July 2015 – Page 6 – Ciaran Laval

July 11, 2015

Ellen Pao Steps Down As Reddit CEO With Dignity And Humanity

I recently blogged about the problems at Reddit : Reddit – The Front Page Of The Internet, Bottom Of The Class For Community Relations. In that post I talked of the failures of Reddit management to engage with the community.

The furore over the direction Reddit was heading had already seen a petition created that called for the head of Ellen Pao. In the wake of the communication debacle the number of signatures on that petition ballooned from around 10,000 to over 200,000.

However, it was quite clear that Ellen Pao, who only took over as Reddit CEO on a temporary basis eight months ago, was not solely to blame for Reddit’s communication issues. The anger fired in Ellen Pao’s direction was misdirected. A communication breakdown such as the one Reddit faced was not due to events in the last eight months.

Ellen’s resignation letter, posted on Reddit, contains a human touch that far too many people on social media and even in virtual worlds, seem to forget about :

I just want to remind everyone that I am just another human; I have a family, and I have feelings. Everyone attacked on reddit is just another person like you and me. When people make something up to attack me or someone else, it spreads, and we eventually will see it. And we will feel bad, not just about what was said. Also because it undercuts the authenticity of reddit and shakes our faith in humanity.

This doesn’t just apply to Reddit. I’ve seen similar sentiments made when people are attacking Linden Lab, or attacking people on Twitter, or in below the line comments sections. I’m not sure why people are so quick to spread bile when we communicate by text. I do hope that one of the side effects of a more immersive virtual reality future is that we will get more clues from facial expressions and that we will then see less venom when people communicate at distance.

Ellen also pointed out how support can be inspiring :

What has far outshone the hate has been the positive on reddit. Thank you, kind strangers, for expressing your support. You gilded me 100 times. (For those of you who apologized for generating a wave of accusations that I gilded myself, please don’t feel bad. You did a good thing.) And thank you for sending cute animal pics and encouraging me to “Stay safe!” when the site overheated with expressions of hate in various forms. There were some days when your PMs inspired me more than you can imagine.

The reason Ellen is stepping down though is not because of a petition and fortunately, it’s also not because of trolling and abuse either.

Continue reading “Ellen Pao Steps Down As Reddit CEO With Dignity And Humanity”

July 10, 2015

How To Fix Flickr’s Embedding Mess (Whilst We Await Flickr Providing A Solution)

Flickr have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to change the HTML code in their sharing photos option. They used to have an option to embed, or grab the HTML, now, if the new features has been rolled out to your account, you can only HTML embed by default, once the script has loaded properly, you’ll see a flickr logo, the name of the person whose photostream the image is from, the name of the photo and the description.

The reason for this is explained in a forum post, [Official Thread] New version of Flickr’s embed code :

Today we’re excited to start rolling out a new version of our HTML embed code, with more visible attribution of the photo owner and enhanced features.

This new code brings the features of the “iframe” web embeds and the compatibility of standard HTML image embeds together into a single code.

The way we’re accomplishing this is through “progressive enhancement.” This means that at the core of the new embed, we start with the same HTML image tag that has always been on Flickr, and if supported, we load the more sophisticated, enhanced embed. If the “fancy” embed isn’t supported or something goes wrong, the standard image will still load.

We’ve already been using the new embed code for months on the Flickr Blog… maybe you’ve noticed? Now we’re ready to roll this feature out to everyone, and we’d love your feedback.

The feedback has arrived, and the natives aren’t exactly jumping with joy. The problems are numerous, but they include images not aligning correctly, slowing down site loading, people complaining that it all distracts from the image, the fact that some people don’t name their photos and more. Do not despair if you have had these changes foisted upon you and you don’t like them, it’s only code and code can be edited. First of all, let’s take a look at that new code. Continue reading “How To Fix Flickr’s Embedding Mess (Whilst We Await Flickr Providing A Solution)”

July 10, 2015

Discovering A Sticky Situation At The Pink Dragon

Sometimes in Second Life you find yourself in some very odd locations and today was one of those times. I headed to a region called Dragons Hearth, expecting to find dragons and adventure. I did find dragons and adventure of a sort, a sort I wasn’t expecting. I also found a lot of ice cream, sweets and Gingerbread.

Dragons Hearth is home of The Pink Dragon and upon landing you are handed information about the region and rules regarding roleplaying, which is described as light roleplaying. Upon exiting the initial landing point you will see a pirate ship, you will also see lollipops, a castle and an area entitled “Fairytale Deathmatch“. I did not witness any of these events myself!

As I said earlier this is a roleplaying region, the notecard provides information about the roleplay, here’s an extract :

The Pink Dragon Realm floats within the universe of DnD but is away from its mortal Realm. Those who are not Natives of the land are brought here from the mortal world by the same way as the Queen and King once were, by touching what is known as ‘The Pink Flower’… a flower magically encased by glass and is only found by a certain special few. The Realm itself a spindle of all sweet dreams, virtue and hope from all it’s Citizens. Created by the worshiped deities the Goddess of Sorrow Sappherios and God of Happiness Dorai Asha.

I’m not sure how much in theme the current region is. Giant teapots aren’t mentioned anywhere in the texts I read.

Continue reading “Discovering A Sticky Situation At The Pink Dragon”

July 9, 2015

Notification Project Viewer May Save You Time

I have had to go to some very dark corners of Second Life to create this blog post, very dark, the lengths I go to in order to get the right shots!

In a virtual world far far away, Aki Shichiroji pointed out that notifications in Second Life were untidy and not well organised, especially for people who receive a lot of notifications. I can’t quote Aki directly because the original Jira post has now gone dark. This is because the issue has been resolved in many ways.

How has the issue been resolved, I hear you ask, well Linden Lab yesterday announced, New Project Viewer: Get Your Notifications Sorted :

The Notifications Project Viewer is an improvement for sorting your notifications. This new feature is based on your feedback: a notifications floater with four tabs sorting your incoming notifications into System, Transactions, Invitations, and Groups and allowing better interaction with them as well. Those who deal with high volumes of money transactions, group notices, group invites, or inventory transfers now have a better way to review their messages and identify which notices need immediate attention.

I’ll try and explain what is changing, with some screenshots.

So on logging in, after clicking the chat bubble which alerted me that I had notifications I see the above. Now I can see that I have four tabs, one for System messages, one for Transactions, one for Invitations and one for Group notices. At a glance I can see I have one System message and 25 Group notices. Now I have a choice here on which notices I consider to be the most important. A merchant may want to pay more attention to any transactions first, whilst someone awaiting a group invitation may want to look at that first.

The messages default to collapsed, to expand them, you just click the downward arrow :

Now I can see the full message, in this case, that I’ve received too many notifications and my instant messages were capped.

Continue reading “Notification Project Viewer May Save You Time”