LL created this document to cover JIRA policies:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Issue_tracker

Note the stuff at the bottom, about "How do I help out?" They ENCOURAGE the community to help sift through issues. This JIRA would be completely useless without the constant work by me and countless others to winnow out the duplicates and misplaced support requests.

Secondly, ~I'm not sure about everyone, but me and Lex at least, use reasonable judgement in closing issues. I don't close things I don't agree with. I close:

individual support requests, with a comment to pursue a solution through LL support.
Duplicate issues, with the issue duplicated specified.
Waste of work issues, ie, fixing physics issues in havok 1, when havok 4 is jsut around the corner. Or adjusting basic sunsets when windlight is in beta now.
Vague or pointless issues. "Make the lag stop"
Issues requiring additional information. "My <insert arbitrary object> broke down in havok 4", with no info on how said object works, or where to get one for testing.
Silly feature requests. "Add gold farming so noobs can have a job",
Unreproducible issues. "This isn't working!" when it is working.
Requests to destroy things for no good reason "Ban sculpted prims. They make building unfair"
Requests to allow things directly detrimental to other residents. Eg, "make textures pop up again so we can spam people"

etc, etc.
All issues can be freely reopened, and in some cases, are intended to be reopened. When closing any issue, I will always leave a comment explaining my decision, and very rarely will someone disagree enough to reopen it. In the case of that happening, I will usually back down and leave it alone, except in the case of absurd unfeasible issues, where common sense makes the solution clear.

There are an average of ~20 new issues per day. A large proportion of which really don't belong here.Linden time is valuable, and a scarce resource. We are volunteers who help fill the gaps in administration work. We do not aim to control or subvert anything.

There's absolutely no reason why a function can't be put into the system whereby actions cannot be taken on a measure without the consent of the person who originally proposed the measure. They shouldn't have to be constantly hovering over their action, seeing if someone has just undone all their work and undermined their intent arbitrarily.

The effect of closing an issue cancels out its votes. I don't see that the votes are then resumed at the same level, so closing can easily be used to undo somebody's votes just because you disagree with them (I'd like some clarification).

This is a world that has many kinds of people in it, some of them paying a lot of tier a lot of tier and serving other customers. It is not just that one script kiddie who has all day to play on the JIRA can go around closing and moving other people's serious bug findings and proposals. If you don't agree with a proposal/bug, you can a) not vote for it b) comment on it c) start a better one.

The reason there is "rarely anyone to disagree" is that there is only a tiny cadre of lifers here working the JIRA, with the vast majority of members of the community either completely unaware of its existence – and the influence of this tiny handfull of people on their Second Lives – or unable to work its levers constantly even in support of their own proposal because they may not fully understand the arcane complexities of the JIRA mechanism itself.

If someone makes a silly feature request, it isn't voted on, no action is taken on it, and it sinks of its own weight, without anyone having to waste time on it. Proposals can age out after 90 days perhaps to solve the problem of "gold farming for news" – and BTW, I see nothing like that here on the JIRA now such as to warrant this faux concern.

In fact, sculpties were something put over on the community by the small group of coders, and had no significant awareness or support in the community, and indeed do make the building market unfair, suddenly introducing a new complexity that only some would be able to master and capitalize on.

We do not need volunteers that in fact control and subvert the proposals and findings of others constantly.

Indeed this is related to VWR 3071 and it is a prime example of a bug and feature issue that in fact does not fit under any of those categories that WarKirby is arrogating himself to "manage".

It is a legitimate proposal calling for a halt to the automatic default into search of all items for sale because people did not have a chance to decide to put every item into sale or not, and were not informed widely and properly of these options. A blog description of weeks ago in which this point was buried sure doesn't count.

Furthermore, the rationale for the concept was that UNTIL the bug could be fixed, causing non-transferable items once set to sale originally, and now in the buyer's ownership, still flag as set to sale, even though of course they cannot be sold because they are not transferable.

Until that bug is fixed, many, many items will show up as set for sale, unwanted in search, and causing invasion of privacy.

Perfect example of the type of action motivating this proposal. There is nothing specific to the WEB in this proposal, and it doe sindeed belong under MISC.

There is an issue that the people who frequent JIRA (including the Linden teams) are coders who do not appreciate economic issues, especially in defining Showstopper in purely technial terms, while happily letting an over-charging bug exist for months without being addressed, even when the solution has been given through JIRA comments. A case in point is the failure to address the various bugs in the website display of classifieds, some day a big spender will decide that they have had enough of being ignored and leave SL, and as a parting shot take out a suit against LL. The claim that Classifieds are paid in Lindens and therefore exempt from finanical law will just not stand up in a court when some advertisers are spending 100s of USD every week to purchase the Lindens to purchase the Classifieds. The moment that LL allowed Lindens to be purchased and sold they entered the world of financial law and some here on JIRA still need to wake up to that fact.

I've had Jira proposals moved by Billy No Mates and it makes me wonder if there's any point to this when Billy no mates can close or move a proposal.

Leaving aside the obvious issue, such as people like Prokofy Neva with an axe to grind, this proposal opens the door to such rubbish as:

"I propose that all female avatars have tits bigger than a G-Cup"

Think about it for a moment. Under this proposal people could not remove garbage like this even if it was evident it was a load of absolute rubbish. That's hardly democracy in action. I wonder how much Prokofy would be backing it if the JIRA proposal was "I propose calling Prokofy Neva a complete twat because that's what she is" or something equally insultive, because under this proposal even though that would be potentially libellous nobody could remove it from the JIRA without the authors consent - and what griefer would agree to have their axe-to-grind proposal removed?

Sorry, but no. There's no way I can support this proposal.

This is a generic issue that goes to the heart of what's wrong with the JIRA for the use of a diverse community with very many different needs and interests. And it's here we should take a stand.

The idea that it can be "gamed" or "griefed" is an argument used against having a "no" vote, too, but that's specious, as "yes" votes can be mobbed and gamed, too, just like the ability to close an issue needlessly. If there were a reputation system in which people could see that those who speciously close issues find them re-opened all the time, it might be possible to live without a "non-consent" system – but there isn't such a system.

Once again, frivolous proposals sink to the bottom. There are numerous unimportant, arcane, and frivolous proposals sitting open even now.

Abusive posts with vulgar words in them such as suggested by Untameable Wildcat would likely simply be removed by the Lindens for violating the TOS, and that alone would hardly be a reason not to propose the simple idea that only with an author's consent can a proposal be closed.

Either you appeal to people's reason and common sense, or you don't. I do : )

Most people have the good sense to concede that their issue must be closed if compelling arguments are made.

I'd like to confirm or deny that closing an issue cancels that issue's votes, so that reopening means the person has to go re-win all the votes again.

You're right... if I could close any issues, I would close this one without any doubts.

We don't need someone like you to invades JIRA and polices it.

1. Warkirby doesn't necessarily speak for me. I do'nt completely agree with that list of reasons he closes issues.
2. I am NOT a "script kiddie". I am NOT a purely techminded coder who has no understanding of the economics of SL. I earn my entire living in SL.
3. Mercia, I DID Resolve the issue, rather than Closing it. I even left a comment detailing my reasons for resolving it and giving tips on what prok should do when reopening it (which he ignored). Prokofy is the one who keeps insisting that I Closed the issue, which I definitely did not. I acted in what I thought was the best way to improve the issue so that it would be more helpful to LL, based on their guidelines. My actions were not unilateral; I can't force any issue change to stick, as Prokofy showed by reversing my change. I am perfectly willing to hear my reasoning refuted and see my actions reverted. I hate the idea of a revert-war powered by someone (Prokofy) who doesn't understand the system and decides that I'm out to get him.
4. While I did comment on VWR-3071 indicating why I disagreed with the issue, that was completely separate from my resolving it. They were two separate comments; one was giving my opinion, and one was acting based on the established JIRA conventions.
5. This proposal belongs under Web, with the jira.secondlife.com Component. That's where issues about this JIRA go.
6. Prokofy, please don't confuse your opinions with common sense. Not everyone agrees with your opinions or your definition of common sense.
7. Closing or Resolving an issue does not reset the votes. It's only the case that people cannot vote on an issue WHILE it is closed or resolved.
8. Community members perform a very important role in this JIRA by closing duplicate and incorrectly filed issues. We'd have even more of a flood of cruft than we do already without the efforts of those in the community to tidy up issues. It's critical that we all have the ability to edit any issue so that people cannot clutter this JIRA with incorrectly filed issues or use it as their soapbox. That's not what it's for.

This JIRA is community driven. I cannot possibly act unilaterally against the community's wishes, because the author of a proposal gets an email when I make a change, and all changes I make are plainly visible to anyone who wants to see them, by choosing "All" or "Change History" at the top of the comments. If I run around on a rampage closing issues (we've seen it happen), the community will quickly clean up after me and reverse my actions. In short, if you think I've done something wrong, appeal to the community.

More importantly, Prokofy, if you feel I've taken an action I shouldn't have on VWR-3071, please contact the Linden responsible for managing Jira, Rob Lanphier <robla@lindenlab.com>. Drop him an email and tell him why you think I acted badly. If he says I did, I'll gladly defer to his judgement. And if he says I acted properly, you need to defer to his judgement too. Don't try to lump him into your "bad guys" category of "coders".

Remember, JIRA is not your soapbox. It's not the place where LL looks for their list of things to do, and it's not a place where you can force LL to do anything. It exists for the community to work together to present technical issues and feature requests in the clearest way possible so that LL's developers can easily see what's wrong and fix it. It's not well suited to policy issues. For that, you might want to consider emailing a Linden directly.

Now, I'm done here. I definitely can't out-talk Prokofy, so he can have all the last words he wants. I'm ducking out before this turns into a flamewar. I hope those reading this will withhold judgement on me until they read the facts of the situation, rather than taking Prokofy's word for it that I'm evil.

Human nature is lazy. If people had to come and close issues themselves, even if they agree that it should be closed and was a bad idea, many of those people won't care enough to come back and actually do it.

Secondly, there are the stubborn people. Whether through inexperience, or simply sheer stupidity, I have seen some very absurd proposals here. Most importantly, some proposals which are technically impossible, and proposed by people who are unaware of this. Or even worse, people who think they know, and are actually clueless.

Lex's second point. I have considerable financial interest in SL too. And I want to make it better as much as anyone.

And as for this:

"In fact, sculpties were something put over on the community by the small group of coders, and had no significant awareness or support in the community, and indeed do make the building market unfair, suddenly introducing a new complexity that only some would be able to master and capitalize on. "

No. Just. No. For a VERY long time, people have been demanding more shapes, ability to import objects from outwith SL, subtractive geometry, and a million other ways to have better building. Sculpted prims are an answer to one of the biggest community demands ever, and can facilitate much better content creation in many ways. There is nothing unfair about liberating content creation from the limitations of SL's tools. SL is not designed to be fair, or balanced. This is not a game. This is a free market. If you can't keep up with technology, too bad.

It's about as logical as whining that guns make warfare unfair.

Lex Neva: it's completely specious to argue, "but I have no special power and anyone can close or reverse anything." It's a red herring. Obviously those with knowledge simply aquire power – and they acquire it without any rule of law here, and without any community spirit, that has respect for people's ideas and concerns. You're closing things "just because" you don't like them. And that's wrong. To prevent them from happening, there should be a flag of consent.

