High Fidelity Poll to Implement Chat System in VR World

Really interesting survey from the High Fidelity team, asking users what kind of text-based chat system they'd like implemented in their virtual world -- interesting, because the way chat is implemented will massively impact how High Fidelity is used, and who uses it.

For instance, the poll asks how important it is that "Users should have the facility to forward chat snippets to High Fidelity for review" and that "Users should be able to rate other users individually." Either of those could be an important tool to curb user-to-user abuse -- but at the same time, incur enormous community management costs on the company's part. When they talk about users rating users, I assume (hope) they mean anonymously, as a way of flagging abuse, and not publicly -- as happened early in Second Life, with disastrous social consequences.

The fact that High Fidelity is even asking whether they should have text-based chat at all is surprising:

Will SL's Welcome Area Ever Actually Be Welcoming?

[Kermit-drinking-tea] I mean, I think it's inarguable that Second Life had a far healthier and diverse community when it was a chat-only virtual world, while introducing voice gave an unfair advantage to extroverted users over introverted ones, while also coarsening the discourse, but that's none of my business.[/Kermit-drinking-tea]

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Comments

[Mac]

well, if HF has no text chat, I won't be going there.

[sirhc deSantis]

@Mac you should read through some of the comment summaries over there to see where the hate of text chat is entrenched.

I saw the full survey and was amazed they even tacitly acknowledged that it was needed at all.