What Torley's (I'm) Working On

Posted on: July 13, 2006

Some things can't be obvious enough. One of them is Lindens communicating to Residents about what we're working on. I hear this a lot:

I know you're a so-and-so Linden, but what exactly does that mean? What do you do?

Resis often see the end results but not much of the process—this is mostly internal and tends to be a mysterious thing, like death itself. For the same reasons that "the making of" documentaries are fun, I like to give more insight into what's happening. It's only fair, after literally being asked hundreds of times about "When's this feature doing to be released?/Has any progress been made on this?" and related questions. And as much as is "company-secret", there's plenty to go around that we can share publicly: often, not having enough luxurious time precludes this, for… more work must be done.

My formal title at Linden Lab is "Community Manager of Communications on the Community Team at Linden Lab". Alternately, and I prefer this more for its warmth, I'm a "Community Team Spirit". (Which, yes, leaves room for more!) So I thought I'd take a few minutes and mention what I'm doing:

  • Yesterday, with the help of Mera Pixel, I tracked down and helped Quality Assurance and the Developers identify a bug involving parcel prim miscounts. Brent liked my repro (yay me!) and I reckon Andrew's gonna fix it. You'll prolly see this in an upcoming release notes.

  • I've helped set up a few new group forums this week. And played a role in coming up with a new policy for them.

  • Main Grid and Teen Grid accounts don't have automated forum transfers (yet), so I played Charon (sorta, don't read too much into this) and moved them to the right place.

  • Working on fun, friendly documentation to address important questions that get asked a lot, but are hard to find the answers to. Also, questions that don't get asked all that frequently, but when they do, it's a considerable support load and I end up repeating what I'd be typing anyway. Two of these are the new Knowledge Base's "How do I stop notecard spam?" and "How do I insert images in my SL Forums posts without using attachments?". I also edited the "SIMPLE SOLUTIONS: Fast Cures for Common Problems" guide. Some astute observers will also notice I contributed some bits as part of the F1 Help team. :)
     
  • Also, happy to see—and commented on—Mark Wallace's blog about my stopping notecard spam thingie.

  • Speaking of the Knowledge Base, I've been moving articles from the old support wiki into it. We're going to update some of the older stuff too.

  • Collected Resident and Linden feedback and wrote up an internal report of my experiences with "Textures not fully rezzing until mouseover and tree detail not rezzing", which I then proceeded to announce on the forums. Also described the imaginative aspects, and made a video bug report.

  • Chatted with Aura Linden about improving right-clicking a folder with calling cards in it to make an ad-hoc group IM session, specifically how the "Instant Message All Users" verbiage is confusing. She's working on it now.
     
  • Summoned "Tersa" internal personality to make my writing more efficient…
     
  • Figured out repro for "ESTATE TOOLS: "Disable Selected" doesn't work for Estate Managers (and possibly Owners?)". Thanx to Zalandria Zaius and Jennifer Christensen for the extra info.

  • Let's not forget the new Resident experience either. =^.^=

  • Raised internal concern about: "PERMISSIONS: Add warning that deeded objects will take on next-owner permissions and may possibly be irretrievable", "UI: About Land floater annoyingly goes blank whenever it's open and you move around inworld", and a suggestion which I'm deferring to graphics guru Runitai: "GRAPHICS: Change LOD scaling of "Object Mesh Detail" slider to be higher quality when it's set to maximum".
     
  • Talked with "Momma" Tateru Nino about a better inworld comm system she's making. Laterally. Function has form.

  • Noticed a motley crew of regions set to an avatar limit of 30, when infact they should be 40. Fixed those—see any more? Let me know!

  • Also reported "FINDER: Auto-populated Linden Locations list doesn't show any places in Mature areas". James fixed that super-fast!

  • Gave feedback on a variety of Linden projects, including improvements to the user interface (a fave area of mine), orientation suggestions to Content, and recommending kewl places to explore and film for promos to Marketing.

  • Spend (different tense) 1-2 hours each day on forums, mainly doing Second Life Answers and moderating bad posts. The latter's something I don't like because it's really frustrating how some people will continue to be mean to each other and hurt the community at large instead of spending time with a loved one… which is better for all involved. :) Being nice isn't hard, and increased abuse costs time and energy which could be used to, you know, make Second Life better. :D
  • Learned from Billing about LindeX details; going to make some notes of how we can improve clarity. For example, the withdrawal times page is REALLY HARD TO FIND, and "0-5 business days" isn't clear to international Resis in different time zones.

  • As a connector, I often "matchmake" Residents across the grid. I may see two people, each of them with half of what would be a totally badass project if assembled as a whole. And both of them just happen to email me, so I refer them to each other. This ain't scalable, but I've done it since the start, and it's valuable.
     
  • Fixed some Linden Locations that weren't properly listed, filed a couple related bug reports. (REPRO/OBSERVED/EXPECTED.)
     
  • Sent misc. community feedback to Developers, including positive love like "OMG! THIS FEATURE IS AWESOME!" They don't get enough of it. :D
     
  • Channelled Liaison concerns about frontline troubles inworld, including but not limited to the aftershock of open registration, griefing woes, God mode hack scares (yes some of those bugs already have been fixed by Phoenix, and more like the map-tracking one will be very soon!), and methodical approaches towards what the Residents want in the way of more control over their experiences.
     
  • Personally replied to 200+ emails (not as much as I could because of my hands.) and some IMs and forum PMs. Forwarded many emails to Lindens in other departments with ze expertise. "If I can't help you, I'll take you to someone who can!" Found The Form Assembly, may play later, I think it's cute.
     
  • Spent time on SIVA and ADITI Previews (prior to this, reported numerous bugs, learned info from QA and Devs to communicate forth). For all the bugs that do make it to the public, there's a lot that get fixed beforehand—'course, noone ever complains about those. ;)
     
  • Helped Jeska launch "humanized" further clarification for this week's 1.10.6 release.

  • Personally read many Resident blogs, added comments when appropriate (e.g., when I felt I had something to add).

  • Pointed lots of Resis towards Robin's blog, Be The Change. Won't it be fantastic when more Lindens blog?
     
  • Blogged.
     
  • Discussed forthcoming priorities with Community Team, ended up reading and learning from a lot of social articles that got mailed around.


Things I wanted to do but haven't done this week or gotten to yet:

  • Spend more time on Teen Grid. (So much going on with Main Grid, the slices of my pie really have to fatten up some.)

  • Write test plans for new Groups system.

  • Write misc. documentation filling in gaps.
     
  • In my email queue, answer a lot of questions.


This isn't a complete list, but maybe it'll give you a better idea? I hope so.

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