I don't understand why countering your arbitrary, unilateral activities here, and challenging the small cabal, is somehow making "a soapbox". It's merely a normal, common-sense challenge. Especially if all the votes for an issue get undone – or stopped for a time – by a close (can we confirm that?!), it's just plain wrong to undo people's efforts that way.

It's also completely unnecessary. There are gadzillion open issues here. No one wins any prizes for closing the most issues. It may satisify some inner sense of rectitude or geekitude to say there are less closed issues than open ones, but open issues are merely a sign of a vigorous community with many contributions, not a sign of laziness and congestion. It's not as if any list of open issues assaults the eye. You can filter it out! One could also build timers on issues, that if the owner doesn't refresh or get a vote or add some justification within 90 days, they automatically close.

I'm glad you earn your living in SL. But you don't earn it the same way many others do, with many other concerns than you have. And you don't get to run SL with only your concerns, of your class of people. It's just that simple.

The issue is NOT resolved. The problem of defaulting everything to search is wrong, until the bug is fixed, and until the community is consulted and has more time to adjust, at the very list. Unilaterally deciding "Oh, it's a feature, get stuffed" is just plain wrong. You don't get to do that. Forcing people to endlessly play a game of open and close is just plain ridiculous.

The revert war is so far powered by you, Lexa, not by me. I haven't reverted anyone's proposals. I've merely reopened a bug that you reverted.

It's not about any weird judgement of being "out to get". It's just plain normal democratic fair play and common sense. Could we inject a little of that here?! People should not get to go sweeping through the JIRA closing or moving people's items in this way without oversight or without any sense of the rule of law.

Common sense lets us know that in a community with a variety of opinions and different levels of understanding and knowledge, you cannot have a few speak for the many, and a few do things like shut off the very levers of expression. That's just dictatorship by a few, and it's wrong. It serves no purpose, either, to build knowledge and understanding of Second Life. Only an open system can do that.

Defaulting everything to search has many negative consequences. If someone doesn't feel them; if they don't understand them, that's fine, but they have to accept that for other people with whom they share Second Life it is indeed negative and destructive. That's just common consideration. More people agree with THAT basic notion than ever will agree with the idea that a handful of tekkies get to decide the priorities of Second Life.

I'd have to test whether the votes cancel out or hear it from a Linden, frankly, but even if votes are NOT lost on an issue, closing it means that days can be lost while it is closed and people get the idea that since it's closed, it's not worth voting on, and that's not good.

I'm quite capable of understanding why a few busybodies take it upon themselves to "clean up" everything in the notion that they represent the wisdom of the crowd. But...they don't. A timer that ends proposals without votes or refreshing by the owner can eliminate "cruft". Duplicates can be handled by having the motion to close that the author must respond to. You're acting as if the idea of having no one be able to close for another means no one can recommend for closure and gain consensus and common-sense consent. Of course they can. Most people would readily concede a common-sense explanation for a closure. My God, the search is so bad on the JIRA that even with the best intentions, you can inadvertently make a duplicate proposal. But you should get to be the final judge of whether it is duplicate and not the "gardeners" of the little circle here.

I don't see who died and elected you to be de-clutterers of the JIRA. If what you did was demonstrably good, it might not be challenged, But it's not. People complain, and not only me. And it's so patently obvious that you closed an issue just because you didn't agree with it. You think "just because" the Lindens or you said "this is how it's going to be – roll over" that a very controversial issue like this gets to be closed.

You have absolutely no idea how much static is building about how awful the search is. Boy, are you going to be getting in touch with this, soon.

You imagine that you are the reader of the community's wishes. But you are not. The history is not good enough. The action should not go forward. A proposal to close is all that should come in, and the person then consents, or doesn't. If he fails to act, it can close in 30 or 45 or 90 days, whatever.

No one should be expected to have to keep scampering around policing those with ill will closing their issues because they disagree with them. You have closed an issue not due to logic, duplication, or reason, but because you disagreed with it, so you have lost credibililty.

I'm not going to be running to a Linden to appeal each JIRA issue on a case by case issue. That sets a terrible precedent, and Lindens don't have time for that. I've put a proposal here. Vote on it or don't. Stop closing issues that you don't agree with. End of story.

As for "list of things to do," you are aware that the Lindens have THEIR OWN INTERNAL JIRA? And this is a kind of, oh, culdesac. It's an important place for feedback, but it is not where things are really decided.

So those who fight their way through the JIRA concept and do bother to mount a feature or bug should have some modicum of respect and not be closed until they consent. The solution to any concerns of clutter is just to put a timer on the issue.

If it were not possible to make proposals about things that somebody thought were "technically impossible," Philip Rosedale couldn't have implemented Second Life. It's hardly a reason for me to accept non-consent for closure.

The "people" who have "for a very long time" have been "demanding" these things are a tiny percentage of the overall users of Second Life. Consumers didn't stand around in throngs shouting, "Give us sculpties!" This is a designers and programmers wish, and it's fine as far as it goes, and it's great, but don't try to portray "the community" as the small percentage of those who design in it – and wanted this particular feature before all others.

I hardly see how something that involves tyranny of a few designers is called "a free market". It's not. This is not about "getting used to technology". It's about a few trying to force their will on the many and calling their refusal to go along with this tyranny "fear of technology". It's understandable that some people want better and more robust and groovy building tools and features, but it's not to everyone's advantage even in the design community and not even driven by some sort of rational consumer demand in a free market that can easily give signals. In fact, sculpties aren't taking off in the way you imagine because a) they rez funny as you land on a sim b) they are much harder to make c) you can't sit on them or climb up them, they have no firmness to them d) they actually look crappy as water in many places and many of the things made out of them look like drippy papier-machet. Sculpties have made some things look good; other sims look like mud. They are also affecting server performance more than textures on prims.

But what the heck makes anybody think they are the ones to "resolve" a jira post because of them seeing things different? Especially the other linked Jira - the one about opt-in instead of opt-out is a classic "different views on things" problem and nobody whatsoever should have the nerves to resolve such a jira just because he happens to be on the other side of an argument. that just plain stinks.

Requesting authors permissions to close/resolve/whatever a jira post might not technically feasible (I don't know what features Jira has underneath for that), but at least a clear policy change on the jira usage is in order. The "none of them will react to close jira's" is a void argument - nobody would request that all closing should run through author-response. The Lindens should be able to work on the Jira's as they need, including resolving and closing. It's the random-resident-close that needs moderation.

Mercia writes: Lex it was you who chose to continue an argument from another issue, this issue is not about your private spat wth Prokofy, this issue is about closing issues. You cited guidelines, Lex, that you often fail to follow (Warkirby the same). Several times recently I have been reopening Closed issues in order to Resolve them. Prokofy does not mention Resolving issues in this Issue.

Prokofy is quite entitled to set up a new issue on the basis of somethng that arises out of another one, several others do that as have I. It was you Lex who turned this Issue into a forum thread (aka flame). Please remember that this is a bug tracker. I am not sure what the problem with moving issues, and this Issue does belong in WEB, as jira is a subcategory of WEB. I wold have thought that the categpry being correct means that Linden Labs are more likely to notice it.

Also, you see a small cabal in everything, Prokofy. You have a very deserved reputation for being paranoid and acid tongued. Just because you say things, does not make them so. This "cabal" is open to anyone who wishes to help out.

Your comments about search, see to fail to notice one salient point. The search allows filtering out closed issues, and this is pretty much a necessary thing, to avoid having to wade through all the spam and duplicates. Closing issues allows them to not get in the way of searching.

Your comments about only designers wanting these things. Of course. The consumers don't know, or care how things are made most of the time. They just see new shiny stuff and buy it. And as for tyranny:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/

Sculptypaint. Free. Resident made. Many presets, to make easy sculpted prims. I personally don't know much about making them. But when I needed sculpted stairs, I used the built in stairs tool, and I had them, right there, without paying any designers. It is not tyranny to make nice things. Noone forces people to buy anything. And noone forces sculpted prims to be used.

You can sit on them quite fine if you use a sit target. And if you don't understand that, there are nice script tools to help with that too. And your point d refutes your own argument. If they look so crappy and useless, how can they be making anything unfair?

Also: "They are also affecting server performance more than textures on prims. "

What evidence do you have for this? The sim just sends a texture, the client renders it. Moreover, the sim treats them as spheres with regards to physics. Generally, sculpt maps are smaller than normal textures, too. So where is the effect on server performance?

I've never closed an issue on the basis of not agreeing with it. In such cases, I leave a comment, and move on.

If this particular issue is changed from MISC to WEB382 that is not so material, if there is some cogent case to be made for it – that is not what this very WEB382 is about however.

It's about a few people going around and closing or resolving issues against the will of the original poster and against any sense of the rule of law and common sense.

"Closing" or "resolving" amount to the same thing so it's silly to obsess about their technical differences on this JIRA, which we all grasp, that's not the point. The point is going against the consent of another resident "just because". It's the arbitrariness of this act that is striking quite a number of people, illustrating that it "isn't just me". It's a generic principle.

And I find that even if those doing the "closing" and "resolving" were in good faith, operating from guidelines and a sense of principle and responsibility to others, they could still be mistaken if they merely represent a "school of thought".

WarKirby, I'm quite away that in Lex's opinion, this "Linden policy" is "not a bug". But I'm here to explain that it is a bug – it's a flaw in their design that goes against the rest of the design. It's a mistake. I've made the argument already above.

Unfortunately, "bug" or "new feature" are the only modes one can use to address "problem with Linden policy". However, in this case, I think it is clear enough that it is a flaw in the design that one can pronounce it "bug". A policy turned into a feature without thought as to how it constitutes a flaw in design is a bug.

I don't see the need for turning this very ordinary process here with a proposal that you can take or leave into some sort of personal attack replete with claims of "acid tongues" blah blah. There is indeed a cabal here, as anyone can see by the arbitrary and wreckless closing and resolving and moving of features and bugs that people have to yank back and put as they were – it's an outrage. Anyone can see that. And the idea that "the cabal is open to anyone willing to help out" is ridiculous. It's open to lifer-coder types who have the time on their hands to obsess about this arcane and cumbersome mechanism. These people are unaccountable to the group. They can hide behind the notion of "we're just helping out here" endlessly, and yet they don't represent the will of the community and their help is not always needed and is sometimes counterproductive. While roughly under Linden supervision, the Lindens themselves don't seem to grasp what is needed for an entire community that consists not just of tekkies who want software to be a certain way merely to satisfy inner notions of symmetry or rectitude, without concern for users and actual field information.

If search allows filtering out closed issue, it can filter out open issues, too. Ask for that if you are bothered by the sight of open issues you don't like.

"The consumers don't know, or care how things are made most of the time. They just see new shiny stuff and buy it". Actually, that's not true. You might imagine it's true if you were in a corporate black box without feedback. Second Life is an interactive streaming 3-D world that enables feedback to come to you impeded. Here it is. Deal with it.

Sculpties have various nice manifestations. I have the free staircases, but of course they are a pain because they require figuring out how to weld prims on them so that residents can actually walk up them if needed to actual other heights, i.e. not just using them for "show".

