Please help us...as long as you don't ask

This week, my former friend at Linden Lab, Prospero Linden, announced a new Beta program available to the Second Life Community.

Upon learning this, I followed Prospero's instructions to post any questions one might have concerning the program on a Forum made available just for that purpose; I asked the following three questions:

1. In the Original Beta we were more then happy to help Linden Lab find and squash as many bugs as we could in the time we had, now you are asking for an Open Ended commitment from us? Will you be paying us? Will you be offering LifeTime Accts to those that attend regularly and jump through the PJIRA hoops?
2. So just exactly what are you offering? Are you going to LISTEN and COMMUNICATE with those that participate, or just do your usual brush off routine?
3. Will you treat these BETA testers better then you did your OPEN SOURCE developers? Many of whom have abandoned the project because Linden Lab Employee's openly trashed their coding. Will you be any more "Professional" this time around, or act the same way?

Apparently, Prospero Linden is a bit sensitive, as after I posted these questions, they were quickly removed from said Forum. This type of Censorship has become a mainstay at Linden Lab when their employee's either refuse, or just can't, answer questions being asked.

Prospero Linden commented that:

"I have deleted several posts from one poster, who keeps coming back and posting ever more offensive posts complaining about the deletion.

To be clear. I'm happy to answer (or, if necessary, try and fail to answer) hard questions. What I'm not happy with is people who post questions in an aggressive, attacking, and insulting manner. There is a difference between asking a hard question and stating a half-rhetorical question that implies that Linden Lab is a bunch of screwups who never do anything right. The former can lead to constructive conversation, the latter is a troll. Please, let's keep the conversation constructive. "

It seems that if you ask Hard Questions they are immediately thought of as being an attack against Linden Lab. This is a new tactic now being employed by Linden Lab Employee's, "cry foul if you can't answer the questions". This tactic along with Censorship is nothing more then a smoke screen trying to divert the Second Life Community User from realizing the simple truth, Linden Lab employee's are afraid to take on the Hard Questions that now plague Second Life and the Second Life Community.

I tried several attempts, each a bit more sharp then the last to get Prospero Linden to answer these Hard Questions, and at one time he commented that he wasn't afraid of Hard Questions and would attempt to answer any and all that are presented without any vitrol attached. In response, I asked the following, again:

1. In the Original Beta we were more then happy to help Linden Lab find and squash as many bugs as we could in the time we had, now you are asking for an Open Ended commitment from us? Will you be paying us? Will you be offering LifeTime Accts to those that attend regularly and jump through the PJIRA hoops?
2. So just exactly what are you offering? Are you going to LISTEN and COMMUNICATE with those that participate?
3. Will you treat these BETA testers better then you did your OPEN SOURCE developers?

Once again though, Prospero Linden took offense at these questions. I guess my problem is that I shouldn't ask questions that point out Linden Lab Employee's past failures, and ask if those are going to be repeated; apparently that's an attack against Linden Lab and their Employee's.

I suppose this experience shows something about Linden Lab Employee's. Either they are very THIN SKINNED and can't handle any type of criticism or they're too incompetent to answer Hard Questions from the Second Life Community. I think it's probably a mixture of both of these characteristics. I can understand being THIN SKINNED, seeing the type of Management being practiced, but being scared to stand up and at least trying to answer the Hard Questions put to them, seems like a scared rabbit is at the helm of this latest Beta Program.

If we look at past actions with Prospero Linden, predicting future behaviour tells us that the Beta Program will fail, that when the new server code is "installed" it will run for approximately 1 hour before being shown it's not ready for prime time. Let's not forget the fiasco of 1.24 install, being reversed 5 times and being re-installed 6 times until it was done right. I suppose this is probably the thing that makes Prospero Linden too scared to answer these Hard Questions, as if he shows he has no idea about them, then it shows he's still failing in his job, and for any management personnel that might be a bad thing to notice.

So, today we learned that Prospero Linden isn't someone that's going to stand up and do the right thing, no surprise considering those that went before him. One must ask, just who's left at Linden Lab that will be willing to answer these Hard Questions?

M? Aunty Robin? Uncle Philip? Blue? Prospero? Seems to me we have covered quite a lot of the departments there at Linden Lab. I suppose we could ask Bub Linden, although we all know his answer. The only Linden Employee left that has more experience then myself at Second Life is Benjamin Linden, although I could be overlooking one or two that don't come in-world.

Benjamin? Do you want to try and answer the Hard Questions being asked by the Second Life Community?