The Open Letter: more knee jerking
It was on New World Notes that the Project Open Letter caught my attention. An interesting move and one that is long overdue. VOIP? Render Glow? Water with real waves? What about basic performance issues facing SL Residents on a daily basis?
Still, I’ll sign it when hell freezes over, as I already wrote under Hamlet’s blog post. Because whenever performance issues are discussed, ‘unverifieds’ are discussed as well, and usually the idea is that limiting their capabilities is the cure for all ills.
The Open Letter is no exception and kicks off straightaway: “Sensible inventory limits (on non-verified accounts only), combined with better management tools and ways to protect our inventory ourselves would help to mitigate the problem as well.” I am not convinced that it will. What’s more, I am not at all convinced that there are no other and perhaps more sensible ways to cut down on inventory.
Last month I cleaned out my inventory and got it back to about 3750 items. Somehow, this past month, it crawled back up to almost 4000 now. Did I buy 250 items? No. Did I create 250 items? No. But I get flooded with note cards and greeting cards (who needs those?), and what I trash does not disappear at all unless I empty the trashbin every once in a while. I’d love to see it empty on logout.
I don’t need your notecard every time I enter your sim or shop. I don’t need to add you to my Friends list and get a greeting card. I don’t need to carry my trash around like a bag lady. I don’t need to delete something in-world (say, in a sandbox) only to find it back in Trash, along with other unspecified prims called Object. I don’t need to keep the empty box my purchases came in.
Maybe some things can be made to reside temporarily in my inventory. Maybe there is a way to separate inventory into a carry-along part and a fixed part with stuff you don’t need all the time. Maybe some types of inventory can automatically be added to a prim instead of a folder. And maybe there are just too many freebies to be had out there. Boxes full of stuff the newbie won’t need but takes anyway, unaware if he or she might still need it some day.
There are a million ways a creative thinker can come up with to control ever-growing inventories, but the writers of the Open Letter go with the knee-jerk reaction of limiting unverifieds. That will only happen over my dead avatar.
UPDATE: My name is on the list of signatories. I would like to know how it got there. I did not sign the letter.
May 1, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Temp-rezzing notecards for things like ads are a great idea - I’m not sure whether they’d be used that much though if people had the choice to use them.
I think you’re reading more into the suggestions about unverifieds than is actually there. Both mentions of unverifieds make it clear that limiting them would only mitigate, not solve, the problems - and the second point (on logins) is clear that limiting unverified’s logins should only be a temporary fix.
As for your name - drop a note to Christiano and I’m sure he’ll remove it.
May 1, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Oh I see the point about logins alright - that’s why I am not mentioning it here. I would grudgingly agree to seeing it implemented. But as a shop owner I need more inventory - textures, clothes, vendors, you name it. Every item of clothing I want to sell generates exactly those three inventory items and with inventories being shaky as it is I am not about to trash textures I already turned into clothes. I might have to do them again some day.
I did drop a note to Cristiano and I am awaiting his reply.
May 1, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Having a 4000 item inventory isn’t the problem. Having a 100,000 item inventory is a problem. I can’t even fathom what would be in a 100k inventory; I’ve been here for years and have around 4100 items.
May 1, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Cristiano answered; in as far as the signing of my name is concerned he said the following:
“Your signature has been removed. As with most online petitions, signatures
do not require verification as it is not a legally binding document. Someone
obviously read your blog entry and decided to be a jerk and sign your name
against your will.”
To which I add that I found my name almost immediately after posting this blog.
About the subject matter he said the following:
“I read your blog entry, and I respect your position. Ideally, I don’t want
any restrictions either. However, in a situation where there are limited
resources, it is not unreasonable for free accounts to have lesser
functionality than subscribers - that is something commonplace nearly
everywhere. Ultimately, it was a difficult decision to make to include
inventory and login restrictions, but something needs to be done to keep the
entire system from coming apart. ”
To which I reiterate that his solution doesn’t show a lot of creativity.
