Vote Against the JIRA, and For a New Feature Votings System

I hope you will vote YES for a proposal to take the Feature Voting System out of the JIRA, simplify and reform it, and make it usable by ordinary people wishing to have a say in the governance of Second Life, instead of leaving it to a handful of coders who have seized control of the tools. This becomes even more awesomely important when you think that with these devices, we are laying the groundwork for the governance of the Metaverse, as this software will be open-sourced.

Lack of even the most basic democracy available even in authoritarian systems has been a hallmark of these Linden-controlled mechanisms. Indeed, with only five votes, the old Feature Voter was proposed for closure by dominant personality WarKirby Magojiro and executed by Torley Linden -- despite the fact that an April blog promised that the FVT would be "migrated" and ostensibly "improved" -- not destroyed. Earlier, as I warned in a blog titled "A Copu in Second Life," the FVT was gutted under the guise of "optimalizing it" by Angel Fluffy, who saw that it was the key to destroying even the rudimentary democracy we had in SL, and instituting the Security State he could control in favour of his capture-roleplay BDSM mindset.

Everyone who has heard of the JIRA knows that it is difficult to use, is obscure, and has an arcane culture of fanboy code-kiddies clustered around it who zealously go around closing, moving, and defeating proposals they find "off topic," or "inappropriate" or "not-doable" or "bad ideas" or "not what the Lindens want." Even if they are right 75 percent of the time, it's an awful thing for them to control even 10-25 percent arbitrarily and wilfully. And I'm not sure they *are* right so much of the time, now that I have studied them in action on the JIRA, read many important proposals, seen how they fare, and seen how they behave in office hours. If you aren't paying attention to this stuff because you think it's too complicated, you will lose your freedoms.

I was astounded, for example, that literally a hundred or more people showed up on the JIRA -- this complex, stupid thing -- to report their billing problems on a particular "bug" -- the freezing of accounts, and the refusal of banks to clear Linden charges -- or for the Lindens to reopen accounts even when people had settled the issue with their banks. 5,800 accounts were frozen -- and as I know because I had an account among them, it was extremely difficult to get the account opened up. Imagine, the voice of the people was able to be heard on this confounded blasted thing, and yet Torley Linden methodically went around declaring all these votes invalid and inappropriate (because it was ostensibly a "support" issue) and claimed it was a wrongful use of the JIRA, and closed the entire issue, making it invisible. Support has no visibility and not votes -- it made the issue "go away". While debatable as a "bug," this problem truly was a proposal for the *improvement* of Second Life features, which do include automated billing mechanisms, so it was indeed legitimate.

I repeatedly asked in emails to Lindens and in meetings with Lindens about the Feature Voting System, when I saw it being destroyed by Angel Fluffy, and was repeatedly assured by Robin Linden and other Lindens that a new, improved system was coming and I'd be happier with it. But in fact what happened is that Angel Fluffy and Torley and a handful of others quietly shut it down and destroyed it, wiping out all its proposals and votes, forcing people in theory to restart them -- except they were never informed that they had to do it. Usually when user content is removed or a bug that you've proposed is now being reviewed on the JIRA instead of in the old system, you get an automatic message. None of us got any messages about our proposals being retired and destroyed from the FVT. It's a really awful thing for user-generated content to be destroyed in this world against people's will, it's never supposed to be done that way. It was done sneakily, and wrongfully, precisely to avoid an outcry. It was done in the theory few would care or notice. They may have been right that it was cluttery and clumsy, but that's never a reason to destroy democracy, however;

The FVT wasn't a democracy, but it was a democratic governance tool. By WarKirby's own admission, the JIRA isn't a governance tool, but merely a technical device to list issues as tekkies can comprehend them for tasks.

On the old FVT, you couldn't propose something to compel the Lindens to change -- when Ulrika Zugzwang tried to propose putting in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Lindens vetoed it because it was a policy, not a feature. "We don't do these windows" would be the stock response to anything that was about political change or separation or sharing of powers. Still, enough democracy could obtain in this system to make it worthwhile to the Lindens and us, given that it is a user-generated world of content. In fact, when they wanted to, very selectively, the Lindens referred to the FVT as the Vox Populi -- when the Goreans were able to flashmob point-to-point teleportation and make it seem as if the community wished telehubs to be destroyed, and p2p to be the only option (p2p, while ostensibly about individual freedom, in fact made it easier to control people in Gorean lands and destroyed public commons area where a public open space was kept open as a routine part of travel, making it possible for many more offerings to be made to people.)

