Hamlet Au is running a poll over on New World Notes. He's asking Second Life users to rate the quality of Linden-to-resident communications in recent months about updates, downtime, policy and so forth.

Think they're doing well, or doing poorly? Go and register your vote. We'll all be watching the results.

The public JIRA has been spitting unusual (and some incomprehensible) Java error messages at people since this-morning. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Rob Lanphier, Linden Lab's open source liaison says that Linden Lab have been working on the problem, but do not know what the cause is.

It seems to be happening less, at present, but there's been no further word that the issue has been isolated and repaired.

Linden Lab has responded to our request for comment about the Wonderland scandal with a statement. The statement was issued just minutes ago by Lewis PR, Linden Lab's external public relations handler. Lewis PR provides public relations support for a wide variety of companies and organizations.

"At present, we have no firm evidence of wrongdoing from our own investigations into Wonderland nor from our Abuse Report channel."

Linden Lab therefore has not acted on reports about the site from Second Life users and from Second Life's child avatar community (we are told that reports have been being filed since July) because they have not been able to find any wrongdoing.

Linden Lab's full statement follows, after the jump.

Second Life is a 3D virtual world in which all the content is created and owned by its Residents. It is used by individuals, businesses, non-profits and educational organizations to communicate and collaborate in an immersive and compelling way. All Residents using Second Life MUST assert that they are over 18 years of age and that they will abide by our Terms of Service which prohibit illegal activity and by our Community Standards which prevent broadly offensive behavior. While the vast majority of Residents abide by these agreements and use Second Life in a constructive fashion, as with any communications technology, such as email, the phone or the Web itself, some seek to abuse the system and behave in an offensive manner.

At present, we have no firm evidence of wrongdoing from our own investigations into Wonderland nor from our Abuse Report channel. There's nothing objectionable nor illegal in having a child-like avatar in itself and we must assume innocence until proof of the contrary. That said, Linden Lab is morally opposed to and has zero tolerance for child pornography, simulated or otherwise, within Second Life.

It is a primary concern of ours to keep Second Life a safe and legal environment. Second Life Residents are held to a clearly defined Terms of Service and Community Standards to prevent illegal and/or broadly offensive activities, and it goes without saying that anyone engaged in these activities will be permanently banned from Second Life. Additionally, it is important to clarify that when we discover minors in Second Life, or when their presence is reported to us, we terminate their access. Underage users are automatically directed to Teen Second Life, an area specifically designed for non-adults, and offering them a rich, creative experience collaborating with other teens.

In addition, Linden Lab is in the process of implementing age verification measures to require age verification for entrance to parcels with adult content. More information about this can be found here:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/09/18/identity-verification-and-flagging-parcels-for-restricted-content/.

In the rare instances of suspected child pornography of which we have been informed, Linden Lab immediately works to remove the offending content and involves local authorities where appropriate. At present in the US, we work with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and are open to working with similar authorities in other countries, such as CEOPS.

News of the Wonderland scandal is spreading through the UK press. Channel 5 News led with the piece - it's all over Sky News. Some of the UK's largest tabloids are picking it up - outlets with millions of readers. UK business magazine, The Business, has just taken up the story.

"users feel the virtual community is unsafe and uncensored; they're also deterred by the huge amount of sexually orientated activity which takes place in the world."

The Business magazine slams Linden Lab for their "unshakeable libertarian positions", and says "This will be a huge set back for Linden Labs [sic]".

Expect to be reading and hearing a lot more about this in the news in the coming days.

Of course, this activity directly contravenes Linden Lab policy - so, why didn't they act days or weeks ago, when this activity was reported to them?

We have been promised an official comment or statement from Linden Lab "shortly". That was nine hours ago.

[Update: 10PM SLT (US Pacific) - Linden Lab has just issued a formal response]

Linden Lab says that they believe some users have been billed twice for tier (land use fees). They are encouraging anyone affected by the double-billing (it appears you will have to go and check - or maybe check with your card company) to file a ticket through the Support Portal.

