m not recording this. Too busy.
[9:23] Philip Linden: OK OK. I agree this is a very important topic.
[9:23] Philip Linden: But can I ask us to move on?
[9:24] Philip Linden: OK.
[9:24] Philip Linden: What should we talk about next?
- Auto-Return
[9:25] Philip Linden: OK… so explain… 10 minute AR?
[9:25] Philip Linden: I hear you about Ruth. Let’s come back to that in a moment.
[9:25] Philip Linden: I don
[9:25] Philip Linden: I don’t know what you mean about autoreturn.
[9:27] Philip Linden: I’m sorry you are talking so fast, I still don’t understand what this AR thing is about.
[9:27] Philip Linden: someone will have to slowly explain to me.
[9:28] Philip Linden: OK so you guys want there to be a lower possible setting than one minute?
[9:29] Philip Linden: Hmm…. I still don’t understand. Nimrod I will try and find out. Best thing would be to ask whoever made the original post.
[9:30] Philip Linden: Hopefully you can imagine I can’t possibly hold every SL blog thread in my head.
- Being Ruthed.
[9:30] Philip Linden: OK let’s talk about this ruth problem.
[9:31] Philip Linden: Does everyone agree that being a plywood box or something would be better than being ruth.
[9:32] Philip Linden: the prob is that attachments and the like come slowly… and always will in some cases I suppose.
[9:33] Philip Linden: so the question is what to represent you as when your avatar is not all there yet.
[9:33] Philip Linden: right.
[9:33] Philip Linden: how about just your name…. invisible avatar.
[9:34] Philip Linden: i guess that wouldn’t work when people have namtags on temporary.
[9:34] Philip Linden: yeah good point prok
[9:35] Philip Linden: the trick is we don’t know when to give up… to force a relog, in essence
[9:35] Philip Linden: this is something that will happen in some places and not in others, right?
[9:35] Philip Linden: if you move to another sim you will show up.
[9:36] Philip Linden: right prok.
[9:36] Philip Linden: of course we are fixing a lot of stuff that stops the dataserver, which is what causes this in the first place.
[9:36] Philip Linden: But…. there are always going to be very intense locations, etc, where this is going to happen.
[9:36] Philip Linden: i agree sarah.
[9:37] Philip Linden: nimrod can you email me exact repro instructions for that. Include the name of an object that you do not always see.
[9:37] Philip Linden: I would like to try and repro that problem here in the office.
[9:38] Philip Linden: OK let’s move on from ruth. Good thoughts.
- The wider metaverse
[9:39] Philip Linden: I’ve met with the HiPiHi folks, yes.
[9:39] Philip Linden: Well aware of it.
[9:39] Philip Linden: they are true believers in the metaverse, i can tell you that! Nice people.
[9:40] Philip Linden: Why is that against TOS baba?
[9:40] Philip Linden: I agree that not being able to criticize government sucks.
[9:41] Philip Linden: wow you guys are really going off on politics. Not sure how I can help.
[9:42] Philip Linden: I think sometimes folks don’t understand that we are now a midsize company, with headquarters in the USA,
[9:42] Philip Linden: and employees that primarily live in the USA
[9:43] Philip Linden: This means that we must be careful to obey laws where appropriate, to keep SL up and running for you.
- Second Life architecture
[9:44] Philip Linden: I think that is a good direction in many ways, Tao.
[9:44] Philip Linden: Right now prok we are not a chinese company.
[9:45] Philip Linden: What I mean otak is that at present we have no employees or offices in china.
[9:46] Philip Linden: Anshe and other land owners are not related to or employed by LL
[9:46] Philip Linden: My hope is that soon we can get servers running in other countries, closer to SL residents to improve performance.
[9:46] Philip Linden: We are working on that internally, right now.
[9:47] Philip Linden: I don’t want to give a date regarding when that will happen. But it is an active ongoing development and company project.
[9:48] Philip Linden: A rational answer there prok would be to look at number of residents affected. Many many people doing both mainland and islands.
[9:48] Philip Linden: So I think we need to be fairly balanced.
[9:49] Philip Linden: Yes Tao if two sims are adjacent and in different locales that is true, but performance once in a sim will be much much better,
[9:49] Philip Linden: if that sim is near you.
[9:49] Philip Linden: Prok I have never heard that quote from Glenn and I do not believe that is true.
[9:50] Philip Linden: Yes that is true… we can optimize by grouping distant sims together so that you are likely to have neigbors on near sims.
