Voice?

I still didn’t install the new viewer. It’s an optional update, and as a rule I only install the mandatory ones (not enough space in disk), and the final (and mandatory) viewer will be coming soon anyway, so I’ll rather wait for that. But I feel curious. I hope the final viewer will come soon.

I’m not in favour of voice, nor am I against it. In my opinion it has both good and bad sides. While I think voice will be handy in some circumstances (for instance being able to chat while building something, without the need for typing), it will be an annoyance in others:

1. people yelling “testing, testing, do you hear me?”
   
   
2. girls endowed with voices like Janice’s from the Friends TV series screaming “Oh my god!” out loud
   
   
3. voice spam
   
   
4. voice pollution (for instance, people talking nonsense publicly when they should be doing it privately, like through IM)
   
   
5. trying to understand people speaking English for the first time in their lives. (As an example of this I'm copying here the lines of a conversation I had with a newbie, here's what he said: "Hi! I only after tutorial. Can you explein me whot have to do here? What for you here? How long you playing?")
   
   
6. not being able to hear people who doesn’t speak up, or who didn’t set their volume up
   
   
7. people in SL hearing what’s going on in my house besides my own voice (husband, music, etc.)
   
   
8. people in RL hearing me chatting away at the computer
   
   
9. people trying to pronounce “Wilhelmina” (LOL! Please call me Mina.)
   
   

10. and one of the worst: imagine a group of 20 to 30 people sitting in a circle and chatting, lots of them speaking at the same time, accidentally or intentionally interrupting each other (the lack of body language might also cause that), and you not being able to know who said what. In RL you can turn your head and see whose mouth is moving, but in SL there will be only that voice icon above their heads, and that’s not as easy to follow as one would hope.

The list goes on, but I’ll stop here.

For an example of how voice can be just plain annoying in some ciscunstances, read this. And imagine yourself hearing those dialogues! ;-)