I tried to introduce the right to vote "no" as did others -- this was construed as a "policy change" that could be destroyed although in fact it was indeed a feature change. It's just those who didn't agree with the idea, hoping to get their little coteries of yes-men to yes up votes, didn't want to ever have to face a "no".

Here's my description of the proposal WEB 399, and I hope everyone who is tired of the irritations and annoyances and difficulties of the JIRA will vote for this and make amendments:

WEB-399

Many people on the forums, at Linden Office Hours, and on third-party sites express great dissatisfaction with the JIRA as a governance tool for proposing features and even prioritizing bugs in Second Life. This is not disputed.

They find the JIRA complex, hard to search, arcane as to its rules and "culture," and daunting, as a very technically-inclined few are basically able to control it. By closing, moving, changing issues based on a very narrow set of developers' priorities and in a very closed developers' culture, they make it too difficult for people with even some working technical knowledge as users to work the levers of the JIRA to signal really serious problems in SL (like objects showing up in search without people's consent) or to make proposals even for the JIRA itself (like requiring author's consent or timing out proposals).

More than a year ago, the Features Voting Tool was revised unilaterally by one very intensive resident, Angel Fluffy, who unilaterally decided what votes were legitimate and what were not -- without any democratic participation, and with an inworld group in which only he himself was an officer. Busy Lindens applauded this difficult part-garbage-duty work, and then presided not over the reform of the FVT, as had been promised, but over its destruction. It was folded into the JIRA, with many of its key features destroyed.

I propose separating a Features Voting System in revised form out of the JIRA and simplifying it and doing a publicity campaign to ensure wider use of it, possibly even putting access to it into the Viewer.

No one knew about the demise of the FVT as it was not announced on the official blog -- in fact, we received misleading information from emails to Lindens and questions at office hours as we were told repeatedly that it was being "refomed" and offered with "improved features" -- and that hasn't been the case, in fact it was removed, destroyed, and a very skeleton features voting system within a very complex and rigid JIRA system is all that exists now.

Here are the features that need reforming in a new, revised Features Voting System:

o simplified user interface, where unnecessary labelling like VWR that people find confusing are removed in favour of numbers, and unnecessary items like "SL version" or "operating system" etc are removed, and a simple box for typing a label and an idea in 500 words or less with a link to any third-party forum discussion or inworld event with a SLURL. The aspect of SL and the appropriate version can always be added on after an issue is finally approved and accepted by Lindens -- this baggage does not need to be part of the drafting procedure.

o ability to label issues not only with aspect and number, but add a short phrase to describe it in words to make it more memorable, so that it becomes a tag, like PROP 101 NO SAVE CHANGES ON CLASSIFIEDS

o have more than 10 votes for "yes"

o ability to vote "no" -- this cannot be gamed any more than "yes" can be gamed, flashmobs can happen on either side of the issue, and it means that votes deceptively appearing popular have a necessary popular corrective

o have the ability for each proposal-maker, when he sees a duplicate, to make an automatic offer, as part of the template, to another person with a similar proposal, and *automatically merge their unique votes* under the new merged proposal -- this provides a great incentive to get rid of duplicates, and prevents campaigning fatigue from trying to have to get the same votes all over again for new aggregated proposals

o have a web page with the Feature Voting System explained, and top voted items shown, with rubrics for easy finding of votes that may not turn up with key words

o have time-outs for features that age 30 days or 60 days without any votes at all, or some number of votes like 10.

o not require Lindens to respond at 500 votes, they may respond at any time or no time

o do not use JIRA software for this feature, which does not seem adaptable for a workable FVS, but bid it out to third-parties to make and then co-opt it for SL use

If something that seems "impossible to code" like "privacy walls you can't web-cam through" comes up, let people vote for it. Let a mllion people vote for it, even if impossible, Lindens can learn what people need in a virtual world and even if not possible to code now, when SL is open sourced, perhaps someone else can take it on.

