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As SLMP Burns - LL Emperors Cower in Silence?


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"I would have expected more passion behind the convictions if Flea was an Alt of LL".

 

I would be expecting a tone of (((amateurish))) 'desperation' peppered with pseudo agreements and apologetics coming from LL which is ecactly the tone of Flea's writings since he came on here right about the time DD launched. hehe ;-)

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lol, I don't know about that.

I don't know what else you guys want as proof that Magic Boxes drop events and requests without merchants knowing. The script delays everything by 20 seconds when it sends a notification email. It was also suggested that Magic Boxes use XML-RPC as well.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:LSL_XML-RPC

>The current implementation of XML-RPC only allows ONE request to be queued on the front-end server (xmlrpc.secondlife.com) at a time.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-29?

That's just as bad as the LSL script event queue getting filled up.

Instead, XML-RPC lags, you get a new order and the old one just disappears. We've all seen how the backbone of SL works, and it's not good. I don't know, maybe it's just me. When things are working correctly at peak hours I get a few sales an hour. To say that there were no problems with Magic Boxes is to say that XML-RPC worked flawlessly, llEmail worked flawlessly, LSL scripts never exceeded the size of the event queue, and the XStreet/SLMP website worked flawlessly.

Regardless, I don't want this to be about Magic Boxes vs Direct Delivery. The LSL code in Magic Boxes was great. How often did you see a script error? How often did you see it run out of memory? NEVER

The people behind XStreet did a fantastic job with the LSL code. That's not my problem with boxes. My problem is the fact that the back end of marketplace is broken. It doesn't matter if you're using DD or Magic Boxes, things are going to be broken. Instead of fighting about what's what, can we find evidence and proof that the backend/backbone of the marketplace (and probably SL) is severely broken at this time? And demand LL actually tells us things instead of running around fighting with each other about which technology is better?

When/if LL fixes the backbone and back end, we can talk about magic boxes vs DD. Whatever is happening now is affecting everyone regardless of what they use. Most of the SLMP problems don't even involve DD or MBs (like corrupted listing images, corrupted reviews, stale relevancy) so it's pointless to talk about how DD has destroyed everything. Correlation does not imply causation. DD coming out and everything else exploding doesn't mean DD was responsible for SL exploding. It might be, but it might not. You can't tell unless you have evidence.

My point with talking about Magic Boxes all the time is that this isn't just a DD issue. There might be problems with DD as well, but right now everything else is majorly broken. Can you guys at least throw me a bone with the fact that everything is messed up?

From my experience, the problem is that SLMP is broken and DD can work, but it can't work with SLMP broken. I used to think that DD fixed a lot of issues and the problem was magic boxes, but after talking with a lot of the people on this forum and seeing what's been happening these last (nearly!) two weeks, it's quite clear that the problem is much bigger than DD or MB and it doesn't matter which method you use It's going to be unreliable to the point where transactions fail, people get our products for free, and the money for the product either goes back to the customer or into LL's hands.

I don't work for LL and I'm just a merchant. Everyone has a right to be mad. LL is treating us completely wrong, but getting mad over a part of the problem when the problem is significantly larger isn't going to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. I am just trying to remain objective without reaching for the pitchfork and jamming it in the face of everyone I think might be responsible.

If everyone in this forum banded together and made reasonable demands from LL (like something as simple as a status update) instead of doom and gloom and rage, it would help everyone out and this would probably get fixed a lot quicker. The only thing I want out of SLMP is for sales to get better again and to be able to feel confident enough to make new listings and upload new products. My experience with magic boxes was bad and my experience with DD has been good, but not everyone shares the same experience. I think that it's an extremely bad choice by LL to phase out Magic Boxes and that merchants should be left with a choice of what works best for them. If everyone wants to stay fixated on DD and pin that as the root of all of the problems of Second Life, then go ahead. I wouldn't mind going back to lurking and it would be clear that nothing cohesive other than "death to DD" would ever come out of this forum.

I am an extremely logical and non-emotional person and I'm not the type to get angry over things like this (even though my SL income is really important in my real life). Please don't assume that just because I am not angry about this that I am not wanting to see things change and wanting to have these problems go away. The most logical way to get what we all want out of LL is to make a list of sane demands (summary of what's wrong, estimates of when steps to fix it will be completed, another extension to MB cutoff, etc) together and to stop turning this into an anecdotal contest of who had the best experiences with DD and who had the best experiences with MBs.

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Magic boxes in themselves never were the problem, I agree.  Xstreet handled magic boxes appropriately, seemed to have multiple processing queues, retries and all else that was required to account for LSL and other SL script communications unreliability.

Marketplace took an off the shelf package with a single process queue and tried to shoehorn it into working with magicboxes and discovered that it wasn't a good fit and had issues.

Then in a moment of inspiration blamed the Magicbox and set about a whole new project to solve an issue that was self created.

Blaming Magic boxes as "unreliable" was like saying that UDP as a protocol is unreliable.  It's perfectly appropriate if the reliability is built higher up in the architecture.  In my view, LL shot the wrong target.

Another example, Xstreet ANS was architected and coded to retry sending data until the web host receiving it acknowledged it.  That's reliability designed into the process.

LL's replacement Marketplace ANS sends once regardless if there's anything to receive it and has NO retry.  That's yet another point of failure designed into the process.

For months i've tried to be charitable, I do understand that the team work within constraints but there's just nobody making key design decisions from the top.  The stakeholders aren't engaged and communication is non existent.  It's a guaranteed project fail methodology even before anyone approaches a keyboard to do any coding.

Immature methodology from the very beginning.

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The point I wanted to make in this thread is not as much about all the rampent problems that were spawned by the poorly tested DD deployment.  Its as much about the fact that quite likely the Commerce Group's DD deployment has placed MP into a fundamentally irreversable situation of constant and unpredictable DB corruptions and sales transaction anomalies.

What the prime objective / point of this thread is, is to bring to attention how LL is handling this.  From Rodvik down to the actual LL Commerce Team, their utter silence on this serious situation as well as no communication of what these un-resolvable issue will mean for the slated MB Retirement date that is aproaching fast and I would suspect a large number of MP listings are still not migrated to DD.

Its simple unacceptable that a primary SL ecommerce engine from the sale and distribution of most content into SL is being treated by Rodvik and LL management with such abandonment of such a critical aspect of SL function and feature.

It has become very clear for some time that Brooke and anyone else at the Commerce Team has pretty much all but shut down any communications with their customer base. They are completely out of touch with their community.  They realized they have messed up MP big time and would be the actions of my kids when they know they have screwed up big time - both them and the LL Management have simply put their heads in the sand and are avoiding the issue.

 

As such , we Merchants need to bring this critical issue to the top and get it known.  LL Management is known to be forced to take action and communicate if they are shamed into it.  It has often worked and sadly it is all we are left with now to get Rodvik and the LL Commerce Team to step up and communicate and tell us what is going on and how they will deal with this.

Here is my suggestion for ALL MERCHANTS and even any SL Customers that care about the current and future health of MarketPlace....

If you have a Twitter account.  Send tweets to :

@rodvik @secondlife

and tell them as a Merchant you need them to tell this community what is going on and how the Commerce Team will fix this.

If rodvik and the official secondlife tweet group get flooded with Merchant tweets demanding them to take visible action.... I am very sure we will hear from them.

Demand an official blog posting from Rodvik or the VP of SL Ecommerce on what is going on and how will they fix this.

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Sassy Romano wrote:

Magic boxes in themselves never were the problem, I agree.  Xstreet handled magic boxes appropriately, seemed to have multiple processing queues, retries and all else that was required to account for LSL and other SL script communications unreliability.

Marketplace took an off the shelf package with a single process queue and tried to shoehorn it into working with magicboxes and discovered that it wasn't a good fit and had issues.

Then in a moment of inspiration blamed the Magicbox and set about a whole new project to solve an issue that was self created.

Blaming Magic boxes as "unreliable" was like saying that UDP as a protocol is unreliable.  It's perfectly appropriate if the reliability is built higher up in the architecture.  In my view, LL shot the wrong target.

