it’s been nuts in the town hall meetings over at OSgrid and virtual worlds can be known for drama at times but this latest news from Sarge at Grid Press seems to be heading in one direction
demise?
OSgrid has always been listed as the testing ground for OpenSim development but it has organically grown into a beautiful international community
maybe that organic nature is now being pruned
Town Hall meetings have been replaced by suggestion boxes. I dunno about you, but at my day job suggestion boxes are merely for suggestions . . .
This is a HUGE issue, Ener.
The Town Hall Meetings were a crucial voice for everyone on OSGrid. Eliminating them is a true slap in the face of everyone in the community, contributors and detractors alike.
What makes this worse is that the ‘suggestion box’ method only exacerbates the uncertainty and distrust. How will anyone know if real issues are being truly addressed or whether they are being ignored in favour of some pet peeve of the admins? How can there be community involvement when information and decisions will be doled out through a locked forum?
Sarge Misfit
10 Feb 13 at 8:31 pm
not only huge but hugely unfortunate =(
this such a huge change and already has resulted in the loss of good people
what a shame
Ener Hax
10 Feb 13 at 8:38 pm
perhaps someone was abusing the Suggestion Box. perhaps flooding it with abuse? that might explain why it was removed.
Wizard Gynoid
10 Feb 13 at 9:00 pm
What?!!?
Only a few hours after eliminating Town Hall, to be replaced with suggestion boxs, those same boxes have been removed?
Sarge Misfit
10 Feb 13 at 9:09 pm
As it turns out, according to someone went and looked, the old suggestion boxes have been replaced with something that forwards notecards to the admins.
Sarge Misfit
10 Feb 13 at 9:20 pm
Actually, given the number of residents in OSgrid, and the lack of any ability to properly moderate chat in a region full of residents, the notecards seem like a better idea. This will allow the admins to answer them as a team, providing clear and concise answers without a lot of chatter between sentences. There is no order in the townhall meetings and reading the logs shows this.
anonymous
10 Feb 13 at 10:29 pm
The reason there was no order in the Town Hall meetings was because Hiro never bothered to organize them properly so now he can point to how bad they were for a reason not to have them. It’s a blatant cop out to kill debate or accountability to a community that is asked to support with their donations.
Gaga
10 Feb 13 at 10:43 pm
only time will tell – but from what i see as an outside observer is a lot of confusion, anger, and frustration
my opinion is simply that – just an opinion
a month from now there will be a better picture of what is going on
Ener Hax
10 Feb 13 at 11:42 pm
Our regions will remain in Osgrid, where they where born and as far as i noticed i didnt find any reason to move them!
Now, that many are moving to Metropolis, where all i read about fits my way of thinking, one should ask , why i keep them on OSG?
Well, cause I’m on Sl and i don’t care, i can host my regions on a private grid or in Metropolis in last resourse!
Still can’t wonder why suddenly all this doubts about Osg?
I was there this weekend and was alive as always!
ZZ Bottom
11 Feb 13 at 3:53 am
Wow. :(
Just got through reading all the comments on the “OSgrid leaders address hosting restriction rumors” article in Hypergridbusiness. Bleh. /me shakes head, sad
The news seems to just keep going from bad to worse. I certainly hope that things calm down and get better. I can’t imagine our metaverse without OSG. Maybe everyone involved should take couple weeks vacation and come back refreshed.
Ohn Lang
11 Feb 13 at 4:45 am
I support the changes happening in OSGrid. It is still alive and well, and thriving. The town hall meetings were very scattered, and can be replaced easily by suggestion box notecards. In fact, it would be much better for smaller groups of people to get together and organize on their own, and develop ideas in a more cohesive setting… then write up a concise notecard.
Avatar-based meetings larger than 5 or 6 people often end up being wild and crazy anyway. There is no mechanism in opensim to moderate local chat. Often, the bitchiest chat participants can dominate the meeting, and it becomes impossible to get anything constructive done.