If the stories we hear have any grain of truth to them, then double-billing land-use fees to some users is an ongoing problem with Linden Lab's billing system - as well as users who are unable to process payments to Linden Lab at all.

Linden Lab's public statistical data feeds all went down at 3:40PM SLT (US Pacific) yesterday. The sudden cessation of data updates led to some unreliable figures in our reporting, so we marked them as such at the time.

The problem was today traced to the faulty deployment of a backend script, which was fixed and redeployed at approximately 11:40AM SLT today. As such, today's statistics are also going to be a little out of whack, but the numbers should all be on the mark again for tomorrow.

September saw a major recovery from the sudden slump in Lindex sales in August. While July had shown nearly US$600,000 in sales, August's sales had dropped to US$163,239, but recovered in September to a much healthier $573,501.

The latest metrics and statistics are out from Meta Linden this month, covering September. The August figures were widely described as disappointing.

Let's see how Second Life fared for September. Highlights after the fold.

Total signups increased by 343,961 (3.71%) compared to a growth of 704,603 (8.24%) in August.

Total premium accounts increased by a mere 454 (0.5%) compared to the previous month's 1,803 (2.03%).

The three most active regions by time spent per user were the Falkland Islands, Antigua/Barbuda and Bahrain. Overall, active users spent an average 46.5 hours in Second Life during the month of September.

The second life map grew by 31.6 square kilometres (3.76%) in September, compared to 59.77sqkms (7.66%) in August. The total now is 871.32sqkms of simulated space, of which 21.18% is Linden mainland, and the remaining 688.34 square kilometres are non-Linden estates.

September saw a major recovery from the sudden slump in Lindex sales in August. While July had shown nearly US$600,000 in sales, August's sales had dropped to US$163,239, but recovered in September to a much healthier $573,501.

Overall age demographics continue much as expected. 73% of the population for September were 25 years and older. The older you are, the more time you spend in Second Life: over-45's spent an average of 64.13 hours in September, 35-44 spent 57.06 hours, 25-34 spent 45.06 hours, and the 18-24's spent less than 30 hours.

Females spent nearly twice as long online in Second Life in September as the boys.

Face it, your aunt Tilley is more likely to be spending more of her time in Second Life than that early-adopting, tech-savvy young fellow.

Every MMO/NGO/VW has bugs. Every patch, every update for every one of them brings a slew of fresh bugs, glitches, imbalances and lost property. Dealing with those bugs, glitches and whatnot can be a pain in the ass quite frankly, but in Second Life, we're not just dealing with peoples' fun. We're also dealing with their revenue.

While Ginsu Linden made quite an effort to make everyone understand that Linden Lab understands the position that it is in, relative to the users, it's obvious enough from reading the comments that many of the users themselves either do not understand Linden Lab's position, or do not think Linden Lab understands it. Pick one.

Part of that position involves a bug. Technically, you'd call it an exploit. That being, a bug which (if you know how to use it) allows you to profit in a way that is unintentional or accomplish some task that is not normally permitted. We're not talking about cheating your cash balance, or purchasing land that isn't for sale, or making prims that are larger than the system nominally permits.

We're talking about the issue with llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(). A sitting avatar becomes a part of a set of linked prims. Until this function came along the fact that a sitting avatar was just another (temporary) member of the linkset wasn't really all that relevant, as there wasn't really anything you could do to the sitting avatar as a member of the linkset that wasn't already able to be done.

With llSetLinkPrimitiveParams() however, the avatar appeared (to this function) to be an additional prim, and that meant it could be manipulated. Those manipulations were pretty much limited to two things: Repositioning the avatar relative to the object, and certain other manipulations that would crash the simulator.

The repositioning tasks were all able to be accomplished by other means, though you needed extra prims to do the job. Being able to handle it directly was a time-saver, although apparently an unintentional one. Yes, it was a bug - or an exploit if you prefer. It was also a superior solution to a common scripting task. It made all sorts of furniture and multi-pose systems more efficient - at the risk of intentionally or unintentionally causing simulators to crash.