May 2, 2007 at 10:00 am
3 groups should be identified on each profile which are no payment on file a payment but basic and premium account.
90 days for a trial period to decide to either you like the game and wish to become a paying member of this society and support it by paying for services being used. Not leaching like some blood sucking parasite from the other paying customers thus Allowing Linden Labs to pay for the needed equipment, upgrades as well as people to make this all work.
After 90 days if said person decides not to pay for the services that are being used then said account is terminated and all inventory deleted allowing space for the next trial account.
If a person has enough Lindens to rent a store and run a business they have enough to become a premium account holder.
May 2, 2007 at 10:40 am
Sure Zoom. I just can’t get any account with Linden Lab since I do not have a credit card or a bank account which allows me to use PayPal. Believe me - I tried. I made all my money in-world, the hard way, and got help from the sim owner who gave me the first month of shop rent for free. That is in the true spirit of Second Life.
Calling a contributing, hard working Resident a blood sucking parasite is not in that spirit. What do you contribute? Complaints? Whining? Big words, hiding behind your keyboard?
May 2, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Incredible all these people thinking they are entitled to something for nothing.
You think you are contributing? No! Abusing and taking away from the other people who have paid their dues? Yes!!!!
May 2, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Where does it say that I think I am entitled to anything? If you can’t read, what are you doing on a blog? Try the funny papers - them has pictures.
May 2, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Why is it that I never see the Zooms and the Herons at the Office Hours for Lindens? Could it be that they have nothing to contribute?
May 2, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Laetizia, please visit the JIRA Issue Tracker and more specifically https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-127 and https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-87
What really strikes me is that someone told me I should not whine because credit cards are mostly free anyway. Just like you, I’m from The Netherlands and I have searched and tried and asked, but have also found out there is no such thing as free credit cards. Besides, the whole creditcard idea is plain stupid. Who goes walking around with a card that can represent thousands of dollars/euros, in the unlucky case something decides to rip you off. And even worse, you pay for something and you need to pay interest over it. Who is stupid enough to agree to those terms?
It would be cool if you could back us up at JIRA.
Also about cleaning trash on logout is a good idea, you can post it there too. And if I may add a suggestion for a function to delete immediately. Like on Windoze, I believe the shortcut was ctrl+del to delete something immediately without first being moved to trash.
Hopefully see you there or else on Linden’s office hours perhaps?
Friendly greetings from the land of wooden shoes and cheese
May 2, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Daedalus, I voted for SVC-127. Indeed, it is hard for Americans who get pre-approvals for CCs in the mail at 16 (Robin Linden said that if I recall correctly) to uderstand that some countries have a rather differet approach to them. So they come here and shout a little… no biggie.
Please vote for SVC-124 as it affects all xs4all users (like me) in a big way. It seems that they’re working on it, as is xs4all itself (excellent ISP!) , but a few extra votes won’t hurt
May 2, 2007 at 9:01 pm
I have yet to do some tests, but I am having network problems too at times/ Packet loss keeps getting higher until the viewer crashes. And things not rezzing ever, things never getting downloaded.
I’m not on xs4all, but Planet instead, but we still could be using the same connection somewhere.
May 3, 2007 at 5:10 pm
“blood sucking parasites” - “abusing and taking away from the other people who have paid their dues”
…interesting and insightful ways to describe the SL society
i’m not sure that Linden Labs share this point of view, though - we will see. as a proud “unverified account” resident, who doesn’t spend many L$ - but actually contributes to the SL community on a daily basis (helping others people, creating freebies and testing the viewer code), the future looks quite promising to me.
i am not part of the problem: i am part of the solution.
May 7, 2007 at 10:40 am
[...] Coronet didn’t sign the letter, but she found her name on it. She also points out that whenever performance issues are discussed, ‘unverifieds’ are [...]