The governance for the software for the entire Metaverse using Second Life, when it is open-sourced, cannot be run by a handful of coders representing one point of view on an obscure, arcane system that defeats participation instead of encourages it. It has to serve many diverse groups.

Comments

[Katrina Douglas]

There is no democracy, SL isn't a state, its server space you pay LL for. No one is forcing anyone to stay or to pay. You can and people do daily, vote with the wallet and given its a private company renting server space that is just as it should be under the law in which country the company resides.

[katykiwi song]

JIRA is incomprehensible and unworkable to all but the few who wallow in its double geekspeak complexity. If eliminating input from the average member was its goal then JIRA was yet another Linden success story where the members lost out, again.

[Maklin Deckard]

I voted yes on the proposal. From my JIRA post (after I figured the damn thing out, sorta).

Basically, the JIRA is useless, except to a small cabal of techies who will fight to the death for it since they understand it....and can manipulate the hell out of it with the small number of voters/users.

As far as ease of use, its like every other OS program out there. Confusing interface, cryptic commands, designed by techies for other techies. it IS hard to use and obscure at the best of times. But the techies love it, as it reinforces their feelings of superiority over the 'end lusers'. Note the condenscension of one user above about how its not hard to use, and how she refuses to acknowledge there is something broken with JIRA when any chimp can close someone's issue...but hones in on the lack of notice and lectures about 'watching the issue' and how folks 'don't care if they don't watch'. Some of us have lives outside of SL and the JIRA, we care but may not have time to piss around with defending a post from the techies out to close things as a mode of control.

ANYTHING would beat the hell out of the JIRA for voting....absolutely anything, including mailing postcards to LL.

[Prokofy Neva]

Katrina, whether you like it or not, whether it serves your own belief system or interests or not, an interactive online world with user-generated content isn't merely "server space".

No one takes this kind of reductivist and harsh attitude even to ordinary websites that gather large communities around them -- it's silly.

Wherever people gather, there are governance issues, leadership issues, politics, procedures -- law. Because it is a trans-national space and involves virtuality, there are indeed some new issues of law and practice that don't reduce down entirely to saying "the state where the servers reside have ultimate jurisdiction". That is, people debate this precisely because it *is* debatable.

[Katrina Douglas]

"That is, people debate this precisely because it *is* debatable." Many people do things just because they have the ability to, and yet even more have impulse control. Just because you have the thousands of free man hours necessary to rant and rail at a thing does not translate into that thing being worth ranting and railing against. This is a non-issue whether you want to face it or not, it is simply server space, not a state. You wish to have more say in the internal workings of LL beyond that of a mere customer renting server space? Pray LL eventually goes public and then buy stock if you so choose, there is your democracy, until then all this, this is empty words and hollow rhetoric falling on deaf ears, the only power, the only voice you really have is to stop paying if you so choose, but we both know you wont because you can't.

[Prokofy Neva]

Katrina, it's the fanboy regs at the JIRA who have the thousands of hours to zealously "clean it up" and close and move and hatefully comment other people's contributions.

I've already bought a say in Second Life by being a tier-payer. That is very much like buying stock when you have an evolving project like that. Together, we tier-payers, as I've often pointed out, pay as much as a venture capitalist in our fees every year. We count.

As SL *is* going open-source, it's not at all "empty rhetoric" to lobby for participation in its destiny. The Metaverse is just as much a target for democracy as any other human artifact, why would it have to be different? To satisfy the whim of a game-god or a tekkie-wikinista for symmetry and power?

Oh, I don't at all agree that the only power we have is to stop paying. In fact, if I were to stop paying tomorrow, it would have little impact, and even if there were 10 or 20 of us small and medium rental barons, the dent in the economy wouldn't likely be as much even as the casino closures. The Lindens lose some money for a bit, especially if they work Supply Linden, land prices fall, people buy land as individuals, and a new round of land barons emerges. There's always another guy to buy the island, as Kenny Linden inimitably put it.

So it's more sensible to keep a stake in and try to participate as long as it is possible.

The idea that we have to refrain from expressing opinion as part of an "impulse control program" is pretty sick, and right out of the pages of any totalitarian manual.