I'm glad Barney has come on to express his points and return this discussion to what it is: a generic discussion about the propensity of some residents to close or resolve (they amount to the same thing) feature proposals and bugs that other residents do not think should be closed or resolved. The presence of some uneducated people who can't be persuaded to see their issue is duplicative or frivolous is not argumentation enough in favour of granting to a few unaccountable "helpers" this right to arbitrarily do what they like with a JIRA.

We can't have the Lindens bogged down with going around and closing issues, and frankly, they're likely to close or resolve for some of the same geeky reasons that don't reflect concerns of the entire community.

Nothing is lost by having a mechanism that requires user consent. Fears of clutter are unnecessary. Filters can be used. As noted, a timer can be put on issues to make them simply evaporate if no action has been taken on them in some set amount of time.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Bug_triage/Monday_Agenda

There will not be a blanket policy against residents resolving issues. I really appreciate the work that Lex, WarKirby and others do to help work through the issues that come into JIRA.

Disputed issues are great to put on the agenda of a bug triage meeting.

I'll leave this open for now, but absent a viable suggestion, my recommendation will be to resolve this issue tomorrow.

Nobody should be forced into attending a "bug triage meeting" on each and every disputed policy in order to prevent it from wrongfully being closed.

What you should be doing, Rob, is representing the voice of reason and law and order, and warning WarKirby and Lex that they must cease closing issues arbitrarily merely because they disagree with them.

By giving them their head, you are merely reinforcing the insolent and condescending hacker culture at Linden Lab, and that will spell your doom.

Apologies in advance, too busy in RL to attend a triage.

I have never, and will never, close any issue arbitrarily. Whenever I close any issue, I always give a reason for it.

"A software bug (or just "bug") is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended (e.g., producing an incorrect result). Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy. Reports detailing bugs in a program are commonly known as bug reports, fault reports, problem reports, trouble reports, change requests, and so forth."

From Wikipedia. The definition of a bug. Linden policy decisions are not bugs. For that matter, they are not new features either, but new feature is the most suitable category. There is no perfect category because jira is not intended to debate policy. There is no defined medium for arguing against or debating policy, and as a result, those discussions often end up here.

This also, brings to a second point.
"You are taking a biased and wrongful position, Rob, and bolstering an arbitrary and unlawful behaviour of a handful of residents. "
Biased and wrongful is your opinion. . I have already commented on your repeated and incorrect use of arbitrary, and as for unlawful. Please point me to the constitutional amendment that grants you the right to have issues on jira. Or a congressional act. A bill of law. Etc. This is a matter of corporate policy, not law.

"What you should be doing, Rob"
I'm not sure about Rob, but I wouldn't like people telling me how to do my job, personally

Naturally WarKirby will imagine that his ministrations here are all to the good. No one person can be expected to be unbiased in this manner, however. It's very important to have some checks and balances in this system, unless it's supposed to be a tyranny. So where are they? Where is the recourse? Where are Linden guidelines and oversight? Instead, what we're getting is Linden applause for arbitrariness, and that's worrisome.

I think we as tier-payers and participants in the world of Second Life simply must be able to tell people how to do their jobs. It's just normal in any system to have a sense of what the rule of law is, and when people deviate from it.

In this case, over the past 5 days this issue has garnered in total 3 votes. This is after having been posted to Prokofy's rant site. It would seem to me that even the people who frequent the site mentioned, those people most likely to agree to this proposal, do not find merit in it.

In this, as in many other issues, we have one person attempting to assert control over the processes that Second Life operates under. This person uses the excuse that an elite cabal, a FIC, or many various other names, is already doing the exact same thing. The difference between the two factions is that the singular person makes it a point to stand up and proudly declare "I am Prokofy Neva and this is how I say things must be done". Where the group she denigrates, insults, and constantly attacks on any public forum that allows her, works quietly, works democraticly and quite frankly.. they just work instead of preach.

There are policies on how the JIRA is managed, some people may not be familiar with them.. and yes at times, people make a mistake. These aren't personal attacks on you because your name is "Prokofy" and you have the right to undo any change someone makes to any issue you make on JIRA, including opening an issue that a Linden has closed.

Could things be better? Quite possibly so. But they aren't going to get better doing it the Prokofy way.

I have never claimed to be perfect, or not make any mistakes. Yes we have measures in place to counter abuse. A change history tracks all changes, which can be easily reverted. You can be notified by email of any changes to your issues.

Lindens are watching constantly. You have screamed and complained about lack of linden judgement, and when a linden, the head of Jira no less, has come in and said something you don;t like, you are quick to dismiss his word and demand that you are STILL right. There is still no arbitrariness. I have still not closed issues without a reason.

Your last line is overflowing with self rightousness. Linden Lab is not a government authority. It is not elected., It does not have a duty to provide anything. Linden lab is a private company. Second Life is a corporate property, and Linden Lab has the right to do it's job any way it pleases, and make any laws it wishes. You have the right to not pay them money if you don't like it.

up until now, I have been unaware of the difference between closing, and resolving. I know now. Clearly, Prokofy is also unaware. Lex resolved your issue about the showing in search. The purpose of resolving is to pass back to the reporter for more work. Ie, to make it a feature request.

Lack of participation in this vote even when mentioned in my blog doesn't mean anything but this: the JIRA is too complicated, and too intimidating to use. Few would want to step into it.

I haven't demanded that anything be "my way". I've suggested a process whereby people can contribute without fear or favour. Confident in the knowledge that any Linden favourties will undo what they've just spent all this time proposing or finding as a bug. That's all.

I don't see why a Linden who is "the head of JIRA" merely gets to come and say "I say I support my fanboyz, and too bad for you" and not invoke any kind of overarching principle. I don't see why a Linden gets to be right merely because they are a Linden, nor do "helpful good citizens" get to be right just because they are dubbed so by those in power.

They can only be right if they make good sense and have logical and persuasive argumentation. "Closed because I say so" isn't that. My proposal is a failsafe to that happening – and happen, it sure does, and if Soft Linden has trouble seeing that, she should be challenged to come up with a list of specious proposals that refused closure when explained the reasoning with logic.

Gigs Taggart declaring by fiat isn't logic. It's just fiat. Especially when the bug descriptions don't match.

Where are the guidelines for features, as Mercia accurately and rightly asked?

Linden Lab is indeed a governing authority. It will be open-sourcing this software in due course and is now laying down the values, guidelines, norms, and procedures for an entire Metaverse. No corporation gets to do what it pleases, we've seen time and again now (casinos, gambling, ageplay) that in fact RL law does intervene.

I find often that those squawking loudest and most indignantly that Linden Lab is a corporation are the very people who want it to stay this way with a closed, authoritarian, and arbitrary nature so that they can benefit by that set-up as the insiders. That's all.

I understand the difference between closing and resolving, and I do not agree with it. There's a difference.

Can you please provide a list of issues where you think there there is a frivolous proposal or illogical proposal or false bug find that you felt just had to be closed?

I'd like to see just how bad a problem this is. I'm not persuaded.

As for a list, I have three for you right away : )

VWR 3071
VWR 3071
WEB 382

Other posters here have complained about having their issues closed/falsely resolved/moved.

If you want to allow that to go on, whether or not you agree that goes on, then say so. My proposal offers a way to prevent that from happening so that people are not discouraged from participating.

I myself thought that surely, among the resolved issues, I'd have to peer long and hard to come up with say, 1 example beyond my own examples which I believe to be very good examples of items closed and "resolved" when they aren't really.

I was actually quite shocked to find that many of the issues in the RESOLVED list have been arbitrarily closed, moved, or falsely resolved by both Lindens and good citizens. It really boggled my mind and let me know things are worse than I knew.

Here's just a sample, with my comments:

o SVC-114
Please Report Inventory Loss Progress on SL Blog

Torley has falsely declared victory, and ignored the purpose of the OP, who wanted REPORTS, not PR characterizations of hard-working Lindens. Hamilton has not reported for more than a month, since the 10/12 "reduction initiative". What has he been doing all this time?! A wiki is no comfort here.

o WEB-247 on terminology, much like Ordinal's WEB-380 (perhaps even dups?)
Torley once again comes in as spin-meister, falsely declaring victory. The terminology definitely needs to be changed, and it should be in the power of the users of this version of JIRA and JIRA's original makers to do this. As has been pointed out, it's especially misleading giving the RESOLVED usage on the blog which means "WE REALLY FIXED IT TODAY AT LEAST". Here it means nothing, more like "we want it to go away".

Indeed, the "resolved" on the JIRA seems to mean "we don't like it in the list any more because we're tired of it and couldn't fix it". There's a simple solution here: stop marking things as resolved! They aren't! Just add another term like "in discussion" or "pending more info".

o VWR-1752. Nicholas Beresford gives in too easily and goes against his own notion to label this a wontfix, and makes it resolved – thought it wasn't. I fully agree with him that a double click to wear an object is a huge boon especially for newbies, not something so easily error-prone as imagined and...didn't it used to work this way?! To take off, you just right click on yourself and go on the pie menu. Not so hard.

o VWR – 2811 "Lindens aren't going to do what this bug asks" Gigs Taggart. LOL – but they did! And see my further commentary on 2811.

No, Alexa and Soft, you just aren't seeing what's going on here: an overcompensatory, and over-compulsive desire to portray things as "closed/resolved/fixed" merely for symmetry's sake, to declare false victories on the JIRA.

This isn't science. It's not good governance. And it's not good software development, either.

The call for information was to show the widespread abuse of this power. What you have shown instead are two issues both filed by yourself, one of which is this very same issue. This casts a very bad light on this proposal as a whole as it is a severe indicator of a personal issue, versus an issue that is widespread and affects a the JIRA in a extremely negative manner.

As for my being a contrarian. That is a subjective view, as it only appears to be so to you as it is you I do not agree with.

NOTE: SVC-114 is the wrong JIRA tag, the correct tag should have been WEB-276

By the list of issues given as example it seems your complaint is that Lindens close issues and people close their own issues.

These items are all in the RESOLVED list. They shouldn't be marked RESOLVED.

Nope, Lindens closing and the OP themselves clothing are bad signs of people under pressure to conform and show false symmetry. Very bad science.

Lindens are indeed arbitrarily closing things for reasons that are completely not justifiable – that's wrong. SVC-114 is indeed a valid item as it requests reporting – that in fact didn't come. Torley tried to mollify this OP with some blather about a wiki and a month-old initiative that had no fresh reporting. Sorry, no sale.

Gosh, I'm in a hall of mirrors here. VWR 3071 which was arbitrarily closed is now suddenly granted "supeceding" status?! Huh? 2811 was marked wontfinish, and we have a case of "dueling Lindens" here because another Linden claims there is a patch ready to ship in 4 weeks. Go know.

This is like the lady with diabetes in "Andromeda Strain". Scary.

And as for Torley trying to molify the origional poster with their post. If you would review the dates of the origional submission and the comments made you would see that the things Torley posted were the result of this issue and not something to wave at a newly submitted issue.

And yes VWR-3071 seems to supercede 2811, you'll notice, if you look at it, that an Internal Linden Lab ID was associated with the item after you re-opened it.