The community took to it like wildfire, as it was discovered, and almost all the new creations used the new function to perform tasks that had previously been performed in less efficient ways. Many creators retrofit their old gadgets to work the new way too.

And then, at the beginning of the month, Linden Lab found the simulator crash problem and fixed it. They fixed it by making sure the function did what it was supposed to do - that is, not allow the manipulation of avatars.

Then the screaming began. The use of the function in this way was nearly universal by this time, and the people at Linden Lab who worked on this code were - essentially - completely unaware of that fact. To them, it was a bug - an exploit, even. The code was permitting something that they had not intended to permit, and worse, people were using it to crash simulators.

So they fixed it in the simplest possible way. Hide the avatars from the function. Done.

Did I mention the screaming?

Intentional or not, the use of this exploit was widespread. It was everywhere. It was a part of people's play. A part of their businesses. The fix went in, and everything, everywhere in Second Life that used it stopped working, all at once.

Hastily (it took several days), Linden Lab responded to the huge quantity of broken product and refixed the function. This isn't actually the first time something like this has happened, where an unintentional glitch that has been fixed has caused widespread problems, breakage, or breakdown in user experience. It's probably not going to be the last, either. Sometimes those fixes mess up resident work, and sometimes they mess up the work of other staff at Linden Lab itself, even.

Whether it is intentional, or unintentional, anything that is perceived as a feature quickly becomes widespread. Look at megaprims. They're everywhere these days. Take a tour of the Linden inworld offices and you'll see quite a few megaprims in the construction of some of them.

The problem is one of communication, certainly. In each case, where these fixes went in, the people doing the fixing were simply unaware of the impact of the changes they were making. While I know it is not their policy to discuss exploits, perhaps Linden Lab really needs to bring some of their own bugs and bugfixes to their bug triage sessions for other eyes to look at.

Linden Lab's Robin Linden has stated up-front that Linden Lab has no plans to raise basic tier or island costs this quarter. That doesn't mean it can't happen, of course, but it does strongly signal their intention to leave those prices unaltered before 1 January. Maybe things could jump if Linden Lab suddenly needed a cash influx before then, but it doesn't seem likely right now.

Linden Lab does indicate that the pricing of ... well, just about everything is 'under review' - but at this stage of things, that's pretty much a given. Almost everything seems to be under almost constant review.

No, really, because you do have to guess. You must comply with the updated Community Standards which are, as far as we can tell, not available to you.

Today, an abuse department Linden contacted a resident on a matter of sexually suggestive images involving minors. I've been passed a transcript, but I'd rather not quote the piece to avoid the resident suffering from any additional woes. The abuse Linden insisted that 'certain' items of content had to be removed, but refused to indicate which ones.

The resident was certain that they had no such content fitting the description of the infraction. The abuse Linden insisted that they did, but refused to indicate which items, only that the offending items be removed or face suspension/banning.

In order to support his case, the abuse Linden quoted the Community Standards. Only they're not the ones on the website, or in the library folder of your inventory. Apparently there's another set that has never been published.

Throughout the conversation, the resident pleaded, wheedled and begged for some clue as to what content they owned might be in violation of the rules. The abuse Linden adamantly refused to give any indication, repeating the same quotes over and over again. In fact, the Linden in this case was so on-message as to be almost incomprehensible.

What it comes down to is opinions. In the resident's opinion, none of their content was a problem. In Linden Lab's opinion at least one item is, but they adamantly will not say which one, resorting only to canned responses.

Not a good situation. Imagine if I turned in this post, and my editor said "You have to change some of these sentences."

"Which ones?"

"Some of them are offensive."

"I don't get it. Which ones?"

"The offensive ones. Change them to be less offensive, by tomorrow, or you're fired."

That's the situation our poor resident is in.