In fact, your entire ideology is, Katrina, and you so well represent the whole dystopia which we need to fight. You wouldn't take this attitude about Bush, but you will about the Metaverse.

[Maklin Deckard]

"This is a non-issue whether you want to face it or not, it is simply server space, not a state." - Katrina

Ah, another person 'too cool' for emotional attachment to SL heard from. Amazing how she comes here and MULTIPLY posts over a 'non-issue' that is just 'server space'. :) Not logical.

I guess all the cool kids have to feign rampant cynicism...it must be chic' to downplay issues this season. :)

Maklin

[WarKirby Magojiro]

I visited an inworld windlight meeting today. Almost all of the visitors there were new faces, who barely had a clue what jira was. We did a lot of introducing, and talking them through it. Introducing them to things.

The complexity of jira is unfortunate, and it's being improved. Before prokofy ever took an interest, it didn't have email notification. You had to hover over any issue that interested you.

Now you can get an automatic email whenever anything happens to the issues you support.

This is the main proposal for stramlining jira. Making it easier for non technical users

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-194

Prokofy, much like many people, has a fear of things she doesn't understand. Despite her incessant rantings to the contrary, we don't want to control SL.

I close issues which

Already exist

Lindens have stated they will not do (eg, closing registration)

Issues that are impossible to do. Like seperating resell from transfer.

Issues that are already fixed.

I do not close issues on a basis of not agreeing with them. Or to silence them.

[Ciaran Laval]

"Issues that are impossible to do. Like seperating resell from transfer."

That's where I have a problem with closing issues. If it's a new feature request, it should stay open. What's not possible now, may be in the future. There's no need to close an issue like that.

[Prokofy Neva]

One meeting inworld is hardly evidence of getting people to use the JIRA. They should not have to go through any learning curve whatsoever to use it. It should be intuitive like any typical voting web page.

It shouldn't need "lots of introducing" -- that's the problem. People like you WarKirby thrive on the idea of being BDSM Master, Gatekeeper, Shepherd, Introducer to the Experience blah blah blah. But nobody needs that. People can just walk around you, bypass the arcane stupid complex thing you are sitting on like a troll and waiting to guide them for so they become subordinate and subjective to you, and make something different, and make something USABLE without freaks like you in the way. That's all there is to it: plain and simple.

This proposal for streamlining contains geeky elements too -- it's really impossible out of this bunch on the JIRA to get anything sensible.

Um, I don't fear things I don't understand. I march right into the door and I storm it if I have to. I bark and bark to get things done. I don't have to be some tekkie nutter to ask reasonable and educated questions as any educated person capable of intuitive logic and deduction.

The little grouplet assembled around the JIRA desperately want to gain reputational enhancement, being the saviours of SL and heros of the bug-hunting expedition, and they are willing to hysterically spend long hours batting away everybody to accomplish that goal. It's a sickness.

I'm not at all persuaded that WarKirby is capable of any rational judgement, when I see him write like this on the JIRA to someone:

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It doesn't matter if resell/transfer are impossible. They aren't *really* impossible, it's just that they are complex and the Lindens don't want to take the time. I don't blame them.

The lobby for "transfer" are just freebie cultists who want to be able to have people pass on objects but never set their beloved treasures to sale against their will -- that's all that's about -- creator fascists and fake altruists who want to grab at what the next owner does, in violation of first sale doctrine. Awful stuff.

WarKirby can constantly be seeing arguing with people and that in effect silences him. You have to be made of stern stuff to stand up to these creeps, you should see how they talk to each other even here:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-774

The Lindens failed to set the tone long ago...

[Nika Talaj]

I completely agree that Jira is not a tool for governance, particularly inworld governance. Indeed, I believe everyone, including its makers, would agree. To quote them: "JIRA is a bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management application developed to make this process easier for your team." www.atlassian.com

As a project management tool, it of course does have a technical flavor to it. It is a hostile UI for new users - in fact, until they were no longer needed, every time I posted on SL's forums about a Jira issue, I included quick instructions on voting. The reason why LL is using it is because, believe it or not, it is one of the best, if not the best, tracking systems available for a less-than-celestial amount of cash. If you know of a better one, which both handles large numbers of issues and has a better user interface, I'm sure LL would be interested in hearing about it.