SVC-114's OP asked for a comprehensive, coherent report about the status of this initiative. There has been no posting about the status of this initiative as a whole. The deployment of one fix for one kind of inventory loss is no comfort whatsoever to the hordes of people who have lost inventory, including my tenants. It boggles the mind that a simple request for a comprehensive report about the entire initiative in all its parts could be somehow "mistaken" for some little patch for only one form of the issue. The wiki is a sop. It takes two common problems that lead people to feel they have inventory loss (coalesced objects and failure to clear cache) and imagines that this makes up the bulk of inventory loss. Not true. I know from constant user education of my tenants on this score that most people have done these tips, and have emerged from them unsuccessful (myself included) so they persist with inventory loss reports. To palm these people off on a wiki with tips is cruel. The survey is of little good because many people never heard of it, and no report on its results, two weeks later, has been forthcoming. The Linden on this project could simply reappear with a follow up saying, "Hi, everybody, I'm not getting much response on my survey or conversely, I have a huge response on my service, so I either a) need more response or b) more time to crunch it. We have none of this. Two lines are all that is needed!

Torley is mollifying. Anyone can see it. This ended up in resolved. It's not.

VRW 3071 was closed arbitrarily, so I have to laugh again at its new wonderful status as "superceder of 2811".

So...I'm to conclude then, that only if I persist and persist, and keep reopening my arbitrarily closed item, that I will final get an Internal Linden Lab ID, the Holy Grail of the JIRA game?

Um. Ok.

As I've stated before, SVC-114 is merely the label under which is appears in the "resolved" list, so that's the label under which I'm discussing the principle of the matter here.

The essence of the matter is about the OP's request, and Torley's argumentation against even persisting with any kind of request like that. It doesn't matter if it is subsequenty labelled "tuna fish". The principle of the matter stands, as an example of how an issue gets moved, changed, relabelled – anything but admitted as an issue.

You have only to read the irritated and annoyed reports of residents who are losing inventory to understand that you cannot have an issue like this marked "resolved" so casually just because you're tired of hearing from them. One poster even made the obvious point that it was hard to repro a bug on a lost item after you...already lost it. And people were losing items even after replacing them.

WEB-276 was a request made in August for a blog post updating the community on the progress of the issues linked to SVC-114. That request was filled and the issue was closed.

And yes, providing the correct issue ID is important, as the issue you provide and keep providing has no link to the issue you are discussing. It isn't linked as related or as a duplicate. The only link is a direct reference to SVC-114 in the body of WEB-276.

The issue you link to does not support your position. The I have provided you the correct ID for the issue you meant to use. You refuse to correct yourself simply because I have posted things that refute your position. And acknowledging it as the correct ID would be acknowledging that you made a mistake.

And yes this is the "substance of the matter" as it was requested that more information be provided for specific issues that you, or anyone else actually, felt showed abuse JIRA for moving, closing and/or resolving issues. I could very easily have not provided the correct Issue ID. But I did, so your complaint would make more sense as it was the issue you were discussing.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-276

It appears in the resolved list as WEB-276, but is under the meta-issue. It's merely been referred to as this, and that is NOT THE POINT. As noted, it could be called "cream cheese".

A huge annoyance on the JIRA is this kind of pedantic literalism and word-fisking. The impugning to me of "inability to admit a mistake" or other wierd assumptions based on your own preoccupations are completely out of line here.

As I've stated now 4 times: it doesn't matter what it is labelled. It was referred to exactly by the numbers that appeared in the RESOLVED list. What's operative here is NOT how the issue is labelled. What's operative is that the substance of the issue, regardless of its number of label is NOT resolved and cannot be resolved in the facile way in which it has been reported as resolved.

It's abuse of the JIRA to a) declare a case like that resolved and b) to harass me for an "incorrect" reference when I've merely referred to it exactly as it appears in the resolved list at the first level, and the second level when you click on it.

It's a perfect example of the problem here.

He gets to say that because he's the "head" of the jira project. The same as the "owner" of a parcel of land gets to decide who has access to it.
Lindens get to be right because this site is owned and maintained by them. Because SL is owned and maintained by them.

"Dear Alexa – right back at you:"

No. You don't get to do that. You came here and started this crusade. The burden of proof is on you. Alexa doesn't have to justify linden policy to you. You've been given an opportunity to prove your point. It's your responsibility to make your case.

And you have spectacularly failed to do so.
You were asked to do the following:

Alexa Linden - 19/Nov/07 03:24 PM
Prokofy, can you please provide a list of issues where the current ability has been abused?

And in case you forgot, the current ability is that anyone can close an issue. As opposed to only the author or lindens, which is what you ask .AT least I hope so. I hope you're not seriously asking that lindens be disbarred from closing issues too.

Now. The arguments you have presented:

VWR - 3071 Resolved for being marked as a bug.
WEB - 382 Resolved by a linden. Asking for more info on signs of abuse.
SVC - 114 is still open, and has never been closed or resolved.
WEB - 247 resolved by a linden
VWR - 1752 resolved by author
VWR - 2811 steve linden indicated it would not be changed,. Gigs acted upon that.

There are only two there which were not closed by lindens, or the issue's author. One is based upon the universally recognised definition of a bug.
And one is based on linden words.

I'm sorry, but that's just not logical or scientific. Lindens can be wrong, and they'll be the first to tell you that – they often have more humility than their fiercely loyal fanboyz, if you read their blog.

I'd like to remind everyone that this JIRA is in Beta. That means we get to criticize it. That means we get to really rip the hell out of it. It's in Beta. Furthermore, the new Search, an elaborate project, is also in Beta. That means we get to criticize it. That means we get to rip the hell out of it.

It's simply unacceptable to adopt a supine posture regarding Linden righteousness given what is at stake, which is our world which we pay for and given an entirely different prospect on the project now: SL is going open source.

So while the Lindens can threaten, ban, mute, close, expel, etc. they can't do that forever, especially if they're wrong.

The JIRA needs a feature that prevents its arbitrary misuse, and I've proposed one, and suggested time-outs as another feature. The JIRA definitely needs overhauling – it not total scrapping, especially as to the feature proposals aspect of it, if it is to be a viable community tool for modifying the world collaboratively. It is not that now except for a few who seized control of it.

I've given Alexa a perfectly fine list – and I'm confident I can go right down the list and keep churning more examples, most of which hinge on one, central problem: the concept of the meaning of the word "RESOLVED".

I'd like to hear from Alexa and/or Soft, and not others, because the principles I've outlined are sound.

VWR 3071 has argumentation explaining that flawed design with uintended consequence is a bug; if that argumentation is not persuasive to you, that's understood, but that doesn't "resolve" it as the invasion of privacy still stands as an issue.

WEB 382 has been granted at least 4 examples where it has been abused – closed too soon, closed under community pressure, closed irrationally, etc.

SVC 114 is merely the meta tag for a legitimate issue that stands, which is not resolved namely the reporting on inventory loss.

VWR 2811 is acted upon by James, not ultimately by Steven, though the dueling Linden problem remains, and may not be overriden by Gigs.

If somebody wants to play "let's drill down the resolved list and find more," I can play it all night. The issues stand, however:

o vague and unproductive and even destructive use and misuse of the word RESOLVED. This needs deep and wide clarification

o premature declaration of victory over very complex problems that are not served by such "resolutions"

o closure under pressure of others though issue remains valid (double click to have clothing worn)

o declaration of invalidity for political reasons on perfectly legitimate proposals that could merely be left alone to gather votes – or not.

I didn't say that "ONLY" an author should close an issue (or a Linden as masters of the JIRA). I said that the author's CONSENT should be sought, that it couldn't be closed without their consent. That is different. That shows that the author has a role, and if he does not consent, then this tugging back and forth of closing and opening is avoided.

Ultimately, another procedure can be created for stand-offs – Linden resolution, time-outs, etc.

The perfect example of this. Used the world over as an information resource. Completely open and free for anyone to edit. And likewise moderate. Abuse is prevented by the many who go in and fix vandalism.

This was exactly the pernicious reasoning used to destroy the Feature Voting Tool.

Ciaran, I wouldn't advocating having only Lindens close issues. They will instantly say "it can't scale" and "we don't have the staff" as they do with every single community effort like this, whether forums or whatever. And then the busybodies who have the time to become what they call "good citizens" and whom we call "fanboyz" prevail with their often sectarian view. They are fiercely loyal to the Lindens, and the Lindens are fiercely loyal to them, and they can do no wrong, because they need them to do this scut work. It's really a sordid little system and they won't admit it is that, and it makes it worse.

I'd suggest having proposals time out, if you don't add a justification or a challenge to a motion to close, or move it yourself, then it closes – and if you do move that it not be closed through a switch of some kind, then only in those cases, which should be minimal, would a Linden intervene. It's not a great failsafe, but it seems to me it could prevent abuse.

This is a BETA. We should be critiquing it. This celebration and institutionalization of a perfectly ridiculous and pernicious system for running complex public project needs to be revised, if not overthrown.

The Lindens demanding "more information" and "proof" that arbitrary closures happen on the JIRA are former residents, and belong to a certain school of thought about all this – it's not a question asked entirely in good faith. It's meant to minimize the problem and provide a technical solution to the political issue: see, there's no issue, so there.

But a) regardless of whether there was any proof it would still be a generic issue of governance and b) there is proof and plenty of sentiment from those who were targeted for closures.

The proposal involves making a policy, or making technical means that either time out proposals, or make a lever where "consent" has to be triggered. So someone recommends something for closure by starting a "close action," but then the author has 30 days to hit a lever for "agree" or "disagree". Of course, the JIRA's framers and Kool-Aid drinkers loathe the concept of "no". They hate free will. They hate "I disagree" as a dissent against the "majority" which is usually manufactured. So it may be very hard to get this to function. Still, by raising the issue, the Lindens can begin to develop a policy – when they see the few cases that spark controversy and they see people constantly trying to close and re-open, they can call off their aggressive watchdogs and keep the issue open.

As Ciaran rightly says, the vast majority of issues recommended for closure are likely to be routine, i.e. support issues which regrettably aren't allowed here (a total flaw in the design, since hundreds of people complaining legitimately on the JIRA about their frozen accounts and these God-awful billing issues are actually a triumph of democratic will using even this horribly sequestered JIRA tool to main their legitimate will known).

However, there is a significant minority, more than the in-group is prepared to admit, of questionable actions, which the unbiased can see by merely perusing the list. I immediately came up with 4; anybody looking at it in good will would come up with more.

There is an underlying ethic here which doesn't serve the community at all. That's the meme of the altruistic good citizien who always goes around cleaning sandboxes or warning people they will be autoreturning or closing, and helping people. Nobody ever questions such do-gooders because they are needed to do the gruntwork of Second Life. Yet such people often have a horribly invested and stubborn ego in this process and engage in this work to get reputational enhancement which they jealously guard. It means you can never pry them away from their self image (one that a small band calling itself "the community" zealously upholds) and ever prove them wrong, even when they demonstrably are wrong.

There seems to be a dynamic where cleaning up the JIRA, making it look neat and tidy, closing issues someone finds "irregular," de-cluttering it, making it look like "progress is happening" etc etc are all things mitigating against it really functioning to do what it should: serve as a means for residents to report what is broken about SL, and propose new ideas for features. The task of improving Second Life itself and accurately reporting it as broken – and still broken - becomes subsumed under the greater altruistic task of Keeping the JIRA and the Keepers of the Keep then fend off anything that mars their symmetry.

