Commerce

ab Vanmoer wrote:

Actually it is not a Catch 22, it is nothing but complete incompetence of the highest order.

At the very least the commerce team should be providing a list of words. . . .

Once again the commerce team have exhibited their disregard for the merchants their customers, and callously continued on their path indifferent to just how much hardship they put the merchants through.

 

It's probably punishment for our blatant refusal to Facebook our identities and attract bored Farmville players into shopping almost exclusively on Marketplace to dress up their browser-based pseudo-avatars.

An entire calendar year of one epic fail after another from LL.

Meh, I'm clicking my heels three times and putting this place on the back-burner. I won't bother fixing or re-listing a single GODD*MNED filtered/flagged ad, and when my L$ money trickles dry, so will my involvement here.

Wonder how many of these jacktards have any real experience with 15-17 year olds? Do they really honestly believe that kids have an attention span or patience level that will provide the content their former SL kings of industry have created for LL FREE OF CHARGE? If they believe their current residency of content creator merchants is literally that expendable, then maybe KIDS are actually keeping the candy store.

You know, i would not even be annoyed at all, if LL made changes on a monday or tuesday. We would have the whole week to correct things. NO, LL likes to do things just before the weekend. I've bitched about this stuff for years now. Go play any game online, no1 puts out updates on thursdays. You know why, cause they know they make the most money on the weekend. LL, they don't care, because they make money either way.

I agree Trilo,

I will go one further... LL Commerce Team not only didnt think through the deployment plan (i.e. when it should be deployed, how to back out if the change screwed up, etc.), but the whole concept of using keywords to identify evil naughty bad immoral listings for the under-aged to avoid seeing in slm was an utterly bad idea in the first place.

KEYWORDS are not feature descriptions of the listed item!  Keywords are used to make sure potentially relevent search terms by a customer can help them find what they are looking for.  There is a difference.

So example.... if I were to make Mens medieval Shoes and in my keywords I put GOR because I am sure those looking for Gor related accessories might find my shoes of interest, I would end up making my innocent shoes now a mature product.

WOW Brooke... where did your team come up with this brainchild.  Your team doesnt know the difference between keywords and listing description and features?

BAD BAD idea... flawed from the beginning.  And then as Trilo says, they deploy this change with little initial notice nor detailed info of what their change intends to do and what merchants could do ahead of time to avoid pain.... and then execute the chang just before the weekend when their staff takes the weekend off.

WOW Brooke... your staff would be fired at my company for impacting that many users with such a flawed implementation plan.

But dont worry Brooke... the SL Merchants are used to this level of service from LL so its not as if we are too shocked... just disappoined that this Commerce Team has learned all their skills and communications culture from the past generations of LL Commerce teams.

Brooke Linden wrote:

 

Hi all,

Well, it wasn’t perfect, but it could have been much worse. Let’s focus on what we have now and how we can improve next time.

On the Linden side, here is what we’re doing:

• Currently working on a bug fix that incorrectly flags some items as moderate and adult. We plan to release this fix on Tuesday.
• Reading through the forum posts and filtering out comments that appear to be issues.
• Reviewing  the decisions, processes, testing, etc. done prior to the roll out to  identify actionable changes that can be made going forward.
• Monitoring  gross market value for the Marketplace as a whole and the listings that  were migrated to determine if we are seeing a change in behavior. At  this point we do not have enough data to make an assessment and will  review on Monday.
• Reviewing listings that you all have sent to us and modifying our filtering to fix any issues.
• Working on getting phase 2 rolled out (advanced search options) to make it easier to find listings marked as moderate and adult.

On the Merchant side, here is what you can to do help us help you:

• Keep going through your listings. There are no additional planned changes to the Listing Guidelines. Note that the logic is checked on save, in addition to during a weekly process, so just editing the listing will only help once we have updated our ratings logic. Which leads to the next bullet...
  
• If  you have a listing that is getting incorrectly flagged, add the URL to  PJIRA WEB-3583. This PJIRA will be looked at on Monday, and a new one  will be created for the next set of listings that need to be reviewed.
• Please do not post keyword lists on Second Life forums. We will have to remove those posts.
• Keep providing feedback. I’ll be reviewing and think that it makes sense to take a portion of the next office hour to discuss.

For  those who didn’t receive the email, please make sure you check your  spam folders. I did a quick check and your names were on the list we  submitted to send.

Okay, I’m off to review some filters to see if we can’t get some cleanup done before the weekend.

Brooke

PS--There  was a miscommunication earlier on where this blog post should live, and  it was moved into the private forum. Once I realized the mistake, I had  it pulled back into the public forum.