After all, anyone can call a meeting in OSGrid… just announce it and set the time and place. Nothing is stopping you.
Lani Global
11 Feb 13 at 6:25 am
first the sky started falling inSL and now OSgrid?
is nothing scared?!?! why, why, why!?!
*falls to her knees with arms raised to the heavens*
Ener Hax
11 Feb 13 at 10:27 am
Every meeting was a chaotic zoo from the beginning, with the most vocal dominating the chat making it difficult for others to speak their mind. This kind of situation is the worst for taking suggestions and complaints as we admins have to read the chat log and filter them from all the noise.
It is ridiculous to suggest that debate has been killed by stopping the Town Hall meetings, with all the other outlets available such as Gaga’s Opensim Virtual community, Grid Press, personal blogs, and also on OSgrid’s LBSA Plaza where at least once every day folks are gathered in healthy debate, quite often with Hiro himself involved.
Key Gruin
11 Feb 13 at 11:23 am
How a meeting is handled is a huge factor. The various statements all relating to how the meetings got out of hand show that they were not handled well. A few basic rules that are consistently enforced were needed.
One such could have been a “speakers box”. A person sits on the box and they are the one that speaks, with a time limit. The box could even be scripted to enforce that time limit. People simply get in line to have their turn to speak. Anyone trying to over-ride the person speaking at the time gets muted for two minutes. The same for anyone trying to jump back on when their turn is over. Repeat offenders get banned for increasing periods of time.
A simple solution to unruly meetings.
Sarge Misfit
11 Feb 13 at 11:43 am
@Sarge – a way to control meetings inworld the way you do in RL would be awesome, for more things than just OSG town hall meetings.
“Anyone trying to over-ride the person speaking at the time gets muted for two minutes. ” Can a meeting moderator mute a person’s chat in local chat for everyone? So that no one can read chat from the person being muted for whatever duration?
That would be very cool. Not just to keep specific people quiet, but just as a way to manage meetings, classes, etc. in general. For example, a class during which students give reports that last 5 minutes or something. By default all public chat (except for a particular student) would be muted while the student reads his report. Once finished, public chat is opened for a period to discuss, and so on.
Can that be done?
Ohn Lang
11 Feb 13 at 12:01 pm
i dunno, i’m heading to an underground bunker on a remote Sim-on-a-Stick! =D
Ener Hax
11 Feb 13 at 12:28 pm
Hi Ener :)
Just read this blog post, and have to say I was a bit surprised to see you participating in that mess, especially without having the inside scoop – all you have to do is ask :)
First, the only thing OSgrid is struggling to do is to obtain some balance in the conversation. There are quite literally about 40 or 60 avatars out of thousands (8000ish total, a little less than half that active), making all that racket, and I have a growing pile of notecards that just as vigorously support what we are trying to accomplish.
The Town Hall Meeting was created to give people a chance to communicate their concerns and participate. I always stayed out of it because it was always been the same 30 people complaining, and the same 10 trying to be heard but getting shouted down. We have considered several meeting formats that would bring the same sort of order to our Town Hall Meeting as ones held in the real world but none were practical or technologically feasible at this time.
Here is the real story:
1. We have clarified longstanding policies and begun to enforce them uniformly. While there are plenty of good, wholesome use cases for both children and child avatars employed in VR, it is my opinion that OSgrid is simply not one of them. It’s too mature, too wild west, and we do not have the resources to certify that no children are present in some highly adult contexts. The official policy, however, is that no one under eighteen is allowed on OSgrid at any time. Child avatars are not allowed in the public areas controlled by OSgrid. Child avatars are allowed on private regions and lands. OSgrid staff will not attempt to investigate private regions unless a complaint of abuse has been made.
2. While the Administration Team has been restructured, it hasn’t lost any members. In fact, it regained an old and longstanding one: me :) We stand united on these actions, they are anything but unilateral. Our support staff is also increasing. Numerous volunteers are putting in many hours building, scripting, designing and teaching. Our residents are investing their time in OSgrid’s future.
