Lip Service

Linden Lab's customer facing departments seem to prefer it; I don't.

For several years I've enjoyed helping others and building communities within Second Life and it's associated webspaces, and also tried to make that easier for other to do, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. I'm not the only one by any means, and hold no illusions that my contributions make or break the effort. There are others who have contributed far more, and there are some that still do. SL has never lacked for clients willing to promote and improve it's platform.

Recently the weight of what I feel is poor decision making by LL in their forum webspace (arguably one of their first lines of customer contact and service), came to a head, with the outright abusive treatment of it's customer community. I became more and more aware of it, both through personal exposure, and word of mouth which was thoroughly checked. I stood up and said something about it, pointing to what was wrong, and focused on specifically why it was damaging, and what needed to be done to fix it. Unconnected to that I made a personal statement of intent, that if I couldn't see improvement or effort towards such, I would withdraw my efforts to improve the forums. I haven't seen it, so true to my word, I've packed up my bags and moved out of the forums. Thankfully, I feel that there is now quite a good pool of people in what's always been my personal home of the scripting forums.

The truth is, my exit was probably late in coming. Over the years I've watched as customers were treated as a convenient workforce, while multiple programs supposed to encourage and assist those who wanted to help died out to neglect and mistreatment. Each time alienating more clients, and leaving more by the wayside confused about where to find help. I'm now among the ranks of those alienated, and a little sad to know how many good people are in the same company. I think it's unfortunate that LL will eventually send more here if it doesn't wake up. As far as I can see, they are their own worst competitor in their effort to expand; If they can't catch and hold onto the spirit of devotion that drives their clients to help others find as much enjoyment in the platform as those clients do, they'll never manage to keep the clients they do have.

As for myself, I'm currently stepping back and reevaluating my other contributions within and outside of SL, so that I can refocus on what matters to me and others like me, even if it means stripping the tree bare rather than nourishing it's growth.

This is where I press post rather than edit my thoughts