Reading Radar

People Can Say Stupid Stuff in Text, Too

December 7, 2007

Look at this blog about voice on the SL Site… it’s the responses that caught my eye.

Some people think that voice has “never caught on” because there’s still a lot of situations where text works best, or because THEY don’t use it. Some people say “never used it, never will”. Some complain about how it’s used by others. Umm yeah.. ever go to a concert and hear the stupid Howl and “Hoooooooooo” gestures?

Voice works great for doing things like actually WORKING on something (building, scripting) while communicating with people, or when your hands hurt. I have tendonitis, and I also have to use different keyboards a lot for both work and home, and adjusting back and forth is hard sometimes. Sometimes it hurts, other times I just can’t type well. Right now is one of those times.. my hand hurts like a mother… beyatch, but I’m still taking the time to tell you all what a bunch of grannies and grandpas you are. Just because YOU don’t use it does not mean it does not have some really good uses for those of us who don’t think everything’s about them.

Another place it comes in really handy are the podcaster meetups and stuff. What, you want everyone there to have to add everyone else to skype, and run an external app instead of just clicking the button to make it happen? Right… I want you as the one helping streamline my meetings/business/whatever. Cause clearly you’re so good at it.

Look at this comment by Traci Summers:

Voice is only for MALES, to make sure the girls they are on top of are realy girls…

So,I say to all GIRLS…..Let the men keep guessing lmao.

To the lindens..get rid of Voice.

No, dummy, it’s for people who actually want to get something DONE, like build or script while discussing the project with other people, or do more than just stand around chatting people up 24 x 7. I’d argue that the number of men wanting to verify their girlfriends is 0, as they’ve already used skype for that, while the number of men with female avatars who refuse to do voice is quite high. So you have it backwards. If anything, a higher percentage of the total number of real women are probably comfortable with voice than the percentage of total men. Anytime I see a woman’s profile where she says she refuses to do voice, it’s a dead giveaway that the RL person behind that avatar is sporting external junk.

I see this as more of the same old “ME ME ME” attitude where people complain if things aren’t done their way, and everyone else can go to Blaze (don’t know why that’s supposedly a bad thing, but whatever). You know? Pull your heads out, ya ding dongs. Or the chipmunk will tell you off!

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5 responses

"While the number of men with female avatars who refuse

Crap Mariner | December 7, 2007

“While the number of men with female avatars who refuse to do voice is quite high”

I find it to be quite amusing to open up the microphone when someone on voice says “Mrs.” or “Miss” Mariner once too often.
———————-
Seriously, I agree with you on the usefulness of voice. If I’m working on a build or fixing something, it’s easier to keep people informed as to what I’m doing by blithering and rambling as I build as opposed to them having to wait after every step.

Despite my unrivaled literary skills, I STILL communicate better using my voice than just plain text?

Voice also works well with real-time discussions that don’t need to be logged like textchats.

Plus, it’s just fun to open the microphone for low-quality a capella karaoke nights. Had a blast on Artropolis a while back with that.

"Sporting external junk" - priceless!

David Miller | December 7, 2007

“Sporting external junk” - priceless!

Yes, people can say stupid stuff in text, too... but

Melissa Yeuxdoux | December 10, 2007

Yes, people can say stupid stuff in text, too… but they’re much easier to identify in text; voice opens up new vistas for griefing.

Also, interacting with people of different native language is much easier when you don’t have the difficulty of recognizing spoken words in realtime piled on top of parsing and understanding sentences–I can’t cut a sound sample and paste it into Google or a {French, Dutch, …}-English dictionary web site and get a translation yet.

Also, we Linux users are _still_ waiting for a voice-enabled client… and the Vivox(?) package is yet another piece of proprietary software. LL should be _replacing_ proprietary software in SL infrastructure, not adding to it. If the common video delivery mechanism in SL were open source, how many _hours_ do you suppose it would be before there was a fix, compared with the current situation, in which video is effectively shut down until Apple deigns to provide a fix that may only badly affect the SL client?

I sympathize with RSI, tendonitis, etc., but… if you have that problem, you have it with every computer interaction, not just with SL… so why aren’t you using voice recognition software?

Melissa, good points... and a lot of different things in

radarmasukami | December 10, 2007

Melissa, good points… and a lot of different things in there.

You are very correct about voice and foreign languages. It does make it difficult. OTOH, I tried to help some portuguese speakers with a space station built by an associate of mine, and the translation stuff was horrible. Add to that the lack of tone in typing, and they were upset for a bit until I managed to finally get my point across to them and we managed to get amicably to a resolution.

As for open source, it’s great and has its uses. I’ve run various linux distros over the years. All I’m going to say is that my current brand of unix based OS of choice is OS X. I think linux is a hugely better alternative than windows, and I think everyone benefits from having linux and other open source OS options available. And sure, the quicktime thing might be fixed by now if it was open source. Then again, it might not. Not all firefox security holes, for example, get fixed right away. Open source does not always mean instant security or bug fixing. It does mean that the possibility for faster resolution exists.

Voice recognition software - it has its uses. It’s not appropriate for all situations and it’s about impossible to use it for certain things. Does anyone manage to use Poser 7, ac3d, or Fireworks with voice recognition and get anything done? And for me programming by typing is (or used to be) so much faster by typing it’s not even funny.

Voice fills a need in SL. Not for all uses, not for all times, but it is not a detriment to SL. Every time something new comes to SL and people say it’s the end of the world, you can bet in 6 months no one will care.