3. The change in the Town Hall Meeting format, to one of suggestion/comment boxes is designed to provide a more balanced, accessible system of communications which gives every resident a chance to be heard. In the “live” Town Hall Meeting, I was barely able to be heard over then din and interruptions. If I can’t be heard, neither can the quietest person in the room. The people who are unable to attend the meetings will also have a chance to get their questions out under the new system. While some may have found the drama entertaining, it certainly didn’t encourage participation. I am hopeful that this new system will.
4. In spite of all of the talk of an exodus, our numbers are down consistently by about 30 avatars – which about accounts for the number who left in a huff – mind you, they weren’t even asked to leave, much less did they get thrown out; they just refused to accept any change and left. But those numbers are recovering rapidly, by about 30 new users per day, and various shifts in concurrency peaks associated with new accounts.
I’m relatively certain that some of those are the old users who left returning with re-rolled characters. As long as they don’t cause trouble, I don’t have concerns over that.
5. We are currently putting together a plan to nearly double the size of the asset server, adding some significant storage performance improvements in terms of hardware speed and software compression of asset blobs. These changes will put us on the road to the future, and should serve the grid well for years to come.
6. Donations took about an $80US/mo hit from this so called ‘exodus’ – this was rapidly replaced with significant numbers of new donations, and several that were cancelled and restarted at higher rates.
7. The legal status of OSgrid as an organization has been less than settled for literally years. That is about to change however, as we have a new organization specialist on board who has a career in the non-profit sector, and he says that we will be just fine; it just takes time to patch these things back together.
TL;DR: OSgrid is in fine shape; better than ever; and that represents a trend that will continue for the foreseeable future.
Hiro Protagonist, for the OSgrid Admin Team
11 Feb 13 at 1:10 pm
read all my comments – i think you are a great guy and any rules can be set, which is fine
in the end, someone has to be responsible and it’s easy to point fingers and blah, blah, blah
i just wrote that certain things quoted from you certainly don’t mesh with the James I know
but i also know that a lot of people are scared and that causes frustration all around
my comments are rhetorical and have resulted in you making a great statement that i will post for all to see
your words are the ones that matter most when talking about yourself and your vision, thanks for trusting them to me here
you are a person who i have loved like a friend and all this ugliness is mainly fear-based and undoubtedly a mix of assumptions and a little truth
at the end of the day, the buck has to stop somewhere and that person calls the shots. i fully support that =)
Ener Hax
11 Feb 13 at 2:01 pm
“Can a meeting moderator mute a person’s chat in local chat for everyone? So that no one can read chat from the person being muted for whatever duration?”
Ohn, I don’t know. Perhaps its a function that can be enabled through Estate, or perhaps grid administration has that function.
I got this idea from RL community meetings that I have helped to facilitate. It was very simple. If a person wanted to talk, they would line up at a microphone. Instead of a script (impossible in RL) a non-contributing person had a stop watch and sat at the control board, able to cut off the mic when the time was up. He or she’d give warnings, too. Like 30 seconds left and such. As for anyone trying to abuse the setup, well, that’s why meetings have a Sergeant-at-Arms. Btw, all this is in accordance with Robertson’s Rules, though not as formal. http://www.robertsrules.org/
——-
Hiro you state “We have clarified longstanding policies and begun to enforce them uniformly. ” Where are those policies posted? I looked at OSG’s homepage and there is literally nothing available. Not even a ToS. Nor is anything mentioned when I check the Wiki. If they are posted, they are buried where it they cannot be found. It is not reasonable to expect people to comply with policies if those policies are not clearly and publicly stated.