Another example, Xstreet ANS was architected and coded to retry sending data until the web host receiving it acknowledged it.  That's reliability designed into the process.

LL's replacement Marketplace ANS sends once regardless if there's anything to receive it and has NO retry.  That's yet another point of failure designed into the process.

For months i've tried to be charitable, I do understand that the team work within constraints but there's just nobody making key design decisions from the top.  The stakeholders aren't engaged and communication is non existent.  It's a guaranteed project fail methodology even before anyone approaches a keyboard to do any coding.

Immature methodology from the very beginning.

Sassy... your tech talk gets me all warm and fuzzy inside.  Thats why i likes you so much!  Your points are so dead on.  Being a network architect - I totally grasped your UDP example. :)

Big Warm Hugsss!!!

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>The biggest problem with magic boxes is that there is no reliable way to have in world objects communicate with websites and vice versa.

I do accept that as a shortcoming. I also see a number of possible work-arounds that might not have turned out to be less reliable than what DD has been. Again, I should point out that the website and the boxes seem to communicate just fine as long as the boxes think they are rezzed on Linden land. It's not the boxes that are broken; it's what they're connected to that's broken, and not even that if what they're connected to is a Linden sim.

> It's rather clear that they are either understaffed and can't deal with our concerns or they don't care.

Maybe they wouldn't need so many staff to fix things if they just didn't hire people to break things in the first place.

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>Next some merchants & shoppers alike (for different reasons) begin to apply pressure on Lindens to shut MP down.

Then Lindens graciously 'comply' with these demands. After all its what residents want.

Finally SL returns to be as it was long before --- an inworld-only shopping experience.

...

Now I'm really confused.

Whose alt am I supposed to be?

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I agree: 
@rodvik @secondlife  

 

Who knows, it might get his attention.  I already tweeted him the Harvard paper Sassy linked to.


I sent him and @secondlife a could messages to the thead on sales with no received payment and asking him when he will eventually be a CEO and deal with this escalating problem within his team

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>Based on what she says, Dakota in Customer Support is as in the dark as we are, perhaps Brooke knows nothing yet too.

I'm also convinced that Dakota is mostly in the dark.

As for Brooke either knowing or not knowing something, if providing anything that resembles a solution will also mean admitting there's something she does or does not know, that's just not going to happen.

>I predict they quietly shut it down in near future.

I previously projected a total Marketplace shut-down date of 5 July 2012 and I'm so far seeing only reasons to stick to that as a projection.

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>When/if LL fixes the backbone and back end, we can talk about magic boxes vs DD.

I think that's fair and reasonable.

>If everyone in this forum banded together and made reasonable demands from LL (like something as simple as a status update) instead of doom and gloom and rage, it would help everyone out and this would probably get fixed a lot quicker.

I guess you weren't around this forum all that much between when DD was announced and when it was finally deployed.

What I see in here are some of the most pleasant, most patient and most forgiving people imaginable (does not include me) and I see them reaching for the stick because, finally, they're just all out of carrots.

Being not angry didn't work any better for them than being angry is working for them now, so it's partly a question of of just trying any approach they haven't yet tried.

There was at least one person telling them from the start that being nice would not work because all the classic diagnostic signals were already being present for a malefactor operating inside LL. I can't really fault people for not wanting to believe this, though, even now. It's natural just not to want to believe such a thing if it is at all possible not to believe it.

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Hopefully the magic boxes will be shut off before the new region idling system comes online. Because that will surely decimate magic box performance in empty regions.

 

Just thought I would toss in a little habanero sauce on the convo. :P

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>Hopefully the magic boxes will be shut off before the new region idling system comes online. Because that will surely decimate magic box performance in empty regions.

...aaand now we also know why the new region idling system is "necessary".

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Ann Otoole wrote:

Hopefully the magic boxes will be shut off before the new region idling system comes online. Because that will surely decimate magic box performance in empty regions.

Just thought I would toss in a little habanero sauce on the convo.
:P

Evil. But region idling is a handy way to stuff even more regions on aging hardware. The days of having your own guaranteed amount of server power are now over for the $300/month that should buy you a dedicated multi core machine.

This will affect more than magic boxes. Next up is the phase where people start pointing out the problems after the damage is done about what's wrong with it, the pretending to fix some trivial bits, and the final ease into less resources and more sluggish sim behavior.

Incompetence is only surpassed by the ability to milk the life out of SL.

 

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>Next up is the phase where people start pointing out the problems after the damage is done about what's wrong with it, the pretending to fix some trivial bits, and the final ease into less resources and more sluggish sim behavior.

Maybe they can become even more cost efficient by gradually cutting back on color resolution.

Of course when people complain about the new 8-color "efficiency upgrade", LL will naturally have to accomodate user demand by going to a grayscale monochrome format.

Maybe by the time they've finally "upgraded" to an all-text format, they'll also finally have purged their user pool of any cynical naysayers who still think that simply committing more processor rescources might have been a better direction to go in from the start.

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Flea Yatsenko wrote:

 

My point with talking about Magic Boxes all the time is that this isn't just a DD issue. There might be problems with DD as well, but right now everything else is majorly broken. Can you guys at least throw me a bone with the fact that everything is messed up?

 

Everything's messed up. ;)


Flea Yatsenko wrote:

If everyone in this forum banded together and made reasonable demands from LL (like something as simple as a status update) instead of doom and gloom and rage, it would help everyone out and this would probably get fixed a lot quicker. 

I thought that was what we were doing by filing the jiras and updating as more info is known.

 

I agree that a well-functioning MP WITH regular communication from CTL is what I want and expect from LL.

 

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Kampu Oyen wrote:

>Did the $ float away to the ether?

That is practically the only way LL makes any money off of the SLM.

Money that is lost or destroyed never has to be paid out again.

Otherwise, maybe it does.

Maybe the $L are in the same black hole as a one-of-a-kind sculpture donated for an event, my favorite easy chair, an entire living room set, 3 of my rezzed in world archive boxes (because I thought archiving currently unused items in world was safer than being in inventory - silly me), and an entire folder of very expensive gowns - all $L I paid out (except for the sculpture) and lost due to inventory failures AND items that were rezzed in world, under the correct land tag, and locked. 

I'm sure others have similar stories.  Different form of losing money but still money.

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Ann Otoole wrote:

Hopefully the magic boxes will be shut off before the new region idling system comes online. Because that will surely decimate magic box performance in empty regions.

 

Just thought I would toss in a little habanero sauce on the convo.
:P

I knew there was a reason I never liked spicy food. ;)

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Kampu Oyen wrote:

>Next up is the phase where people start pointing out the problems after the damage is done about what's wrong with it, the pretending to fix some trivial bits, and the final ease into less resources and more sluggish sim behavior.

Maybe they can become even more cost efficient by gradually cutting back on color resolution.

Of course when people complain about the new 8-color "efficiency upgrade", LL will naturally have to accomodate user demand by going to a grayscale monochrome format.

Maybe by the time they've finally "upgraded" to an all-text format, they'll also finally have purged their user pool of any cynical naysayers who still think that simply committing more processor rescources might have been a better direction to go in from the start.

WOOT!!!!  I can keep my old PC!!!!!

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Kampu Oyen wrote:

Maybe by the time they've finally "upgraded" to an all-text format, they'll also finally have purged their user pool of any cynical naysayers who still think that simply committing more processor rescources might have been a better direction to go in from the start.

LOL Rodvik so happens to be a huge fan of alltext games so this potentially is a real item on the itinerary. Very cost effective for Linden Lab - its a true win-win. Only trick might be making it look like residents asked for it :matte-motes-confused:

Getting people to cough up $300 USD a month for alltext 'sims' might prove tricky as well :catlol:
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I have to say, as horribly broken as the MP is -- and although I have seen every bitter minute of it up till now and this is the worst yet -- I think it is better crippled than dead. LL, just please don't kill it off completely, like, by accident? Just keep the life support going at least.

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Lasher Oh wrote:

Or perhaps sell it back to the original owners who knew how to run a marketplace facility !

^L^

I just don't think I could survive a reversion back to Xstreet.  Redoing all those listings?

 

But as far as putting Apotheos back in charge -- well, if the can get him, it could not hurt.

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