I don't care about the JIRA being cluttery and not-shiny. If it has gadzillion proposals that enthusiastic people fielded to try to make SL better, so what? if they sink down without votes, and never get action, so what? That doesn't mean they need to be closed. Ideas can take a while to gain support. Features almost by default nature should never, ever be closed except by Lindens.

And frankly, THAT was a central thesis of the Feature Voting Tool gutted by Angel Fluffy. You could keep your vote open and collect votes – and no one could close it! And once you had a threshold of 500, Lindens were expected to respond. And THEY would decide whether it was feasible or not, not some "good citizen" with his own agenda. And frankly, if the Lindens were out of step with the vox populi, people would rephrase and re-do the issue again, often going through a number of variants to find at least some part of the idea that would gain support.

THAT element is entirely missing from the JIRA – no accident, comrade.

So you see, there is already an existing system for handling such abuse. And unlike the system you proposed, Prokofy, it doesn't decrease the signal-to-noise ratio of the PJIRA to the point of uselessness.

If you have a specific list of cases where the ability to close/resolve issues was used maliciously, give them, and perhaps the abuser(s) will be disciplined.

Otherwise, let it go and move on. (That goes for everyone here, I think.)

The idea that you report people for "abuse" when they are merely explaining why they think bugs are bugs and should be important, or defending their idea for a feature is just ludicruous. This issue has repeatedly and maliciously been closed, but "reporting" people isn't the answer.

The answer is to make a system whereby the author's consent can be a buffer against not only abuse and malicious, but bias and stubborness and refusal to tolerate other's ideas.

I've already given a list of issues, Jacek, including this one. I don't call for people to be "discliplined," I call for an end to arbitrary, politicized, sectarian closures and I urge that a fail-safe to be put in by allowing the author's consent to be a factor in closures.

My God, the JIRA is in beta. I don't understand the haste and aggressiveness with which people try to close and finish off issues they don't like or offend them as "clutter" or whatever.

You're the one who needs to let go anything you don't agree with – let it go, Jacek, let it gather votes or not, just leave it alone.

The first two lines of the above post are her skewed version about how she was an innocent victim, persecuted by the mob

>_>

As for progress happening, try looking at all the patches that come in. The bugs that are fixed in each new release.
Your comment about support issues is irrelevant. Listen carefully.

Jira is NOT a governmental tool.
Jira is a technical organisation tool.
IT is designed to neatly order technical issues.

Banned and frozen accounts can still contact LL support. If you want to spread the word about something, there are millions of resident sites, forums, blogs, etc. Jira is a tool for technical issues.

The 500 vote threshold of the FVT was rarely honored. And it's also a poor way to do things. To require massive community votes to do something is silly. As that means only things which affect a lot of people visibly will get fixed, and lesser, simpler things will get ignored. Farthermore, there are the ideas which are popular, but unfeasible. People have been demanding writyeable notecards forever. But it's not possible to do, without completely overhauling the asset system. LL does not have the resources to implement many of the massive pipe dreams that hog all the votes.

The FVT also had the problem of limited votes. The 10 global votes thing was utterly ridiculous.

The list of issues you gave out has been refuted several times already. They do not prove the point at all.

And this issue is not something people can just let go. This is not an addition, something people will; not notice. This is a stupid idea that will destroy a well designed system, and permanantly hamper the progress of SL. People CANNOT simply let go, and allow you to have your way. Doing so would affect everyone.

SVC-125

Closed by Darling Brody because she didn't agree with it.
Guess what happened.

Yeps. It was reopened.

And has been open since. Recieved over 60 votes. Her abuse was crushed by the community, who want this fixed.

That is all the checks and balances we need.

This very issue Web 382 has been repeatedly closed for absolutely no good reason, "just because" somebody disagrees it, so that alone is good enough example, along with VWR 3071 and 3072, which shouldn't be closed, either. Just because they're mine doesn't invalidate them; but there are many more than mine and many more people complaining.

There isn't any such thing as "the community" – there is your little community of likeminded and likely I could declare "the community" to be some other set of people and yet a third and a 100th. The people who use Second Life do not constitute one community that agrees on everything gasp. You will have to accept that, and stop invoking this putative and mythic "community" as being a "check and balance". It isn't a sufficient check and balance on you.

People shouldn't have to battle "the little community" on the JIRA that keeps closing things. The corrective to the problem of the oppressive collective like that is to make a mechanism for individual consent. You need not fear it so much as you do. It just means that people who collect votes, who make a good proposal, don't have to battle little sects and cranks who close their issue merely because they disagree with it. It's a failsafe to ensure the individual rigthts needed for a democracy, which yes, this simply must be because it is going open source, it won't be the property of one company.

If features time out, if the consent is contingent on a timer, it will ensure there is no clutter.

Listen carefully yourself, WarKirby, as your ideas are merely your ideas, they do not reflect the will of the majority or even any sizeable faction:

Re: "Jira is NOT a governmental tool" – of course it is a governance tool, and the feature voting tool being folded into it indeed makes it that, and the voting feature of it, that decides which bugs are more important to this putative "community". It is frequently referenced by the Lindens as a governance tool, and indeed it is; that's why you and just a few people cannot run it, that's not democratic. In fact, the way it is being misused is good reason to take the FVT out of it again.

Do you like the idea of it "not be a governmental tool" precisely so that you can take charge of it without dissent?

Re: "Jira is a technical organisation tool" – yes, I realize that some people delight in reflecting these tools as "merely technical" and even to keep them deliberately complex so that only "the experts" and "the technical" can get to run them, and make political decisions on behalf of the many. No. And no again. You don't get to do that. The tools are inadequate and needlessly complex, and the job of fixing and prioritizing bugs and proposing features is NOT repeat NOT one that can be left to a tiny handful of volunteer coders, sorry to rain on your parade.

Re: "It is designed to neatly order technical issues. Yes, I realize that people and their free wills and democratic voice, and democracy itself is "messy". And that it mars your "neat, orderly technical tool" here by disagreeing with you, finding priorities that you don't find to be important, and so on. But you'll have to accept a bit of clutter and disagreement even within your own narrow circle, it seems, and in a broader and diverse community with many different stakes in Second Life, you'll have to accept that there will have to be compromises.

There is no need to imply that someone has to be forcibly banned and ejected from the community where they have stake, that this is "ok" (it's not) and that they can "make do" with third-party sites. That's wrong.

It doesn't matter if the threshold of the FVT was ever honoured. Indeed, the FVT did need reform but didn't need to be reformed out of existence! If you think that "massive community votes" are silly, then why are we looking at even 100 or 200 votes, in a place where votes are very hard to muster, given how obscure the JIRA is?! Why aren't those silly in your book too!

It's good that in a large community, things that affect a lot of people visibly do get fixed. Unless I had finally stormed the triage and JIRA, the bug that was annoying thousands of people advertising on the classifieds with a cascading SAVE CHANGES completely unnecessary dialogue introduced by one crank as a fix for something only he thought was broken would never have been fixed and made bearable. And that's really scary. That means in the name of getting air time for smaller less popular bugs that developers find important and the masses don't, the masses have been entirely shafted. There has to be a balance, and right now we are skewed back to having bugs that affect and inconvenience millions – like the objects showing up for sale that people don't know are going to be for sale! – are constantly "closed". It's insane!

It doesn't matter if notecards are "impossible" to do. And it's important that the Lindens see what in fact the pipedreams are that people do want, because frankly, if they aren't willing to overhaul their systems to bring them about, other companies will. We're now in that climate where that will indeed happen. Somebody starting from fresh can indeed make it! So it's actually in the Lindens interest to see what the mind of the communities is, and what different groups find important.

The limited number of votes on the FVT could have been reformed, as I will suggest; no need to kill it off completely as has been done, rendering it complex and therefore useless.

The list of issues I gave out have not been refuted. I've cited the argumentation again and again. Not a single persuasive argument has been cited. I'm definitely not immune to persuasive arguments, but they haven't been given. Instead, what I've seen is heavily politicized arguments, not factual arguments, and arguments that take some small factoid, like the labelling of the issue with the meta issue, to try to render it null.

I don't see how providing for the author's consent is a stupid idea. Author's consent was built into the FVT and it isn't what wrecked that system. All you have to do is to time it out if the person doesn't respond to a motion to close – it's enabling people not to have to keep coming back and forcing open their issue again and having their votes freeze, and also have them not have to make sure they don't miss a closure if they can't get logged on – sometimes the JIRA doesn't work, and people give up.

This isn't about "having my way," and your seeing it in that way, WarKirby, lets me know that you see your proposals and your successes here as "having your way". And that's exactly what's wrong with it. What I've proposed is an idea that is good for the system, to make this system less tyrannical and less destructive of proposals and bug prioritization, so that people have a fighting chance to get ideas through. It shouldn't have to take storming as I've seen now that it does. It should be a normal procedure whereby even ideas that the small minority of coders who rule the JIRA don't like have a chance to succeed.

With respect to bugs, it's very important that the community help identify and resolve duplicates, unclear issues, and other items so that its easier to find the actionable bugs. The current process, while not perfect, is worlds better than what is proposed here. Based on the copious debate here, there's little evidence that there's much support for changing it.

With feature requests, there's more room for debate. I'm happy to discuss this at one of the next open source meetings (see https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Source_Meeting ).

It's disingenous to describe this issue as having "copious debate" around it, as only a handful of people – 9 residents in total to be exact – have debated it, and most of them were on one side of the issue, and representing the aggressively-obedient status quo here among the JIRA regulars.

It's also unfair to say there's "little evidence that there's much support for changing it" when it has been debated in an obscure place with arcane tools by a handful of people, most of them in the magic circle and themselves engaged in the very action of closing issues they don't like – constantly. In fact, several tried to close this issue.

This issue has been posted for a mere 7 days and has 5 votes, hardly anyone is even aware of what is involved in posting on the JIRA, and having your proposal undone, often without your knowledge or consent.

"The community" you imagine goes busily about resolving, identifying duplicates, etc. etc. doesn't have the support of all aspects of the larger community of SL as a whole, because their interests as dev helpers are not the same interests as other groups, like merchants.

I'm glad you're willing to entertain more debate about consent for feature requests, because it is there that politicized closures and false resolutions take place more often. However, the debate should be about Web-399, moving the Feature Voting System entirely out of the JIRA, or at least, the JIRA as it functions now with unfriendly user-face and no "no" vote and not consent for closures/moves/merges, etc.

Actually, I can't think of a more sure way to ensure the killing of a proposal by subjecting it to the regulars who show up at the soi-disant "open-source meeting".

I've cited 4 others and I keep getting the runaround on them.

I did actually do as Alexa asked, and pointed to four very plain, obvious issues that were obviously monkeyed with. I'd like Alexa to look at them in good faith.

And not to be pedantic but it's been 11 days, not 7

I can't speak for everyone else here, but I AM a merchant. I am a full time SL content creator. I also own a fair bit of land, and contribute payments to a lot more.

Stop trying to alienate us as "them". We are normal SL residents like everyone else.

I've seen Jira used as it is here, as an outward-facing customer issues tracking portal, at two companies at which I've worked. This is by far the busiest and best-managed instance of the three.

