The JIRA issue that won't die

In it's long and distinguished career, JIRA issue Web-382 has gone from being a carefully worded attack on a group somebody didn't like, to a moderately serious proposal, to something almost workable and finally back to being a carefully worded attack again.

So why won't this issue die? Quite simple. The original poster won't let it.

And of course, the original poster just has to turn out to be Prokofy Neva, perhaps the most outspoken person in Second Life's history. Prokofy is an unbeaten expert in turning things around and beating people with slightly different things while pretending those were the original things, with being the schoolteacher disciplining recalcitrant schoolchildren and with the most interesting set of double standards which she will never admit to.

Let's have a look at the wording of Web-382 for a moment:

It is too easy for feature suggestions and bugs to be prematurely closed.

This must surely be the point at the heart of the debate, and this point I don't have any problems with. But she goes on to say:

A small group of coders here on JIRA are constantly closing and resolving issues in the belief that they know best, yet they do this at times without consent and support. This results in undue pressures and discontent, and makes it very hard for the author to re-open his proposal in the face of hostility. By providing the authors with a feedback period some of this can be avoided and if deemed appropriate the issue in jeopardy can be kept open.

And here is where the problems and the biases start to come out. It all revolves around the idea that she has of this "feted inner core". Now, she's not big on conspiracy theories. Just ask her if the US government were behind 9/11. But when it comes to Second Life, there's definitely a cabal and there's definitely a 'feted inner core'. Naturally, she's a target for this group because she's the big Defender of the Second Life Freedoms. So, if she opens a JIRA ticket, and somebody closes it, it's because they are in one of these tin hat groups.

JIRA-382 has ceased to be a productive discussion. At one point I backed her into a corner which she got quite vicious about. Part of debating a propsal where the consequences could be unexpected is to consider hypothetical situations. I posed two: Firstly, if someone were to directly or indirectly insult another person (for example an immediate example of Godwins Law) then where would the JIRA stand on closure? Linden Labs simply don't have the manpower to spend a lot of time on the JIRA and this means that if other residents don't tidy things up (closing duplicates or pure waste of time tickets) chances are nobody will. If issues can't be closed without the permission of the original author, and that author purely wants to use the JIRA like a soapbox or to grief someone else, that ticket isn't going to get closed. The author will just re-open it. 382 itself is a perfect example of that. Secondly, if someone does decide to deliberately misuse the JIRA, and Linden Labs don't notice - who is going to police it?

So now I've been branded a troublemaker too. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be in the 'feted inner core' or the 'coders cabal' - probably the latter - but regardless, the fact that Prokofy Neva has double standards isn't supposed to be relevant. What do I mean by double standards? Well, this self proclaimed champion of SL civil rights holds two very different views about age verification at the same time:

So a list of adult consumers with their avatar names and RL birthdates will be in the hands of one of the most aggressive and persistently nasty BDSM types in Second Life. Maybe the BDSM community won't care -- they like abuse, and maybe even this kind of RL abuse of their privacy. But as it spreads, and begins to be used by any club, or any rental, or anybody who just wants to be free from the plague of kids harassing and griefing you, it could become the device of choice, as it advertises being "better" than Integrity by not taking your RL name and drivers' license or Social Security number.

She gushes in her hate filled blog entry about a resident-created age verification system called agelock. But then she immediately goes on to say:

Hey, give me Integrity *any day of the week*. They are a real-life registered company with a business reputation and a bottom line to fulfill and a board of trustees. If I fear they've abused my trust in taking my info, I can protest -- with lawyers, by getting Congress involved, by getting the media on it. I can't do that with these anonymous avatars in Second Life!

I've got news for you, Prokofy. You can't. Nobody can. It comes down to an issue of contract law. We have a contract that we agreed to with Linden Labs when we all clicked the "I accept" on installing for the first time. That contract is enforceable. If Linden Labs breach it, ultimately they can be called to account for it in a court of law. We have no such contract with Integrity, nor do we have any idea what - if any - safeguards apply in the contract that exists between Linden Labs and Integrity and as such the very reason - unaccountability - that she cites for Agelock, also applies to Integrity. Yet she's passionately in favour of one, and passionately against the other. A double standard.


Ironically, the very reason Web-382 won't ever go anywhere is because the original author of it is the best example of why it should never be implemented. Somebody who absolutely MUST have their say, is abusive of others and won't let the issue be closed.

So I've called on Linden Labs to finally put an end to this self serving soapbox facade, by actually telling everyone what, if anything, they intend to do. Either to say "This part of the issue makes sense, we're looking at the viability of implementing it" or to outright say "this isn't going to be implemented, case closed." While I doubt they'll bother, it does show how badly the JIRA can be - and is being - manipulated for personal reasons, in an issue that simply won't die.