 

Okay, this did not go so smoothly but did anyone really expect it would? No.

What is important to me is that we have this communication.* That is huge. In the past the problem would not have even been acknowledged at all, and certainly no one would have told us what corrective measures were being taken. I for one am deeply grateful to be kept in the loop.

Plus we all know probably the last thing the Commerce Team wanted to do was this -- this is part of an overall LL policy.

Brooke, if by chance we seem to have gone overboard a bit: as others have pointed out, you can't imagine the hours we have spent redoing and repairing the results of migration. We are just shell-shocked.

 

PS  Just wait until the Magic Boxes are eliminated.

 

* And folks, we have a pro doing the communicating here. None of this blaming merchants for being lazy / stupid (eg "I am not a mind reader!) like we have heard before -- when we heard anything at all.

Ok, I was not really worried about this, as I don't sell anything on the marketplace that would even remotely be considered Adult or mature. Oh, but I just checked and LL thinks that my 2 most recent AOs are somehow mature. WTF! Well, both of those used to have enhancements attached to them. Not any more! Now, are they going to refund me for the days that they are not viewable? And why can't we change the maturity rating, after the fact?

It seems, that the aos had gor in the keywords. All, the others, had no bad words and changed when changed the maturity level. So, why did they get move to mature in the first place?

------------------

There is 1 that is ranked Adult: MDHU TKD STAF combat iV3 box

Keywords: boxing fight hit punch right left uppercut backhand system kick strike pummel system combat battle spar jump hitting combo bruise contact kung fu martial arts staf

-----------------

If any1 knows which word makes this product Adult, oH wait, the only word that is different than another listing is staf. Are kidding me?

omg Pamela....

I soo soo soo dread LL's attempt at replacing Magic Boxes.  That truly scares me.  I might liquidate my account after 10K instead of 30K as that approaches.

I would rather the evil we know with magic boxes vs the impending evil we dont know with LL trying to integrate SLM right into our inventory!

 

And... contrary to Brooke's statement... I dont have a spam folder or filter on LL.  This one just didnt arrive.  And likely many other didnt.  In 2009 I asked Colossus to have my email removed from their Marketing spamming emails - when they were emailing the SL residents with advertising of 3rd party merchants.  Remember that fiasco?  Maybe them removing me from their spam list makes me lose some of LL's informative emails.  Many of us demanded that LL take us off their marketing spam list.

Wouldn't someone looking for a barrel stove more likely search for  barrel stove? Someone looking for a vegetable stand search for vegetable  stand?

I think the "too creative use of keywords" is part of the  problem with results that don't necessarily make sense to a shopper, I  pretty much gave up shopping on the Marketplace because of this.

I totally disagree.  I sell gorean things but market them as  gorean/medieval/sometimes even rustic depending on the look and feel.

 

My  Gorean style kitchen is one thing that I think needs to have gorean  somewhere in the keywords.  Most people looking for a wood stove type  kitchen might not look for "wood stove" because a lot of wood stoves aren't gorean in style.  They're more industrial revolution or victorian or what have you.  More along the lines of a pot belly stove which isn't very gorean.  But a fire with a grate over it is quite gorean.  Yet those kitchens would fall under moderate or adult even though they don't even have animations and are merely for "looks".

As a gorean merchant AND a gorean shopper, I often put the word "Gorean" or "Gor" before whatever I'm looking for so that if I'm looking for a Gorean couch, dress, house, I don't end up with modern couches, dresses, houses.  Searching something vague like that doesn't return the specific TYPE of item I need.  However just because it's a gorean house doesn't mean it's inappropriate for minors.  It's just an adjective to refine my searches... and with search so utterly horrific at returning relevant results as it is, having to eliminate the word Gorean from listings just so that items can be marked general will either hurt the shoppers or the merchants.

Either the merchant has to remove the word gorean from the listing entirely and thus lost sales from not only the minors but anyone else who is bad at setting their preferences to anything but the default (why that isn't a preference we can set permanently is beyond me).  And by doing so, makes their items get lost in the shuffle of all the modern/ultramodern/victorian/steampunk/etc versions of such items.  OR they leave Gorean in the listing and are thus forced to bump up the maturity rating on something that's entirely harmless.  Should Gorean boots be moderate or adult?  I don't believe so.  But unless they want to be lost in the pile of millions of other boots AND not be returned higher in the pile for someone who IS specifically looking for gorean boots, they hve no choice.

Why is gorean even on the naughty list?  You can go online and read the books without age verifying.  Anyone can find out what Gor is on wikipedia.  And there are plenty of gorean items (kitchens, houses, furniture, FreePerson clothing) that aren't in the least adult.  Gorean isn't an adult "style" it's an adult LIFESTYLE.  A porn star's couch isn't adult just because she owns it.  It's adult if she films herself having sex on it.  Otherwise it's just a couch.