[9:51] Philip Linden: Nimrod… I think that stat is terrible and we need to fix it. That is why we started reporting it!
[9:51] Philip Linden: bear in mind that it is conversvatively negative, btw. It includes cases out of our control.
[9:51] Philip Linden: But is is a great number to actively make decline.
[9:52] Philip Linden: right.
- Chat functionality
[9:52] Philip Linden: artworld, I don’t understand.
[9:53] Philip Linden: what is the issue?
[9:54] Philip Linden: So adding the ability to restrict who in a group can IM would be useful?
[9:55] Philip Linden: Hey does anyone know of a really good web-only (no download) IRC client?
[9:56] Philip Linden: I’d love to have one that we use here.
[9:56] Philip Linden: CGI::IRC?
[9:57] Philip Linden: thanks I will look at those. We need a pure web solution for work.
[9:57] Philip Linden: 3 minutes, then i need to run.
[9:57] Philip Linden: IRC is too hard as an exec for non-tech people to configure in a 200 person company.
[9:58] Philip Linden: Communication tools are useless if not simple. IRC really annoys me because it is great but useless because of complexity.
[9:59] Philip Linden: We use an IRC channel for intercompany communication and we need to make it seamless for everyone. Agree with you prok.
[9:59] Philip Linden: Actually IRC is much harder than SL.
[9:59] Philip Linden: Because to get into IRC you have to memorize a bunch of strings and settings.
[9:59] Philip Linden: totally stupid.
[10:00] Philip Linden: Nein Marcus, ich kenne kein deutsch
- Tweaking the user interface
[10:00] Philip Linden: We will get better at the UI, I bet.
[10:01] Philip Linden: But I agree we’ve made a lot of it needlessly complicated.
[10:01] Philip Linden: But with open source there are some nice projects that will help us go the right way with UI.
[10:01] Philip Linden: We need to make basic important operations trivial. Like putting on a pair of shoes. That is my take.
[10:02] Philip Linden: I don’t think a web only client will have adequate graphics for years.
[10:03] Philip Linden: Sometimes, nimrod, we just stop working on things. There are too many ideas and not enough lindens.
[10:03] Philip Linden: The alternative to how we do things is for me to tell everyone not to blog without checking with me, and that doesn’t make sense!
[10:04] Philip Linden: I agree that sometimes we say we are doing things and then don’t do them.
[10:04] Philip Linden: But to stop that 100% would be to radically reduce our communication outward.
[10:04] Philip Linden: OK cool.
[10:05] Philip Linden: I promise that next office hour my office here will be nicer with better chairs, OK?
[10:05] Philip Linden: OK I’ve got to run.
[10:05] Philip Linden: Thanks you guys for the time.
[10:05] Philip Linden: Be well!
September 11th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Cheers mate - I read through most of Prok’s and this version made some more sense of the chat log. But people really need to go and read the full transcript to get a sense of what the issues were, rather than just Philip’s responses to them.
The griefing issue, for example, is one in which Prok puts forward some good points but I don’t think Mr Linden ‘got them’. Christ! You’d think somewhere in the LL Bunker, a red light would be flashing furiously to inform someone… anyone! that dozens and dozens of sims are failing all the bloody time. Either there is no system to warn LL about this, or Philip doesn’t know about it. Or isn’t too bothered.
HBA
***
September 11th, 2007 at 10:13 am
HeadBurro - Well, not to editorialize too much but… I think it was pretty clear that Rosedale doesn’t really know much about griefing at all. When it comes to that particular issue he’s WAY out of the loop, and yet he’s the one ready to start turning knobs and pulling levers at random.
I didn’t realize Prok put something up, I’ll have to take a look…
September 13th, 2007 at 1:55 am
I put this same transcript up here with some discussion:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/09/philip-tunes-in.html
It’s funny how there is an insatiable call for these unwieldy transcripts, people LURVE to read them, but in fact, they are distracting and stupid, as artifacts. Those who were in the event want to read it; those obsessed by the topic want to read every word — but then the next layer out of consumers really find it tedious.
And that’s why some university or web page out there had a service redacting these things and putting them in colours and such.
One obvious thing to do with these ridiculous SL transcripts it to put what one person says all in one big paragraph. That immediately then makes it more sensible. Because most people come into a meeting with at least one whole paragraph, if not 10, of what they want to say. And the SL medium doesn’t allow you to say it (unlike The Sims Online, which was kinder and gentler precisely because sims were allowed to speak in entire paragraphs in colour-coded balloons, so that the screen looked like a cartoon with balloons, and people could have more coherent conversations).
