There are certain aspects of human nature that at times we find unseemly, what passes as unseemly depends upon your viewpoint at the time but customers can have unreasonable demands and expectations, they can blame you for things that aren’t your fault, they can swear at you, be obnoxious and refuse to listen to you. Bad experiences make people more vocal, I read somewhere that people remember bad experiences for over twenty years, whereas good experiences have less shelf life, your mileage may vary but being annoyed makes us more vocal, that’s human nature.
Recently Botgirl Questi posted a blog on why Botgirl thinks Linden Lab are investing in new products rather than Second Life. Interesting post, which received a response in the form of a blog post from Metareality Podcast superstar and owner of Sand Castle Studios Gianna Borgnine, in a post entitled: The Virtual World False Dilemna. Healthy disagreement and that is to be welcomed. However it’s in the comments of Gianna’s post that we see the human nature aspect rear its head, in a comment from someone calling themself “Another Ex Linden“:
“Would you keep talking to the public if it didn’t help your job? What if it caused personal attacks against you or something you care about? Most individual Lindens gave up years ago.
Would you let your employees talk to the public when conversations incite defamation of your company? A year ago the company issued a policy that stops most remaining Lindens from talking. Only a couple senior engineers speak publicly without PR training and scripts.
By the time I left, many Lindens moved their meetings to Skype and only logged into development servers. They added a viewer setting that ignores IMs from strangers. Assholes were always the loudest and almost nobody called them on it, so the users lost their collective voice.
This blog is years too late. Take these lessons to the next company that tries openness.”
Whether the person posting is an ex Linden only the person posting knows, but this comment applies to far more areas than the person who posted seems to realise.