“The change in the Town Hall Meeting format, to one of suggestion/comment boxes is designed to provide a more balanced, accessible system of communications which gives every resident a chance to be heard. In the “live” Town Hall Meeting, I was barely able to be heard over then din and interruptions.” While this is one way to go about it, doing this introduces concerns about hidden agendas. No matter how unruly, open meeting are transparent meetings. Perhaps you and your fellow admins would consider the Speaking Box idea I put forth? Using such a thing keeps the unruliness in check while ensuring that issues are brought out in the open and dealt with.
“The Town Hall Meeting was created to give people a chance to communicate their concerns and participate.” OSGrid is a huge and hugely valuable resource to the OpenSim community at large. By eliminating the Town Hall Meetings and using suggestion/comment boxes and a locked forum to address concerns is not communication nor is it participation.
Sarge Misfit
11 Feb 13 at 2:08 pm
@James – after all the positive press Ener has published about you, you should never doubt her. *wink*
Her loyalty is above reproach and she likes to hear all sides of any issue.
If she is guilty of anything, it’s thinking aloud and giving all voices equal time. Looks to me like she did good with your reposted comment above.
Ditto what she wrote about missing your outstanding service – the freedom of a server set up by you is sorely missed!
David Miller
11 Feb 13 at 2:43 pm
i swear, the biggest drama queens are always boyz! =p
thanks subbie for standing up for me (now step behind me so ya don’t get hurt!)
*draws her bokken*
Ener Hax
11 Feb 13 at 2:45 pm
Unless there is some way programatically, within OpenSim, to truly manage meetings in the way we were talking about, I don’t see how you could stop public chat disruptions, other than simply banning those that misbehave, but that method is fraught with its own PR dangers even if used judiciously. Sometimes I wish there were some true control method just so I personally could have been prevented from blurting out stupid stream of thought crap occasionally.
Suggestion boxes are great as a method to contribute for those individuals who wish to contribute in a quiet way, with a bit of a sense of anonymity, at least relative to the larger OSG public.
However, it does limit transparency, and leaves management vulnerable to accusations of indifference. I like the way that Kitely management operates. They do hold structured (and successful) inworld meetings, but I’m not thinking about that part.
Outside of inworld meetings, Kitely strongly encourages and responds to feedback, primarily through the forums. Kitely also make it clear that anyone is welcome to email particularly Ilan directly as well.
In the forums, everyone can see the topics and exchange of discussion, as well as contribute if they choose. It’s public. You see resident’s laying out their opinion/issue/what-have-you, and you also see Ilan’s responses and followups. Ilan has the capability to moderate the forums should it be appropriate (though I’ve not seen sign of that).
If inworld meetings are off the table, perhaps the OSG forums would be a better place to continue the public debates. If you don’t wish to air dirty laundry to non-OSG members, just create a private OSG-member only area, where town-hall like discussions can resume, but just in the forum format.
Personally, I find some inworld meetings less satisfying–depends on purpose and circumstances–than forum discussions. In inworld meetings, it feels like people sometimes rush their responses in fear of being lost in the chatter. That can easily result in expressions that haven’t always been well reasoned and thought out. Not that that is a horrible thing, it just means that even in the calmest of environments, you can spend large blocks of time re-explaining things that people missed the first time you said something, or that you said poorly the first time around causing confusion. In more passionate environments, rushed words can cause much more damage.
Disclaimer: I don’t have a dog in this fight or pretend in anyway to have any in-depth knowledge about the emotional turmoil of the last few weeks. All I know about the emotional stuff is just what I’ve read in the comments/blogs/etc. I just have an enormous appreciation for what OSG does for and means to the metaverse as a whole.
Ohn Lang
11 Feb 13 at 2:55 pm
wow! Ohn earns the coveted “Reasonable Person with Good Ideas Award”!
nicely put and very good, now about that dog, i bet you could script . . . =)
Ener Hax
11 Feb 13 at 3:12 pm
The suggestion boxes are in place and working. Every comment is read by the Admin Team. We haven’t been through one cycle yet. I think people may actually find this new format helpful. I know they will certain get more accurate and complete answers.