Until reading this issue, I've been generally impressed at the judgement shown by JIRA users.

Prokofy: with all due respect to your communication skills and passion, both are better applied to social action issues inworld - this is very close to engineering, and you are well outside your field of expertise.

Lindens: please do not approve this proposal - it would degrade the usefulness of this tool for residents.

nika, sorry, but engineers do not get to run societies in the real world, and there is no justification for having them run virtual worlds merely because they are online and digital. I'm afraid you are well outside your field of expertise as a tekkie, if you imagine that what goes into making societies and the governance of them involves merely tools and bug lists. The JIRA absolutely sucks as a governance tool for all the reasons I've stated – features that involve sometimes clashing interests cannot be developed and resolved by a yes/no toggle switch and an open/close button, and far from degrading the feature discussion, it would finally enhance it and bring about more participation.

Nothing I've heard from any of you – any of you, including Lindens! – indicates that you want more participation from ordinary people from all walks of life. Indeed, you want them to stay away, as you imagine this is a job "very close to engineering" that many wannabee programmers want to use to show off in.

Beezle, as I've said umpteen times, there is no wait, because I'd have the proposals simply time out. My God, that ought to be the easiest thing on this JIRA, making a proposal auto-close after 30 days due to time out so that it is removed from your pristine view, if open issues trouble you so. In fact, even if for some technical reason you couldn't auto-close after 30 days without action, i.e. author action to modify/edit/move etc, you could still enlist the busybodies who love cleaning up garbage to manually close them all on a dated schedule.

Far from preventing people from launching agendas, the failure to have individual rights on the JIRA – including the woeful abrogation of rights on the old Feature Voter where thousands of ideas got destroyed without notification – has led to a situation where a small group feel they can tell others to get lost because they are "outside their field of expertise".

There was never any coders' elitism in the old Feature Voting System – and it is absolutely appalling that it creep in now.

Professional behaviour doesn't have to include being snobbish, condescending, narrow-minded elites. There shouldn't be the neuralgia about questioning anything on this JIRA that there is if in fact it truly is the professional and scientific thing you claim. The comment-fisking, literalism, sniping, barely-repressed hatred, etc. that goes on here belies the fact that it is anything but scientific, and has the earmarks of a cult.

The hysteria that the Keepers of the JIRA feel about the simple, ordinary, normal, plain, everyday, common-sense, democratic action of saying "No" is very, very troublesome. In an interface where filters and topics and searches can easily be made, it's insane to be so troubled by the fact that proposals that people have placed and kept active for 30 days should not be closed without their consent. There's no objective reason for it that I can see anywhere.

What we can reliably say about this issue is that engineers are the problem, however.

Note: "Rob Linden - 26/Nov/07 04:01 PM
We'll leave this issue open for the time being. However, we are not likely to make the proposed change."

This issue has been open for discussion since November 25th, and continues to face premature and hostile closure from those whose interests it doesn't serve.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-270

Lex rightly identified the problem of overuse of "Showstopper". Rob Linden violent agreed with him. Yet he was badgered and bullied in the thread, in some cases by argumentation that said essentially this: "don't make a due process rule because the examples we have now to illustrate that generic principle don't pertain."

I can't think of anything more short-sighted in making a system than that. If there were only 4 Showstoppers, in part it was because people undid then and ratcheted them back.

The curious example of "half of Germany" not being able to log-in was given as a "Showstopper" even though clearly it isn't; a Showstopper must be defined as that which stops the entire Show of Second Life, i.e. the entire grid, not just some portion. 1/16th of the population was affected by something today; another day, 2,000 sims were affected, surely more dramatic, if they were all full, then "half of Germany," as important as it is. This or that interest group, vital though it may be, cannot be allowed to call itself a "Showstopper".

The curious reason this issue was closed, under duress, by the author Lex himself, was because Rob said there was no way to fix it. Why? Because it was a policy not a tool, and the JIRA sucks and helping people make good policy.

It would have been the simplest thing in the world for the Linden in charge to say, "Oh, sounds good, I totally see your point, while we share concern about blocks on "half of Germany," we really need to perserve the overall meaning, so henceforth we will make it a guideline, included in our guidelines, that you must be very sparing on using Showstopper for the good of the project." That would be a "fix" then, even without a "tool".

That the JIRA doesn't allow you even to make a good policy for the JIRA itself is proof positive of its idiotic malfunctioning for the purposes of governance.

The majority of my profits are from avatar design. I have clothing, and armor, and scripted particle effect objects. What exactly would you class as a "normal " merchant?

And "most people keep their World of Warcraft or Eve Online games separate from Second Life"

Just shows what a vacuum you're living in. Try visiting one of the hundreds of roleplay sims around SL. Try looking at the hundreds of avs who wear armor, and carry ornamental and/or functional weapons around on a daily basis. The avatars who walk around with "magic powers", strange fantasy clothing, etc.

"Nothing I've heard from any of you – any of you, including Lindens! – indicates that you want more participation from ordinary people from all walks of life"

Then try reading your own blog sometime. I posted a comment yesterday about a recent windlight meeting, and introducing a score of new faces to jira.

"BTW, here's an excellent example of a perfect legitimate issue very well researched and expressed, that was browbeaten to death by the regulars, by none other than...Lex Neva: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-270 "

Will you please pick your damn side already. Your constant switching is highly irritating.
That issue was a fair and rational debate on a subject, and lex eventually closed it for technical restrictions. Not peer pressure.

"Well, given that Rob says there isn't actually any mechanism in JIRA to do what I want, I'll have to close this issue as "Won't Finish"."

Mechanism. not policy.

And blocking out half of germany is most certainly a showstopper issue. Alienating thousands of people is a problem where all resources need to be concentrated on fixing it. How can you really say denying acess to second life, to 41 MILLION people, is not a showstopper ?

It's not about "my will" or "getting my way" but an issue of due process, and respect of people's proposals, i.e. content and creativity. An author of a proposal should have consent in an issue being closed. If he reopens it after closure, and that's supposed to be the corrective for abuse, then it should not require constant re-closure, especially after a Linden noted that it should be left open for a time for discussion.

However, it has come to my attention that Aimee Weber, joshua nightshade, and Cristiano Midnight are all banned from your blog, Prokofy. So much for free speech there.

Prokofy: Don't forget that we can undo others' actions too. If anyone thinks someone screwed something up, they can just revert the action and explain why they think that was a screwup. LL has decided to trust our collective judgments. Please convince your peers and try to come to consensus, rather than attacking those who disagree and considering them incompetent.

If people were able to re-open issues and not have others tendentiously close with with hostility – as this very proposal and several others of mine have been viciously closed not on the merits but due to personal politics or culture, then there'd be no need to ask for this as a systemic reform. But they do, and its visible here in this JIRA in spades, and its visible in all the other examples I've given – which, BTW, the merits of which have not been responded to by Lindens, or by any resident without baggage. I can go on finding false resolutions and wrongful closures – the heart of the issue is the overuse and indeed misuse even of the word "resolved" and the function "resolved".

There isn't any trust of a collective judgement, Celierra, as if it is some sort of magic phenomenon, when a very few voices in a very determined little cadre with a lot of extraneous baggage and a lot of malice drawn from their class interests are in charge. This is visible. If it weren't evident, I wouldn't have the need to ask for this feature.

If people were able to re-open issues and not have others tendentiously close with with hostility – as this very proposal and several others of mine have been viciously closed not on the merits but due to personal politics or culture, then there'd be no need to ask for this as a systemic reform. But they do, and its visible here in this JIRA in spades, and its visible in all the other examples I've given – which, BTW, the merits of which have not been responded to by Lindens, or by any resident without baggage. I can go on finding false resolutions and wrongful closures – the heart of the issue is the overuse and indeed misuse even of the word "resolved" and the function "resolved".

There isn't any trust of a collective judgement, Celierra, as if it is some sort of magic phenomenon, when a very few voices in a very determined little cadre with a lot of extraneous baggage and a lot of malice drawn from their class interests are in charge. This is visible. If it weren't evident, I wouldn't have the need to ask for this feature.

Um, my so-called "peers" in fact are attacking me, and constantly resorting to attacks, brow-beating, and reference to their disagreements on third-party blogs and forums that are simply not relevant here.

You can't always convince your "peers," Celierra, especially because they aren't really your peers, and will kill off anything you propose merely because they don't like you. It's very hard to get due process to work here as you can see. Due process and the rule of law could triumph over petty personal agendas, but it can only do that if those who institute the JIRA themselves are subject to it – and we've seen that is not the case, by the blanket Linden blank-cheque given to those they already consider "good citizens," regardless of their actual behaviour from JIRA to JIRA and from day to day.

It's what happens when you subject a system to an imagined "collective" and its imagine "judgement" instead of to a democratically established rule of law with liberal values that protect the rule of law itself and minority opinion. Substituting the "collective" for this which you imagine to reach "consensus" is one of the grave fallacies of the JIRA and why it can't work especially on feature discussions.

Just kidding!

But seriously folks. Without volunteers helping to sift through the mass of information in the JIRA it will grind to a halt. Possibly quite literally. It creaks a bit already. Who knows what it'll do with 5,000 open issues that no-one can close!!!

• No one will be able to find which issue to vote on because every issue will have duplicates and no one will know which is the "main" one.
• Searches will become less useful because of the vast number of hits for any given search phrase.
• LL will eventually find the JIRA next to useless as a source of identifying problems or feature requests because of the vast amount of duplicate or "missing information" entries.

The JIRA needs maintenance, day by day, hour by hour. That includes refining and reducing problems in to more manageable and addressable issues. And it just isn't in the plan. Like a wiki, the JIRA is INTENDED to be editable. That's what LL bought, that's what they implemented, that's what we have.

If you want a place to post your own bug reports / feature requests about SL that no one else can edit you'll have to go and start your own blog somewhere or get a thread running in the Forums.

People don't know where the main issue is because the Jira is cumbersome.

Duplicates do need to be merged but as I said above, it's cumbersome.

I appreciate the work people do on merging duplicates, It's extremely helpful but by the same token closing issues is all too easy here. Yes they can be re-opened but I guarantee that a lot of people will be put off when someone without the surname Linden closes their issue.

Your comment about using the forums or third party blogs, whilst well intended, falls into the category of putting people off from using the Jira.

• I didn't mean that the discussion itself (or its size, etc.) was wasteful, but just the fact that it seems to be going nowhere.

• I'll agree that the different definition of "resolved" is causing problems. Here, "resolved" is used as meaning "people think there isn't anything more to be done about this, but it's not consensus". Most people take it as simply "it's done with" - but that is what we mean by "closed". There's been a lot of discussion about this misunderstanding, and I've been trying to get the word "resolved" changed (WEB-247, which is "resolved" but with the meaning of "we're currently helpless on this").

Meanwhile, though, I think that if you keep the intended meaning of "resolved" in mind, you might find that there's a lot less intentional malice or "killing off" out there than you are attributing....

• I think you should know that you're up against some basic properties of an entire system that harnesses a huge community's power in order to deal with huge amounts of data. The idea of these systems has been ingrained into the computer science field and has been shown - repeatedly in projects like Mozilla's Firefox and Wikipedia so forth - to work incredibly well. For example, these principles are things like "anyone has access", "everything is open for inspection", "everything that can be easily undone can be done by anyone", etc.

