Can communication really be managed so badly?
Yes it can. Another bug by Linden Lab: Katt Linden, the Communication Manager of Second Life, posted “Where to find updates from Linden Lab” at the official Second Life blog. It seems, even Linden Lab recognized that it was very hard for their customers to find the necessary information on their many sites.
OMG, Katt failed again. The first link is supposed to link to the status page of Second Life. But what did Katt? She linked to https://status.secondlifegrid.net/ instead of http://status.secondlifegrid.net/ which is the correct address. She was told so in a comment by Garth FairChang at 10:38 AM:
Your attempts to hide bad news are amusing. LOL
BTW. one of your links just gives a 404 error. If I was feeling helpful I would say which.
At 10:55 AM, Winter Ventura took pity with Katt, as she apparently was unable to locate the missing link and she gave her detailed informations:
first link.. 404′d
Alas, more than 24 hours later, this error is still not corrected. People, especially Newbies using the link provided by Katt will experience Linden Lab quality work first hand – SNAFU.
We all do mistakes, and this error with http and https has happened to myself more than once, but after being told twice (correction: thrice) one should be able to correct it on such an important page. Maybe the whole manpower of Linden Lab is concentrating on censoring the forum and blog entries at the moment. No time for such mundane things as de-bugging blog entries (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).
The “https” programming error has been such a common error by the loosers at LL over the last two years or so, you’d think they’d have made it part of their error checking protocol long before now.
The fact that the error remained uncorrected for so long is part of the internal culture within LL that the staff do not make mistakes and that the “residents” are mistaken idiots.
When a culture has that mindset it doesn’t put in place the necessary feedback tools to call problems to the staff’s attention… or if some tools are available, the staff fails to utilize them.
Katt Linden is a bad communicator in general. She ignores all critical questions and just responds to a few. Not much communication there.
Its funny…. The SL viewer _used_ to show blog updates on it. Then they made blog and status separate, with status being a tiny box off to the side. Then they removed it…. Kinda says a lot about the company….
Part of the problem is people assume Katt Linden’s job is to engage is *two way* communications. It simply is not. She is merely the pipeline to “communicate” Linden Lab’s decisions and actions. This is why she will not directly engage in blog postings from residents that are anything more than superifically positive towards the LL stance.
That this would be the case was evident from the kack-handed manner in which LL “announced” her appointment (see http://peysworld.blogspot.com/2008/04/window-dressing-or-something.html), so we really shouldn’t be surprised.
As to the break-up of the blog, the new cenorship to be introduced *when* the new forums go live, etc., this is again a very short-sighted attempt to “bury” negativity within SL and present a nice gleaming showroom to potential new customers (aka residents).
In some respects, in fairness, we shouldn’t be surprised – what company is going to preface their product with direct links to negative views on it? However, the degree to which LL are pushing this is extreme – the easiest and most straight forward solution would have been to revamp their homepage (the one seen prior to logging-in), making it somewhat more informative to potential new users, and move the blog, etc., back BEHIND the log-in screen, thus making them visible to residents only. This at least would give the desired “showroom” shine to the home page and give potential new customers all the “goodies” to read without all the obfustication.