I like Ebbe Altberg, he talks to the community, he’s not afraid to tell people they are angry :
Wow, you are an angry person. Ok, so, why are you so angry?
He talks to the press and has recently been talking to Re/Code in an article entitled : Second Life Creator Linden Lab Says Virtual Worlds and Virtual Reality Belong Together. Early on in that article we see that Ebbe has learnt how to talk the talk :
“We don’t call it a game,” says Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, almost before our interview has begun.
He’s talking about Linden’s most famous product, Second Life, now 11 years old. That’s old by game — sorry, “virtual world” — standards, but its “significant revenue” means the 185-person company is profitable, Altberg said. Coming to Linden from BranchOut after the departure of CEO Rod Humble in January, Altberg does not mince words about Second Life’s past mistakes.
That article also talks about Oclus Rift usage in Second Life, including a shout out to Jo Yardley of 1920’s Berlin without mentioning her name :
“One creator went into her virtual world in Oculus for the first time and was crying,” Altberg said. “It’s very powerful stuff.”
Philip Rosedale also features in the article with talk of High Fidelity but I’m going off on a tangent here, the point is Ebbe engages and it’s very encouraging. However one of the problems with engaging is that everything you say is dissected, analysed and at times misunderstood. Then there’s the fact that what you say is remembered, especially on the internet. So it was with some surprise that I witnessed Ebbe getting involved in a Twitter exchange about group chat. Not only did Ebbe get involved, he actually suggested that group chat will be fixed before the new world launches, an extremely bold claim indeed.
Things started with a Tweet from Belladonna066 : How about you fix this SL chat before you build a whole NEW SL? Grrr
@ebbealtberg how about you fix this SL chat before you build a whole NEW SL? Grrr
— M.J. (@Belladonna066) June 27, 2014
Jo Yardley entered the fray suggesting that maybe this was something that would be better served in the new world and then along came Ebbe, who said : We’ll fix chat way before then. Top priority for the SL team.
@1920sberlin @Belladonna066 We’ll fix chat way before then. Top priority for the SL team. — Ebbe Altberg (@ebbealtberg) June 27, 2014
Indeed he reiterated that they would fix group chat in a follow up Tweet too. This is a very bold suggestion from Ebbe, not least because group chat in Second Life has been problematic for so long. The problems have been around for years, Linden Lab have to their credit fixed some of the older issues, for example back in July 2006 Wrestling Hulka asked Torley if there was any way to stop group chat timing out. Torley responded that it was a known issue and should be on the to do list. I don’t see reports of group chat timing out due to people not participating these days, so that was done.
A more common problem was reported in December 2007, the issue of not being able to start a new group chat session. By March 2008 Eyerocker Picket’s frustrations with group chat boiled over :
sorry for yelling but I’m at wits end here….
WTF will it take for them to fix the broken group chat. Its been like this for months and months and is even getting worse.
GAWD it takes sometime over 15 min for a message to go thru. Sometime it dont even go. There used to be a message saying you had an error…but now thats broken too.
Linden Lab haven’t ignored the issues, they have made improvements and continue to work on them. However to quote Kelly Linden from a Simulator user Group meeting held on 18th March 2014 :
As Ebbe has confirmed someone is looking at and working on group chat. However it is a non-trivial problem saddled with a lot of legacy and high expectations. I have reviewed some of the changes so I do know changes are being made that sound like they will make improvements.
I should also point out here that Ebbe’s confirmation to group chat being worked on also appeared on Twitter, in response to a complaint about group chat from Belladonna066.,,,,,
Inara Pey also reported more information from work being being carried out on group chat. In this post Inara quotes Simon Linden :
Basically I dug into the code and found some inefficient parts and cleaned them up. I also added more metrics, so I’m hoping it can show an improvement. I’m pretty sure it will be better, but it’s really hard to guess how much better. I’m hoping to test it on the main grid soon. It would get put on a server and then it would affect a fraction of the groups. I can pick one group to target and make sure it covers that group.
Linden Lab are to be admired in many ways for trying to fix group chat, I mean it does work to a degree and a lot of people are used to its quirks but Ebbe really is being rather bold in suggesting it will be fixed, but you have to give him some kudos for being so bold regarding such a troublesome issue.
There’s even a website dedicated to group chat in Second Life : Is Second Life Group Chat Still Broken? Ebbe’s challenge it seems is to make that site owner update their site! That will be a tall order but I wish Linden Lab well in meeting this challenge.
Simon’s initial work on Group Chat has been deployed. He was looking at reliability and response issues when moving between regions (directly or via TP) and reducing the amount of chat freezes, etc., experienced. The work brought about a small improvement in things but, as he said himself, gave pointers as to where the real load issues might be.