 

LL needs to think about some of these restrictions and figure out what's logical and what's overboard.

EPIC FAIL

Well I hope gorean role players know that now they have to look for "medieval or rustic" I think almost nothing is going to be "gorean" in the MK now.

And "Rapa" how this word can be black listed (what it means rapa)??? How can I sell "Rapa Nui" clothes then, in Chile we call the island Rapa Nui or Isla de pascua just now I can't think of any alternative I'm going to sleep?

I think LL its not worried for the "teens" the problem is with adults saying that LL allows the teens to see adult content...

Where I can find the pjira that Brooke talk about?... and I didn't get the mail either

I do agree with Pam and have to commend Brooke on her communication.  And as the messenger, please excuse us if it feels like we're attacking you alone or placing all the blame on your shoulders, Brooke.

• It's just that there was little to no warning about this (I first heard about it at OH on Wednesday). 
• The change in guidelines could have been released earlier to give people notice and a chance to adjust.
• The auto filter is just a slap in the face as we have ALWAYS (at least as long as I have been in SL) been permitted to self monitor/self censor. So now we're made to feel like kids who've had the car taken away because mom and dad arbitrarily decided it might be unsafe for us to drive.
• The ONE WEEK to get our listings adjusted (especially with the gorean=moderate or adult... and I'm sure other words as well) is NOT enough time for merchants with a lot of listings.
• The inability to correct the improper classification of items because of keywords that LL won't release to us so we know what to drop to make an item general.. can you imagine how much time it would take a merchant with 3000 items that are rustic or medieval to go through and remove "gorean" from the keywords WITHOUT violating the keyword spam policy and just plug in all keywords that apply to all their products?  I mean that's the easy route.  Just list "dresses, sweaters, houses, boots, jewelry" for every item even though you might only sell a few of one of those...which was a bulk of the keyword spamming issue when the migration happened earlier.
• The fact that after filling in keywords (per item or item type) had to be done during migration when this SHOULD have been implimented (or at least leaked so we knew it was coming and could compensate for it then) and now we have to go back and do it all over again.
• There are MANY MANY flaws in this system.  And we have ONE WEEK to TRY to fix all this WHILE the commerce team is still fishing around fixing the bugs and glitches.  What kind of timeline is that?  AND you implimented it right before the weekend so there's no one to handle all the issues we're having or any way of knowing that if we spend our entire weekend removing words like "gorean" from our listings that you won't come in on Monday, decide that was an error in judgement and remove that from the filter list anyhow making all the work we just did pointless.
• OH!  and when trying to change one of my listings because it was marked general when it clearly should have been adult, it deleted the entire description for the item so I had to fish around for a similar item and copy/paste it!  So I'm not TOUCHING the rest of them till I'm sure that little glitch is fixed!  (whatever happened to our handy little templates button?)

It's really getting to the point where I wonder why I try to sell on MP at all....what little sales I do have there.

Pamela Galli wrote:

Okay, this did not go so smoothly but did anyone really expect it would? No.

What is important to me is that we have this communication.* That is huge. In the past the problem would not have even been acknowledged at all, and certainly no one would have told us what corrective measures were being taken. I for one am deeply grateful to be kept in the loop.

* And folks, we have a pro doing the communicating here. None of this blaming merchants for being lazy / stupid (eg "I am not a mind reader!) like we have heard before -- when we heard anything at all.

 

Ill agree, We really should commend Brook for the continued communications!

Someone talked about the hours of fixing stuff after the migration from SLX to SLM. You were lucky, I have a product that, instead of migrating it as a product, it produced 10 different products and none of them had any of the original ratings or the comments. So my free builders hud is back to a 0 rating. I can not count the hours I have spent trying to get this stuff back and it really is upseting to see it all messed up again.

To Brook and the LL team, Please read the  Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Paying special attention to the sections on ITSM (IT Service Management). Please pay close attention to ISO 2000 procedures.

ITIL defines Change Management as "A Process to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents upon service quality, and consequently improve the day-to-day operations of the organization."

I also suggest that you implement a CAB (Change Advisory Board) as well as proper RFC's  (Request for Change)

Which should outline

   1. The change to be implemented
   2. The Back out plan
   3. At what point a change is considered to have failed and the back out plan put into effect.

 

The rest of the IT world does this and it works great!

Well I hope gorean role players know that now they have to look for  "medieval or rustic" I think almost nothing is going to be "gorean" in  the MK now.