It is not possible to mute an individual in chat so that no one in the region can see his or her chat at this time so there’s no way to have a meeting that follows real world meeting rules especially when the meetings are heated.
It’s interesting that people don’t feel heard when the members of the Admin Team spend time at LBSA answering questions and assisting users. They are also available by im and through the forums.
Amy Storm
11 Feb 13 at 3:29 pm
thanks Amy! another voice of reason and the waters are calming by the hour!
OSgrid is a neat organic international community – sure would be neat for it to thrive
but is that really its purpose?
i still think of it as the OpenSim test grid because i read that at some point on the OSgrid website
doesn’t matter what i think though =)
Ener Hax
11 Feb 13 at 3:51 pm
“doesn’t matter what i think though =)”
/me whispers, humph, its your blog, course it matters!
Ohn Lang
11 Feb 13 at 5:00 pm
thank you for the info… i had an headache trying to sift thru the townhall meeting chat logs (did not attend because the chatter in the group IM beforehand told me enough about how people would be acting)
i would like to know about hypergrid travel, i did not see that addressed, and that is the one thing i would like to know about.
thank you very much ener for this open forum, i enjoy your injected comments .lol…
shanghei shieldmaide
11 Feb 13 at 6:25 pm
3RG has regular meetings and they are usually quite orderly -and populated. It is possible to have orderly, real-time meetings; it’s just a question of organisation.
Maybe it would be valuable to attend some of the meetings at 3RG as an observer and see how they’re handled.
Meetings provide a valuable back-and-forth, and also eliminate a lot of redundancy that I believe you’re going to encounter with your current notecard approach.
**IF** you intend to have a community based grid, I’d urge you to study 3RG’s approach, or even study Robert’s Rules of Order.
If you intend to do something else, it might not hurt to be forthright about it. :)
Han Held
11 Feb 13 at 10:49 pm
I pretty much said all I had to say in G+ cause I was forced to with the closed comments and all.
Someone who don’t know me from a can of paint called me and everyone LIKE me a mental defective. How happy am I supposed to be about that, exactly?
Crystal Brewton
11 Feb 13 at 11:23 pm
There are talks of small groups getting together for their own Town Hall meetings. Then submitting notecards or meeting logs to the suggestion boxes.
Instead of this, why not appoint a spokes person from each of these groups. They could be the voice of these groups at a locked down meeting.
Create a Town Hall mayor and go over all the issues. The community could then read the logs as well as the admins if they choose not to attend.
Could be me but, getting flooded with notecards can’t be a lot of fun. They probably have better things to do. Also, over time, won’t all this Town Hall stuff be forgotten? Wasn’t this really setup for the community to feel truly part of OSgrid?
Hash it out in community gatherings, and then present it in a dignified manner once a month or so.
Michael Skelito
11 Feb 13 at 11:31 pm
yay for leaving comments here for Hiro’s post (he will be notified of comments here since he posted here and would not be on the post i did of hs comment)
everyone here made some very good suggestions – all honest and sincere
however, my fave has to be Crystal with her
“Someone who don’t know me from a can of paint called me and everyone LIKE me a mental defective.”
that’s my new expression! since i love that so, i must be even worse off than a mental defective! =D
Ener Hax
12 Feb 13 at 7:30 am
lol, a real issue from shanghei shieldmaide! what about HG!?!
once all the tears dry up and drama dies down, then these issues can be the focus and OSgrid can keep on chugging down the path of innovation (with a few bumps in the road to be expected)
thanks shanghei for reminding us all what moving forward means! =)
Ener Hax
12 Feb 13 at 8:06 am
[...] it stand as “the” statement on record and also so that comments would continue on the holy cow – is OSgrid done? post so that Hiro would be notified of every followup to his [...]
OSgrid – moving forward at i live in science land
12 Feb 13 at 8:27 am