The scrolling IRC mess of Second Life chat interface, which evolved out of geeky idiots wishing to just copy IRC culture, makes a mash of coherence and fosters backchat and fanboy off-topic remarks and crap. Here is a classic, brilliant case of the medium MAKING the message instead of conveying it.
Once you realize that real people don’t think or talk this way, and the scrolling mass is just an overlay of IRC/SL culture, you have two choices. One is to mash it back up into its coherent paragraphs, which usually involve 10 people all talking past each other in 250-word segments (and that’s ok, much of life is like that) — with even the occasinoal “conversation” actualyl resulting, where one person listens, and responds.
Or, you can say, let it go, roll with the flow, read it later if you can’t keep up, etc.
One thing that I find truly exasperating with Lindens — who are themselves the ones who foisted this geeky IRC channel scrolling crap on us — is that they are the first to get annoyed and irritable and accuse everyone of “talking to fast” and say they “can’t keep up” blah blah.
Well? Then uh…design it differently? Go talk to Will Wright? Make big boxes with paragraphs in them? Get people to use balloons?
Or…adapt. We all have to adapt; why can’t you, Lindens? Could you spend more time in your world eating your dogfood and barking this, please?
At this point, I hate the IRC scroll, but I accept it. I let it go. I read what I can; the rest, I come back to. I know it’s a given that, like trying to proof-read a text solely online or on the screen, I will miss 10-20 percent of mistakes.
(People in book publishing know this, even though people in web publishing swear it isn’t true. But anyone reading the crappy books published these days with their millions of mistakes could then prove my point: there is a limit to human capture of mistakes in proof-reading when the material is presented on the screen or on line. It is a hard, unchangeable fact of like 10-20 percent. ONLY when the print-out is made, and the human can sit down and line-edit will they catch the mistakes.)
So I save the text, and fortunately that’s easier to do now on the game itself, and I read it later. I then go, oh, I didn’t realize you said THAT, and that’s what you meant by THIS. But that’s fine, you just soldier on.
One of the things I’ve learned in customer contact in SL is triadic repetition of the narrative has to be strictly observed, just like on the telephone. You must say everything 3 times. You must repeat the same thing 3 different ways, as people do not read, do not notice, and do not comprehend, and not necessarily because they are uneducated or idiots (although you get that too).
People often find it rude when I simply paste back to them what I’ve already said — but then, they didn’t get it the first time, and need to READ. Reading comprehension online is very poor. People often talk and ask questions not to get answers, not to have information conveyed to them, but because they want their little avatar hands held.
All this is a long-winded round about to saying that I know what Caleb is up to here, as he has been hugely irritated with just about everything I say lately, ideologically. He just didn’t like my constant interventions, questions, and reasoning in this session. No doubt he fairly itched to have me just SHUT UP so he could hear whatever “cool technical thing” Philip was going to say. But hell, Caleb, your friggin’ land you rent from me is griefed, duh, and I’m there on your behalf, like I am on behalf of every other tenant, trying to get answers out of El Chefe there and it’s damn hard. YOU go try it if you think it’s easier.
A major problem I had in this session — as one has with all Linden office hours — is getting around the gaggle of fanboyz and tekkies who interpose themselves between you and the Lindens.
So in this session, nimrod, Baba, otake, etc. were all a gaggle of cynical tekkies telling me to shut the fuck up because I “didn’t know” that objects “cannot enter my land” and that this was a “user problem” because I “had not checked off the box”.
This tekkie ignorance/arrogance, so epidemic in Second Life, is very typical. in fact, each one of these tekkies were dead wrong. In fact, Onder, as you know from looking at your land in SL and my land and everybody else’s land while this was happening, duh, stuff DID come on your land even with stuff checked off. And the challenge to Philip and the gaggle of open-sourcer nerds is to LISTEN TO THE FIELD DATA AND FEEDBACK from users to figure out how things are going wrong, instead of sittingi n the code cave and saying BUT THAT CAN’T HAPPEN SIMPLY BECAUSE IT CAN’T HAPPEN BECAUSE I CODED IT AND IT CAN’T HAPPEN THAT WAY.
Well, guess what, champ. *Another coder* uncoded it on you and made it happen *another way*.
December 15th, 2007 at 4:28 am
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce