The Fallacy of Box Farming

[Dakota Linden]

Hello again Josh,

There is a huge misconception that the issues with deliveries and sales failing is because of the shopping cart.

This isn't the case.

The reason why many assume that it is the problem is because the shopping cart was is the most public change to the Marketplace.

The issue isn't the shopping cart, the issue is the sheer volume of sales increases since the SLM went live.

The Magic Boxes cannot hold up to the demand. They are sorely outdated and the way the Magic Box processes deliveries is impacting the system.

This is why Direct Delivery is such a dedicated focus.

Here is how the process works.

A buyer locates an item and either buys it or places it into their shopping cart.

The buyer then processes the order to purchase the products.

The system then polls the buyers account to transfer the funds for each item purchased.

The system then contacts the sellers Magic Box and sends the delivery message.

The Magic Box then attempts to locate the receiver in world and send the item.

The Magic Box then attempts to reply to the SLM with the sent confirmation message.

Each product sale goes through the same steps.

The reason why it may appear to be the Shopping Cart is because each delay while waiting for the replies from the Magic Box adds to the queue times and lag.

You can purchase 100 low demand items and not get a single failed sale, or you can buy 10 high demand items and get 3 failed sales.

It is because those high demand items time out waiting for the Magic Boxes to queue and deliver all of the products.

This is why limiting the number of items you have in your Magic Box can help. It may not solve the issue, but can help.

If one Magic Box is in the middle of a delivery the other Magic Box can processes and deliver the item before the first one is finished.

If you have 700 items in your Magic Box each order queues.

The Magic Box can only deliver 1 product at a time.

So if you have 10 orders for products in the same Magic Box then you add lag time to the delivery process.

The 10th person has to wait for all of the other orders process first before their order will process.

This means that those Sellers who have high demand items have buyers who are stacking up waiting for orders to process.

Why wouldn't you assist your buyers by balancing the load across more than 1 Magic Box?

 

 

 

 

 

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Hi Dakota -

It seems that I am the only one having the issue.  No one else has chimed in on it.  I would probably be the only one on the Jira, and not worth it.

Today, yet another second life sponsored page entered the google search - it's almost as if they are stuffing pages to cancel out all my blogs and marketing.  Timing is interesting on all the new obscure pages appearing, since I raised issue with it a few weeks ago.

Figured I would add that, since this is the conspiracy issues thread.

I'm going to be a good avatar for a week or so, and see if that works.

Thanks for getting back on the question.  Appreciate that.

[Josh Susanto]

@ Zanara

NOTHING I did was having ANY affect on the magic box.  

To clarify; right clicking of any kind was completely ineffective on the box, although it had normal effects on other objects.

I would really appreciate you actually trying to understand what I've said before you criticize me for saying it.

 

@ Dakota

I HAVE rezzed a 2nd box, and it DID NOT help.

Fortunately, it's clear enough to me that what you say about the shopping cart not being a problem (at all) is pure distilled hogwash, so I'm not tempted to (merely) keep rezzing more boxes when there are other ways to deal with the problem which have not been much tried, as you have not suggested them.

Your reason for saying that the shopping cart is not a problem seems to be that all the shopping cart does is make orders process too quickly in succession. If this, in fact, is your explanation, how are we to consider it NOT to be problem that orders are being processed by SLM faster than the boxes can handle them?... and especially, specifically, when the shopping cart makes SLM process orders faster than they would otherwise be processed?

Is the point that it's OK for the shopping cart not to work well with the box because it's "the box's fault"?... even though the box existed and worked better BEFORE the shopping cart was introduced?

How is what you're really telling us different from that?

More to the point, though, I HAVE found something that HAS helped.

I am raising almost all of my lower priced items to 9L (somewhat discouraging people jamming the shopping cart with freebies and 1L items) and I am posting under most product descriptions the following phrase:

"NO USE SHOPPING CART. SHOPPING CART MAKE DELIVERY FAIL."

The result, so far, is a greatly reduced number of shopping cart orders and a reduced number of failures, specifically related to the reduced number of shopping cart orders... although my total revenues actually seem to have improved.

This is a very acceptable situational outcome to the specified effort in this case, at least to me.

It is interesting, though, to note that in shopping cart orders that contain a failed item, it seems to be the item that costs less than 9L, even though the other orders show no special higher demand for such item. It's almost as if "the system" still doesn't want people buying the cheaper items as much as it wants people to buy the less cheap items (hmm).

If the shopping cart, itself, is not A problem (OK, I agree it's not the only problem), then how would you explain the positive results I'm getting simply by persuading people not to use it?

