Early reports are filtering back from the traffic meeting with the underlying message that they are a waste of time. I’ll hold judgement on that until I attend one, I think I’m booked in for Thursday.
However one issue that is related is the showcase and I’m having a hard time not finding it unethical in a world where we’re supposed to have a marketplace. I’m simply uncomfortable about the idea of stores being promoted in this way. I wouldn’t find it so objectionable if places with stores were being promoted, but highlighting a particular store makes me a tad uncomfortable.
The first thing that should be made transparent about this, the very first step to retaining business credibility, should be that no Linden Lab employees, their family members or their close personal friends are promoted via this process. The sort of thing that happens when companies run competitions, employees not allowed.
Personally I’d prefer them to have awards and the winners showcased, that would have more of an ethical feel about it. The winner of the best building designer for whatever period, a month, a quarter or even a year, gets a showcase spot. The winners would have course have to be picked and probably by the very people making the picks now, but the whole process would appear to be more ethical, and maintaining standards is a very important issue in a business environment.
I wouldn’t even mind if the showcase featured those paying the most for their adverts, I know some don’t consider that fair, but it’s a metric that’s hard to dispute and I don’t object to those who pay more, getting greater exposure.
Places, I don’t mind them picking their favourite places, as long as they have the heart and will to follow it through. So many times we see Linden Lab rolling out the bold new frontier only to see the solution to be half assed.
I can’t help but get the impression that Linden Lab don’t think of the bigger picture. The estate price drop, they were taken by surprise at the complaints, you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see the implications there. The new search, it’s created a problem for classifieds, they really didn’t appear to consider the role of classified adverts when they were creating this new toy and now months on they’re still talking about one day doing something about the classified issue.
They really need someone on the inside to say “Whoa”, to point out that A+B might = C, not that A+B = Happy ever after, because all too often it doesn’t and that’s because they don’t appear to think systemically.
This is really important with regard to the traffic issues, because changing how traffic is measured or evaluated has a wider effect on the community as a whole. That store with 15-20,000 traffic that isn’t employing camping, how are they going to feel about the changes? No you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but you need to consider the implications of your actions, cause and effect, it’s extremely important not to make a hasty decision.
I am no big fan of traffic, but I think there needs to be a clear, ethical, easy to understand metric to replace it and it’s all dependent upon the future of search, the search functionality is key here because if people can engage with a more feature rich search engine, then traffic becomes less of an issue, as then does camping. Changing traffic for the sake of it and not improving search will lead to a half assed solution, one that will probably never be finished properly before someone decides that they need to change it all again.
There’s no need to rush the decision on the future of traffic, and there’s still time to get ethical on the showcase issue, isn’t there? Or have Linden Lab already made up their mind?