 

Well, two solutions to this.  If they'd add the ability to cross list items.  ie. something could be listed as a medieval couch or a gorean couch, then the merchant could leave those words out of the description and list it in the appropriate subcategories.  But you can't list an item more than once and there's no feature to cross list... PLUS there's no gorean section to the MP.

If LL intends to stick behind anything gorean being mature or adult, then they should add the ability to cross list the items AND add a gorean section.  the Gorean section itself could be rigged to not show up unless someone has mature enabled.  But at least merchants could list G rated items that pertain to the Gorean lifestyle without having to sacrafice their general rating because it could be found elsewhere without the "naughty" keyword.

Brooke Linden wrote:

 

 

• 
  

• For  those who didn’t receive the email, please make sure you check your  spam folders. I did a quick check and your names were on the list we  submitted to send.

I haven't received the email either with my business avatar even though I don't have any spam filters enabled for my SL related email address.

I don't know if this has been brought up yet, but I was wondering what's going to happen to "related items"? Will related mature / adult items be allowed in general listings? Or will they be blocked from sight? Will a related mature / adult item in a general listing make the general listing mature / adult as well?

I think people will get used to searching for medieval again really quickly. When I started SL a few years ago the kind of items you mentioned in your post (kitchen, couch...) would have been tagged mostly medieval instead of gor /gorean. While not my lifestyle I wouldn't consider it particularly naughty and I wouldn't have put it on the bad word list myself (in addition to never having merged both grids), but since there's a very good and proper "replacement" keyword available I don't really think that there will be lots of lost sales because I'd assume that all merchants will adjust their listings accordingly. For the "naughtier" aspects of the gorean lifestyle there will be the mature setting and people will quickly learn which of the two keywords they have to search for in order to find what they are looking for ;-)

I think people will get used to searching for medieval again really  quickly. When I started SL a few years ago the kind of items you  mentioned in your post (kitchen, couch...) would have been tagged mostly  medieval instead of gor /gorean. While not my lifestyle I wouldn't  consider it particularly naughty and I wouldn't have put it on the bad  word list myself (in addition to never having merged both grids), but  since there's a very good and proper "replacement" keyword available I  don't really think that there will be lots of lost sales because I'd  assume that all merchants will adjust their listings accordingly. For  the "naughtier" aspects of the gorean lifestyle there will be the mature  setting and people will quickly learn which of the two keywords they  have to search for in order to find what they are looking for ;-)

 

The issue is that we, the merchants now have to go in and REMOVE any of those keywords (which LL has not posted yet) that might cause this effect.  So for those with 1000 listings and all pertaining to Gor, even if HALF of them aren't mature or adult items that's 500 items to manually change keywords on within ONE WEEK.

 

Sorry but I find that just plain inconsiderate on LL's part.  Especially since we all just had to go through listing keywords again during migration back in Oct.

Loving Clarity wrote:

The issue is that we, the merchants now have to go in and REMOVE any of those keywords (which LL has not posted yet) that might cause this effect.  So for those with 1000 listings and all pertaining to Gor, even if HALF of them aren't mature or adult items that's 500 items to manually change keywords on within ONE WEEK.

 

Sorry but I find that just plain inconsiderate on LL's part.  Especially since we all just had to go through listing keywords again during migration back in Oct.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you on this one - I have close to 1000 Marketplace listings myself with my business account and haven't even managed to finish the mess the initial migration from Xstreet did to my listings, actually I haven't even managed to fix half of my listings after months and I have spent weeks working on them already. Copy/paste unfortunately doesn't work for my items, so I have to do each one separately. It's pretty clear that they have no idea how time consuming all this fixing can be.

One week is indeed a total joke for those affected, even for those who can dedicate all of their time to this task as it can take hours to even find the one word that has to go. And what about those who are on holiday right now or away for other reasons? Those that have other deadlines to meet?  And those who don't even know about the change because they are not among the few who actually received the email and stumbled across this coincidently by browsing the forums?

There should be a minimum of 3 months, you can't announce such a major change "last minute". The Marketplace issue should have been taken into consideration and planned ahead long BEFORE the actual merger.

WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

 

I'm not sure of the real-world age limit on buying tobacco--like RL age-of-consent it may not be 18 in other countries than the USA--but there are age limits. So at that level, it isn't crazy.

So, if RL age limit for dirve a car is18 in some countries, a car is a Mature item? And airplanes? And buy and own land? And use a weapon (General in guidelines!!)?

WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

 

I'm not sure of the real-world age limit on buying tobacco--like RL age-of-consent it may not be 18 in other countries than the USA--but there are age limits. So at that level, it isn't crazy. Though virtual items for roleplay--pass me the pipeweed, Mr. Underhill--maybe should be less tightly restricted than reality. Do Linden Lab have something better than the initial automated pass to clear this sort of ambiguity? I don't know.