That's all Jira is. It shines at bug tracking, and does a decent job of issue tracking, within the context of product releases that have defined beginnings, middles, and ends. NOTHING will make it into a platform for open-ended feature discourse and inworld policy definition. To spend many words making this transcendently obvious point is not necessary, although of course your time is your own.

A new feature system would not replace Jira, which LL's program managers, as well as much of the SL community, clearly finds useful. As feature specifications get more refined, they might even migrate from your new system to Jira for tracking. I know you are not concerned with how things actually get done in software, but I'm sure you recognize the rights of others to be so concerned? It is very helpful to much of the community to get a heads up on implementation progress, which Jira gives.

Lastly, on the question of resident closing/resolving issues. I think your concern about warkirby and other residents' decisions is overreaction. In an ideal world, only perfectly knowledgable Lindens or supremely reasonable panels of residents would manage the huge and fluctuating body of issues that an application like SL spawns. The world is not perfect, and if I disagree with a decision about an issue, I simply reverse the decision and add a comment explaining why and soliciting feedback from others.

p.s. A minor usage point: it is "Jira", not "the Jira" -- in the same way as it is "Windows", not "the Windows". Thanks.

[Prokofy Neva]

Nika, spare me the condescending tone and ascribing to me of lack of concern about how software gets made. There is nothing that says a JIRA has to be used for this task, either, frankly, and whatever someone's good experience with it for bugs, that doesn't mean that it is suitable for a task of this complexity.

Features are more complex, and frankly, some of the things that people want are more about policies than about technical tools. The Lindens make a policy about "ageplay"; they don't make a tool. They make a policy about a gambling; they don't make a tool. There are also soft norms, socio-cultural norms that can be set if you begin to gain consensus, that's why even if it is "impossible" or "not technically sound" to make it so that consent must be toggled for the JIRA, you could still establish a kind of netiquette about it by having raised the issue.

I'll go on calling it The JIRA like I call it The Bronx and not The Manhattan, because I know where I live, and it's not there
: )

The very proposal I have made that proposals should not be peremptorily closed is of course itself repeatedly closed and I've had to re-open it 4-5 times.

[none]

Prokofy. Why do you bother?

SL was a cool, Sci-Fi, manic idea that held promise in a trippy kind of way, and is run by chimps and monkeysw ho thionk they are geniuses who use unemployed cult sheep for free labor and it's all powered by scam artists.

The truly creative artist and the good people within SL, have already been and will be ultimately betrayed.

My opinion is get out while the getting is good. It's a lost cause. The linden will be illegal. It's going to explode in their face. LL will be ruined and SL (or it's later incarnation) will end up controlled by avaricious business.

The amount of wasted time spent with SL today, trying to improve it, or even discuss it, etc., will pale in comparison to the time many people will spend trying to shake it off, hide from it's greedy future and kick themselves for buying into, what will eventually be considered somewhere between the devil and big brother.

Maybe some mature people will come along and do it right, but I am not holding my breath and I am not wasting time or money in it.

I loved SL when I first started here, but as soon as I picked up on the "open source" direction, the hacker Copybot, anarchy mentality of the 'cabal' and saw LL ignore their responsibilty of protecting the creative or socializing resident from thieves or griefers, I knew I was in with a bad crowd (not referring to regular residents) and that SL and LL is just not anything to be serious about. It's too far gone.

Trying to get anywhere with all this is like beating the proverbial, dead horse. It's just idealistic naivite to hold on to it. Forget about Jira, no one will reach any concesus about anything anyway. Trying to tell the script junkies anything will continue to be impossible and they are just the alpha sheep, the follower sheep are just chatter with gang turf mentality. The vast majoity of residents could not care less anyway.

A crooked flag pole will cast a crooked shadow. Trying to fix the shadow is useless and the flag pole has already been built crooked, is defended by the "Magic Circle," and financed by the hanger-on people voting with their wasted dollars. Its just a business---and a bad one.

Spending time to support or change SL is futile, it's just preparing a platform for future spammers and scammers, thats all. It's not what was dreamed.

[Rebecca Proudhon]

I didn't intend on posting anonomously(last post)--guess my Typepad settings are off, since it's not showing my name.

-Rebecca Proudhon