To be honest, a lot of your argument seems to be a result of culture shock - this sort of freeform trusting collaborative effort isn't really encountered by most people outside of CS (though it's starting to gain traction).

So yes, there is a great amount of support of the status quo, because you're trying to change the foundations of things that have been shown to work. If you want to continue arguing to change this system, you'll probably need to reason out and explain how your proposed change might affect LL's utility, and how to replace the functionality in a way that LL would be willing to implement. From my admittedly-brief scan of this page, I don't think you've thought your change through this much...

Or, you might want to start arguing things within the constraints of this system - for example, if you want to argue that resolving an issue doesn't fall under "easily undone" for those users unfamiliar with JIRA, you might have a point there. Personally, I've been trying to reduce the "culture shock" aspect of it, which is a big problem - see the (many-part) issue WEB-194.

• The Lindens have all the power here - and unfortunately for the "democratic" idea, Linden Lab is a company, operating via hierarchy and a benevolent monarchy (from Philip Linden). Yes, they could always institute something more "democratic" from our POV, but remember who has the power here. We, the residents, are totally cordoned off from their power structure - I'm sure they look at it in terms of "listening to their customers", which is more of a nebulous goal than someone to report to. We're all almost the same in LL's eyes (though certainly with some ranking or weighting).

So, specifically, I don't think we (simple residents) are going to get any LL-imposed power structure at all - from LL's view, there is no direct power in our hands, so any "election" to determine "power" probably seems silly and meaningless. Our interests are very different, so we don't get to decide anything especially important anyway. Their goal is not to simply satisfy residents, but to do the things that are most likely to fall within the intersection of "make money" and "change the world" and "satisfy people" and "help the company" and "please Philip" and on and on and on... and we should not have any illusion of direct power or representation over any aspect of LL.

All we can hope for in terms of "organization", I think, is a sort of volunteer "ombudsman" position, for those people who can translate between Lindenese and Normalese. I think "good citizens" has become the people whom various LL staff consider to be a representative group of good ombudsmans. The big distinction is that, here, LL gets to choose their ombudsmans - residents don't get to choose "representatives". This isn't really an optimal system for residents, but it's not that bad for LL, and we don't control LL. You might try to argue that LL's choices of people to trust stink, but ... to be honest, that most likely will just cause LL to think you're disconnected from their interests.

... I can't really speak for LL, of course, but this is my interpretation on the meta of what's going on here.

...it's getting late for me, so I'm sorry if that last part stopped making sense...

Ordinal Malaprop has an eloquent JIRA to remove the fallacious and misleading of "resolved." It's not that there is a "misunderstanding," it's that there is a deliberately misleading jargonistic spin being put on the word to make it seem as if progress is occurring. It isn't. There isn't any actual "intended meaning," because if there were, a different word could easily be substituted without all the static. And indeed the resistance to having changed this long ago illustrates that there is far more malice than you're willing to admit – or at least deep-seated denial.

I think you should know that it is you who are up against a huge community's power to harness data – it's called "the rest of real life" and "the non-sectarians" and "the non-tekkies of this type". Not even all tekkies are open-source extremists of the type we see in Second Life. It's not as if you represent some powerful force that has some legitimacy merely by its "hugeness". Indeed, that is a grave fallacy, as it makes you act in ways that are damaging to the whole of society.

What you imagine is "ingrained into the science community" is in fact ingrained only to some of it and represents a movement that in fact is criticized severely even within the open-source community itself. There is nothing "scientific" about Wikipedia or demonstratively "better" about Firefox except among its zealous fans. Wikipedia is roundly and rightly criticized in many quarters precisely because it represents anonymous and unaccountable skewing of information by the few under the guise that it is open to the many.

Your notions invoked here like "anyone has access" or "everything is open for inspection" or "everything that can be easily undone can be done by anyone" etc. are first of all falsehoods – propagandistic maneuvers that cover up the truth of the situation: a handful of "expert" cadres gather around each instance of this false "openness" and in fact close it for everyone else, invoking their elite and superior status. They behave in fact worse than the proper editorial board that they purport to overthrow in the name of openness, because they are arbitrary, unaccountable, and often stubbornly ignorant. They represent "the dictatorship of the proletariat". It is anything but the democratic and liberal "openness" that you imply. When "anyone has access," vandals have access, too. Sectarians with harsh extremist agendas have access – and use it. Arbitrary and whimsical notions prevail in the undoing of things. The Big Lie prevails by faking progressing and implying everything is being resolved, and moving along fine.

A lot of the resistance here on the JIRA; the sort of responses a certain set have always engendered on the forums (with Linden backing); and much else around the culture of Second Life are all in fact manifestations of culture shock by these people themselves. I'm not the one with "culture shock"; you are. You are shocked that someone resists what you imagine to be the hegemonic norm. But it isn't; it's a sect, and will go on being treated as one, more and more, until ultimately the project fails if it cannot adapt to real liberal democracy and cannot drop its totalitarian methods.

Because there isn't any "new culture" here. The idea that "anyone can undo" and "anyone has access" is in fact straight out of the playbook of propagandistic Bolshevism: ostensibly open up a process to everyone, give away all property, make people's councils, etc. etc. – and in fact have a small cadre of people really run it.

Freeform trusting collaboration can work when there is a narrowly-defined task and a group of like-minded people. Even there, many doubts can be placed as to its efficacy. Possibly a task like "let's manufacture a new car" or "let's repair the broken servers" lend themselves to this collectivization and democratic centralism you call "collaboration".

But other more complex tasks like "let's have a government" or "let's have a system for democratic participation of a user population in the product being created for their use" are not suited to this collectivization or fake "collaboration" – especially when in fact they don't own the property being changed. It's just that simple.

It is you who are trying to change the foundations of the status quo established over the millenia by numerous human communities in every era. And the ideology for your change has already been "done" in the last century, with tragic consequences. You cannot fake collaboration when it does not exist. You cannot collectivize everyone. There must be protection of minorities, freedom of expression, and a willingness to accept new data and feedback to peacefully change this "collective will" that in fact ends up being imposed from on high by violence when it cannot gain consent.

Linden Lab is trying to elevate to cult status open-source culture that in fact itself is under fire even within the open-source community. Various artifacts of their regime – the Love Machine, the Tao, the JIRA, the SL Views – are all out of the playbook of past utopianist ideologies that are failed. While they may appear as grand experiments on the bleeding edge, in real life, the execution of these ideologies in any kind of massive real way only led to people bleeding, not edges.

I've thought through my proposal abundantly because I was an apt student of the previous Feature Voting Tool in the two years before it was summarily killed off by one resident, Angel Fluffy, with the applause of a few busy Lindens. I followed how the chimera of an improved FVT was waved before an indifferent public and how in fact it was killed by stealth by not being "migrated" but by being "deleted". It really is an appalling thing when a world created under the banner of "your world, your imagination," can, in the dark of the night, be deleted – losing thousands of proposals hammered out by residents – their content – that in fact accrued hundreds of votes – their content. Lindens tend to think narrowly of "content" as only what skilled programmers make in code or on PSP. But content is democratic participation, too.

The culture shock, again, needs to be reduced on the side of the tekkie wikinistas. They need to stop slamming their outmoded, outdated sectarian culture down the throats of normal people outside their magic circle who have absolutely no reason to drop the normal, democratic, participatory procedures of real life for this insanity. They'll need to adjust, and stop screaming in a sectarian manner for things like removal of the right to vote "no," or removal of the right of a person to express consent, or removal of content arbitrarily and whimsically. There is nothing sacrosanct about their approaches; there is nothing new. Indeed, they are a very old story.

The idea that "Linden Lab is a company" or "Linden Lab is a benevolent monarchy" simply can't wash any more in the era of open-source. Are you imagine these two facts of hegemony and authoritarianism are to ever and anon pertain in the open-source setting? Are you imagining that some cadres will decide everything, even so? Are you to imagine that a set of "avant-garde workers" will get to set everything about this software in stone before it is open-sourced so as to keep control over the world forever? Why? And how?

No, the Lindens – and you – have to remember who else has the power here: the people who pay tier, whether on a 512 m2 or 512 islands – the people who pay 80 percent of the Lindens' bottom line. That is a significant venture capitalist vote, my dear. It matters. And even if they unceremoniously dump these people in favour of a new hook-up fee with their special friends who can make open Sims, they will still have to have some kind of consent of the governed or people will flock to Multiverse or Metaplace or whatever.

It's not just that we have the "vote with our feet". The Lindens in fact instituted the FVT and then later the JIRA precisely because in their hippie fastness, they do have at least some nominal concession to the idea of democratic participation. I think the illusion that you and others so willing to ascribe power to the Lindens in excessive of the actuality (and hence ascribe it to their fanboyz gathering around them so zealously) is that this is a situation in nature that can last. It can't. You cannot control the many by the few without their consent for long.

Ombudsmen are something I know about. It's no accident that you find very few people with this title in the United States, except in very localized and narrow settings, i.e. "the state ombudsman for education". That's because the U.S. has a common-law system with a very important feature: adversarial defense. By contrast other systems have a civil-law system with magisterial power against which adversarial defense is weak, or non-existent.

Ombudsmen tend to be prescribed, for example, by Western Europeans with established democracies and more homogenous cultures, for example, for Central Asians, as a way of getting around the problem of their failure to reform their Soviet-style unjust "justice systems".

Ombudsmen can work when they have a narrow set of tasks, the support of parliament, transparency and accountability, and real influence – if not the power of intervention – over the executive and judicial branches.

The ombudsmen here in SL are appointed by the executive branch, the Lindens, and do not have widespread popular support (it's like the problem of the resmods on the forums). They don't translate between Lindenese and Normalese. They are a conveyor belt for power who are abject loyalists basically like-minded to what they perceive as the Linden project (and often we find them more zealous than their masters, yet their masters seem powerless to curb them).

Ultimately, at root, the P-JIRA is a sop. It's a rubber-stamp parliament. The real decisions are made on Battery Street, not here. While that is a fact of life for many valid reasons, there isn't any good reason to cover up this fact with the prettification of claiming "good citizenry" and "your world, your imagination" when they don't truly exist.

Alyx, your summary of the discussion is typical of what happens in the hall of mirrors of Second Life forums.

I've never used the word "conspiracy" – you have. I am not attacking people right and left; you imagine that merely because I oppose their will and don't go along with the "collective will" here which in fact isn't as representative as you imagine.

Here's what I wrote: "frequent practice by a tiny group of coders who spend a great deal of time on the JIRA is to unilaterally and arbitrarily close any issue they do not agree with, or move issues that they perceive as needing to be conflated with other issues."

This is enough of a problem that two other people I never heard of launched this exact same sort of JIRA in the last few months, and it led to a significant reform: e-mail notifications of what was happening on your JIRA began to go out, so you could rush back on here and defend your proposal. A Linden even intervened with a Linden policy, when Workingonit said basically, "if you have concerns about arbitrary closure, report them and we'll take a look." That can't scale. So my proposal is to institutionalize a feature that would automatically trigger the need for a consent toggle on closures within a time period (or some alternative, Linden review after multiple opening and closing).

