You have heard about the Contingency Measures?

Yesterday Mark Wallace pointed out Linden Lab is approaching a crossroads. I didn’t read into his article that the world was coming to an end because Linden Lab has set into place contingency measures to ensure the service of Second Life. I do see where Linden Lab is finally stepping up to the plate and admitting there is a problem which they are having more difficulty than they were willing to admit, and acceptance is the first step toward a solution.

Basically, the contingency plan the Lindens have set into place is to not allow unverified accounts onto the grid during peak usage. This doesn’t mean all free accounts; it mean those which haven’t conducted business with Linden lab either by being a premium account holder, owning land, or purchasing currency on the LindeX. In other words anyone who is not contributing in some meaningful way to the world of Second Life. Personally I think Linden Lab could probably reduce the server load more by simply removing camping from the world. I know that would not be popular with any of the campers, but as they sit in those chairs and get paid $lindens while they are cleaning the kitchen, reading a book, sleeping, or in any form not even being at their computer… the data server must continue severing up data to them.

I wouldn’t want to take away something for new people to gain money without at least offering a suggestion to allow them to have spending money. My thoughts on that is to try to kill two birds with one stone. Most new people who come into Second Life come thinking it is a game. They have no idea just how big the learning curve is to being able to support one’s self inside Second Life. My suggestion is to make a learning game for them with the reward being earning money to complete tasks along the way… lets teach them how to support themselves as they enter the world. The information islands are great for some people, but with at least 6 out of 10 people that log into Second Life not sticking around… something different needs to be done. Of course the down side to that is the concurrency rate would really skyrocket if the churn rate is corrected.

As I read Mark’s article, I saw Philip’s request for new help to handle the management of “thousands of Linux servers in multiple locations as small step in the right direction. The new help needed also includes software developers, graphics software developers, web developers, systems engineers, QA engineer, Project managers, project coordinators and more.

The reason for the sudden request for new employees seems to be because of “building ambitious plans for re-architecting the grid, so that in the future we can realize the full potential of the Second Life Grid to support millions of concurrent users.,” states Robin Linden in the Contingency plan post, along with additional caching systems, reducing the write load on the central database, addressing critical bottlenecks, and deploying more internal ‘web services’.

Linden Lab also announced “In an effort to make our Website more useful and easier to use we will be undergoing a major redesign… building a set of Web-based tools to allow you to manage various aspects of your account…” I take that to mean being able to do things like running searches, set preferences, and hopefully straighten out your inventory without actually having to log into Second Life.

Mark Wallace did question why Linden Labs is now attempting to under go this 2D web effort now that the client is open source and when independent developers are diligently working on that goal. Mark brought up how Linden Lab opened the LindeX currency exchange in direct competition with a popular user-run currency exchange which was then forced to close rather than try to compete with the LindenX, and this was after Linden Lab had several meeting with the people who had opened the user-run exchange getting vital information on how they did it. Will the same happen to developers who are working on the 2D web tools for Second Life. I certainly am not able to answer this as all the comotion with the LindeX happened before my Rezz Date.

Mark went on to take a couple of parting shots at Philip Rosedale’s management style, but over all I didn’t see Mark’s post as a “sky is falling” post… simply a well written warning about what is going on…. except what I considered a couple personal shots at Philip.