He’s now resumed work on the issue, but as Kelly pointed-out, the work is a non-trivial task, so people should expect things to get instantly better. I’ll continue to track and update on progress through my weekly SL projects updates.
Thanks, missed that update. This is really challenging work for the Lab as there are bound to be lots of legacy issues involved, as there have been with issues such as region crossings.
Sadly, the SL user base suffers from a chronic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Especially its loudest forumites.
Well to be fair this is something that has long been an issue and some of the criticism is most definitely fair. The user base do not understand the complexities behind such issues, they just want things to work but Simon and Kelly certainly do well in trying to explain the problems.
I think it’s hysterically funny (did you know that the root of the word “hysterical” is the Greek for “womb”?) that Mona is accusing others of suffering from the D-K Effect . . .
Pep (Did you also know that Mona is Spanish for monkey?)
It’s funny how the Ebbe “cheerleaders” are ready to bombard any blog that doesn’t suit their ever-diminishing club.
I mean, you don’t get Heather Inara without Heather Mona, who gets her panties in a bunch if anyone says anything bad about her Ebbster and LL.
We can all happily disagree but can we leave twisted knickers out it 😉
I’ve seen both of the aforementioned ladies hurl criticism in LL’s direction in the past and not too distant past either.
I trust in Second Life 2.0 as defined by Ebbe Altberg. Can I apply for a cheerleader position too ?
Sure Pierre. Just be sure to kneel before anything Ebbe does and wave those pom-poms in front of your face as you walk towards the cliff.
And Remember: All is well! 🙂
Not in this post, this post is about Second Life The Original Series.
In all seriousness it’s silly to be taking a cheerleader or naysayer position with so little information about the new product around.
Ciaran, your first link demonstrates Ebbe’s inability to accurately recognize or more importantly his ineptitude at ‘reading’ people in a text based environment. In actuality, his tactic was more probably an attempt to both give the appearance of being empathic, and to regain control over the situation, by directing attention away from himself by questioning the emotional stability of the person making the comment, as though it were evidence that they are incapable of making reasoned and rational points because they are unable to control their emotions, a ludicrous notion considering who the comment was directed at. A pretty lame tactic employed all too often by those who are suffering from the aforementioned Dunning-Kruger syndrome. So yes, he may not be afraid to tell people they are angry, but it only highlights his incompetence.
The post he was responding to had highlighted some typos, rather than the content of the post. I know some people on the SL forums are big fans of pointing out typos but it’s not very constructive to only highlight the typos.
Many people would have ignored that post, Ebbe chose to bat it back.
Yes, right into the net. 😉
Cascading effect from Ebbe in that thread.
I’m a fan of playing the ball not the man.
You’ve no Uruguayan blood then?
Pep (Or were you referring to canni-balls?)
Playing the man allows one to anticipate where the ball is likely to go.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
@Dewi
I think the analogy was about football. Football is about kicking the ball and moving it into space. Not so much about capping the other players on the park. Or biting them bc dunno the difference between lunch and not lunch
The post he was responding to was casting doubt on Ebbe’s ability to participate in a forum without massively reducing his credibility. He has made just about every n00b error in the book (his “response” to Laskya was a masterpiece in confused presentation, to such an extent that she didn’t even notice that he had replied) demonstrating his misplaced ESLer arrogance in his capabilities of expression – did someone mention Dunning-Kruger – by not bothering to show his respect for his audience by spell-checking his posts. His posts can not be relied upon, not particularly because he has followed Peter Gray’s advice to be as ambiguous as possible (there are two particular posts which must have been written for him by the PR department – reminiscent of Deek’s less incoherent posts being copy-pasted as instructed by the schizoid cult leaderine) but because he obviously is not competent in English.
Pep (Ebbe’s biggest mistake was posting at all; his job as CEO is not to be a PR or Product Manager, but to co-ordinate resources who are, inter alia, competent in those areas.)
Stop your dreaming, can’t you see their spear points gleaming.
I am seriously on the verge of declaring all D-K references to be worthy of being deleted, the D-K theory is in itself a prime example of the D-K theory.
Pep you and I used to disagree on this in the forums, I care about communications and whereas it’s fine to gently guide ESLers in the right direction I find the aggressive nature unappealing.
The post you are defending made no reference to the content of Ebbe’s post, only his typos, in those circumstances I full support Ebbe’s response.
So now you are suggesting I should “gently guide in the right direction” the CEO of SL, who is paid significant sums in remuneration to establish direction and and is responsible for direction of the organisation’s strategy. Well, except for the “gently” bit I suppose I am . . .
SL is a social world; Ebbe doesn’t have the first idea how to be social, much less anti-social. Angry? Me? I presume that you were among those laughing at his naivety.
Pep (It’s called transference in psychology when you accuse others of suffering your own emotions.)
PS Thanks for a great idea for my next instanciation!