Alyx, I'm pointing out here a basic problem of due process – that arbitrary closure is a frequently-enough occurring problem that there should be some rule about it. It's not, as you imagine, a ferreting out of a conspiracy – some conspiracy if anyone can see it and protest it! It's not "attacking people" – who themselves have been far more ferocious and even vicious in attacking me merely because I countered their will.

Once again, you're trying to invoke the false flag of "the altruism of these good citizens" as if requiring consent to the work of good citizens somehow undermines their good. Let them bustle about and make motions to close, change, move. All to the good. Their work then is done. It then awaits consent Fluf because it's not about "good work" but about the good thing of consent, too – the other half of the equation without which no governance system can succeed. It's no good having that hapless closure target re-open – a tug of war might ensue. Instead, a curb on the zeal of the closers, and a form of due process has to be introduced, whereby consent is always what they must face in trying to develop their logic. It forces them to make their case better – because often, their case is "because I feel like it" or "because I don't think the Lindens will do it".

It becomes a routine matter – likely a very large percentage of the people alerted to a closure motion will see the logic of the action and toggle it YES immediately. A small percentage will toggle NO because they are not persuaded that the action was justified. And another percentage – larger than this latter, but still relatively small – will disappear, as they won't bother to follow up on their light-headed proposal and will time out and delete. Why does this challenge you so? Make good arguments, no one will toggle NO against you, right?

Your notion that there would actually be 5,000 closed items suggests you are unconsciously speaking to a very deep problem here: you unwittingly to yourself believe that many, many people will object to their closures, and that the only thing standing between them and expression this will is fear or lack of knowledge. And that's quite a statement. Sit with that and contemplate what you are about here, implying that.

There are far, far less open items, but not because they were efficiently closed; they are not open because the people closed gave up, didn't understand, or were falsely told of "resolutions". That is unscientific.

You're also falsely invoking a storm of duplications as the result of this proposal, as if the only way to remove duplication is to hack and slash at everybody who couldn't find their way around this ridiculously complex labyrinth. But...you can notify people of duplications by...posting the link! Duh! Then everyone can see it. The logic will either be abundantly clear – or not. Someone getting such an email will instantly be persuaded, no? Because the good citizens do good, right? So...only in a small percentage of cases due to a) human error (can you admit that takes place?) b) lack of understanding of the full motivation for the proposal; c) insufficient attention to the broader case to be made; d) bias (gasp, can you admit that does take place even among good citizens?!) will obtain.

If the JIRA is intended to be editable, Fluf, hey, let's edit it: let's have people whose proposals or bugs are closed have the right to edit, too, and not be closed with prejudice, having to face a tide of hateful collectivists who resent them speaking up. Let their individual right be respected to edit, too. Let them edit. Let them edit by saying "no, I prefer not to," and let them explain themselves, prevail, lose, or time out. Why are you afraid of editing, Fluf? This is an open system, right?

There's no "have to start your own blog" that has to be built into an open system, eh? I mean, if it is so open and editable, hey, let's edit the thing and not force minority opinion out the door to a far-away blog, when they may contain the key to knowledge.

Look, let's try to remember what our goal here is – if we can invoke any "our" in any abstract way about this collection of self-interests. Let's remember that our goal is to help the Lindens make better software during their tenure as temporary trustees of the engine of the Metaverse. (I realize there may be about 6 false premises in that statement but let's posit it for the sake of argument for now.) If that is not the goal, then arbitrary and overzealous readings of their intentions which may disappear down a dark alley of misguided denial will lead them to make bad software.

Dear Prokofy Neva,

Re: Your post of the 02/Dec/07 01:47 PM

I commonly associate the use of lengthy commentary to confuse and confound the argument of an issue (as in "Filibuster"). I associate clear concise communication as a platform for further discussion based on a clear understanding of the facts between parties.

I defend my invoking of 'the false flag of "the altruism of these good citizens"', even though I didn't actually invoke it. It does take good natured "users" to help keep the JIRA manageable and in shape. (The word citizen would be more appropriate in a political debate ... erm ... I'm not having a political debate am I?).

It is good to have the closed target re-open, if it's still an issue that is not addressed more fully elsewhere, or if it was closed for a misunderstanding for example. So the good work of the "user" is checked by other "users".

I wasn't aware the JIRA is a system of governance in itself. In fact I'll be bold and say it isn't. 'Governance has been defined as "rules, processes and behaviour that affect the way in which powers are exercised.... particularly as regards openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence"' So no. The JIRA is a contributory information source to LL's own system of Governance if you want to call it that. You may of course prefer to think of it as a minority governance within a larger context in which it is also a minority governance or something. Uhm. Hang on. Aren't we drifting off topic here?

You obviously feel that "a form of due process has to be introduced" to control the closing of issues... (are we having a legal debate now?) ... and you're entitled to that viewpoint. Many others however feel differently. Yay! back on topic!

You then describe some kind of democratic voting process to validate the closing of issues. Again, I respect your right to feel that's a good idea. However, that's not currently part of the JIRA and not (afaik) an easily bolted on feature. You also brush across the fact that people watching an issue are instantly alerted to it's closure at the moment anyway. So in effect the democratic peer review already occurs doesn't it?

I actually said there would be 5,000 open issues, not closed. And since I can't actually decode the rest of the paragraph to tell if you meant open or closed ... I'll sit and contemplate ... something ... Oh ... while we're here, can I suggest your need to have these obscure rambling paragraphs, often with only one full stop, suggests that you are unconsciously doing something too, and could you sit and contemplate it please? [I feel better now we've traded bizarre psychological assessments of each other].
Oh no hang on. I contemplated just enough! I recall something about: issues should be closed only with the consent of the original reporter. In which case, I was simply suggesting that process would significantly slow down closing issues by the need for exchange of request, consent, then action of closing an item.
Right. Ok. I've thought about all that fear and lack of knowledge stuff. Nope. Doesn't apply. Sorry.

Hey cool. Thanks for this one... Then you state that there are far far less open items and it's because people gave up or didn't understand. You then call that unscientific.
Well. OK. To take a scientific perspective. How do you know that to be true? What stats do you have that would help validate that claim? What method of finding that out could you use, that I could then re-use to validate your findings?

Duplications. you want me to email someone a suggested link in the hope they might read it and respond someday that "yes" or "no" that sounds like a good idea? So then I can go ahead and link it? Time Prokofy! Time is your enemy here, not some bias on which issues should be linked as a duplicate! Besides, by the very act of linking you get a big "Comment" box to explain your link to the reporter and other readers. That's your email right there. The possibility they will come back and say "no hang on" and re-open it is them saying "no" to the email you wanted to send earlier. What are you adding except delay?

People who's proposals or bugs are closed DO have the right to edit. I said "Like a wiki, the JIRA is INTENDED to be editable". How clear cut can I get? I even went out on a limb and used caps! Why are you afraid of users oh sorry .. "citizens" editing your issues? I'm not!

My parting remarks on going to start your own blog were in the hope that an intelligent user might think "we'll that's not going to work as a way of getting things noticed." Or in some cases, current blog maintainers might be better off airing certain grievances back on their own blog. I sometimes make such crass remarks at the ends of posts and must stop it. I forget irony doesn't work well on the web sometimes.

Then you come up with this one : "Look, let's try to remember what our goal here is – if we can invoke any "our" in any abstract way about this collection of self-interests. Let's remember that our goal is to help the Lindens make better software during their tenure as temporary trustees of the engine of the Metaverse. (I realize there may be about 6 false premises in that statement but let's posit it for the sake of argument for now.) If that is not the goal, then arbitrary and overzealous readings of their intentions which may disappear down a dark alley of misguided denial will lead them to make bad software. "

Well no. Lets not "posit" it shall we? It's fundamentally flawed in so many ways! Take it back to basics and start again shall we? The original description:

"A frequent practice by a tiny group of coders who spend a great deal of time on the JIRA is to unilaterally and arbitrarily close any issue they do not agree with, or move issues that they perceive as needing to be conflated with other issues.

The JIRA should be set up with a mechanism so that no issue can be closed or moved without the author's consent."

1 - You believe it to be "A frequent practice" many others do not.
2 - I strongly doubt that the LL coders themselves spend much time on here at all. They should be looking at the LL internal JIRA instead. You may be referring to active contributors, which are citizens or users to you or me.
3 - Not many Linden's spend enough time in here (in my opinion). Not through any particular fault. Perhaps simply because it's a bigger more sprawling thing than perhaps they expected, perhaps because they are too busy dealing with the problems they have already.
4 - It's only unilateral until the reporter or someone else decides it needs re-opening or moving back. So it's not technically unilateral at all since both sides can comment.
5 - I'm stunned to think these actions might be "at random" (arbitrarily) carried out. Who in their right mind logs in to the JIRA for a fun filled hour of closing random items??? Besides, your use of this word undermines all your further mentions of bias in following comments.
6 - I do not believe your basic notion of not being able to close issues without the reporters consent is practical or required.

Yours Sincerely,

Fluf.

I'm not the one who made up the term "good citizens". Rob Linden did. I wouldn't call them good, or citizens. They are dispassionately speaking, one set of customers, or let's say "prosumers," being played off against another set of prosumers, by the company – or, if you will, in an emulation of a world, two political parties that are debating, but in a closed society where the polls are rigged.

When you speak of 5,000 issues, closed or open, being at issue, the whole point is that you imagine that under my system, there would be 5,000 issues open because you imagine that those 5,000 people would rebel against the closure. Their rebellion would be somehow visible or even incited by my system. So I'm pointing out that you believe that 5,000 closed incidents today would mainly be opened again by rebellious citizens feeling wronged and falsely closed.

So my point is that couldn't happen, if the rationality and logic and science you claim prefails on the JIRA in fact obtains.

This page is getting very slow to load because of long comments, and not only by me. Many of your concerns are already addressed. I'll reiterate the argumentations on my blog here:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/12/the-two-culture.html

Prokofy

Zigzag, there is absolutely no necessary correlation between the number of people who watch an issue, and the number voting, and to imply that is to create undue pressure for closure around an issue. Some people are intimidated enough not to vote because they don't want to face the very ferocious group peer pressure here to close issues. Whether or not the watchers favour the issue is irrelevant; they are merely watching.

I would reject any notion of a "counter issue" as this JIRA itself is a counter issue to the significant number of premature and unjustified closures taking place, and frankly, no "poll" is going to ever be accepted as accurate and reflecting any kind of "democratic will of the majority"; it will merely be an indicator for the tiny core of closures to flash mob it, a chronic problem with all wikis.

Seg, this isn't a bug, it's a new feature. As such it, needs to be left alone for the original proposer to refine it, seek votes in favour of it, and not face the heavy pressure of the tiny minority of users and readers who agitate to close things they don't like. Just leave it alone.

• Silly feature requests. "Add gold farming so noobs can have a job".

"Silly" is too subjective. Even though there are obviously silly requests, there's too much of a grey area. I'm also wary of the 'detrimental' category, for the same reason. There's been a number of features that have been dropped, nerfed, or limited that don't need to be, and there's been excessive restrictions on new features (for example, the new camera controls).

Prok: Do you have evidence that people are being harassed to remove votes or that there's any other pressure that would make people afraid to vote for an issue?