Democracy in Action at Linden Lab

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Lukkibessoni of AL 8:01PM August 20, 2008

LL is only democratic if you accept the idea that only federal employees have the right to vote in federal elections, and the rest of us are just peon tax payers who should shut up and get back to work or get sent to the gulag. Some democracy.
The Governance Team purposely harasses residents to destroy their second lives, so they get recruited into griefing groups, so that Linden Lab customer Central Intelligence Agency can study and game responses to terrorism (its a fact, check government records for the contract).

LL Victim # 980345nlfniadf89-dhyr78-87dbhf of NH 4:09PM June 18, 2008

A government you get to vote in and then you trust in their decisions is more like a dictatorship. The future of a democratic government perhaps because of available communication technology should be based on a phone call or email by all who want to vote yes or no, and just like most companies the final decision would be left to the CEO, or in a democratic country President or Prime Minister. Perhaps Linden Lab's and any company or government should be not just allowing its employees this vote but shareholders and customers also. By making major decisions in this way, in the end if something goes wrong no one person can be held responsible, unless the head of this went totally against the democratic decision of all. Maybe they should play with this as an experiment instead of with something that upsets the majority.

Andrew Ruselle 10:50AM June 16, 2008

A government you get to vote in and then you trust in their decisions is more like a dictatorship. The future of a democratic government perhaps because of available communication technology should be based on a phone call or email by all who want to vote yes or no, and just like most companies the final decision would be left to the CEO, or in a democratic country President or Prime Minister. Perhaps Linden Lab's and any company or government should be not just allowing its employees this vote but shareholders and customers also. By making major decisions in this way, in the end if something goes wrong no one person can be held responsible, unless the head of this went totally against the democratic decision of all. Maybe they should play with this as an experiment instead of with something that upsets the majority.

Andrew Ruselle 10:48AM June 16, 2008

SL resident of MN makes a very good point. The Lindens claim a policy of transparency, but try messaging them in-world to discuss an issue. You'll typically be greeted with "I can't discuss that" and extremely vague copy/paste solutions such as "please file a support ticket." This asynchronous relationship between LL customer support and residents creates a barrier that the Lindens LOVE to hide behind. If this was democratic, residents would be voting on governance issues and policy changes. There is absolutely nothing democratic about the way Linden Lab operates, outside of maybe JIRA which is completely FIC in and of itself.
I think it's time that the world is introduced to the real Linden Lab, not the flowery euphoric picture that Philip and Mitch have painted in the public eye. The original Linden World name would have really been a much more appropriate for this totalitarian, "technolibertarian" high school clique.
They'll never go public as an IPO. We all know that Sarbanes-Oxley would force the real numbers to be exposed. lol! Cory claims 2008 will be the age of enlightenment. Ya... right. Companies will be enlightened that pouring time and resources into this proprietary science experiment will yield no return on investment. Ever visited Geek Squad island? You MIGHT see one or two green dots on the map.
~Tizzers

Tizzers Foxchase of CA 11:36AM May 14, 2008

Linden Labs Recently has acted more like a Dictatorship along the lines of Sadam's Regime in Iraq prior to the USA led Invasion. Linde Labs Dictates to it's Residents what they can and can not Do "Your World, your Imagination" is thier tag line, however when it comes to Protecting The imagination of it's residents from Copywrite theft they take the "NAPSTER vs METALLICA" stance. ".... we just created this world, we are not responcable for how People use it...." yet they still take 9.95 $us a MONTH from thier residents AKA (Customers) and Dictate New Rules and Requlations every day as to How people should Conduct themself while in SecondLife. Creative Theft is Rampent, Exploitation of Child Like avatars is around every corner, Female avatars are exploited as well. Sexual Harassment is Worse then any Game I have ever seen and is Rival to that of XXX Chatrooms. The Governance team (what linden labs calls ther Make shift Gov't) NEVER LISTENS TO IT RESIDENTS! How is that Democracy in Action? all I see is a Bunch of Fat Cat Dictators at the top getting rich while the rest of Secondlifes Residents are getting poor.

SL resident of MN 11:09PM May 13, 2008

This method of management is a complete failure. As a result of it the customers of LL get a continuous stream of useless, unwanted, changes that remove functionality that is actually used in favor of new ones that are more obscure and much more difficult to use not to mention find. They reguarly remove or break useful functions with these changes. Even if there is a team working on stability the shiny makers are working against them and consistantly re break anything that gets fixed. This management style is a complete failure and needs to be scrapped.

of 3:45AM May 13, 2008

I think Linden Lab's employees work a great deal on stability and bug-hunting, but there is something more insidious about this odd mixture of socialist collective and utopianist hippie commune wedded to California technolibertarianism. And that is the ruse of transparency. People forced to constantly lifelog just engage in the Big Lie more efficiently.
I wrote about this at length here: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/12/the-leninism-of.html

Prokofy Neva of NY 12:16AM April 27, 2008

Would that this word applied to the resellers and partners of LL's service. We've consistently asked for more participation, more stabilty, and better communications. Instead, we've consistently gotten crashes, outages, and system failures. Where would Visa be if several times a day credit card orders didn't work?
Innovative management needs to be judged by the quality of the product. In fact, Rosedale just gave an interview where he said that he stepped down because he isn't a "people management" person.
Second Life is an amazing platform, when it works, and could be an amazing environment for business, if they communicated with their partners and resellers more effectively.

Lillian Yiyuan of DC 3:19PM April 26, 2008

...except when no one wants to work on the less glamorous things like fixing the stability of the Second Life client, the stability of the asset server database, the stability of in-world transactions that are the lifeblood of the Second Life economy.
Instead it seems that many Linden Lab employees focus on packing in new features which would be nice if all of the above issues didn't make the platform so unstable and unpredictable.
I'm all for giving employees freedom to keep them happy and make their work more enjoyable, but at some point someone has to take care of the more mundane tasks that may not be as glamorous but are far more important in many cases.

JT of MO 1:18AM April 25, 2008