I'm kind of old fashioned in some ways. I have a tendency to think that if you solve a problem by bypassing something that is known and agreed to be totally unnecessary, the problem is fair to consider to be in the thing bypassed.

In what way is this kind of thinking wrong?

 

 

[Josh Susanto]

@Dakota:

Substantially more than 24 hours without any response from Customer Support.

How long should I wait?

Again, it's not I (as you have more than implied) who won't take the time to learn proper pruduct categories, but the "human" whom it is your job to maintain reviewed the item flag before delisting the item the first time, who apparently did not take the time.

And, again, if neither you nor Customer Support can tell me in which category the item should have been placed initially in order to prevent it from being delisted by your "human" flag reviewer, by what means am I to conclude anything but that there is no correct category, and that my competitors are free to flag it at-will in order to have it delisted?

[WADE1 Jya]

Well... it is weekend so understandably Lindens are short staffed, but still....

I have to sympathize with you Josh, as today I find myself in the same situation (probably since competitors didn't like my last JIRA request).

Can Lindens even see who flags stuff? I imagine if the competitors/greifers do it with alts the process is safely anonymous.

I would hope Lindens have the technology to detect & ban offenders (or just change this system).

It is a shame that the marketplace system currently allows for such nasty tactics.

*sighs*

This instant autoflag removal, yet super-slow manual item reinstatement by Lindens process needs fixing desperately.

[Josh Susanto]

My issue is not essentially with whether the Lindens fail to do things.

My issue is with the their inability to talk straight with us about things that do not go as they should.

 

The following explanations would be acceptable to me (for example).

1) "We have lied about consistently using a human to review the flags."

2) "The human who reviewed the flag did not do his/her job correctly on that occasion."

3) "The correct category for the item should have been _________, because __________."(for this one, the blanks would have to be filled in in some convincing way).

 

 

[Josh Susanto]

Dakota has now eliminated option 3.

Owing to the earlier assertion that the flaggings are never automated, we can now deduce that the item was delisted from the agreed correct category by a human.

Unless there is going to be a retraction of earlier statements, this is what I'm going to have to work with for now.

So... I might, again, ask why a human would delist the item from the correct category.

Was it:

A) Intentional?

B) Unintentional?

C) (There is no "C".)

[Mickey Vandeverre]

You should get yourself a little blog with conspiracy theory posts like I did.  Then make yourself a cute little link in your signature line like Darrius just taught.

I didn't link to my conspiracy theories blog.  Letting you have the limelight on that one.

[Dakota Linden]

Hello Josh,

Everything that you have posted about clearly shows that the reported listings are handled by a human.

The human that handle the original report on your product felt that it would be more appropriate in one of the sub-categories.

Since there isn't a sub-category just for "scultped boxes" then your product is fine in the higher category.

 

[Darrius Gothly]

Something kept tugging at me about this whole issue ... delisting for "Wrong Category" ... and today it finally bubbled to the surface. So now I'll ask you directly Dakota:

When an item is delisted, you have stated (and others have verified that it works fairly quickly) to file a Support Ticket asking why. As you've stated, you will with all reasonable speed reply to the ticket with the actual reason. Okay .. all good so far.

But now for the bubble ....

If it takes 24 hours (or more) for the Merchant to notice the delisted product, and then another 24 hours (or a weekend even) for you to get the ticket and reply, how do you know you've supplied the correct answer? Do you take notes, do the operators file notes and action reports as to why they took the delisting action? Do you reference those action reports when you reply? Or are you just shooting from memory (yours or the other operator's) when you reply to the ticket?

[Dakota Linden]

Hello Darrius,

As long as I have the item name, I can look up in our tools to see why the product was unlisted.

 

 

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Dakota Linden wrote:

Hello Darrius,

As long as I have the item name, I can look up in our tools to see why the product was unlisted. 

---

Ahh good. Then the reason / explanation for the action is captured in a log file or database somewhere. Excellent.

Now all that needs to happen is for someone with access to the tools and a bit of programming experience to extract that data to an IM or Email and send it along to the merchant. That's a purely "mechanical" process that takes next to zero time to perform.

If it was a matter of actually capturing the data then I could understand why this has been put off, but now that we know the data is there ... it NEEDS TO GET DONE NOW!!

(That was a shout at Brooke, not you Dakota)

Seriously Brooke .. this is utter horse puckey. I cannot fathom the slightest reason why you can't task one programmer for one stinking day to fix this. Just get it done.