Innula Zenovka wrote:So do I hope that we get some communication going, but I can't help but recall what happened about a year ago, or more, when Viale Linden asked us at the Adult Content User Group what issues LL could help us with, and several of us (me included) said that the Marketplace's opaque policy on what makes listings Adult rather than Moderate were a major cause for concern.
Viale took this on board and said he'd try to get someone from the Marketplace along in the following weeks to discuss this, but was eventually forced to say, in effect, that the Marketplace team were refusing to appear in public because they were worried about lynch mobs of irate merchants turning up if they did.
I can understand their concerns, but I really think that a bit of glasnost is called for. Oskar and Maestro have the right idea, I am sure -- people get mad when stuff goes wrong with the servers, but we all know that Oskar and his team are on top of things, and trying their hardest to rectify stuff, because they tell us what the problems are and what they're doing to fix them.
Ahh yes but the "mobs" as the meeting attendees were referred to had appeared for two primary reasons (as I recall them) of which these scenes could be controlled and defused....
- Brooke and team were new to the Merchant team then and had VERY little understanding of the SL Merchants dynamics - i.e. whet factors could turn the merchants into an angry mob vs. what could defuse them. What I am sure her and the team would now be fully aware of that they werent at the time was that many of us Merchants are extremely technically and SL merchant selling savvy. In fact, I would strongly argue in many aspects we understand the MP and the dynamics and impacts of the MP better than the commerce team.
As such, the atitude and conduct by her and the commerce team at these meetings sadly was a a carry over from how previous generations of the commerce team culture had been on how to deal with us at meetings.... i.e. one-sided conversation.... her team simply telling us what was gonna happen and how things were gonna play out and then not recongizing most of our serious legit concerns on their plans. - Additionally, and this blame gets fully placed on Sr. LL management over Brooke, one of the first orders her team were forced to deploy was an exetremely unliked and disruptive new Adult Content Filter that was poorly thought out and caused a ton of REAL $ sales impact on a lot of merchants. I am sure Brooke didnt want this to be her first big change either.... but as being new and being given direct orders at any cost.... she deployed it. And it did cause a ton of grief. And sadly, it was her team - not the sr. LL management above her that had to face the ANGRY MOB which LL caused a lot of REAL $ loss on. Of course the would be anger. especially when Brooke's meetings were one-way meetings that we could have just as easily read from blogs.
If Brooke is reading and she does agree to restart these meetings weekly. She need to get the blessing from Rodvik that her team is empowered to actually engaged in open frank honest two-way dialog. Brooke and team should not be afraid to hear our concerns and feedback and consider them as a possible priority. Rodvik must allow Brooke to listen to serious Merchant concerns when her team brings forward any plans for MP changes and these concerns should be able to change the plans when its something LL can compromise on.
The Merchants are not stupid and they dont want to be treated like mushrooms. If they get a wiff that they are not treated with the intellectual respect on how the MP works and is used by the Commerce Team at these meetings, then sadly Brooke and her team might end up with that same angry mob again.
The control of these meetings are in her team's hands... but the control is not by rules - its by the level of respect and true commitment they have in engaging in a healthy two-way diaglog.
We CANNOT* see "we are aware of the situation and we will get back to you" statements. We want to know exactly whats gone wrong when it has and we want to know exactly how its getting fixed and reasonable timely updates if the issue is serious. And we want to hear plans for MP early and we want to be able to have SOME influence on the commerce teams priority of what should be worked on (i.e. having our list of MP fixes and missing features addressed along with LL's).
This is what the other LL teams provide their respective residents. This is the level of open dialog they give and the level of countering respect the meeting attendees respond with.
But ... if there are some special LL policy shackles / gag orders that Rodvik or Brooke's Sr. management had previously placed on Brooke, we need a commitment from Rodvik that these will be removed and Brooke is allowed the authority within her scope of management to do her job and work more openly with the merchants.
If this happens.... Chances of Angry Mobs at these meetings is VERY LOW.
Rodvik Linden wrote:Hey folks, just dropping a note to let you know I have read the thread. The team reads the boards every day so they asked me to pop in to acknowledge that they read the boards and I have also read this thread. I appreciate the feature requests and bug notifications in particular.
For sure we can up the tempo of communiation in blog posts and notifcations to upcoming changes & fixes. We remain commited to our merchant community and I appreciate you taking the time to write down what you would like to see in the future for SL.
It took sacrificial goats, bulging veins and much reasoning to exasperate the commerce team enough to conjure you to tell us that they read the forums every day?
Isn't that kind of boneheaded? 
They could have posted themselves and said "hey guys, we read the forums every day".
When does a communication problem turn into a comprehension problem?
Someone said they were afraid of lynch mobs. I think you need to tell them that the lynching part isn't real.
More seriously though, if it weren't a bit bigger than the team communicating or a handful of strongly desired feature requests, it wouldn't have had your name on it.
Communication is great, but it's become an issue of production, implementation, stability and trust in a buyer/seller environment. Suspects are often incompetence, management problems, development methodology, etc.
It's the follow through and delivery times to get there. A disconnect between here and the level of quality and features we're used to elsewhere when it comes to buying and selling goods.
Also you may want to read the post over on New World Notes about land barons and how the Marketplace has affected them as well: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/10/sl-land-threatene
There are billing error issues that a more focused and communicative commerce team can (probably) handle and then are issues related to overall "economy that the commerce team can't handle. High tier and dinking around with monetization is dated, taken it's toll and in need of a rework.