If getting drunk in World of Warcraft isn't an issue, I don't see why tobacco and alcohol are a problem here.

Ciaran Laval wrote:

"If getting drunk in World of Warcraft isn't an issue, I don't see why tobacco and alcohol are a problem here. Hic!"

Amended.

I had a few curtains that had changed maturity to adult.
How can a curtain be declared adult?
I really prefer not to think of what people use my curtains for, if that is so...lol

No, I think there was a bug in the code that was converting the items to a different maturity level. I had 3 magic boxes affected (of 25 in total), and it was only the middle items that was affected in all 3 (middle when you look in contentfolder of the box). Just a few in a row. And they were all items that wasnt updated, since they arrived from xstreet, so that might also be a factor.
But they didnt include any "wrong" words, unless Library or DinnerRoom is a bad word.

Fortunately I only had around 10 items that were affected by this, but I feel sad for those people who had many more and who have to fix it all, especially if its all because of a bug.
I just deleted my items, because they were ready for achieving anyway.

Xzarina Demina wrote:

But they didnt include any "wrong" words, unless Library or DinnerRoom is a bad word.

This is a catastrophe. I have made 3 sales in the past 3 days with a collective amount of around L$600. I can't even pay my rent. My store has been undermined and there's nothing I can do about it since I can't change maturity settings because of some f%@&*$# bug.

Anyone less stubborn than myself, who may have put in less hard work into their shop than I did, I'm sure would have closed up and said screw it.

The next hurdle LL throws at the merchants, I'm not sure if I'll still have the fight in me. This is ridiculous.

And poor Pancake Nirvana in the other thread and Gor sellers. It seems like LL is trying really hard to crush certain businesses.

I still did not recieve that email.

Prior to reading this announcement I was completing the keywords on a marketplace product that sells fairly often, my Gothic Ruins, a non mature item. I added some keywords including "roleplay" and "Gor".  Now this listing which is also paid for enhancement, does not appear, even if I have "show mature items" checked.  If I look at my store it is gone.

If I check inventory it still registers as there.  I took the word "Gor" out after reading this thread. The item is still gone . . . I cannot find my own listing in my own store unless I hunt it down using my inventory function.  Likewise trying to use Search to find it is hopeless.  Wow.

 

I had noticed my normal rate of sales had steeply dropped this week, and even wondered if it was a search issue. Now I know it is.

 

LL screwed us merchants and creators yet again.  How would you fuckers like to have your ability to pay your bills repeatedly taken away by capricious and arbitrary decisions?

I have my tier coming up next week and at this newly declined rate may very well not be able to pay it.  5 years of sticking it out through every incompetent decision LL has made. I realize LL doesn't care if we lose our stores, they never did.

OK, so I got bored stupid of reading this whole thread by about page 8, but i'm still going to add my own 2 completely valueless cents to the general feeling of  'we got scr**ed again' that's apparent here.

Essentially, my business is selling medieval weapons - now, of course in RL that would be very definitely an 'adult' profession, yet in this fantasy land it barely registers a raised eyebrow.

Lord of the Rings was a 12-rated movie. All my stuff would be appropriate to that,

yet, because of all the different combat meters in SL, it is vital to show which meters your weapons are compatible with.

Enter "Gorean Meter" in any description & suddenly toy swords are 'adult' .

One of my main products had suddenly dropped from healthy sales to zero - I just now discovered that it has been given an adult tag. It's a scripting system for weaponry, it doesn't have any sexual connotation whatsoever, yet now half of SL can't see it.

So, I do what? Remove the tag that tells the customers which meters are supported, or keep it & halve my prospective client-base?

Or start playing with stupid workarounds like "G*rean" in the main description?

This mockery of a system now effectively means I could not even buy my own products, as I utterly refuse to play the age verification game.

I'm 50, & the last time someone asked me my age so I could buy alcohol or cigarettes was 30 years ago.

I'm most certainly not going to do it to buy a toy sword.

I have seen a few good ideas here. 1. was about giving teens an easy to recocnise tag, for instance in their profile that shows they are teens and 2. was about making the Marketplace a "no go zone" for teens. We already have maturity settings on parcels, so, if LL should pick up these 2 ideas the problem would be fixed without herassing us merchants. I am getting a little bit annoyed/angry about the stupid maturuty/teen discussion. People are putting way to much and way to valuable time is this "so called" problem. The internet is "open hunting grounds" for teens already so why create a problem where there is none.

Ami