The Second Life Blog was once a place where the Lindens talked casually with you about policy, their projects, recent news, the future of SL, etc. Residents regularly told us that they loved having access to such broad insight into the company and frequent communication with the full range of Lindens. And Lindens loved the ongoing dialog with residents.
Sounds like something I might have said here – or you might have read from Tateru or a dozen other SL commentators. A harkening-back to the “good ol’ days”.
But it’s not. It’s actually from – wait for it – a Linden, who went on to say:
Over time however, as more Lindens came to participate, the blog got a bit manic. Some of you complained that reports of temporary performance issues would eclipse larger conversations related to long-term plans and features while others believed that tutorials and opinion pieces were distracting them from the hard news of inworld issues they needed to know about in order to run their businesses.
In other words, we outgrew our single channel blog [...] We knew it was important to get back to using the blog as a key means of constructive two-way conversation with the community.
“We knew is was important to get back to using the blog as a key means of constructive … conversation…” How times have changed, hmmm?
These quotes come from the Linden Lab blog archive on WordPress. Written by Blue Linden (sadly gone in the re-organisation of June 2010), they demonstrate how much attitudes have changed within LL over the last three years.
The LL blog archive on WordPress
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I have said before; I would love to see frequent blog posts by the Lindens at the official LL blog. Not just major announcements (and lately few of them even make the official blog), but ideas, background information, idle thoughts. By frequent I mean at least once a week, preferably more frequently. They must be clear, “some of us are thinking about …” is not the same as “this is what we are going to do”. Perhaps even “this is why we ….”
Turn off comments, if you are looking for feedback, start a thread at the forums and provide a link. Maybe even find a way to initiate a poll.
Perhaps even come back and add to the post some links to resident blogs that have posted about it..
I hope LL is reading – - – -
Agree on all points. Sadly, however, not holding my breath….
maybe philip could be ‘hired’ back as guest!blogger!?. i also miss not just the information and a sense that things are headed in a particular direction for particular reasons, but also the personal touch that comes from reading someone’s thoughts.
agree with shug, no comments would be fine, welcome really at this point
Don’t really think Philip would be a good choice, tbh. Anything he writes could end up increasing the rift between engaged users and LL as much as anything, simply because his views are so out of synch with the company’s direction, and often too far removed from the realities of running the business. No matter how caveated his comments, etc., might be, they’d still run the risk of being taken as read and end up building false expectations, incorrect perceptions, etc.