Personally I can give you a big Obama style pass and say that you inherited the messy bits. But to us it's an old story. Most of us who have met individual Lindens like them. Indicators keep pointing up the chain to them having a serious lack of solid direction and focus sometimes.
That would be your turf?
Rodvik Linden wrote:Hey folks, just dropping a note to let you know I have read the thread. The team reads the boards every day so they asked me to pop in to acknowledge that they read the boards and I have also read this thread. I appreciate the feature requests and bug notifications in particular.
For sure we can up the tempo of communiation in blog posts and notifcations to upcoming changes & fixes. We remain commited to our merchant community and I appreciate you taking the time to write down what you would like to see in the future for SL.
"Upping the tempo" is a good step .. one that should be engraved in bronze and used to make cupholders for everyone's fluid refreshment of choice. But there are so many more things that follow on from that initial step. Such as:
1. Release notes for updates to the Marketplace need to be posted several days in advance. They need to detail what will be changed and when the changes will hit. This is analogous to yelling "Look out!" just before you run into something .. as opposed to the current method of posting the Release Noes after the fact. Even though you may think your changes won't impact anyone, the truth is they often do .. and many times in ways you folks never saw coming. (The recent email change for example.) With some advance warning there would be far fewer support tickets, flailing arm forum posts and overall anxiety.
2. Updates to the Marketplace and the Release Notes should be announced in a standard location that is centralized to SL and its own communication methods. The Grid Status is one example that will sort of work, but only if the posts to the Grid Status feed provide much more info than they do now. Simply stating "Marketplace update on ..." isn't sufficient. The posts should have links to the Release Notes at the very minimum.
3. Those "Red Box" notices in the Merchant Dashboard are useless for time sensitive information. It's a location few visit routinely and there is no automated way to detect changes. If you are wishing to include a notice from within the Marketplace that is available to Merchants only, consider adding it to the Merchant Menu (the one at the top of most Merchant function pages that reads "Home, Inventory, Orders, Reports, ...") Make it a "Trigger cleared highlight" type menu option that shows highlighted when a new notice has been posted, and that clears the highlight once the Merchant has read it. (This can be done easily with a cookie that contains the date/time of the last notice read. If the cookie date/time is older than the notice's date/time then highlight the "Notice" menu option.)
4. Forum posts must return to a two-way format. The "fire and forget" forum posts with absolutely no response from CTL to follow-on comments has to stop. There is no need (nor any reason) to respond to flames, but there is a requirement to acknowledge reasonable responses .. especially those with additional information, concerns and suggestions. Even though I personally am incapable of posts with fewer than 20 words, it is possible to indicate that customer comments have been read without engaging in ad nauseum text floods.
5. Consider adding a feature to this Forum software that would display a "Read Receipt" type notification when CTL has read and digested a comment. Similar to the flag on a mailbox that would be lowered once CTL has checked it off, it would eliminate the need to write a response to everything .. instead reducing it to a simple "Got it" checkbox that would be visible to all readers. (And an email to the comment author would be super cool!)
6. Restart the weekly User Group meetings. Don't go overboard on Sim space and don't waste your time with fancy 4-corner region games .. just a single meeting spot with the usual 10-20 avatar limits will do. Yeah they'll be crowded and heated at first, but in a short while with regular meetings .. and with an end to features/upgrades/changes that no one wanted, needed or had any clue were in development ... those in attendance will soon trickle down to be just those with a true desire to stay in touch and participate.
7. Post the next 6 months Task List .. now! Update it once a month. Be prepared to explain why time is being spent on the items on the list. Listen to the concerns, suggestions and complaints that it creates. (Hint: If CTL cannot justify spending time for the items on the list to the Merchant/Shopper community then it's a good bet you shouldn't spend your money on it either.)
8. Follow through! All two paragraphs sound fine. Lots of things sound fine. But the Marketplace doesn't work on sound, and money doesn't flow into your coffers (or ours) based on sound either. Make it happen. Otherwise the backlash from this tiny morsel of text will be an even louder and grumpier response once folks figure out it was just lip-service. Folks around here are neither dumb nor naive. If you have no intention of actually doing things to make it better then you best just shut it down and let us move on to your competitors now. We've all been run through the ringer too many times already, and just tossing a few crumbs on the table and calling it Thanksgiving is only going to result in more righteous indignation. (Translation: Put your money where your mouth has already gone.)
9. Permanently outlaw and remove from the LL Mantra the following two sentiments: A) Customers are a pain to deal with, and B) The forums have no value to LL. Replace them with the following two instead: A) Customers are why we get paid, and B) Participating in the forums is how we stay commited to our customers.
These are just for starters. I've seen a ton of other good ideas floating around .. and I'm pretty sure you've seen them too. (If not then shame on you already.) I'm glad you used the word "commited" as that's a very powerful and important word. As you've no doubt come to realize, we loud people are pretty deeply commited too. So match us, stand eye to eye with us .. and demonstrate that the word means much more to you than a convenient assemblage of letters.
I like the idea of the sprint task list 
Just how much spare capacity do the commerce team have for implementing new ideas AS WELL AS communicating extensively with the merchant community? I know from personal experience how much time meetings, preparation for them and reports take up.
Personally, I'd like to get an understanding of the priority tasks the commerce team faces (which may be "under the hood" and so invisible to us), present them with issues merchants feel are priorities for them - and start negotiations as to what can be taken forward.
Following from that, maybe occasional updates and very infrequent reviews of priorites perhaps involving meetings may then suffice...
My little wish list for the sprint list on page 1 of this thread
Emma
