Email Address Change from Marketplace - Has anyone noticed?

[Darrius Gothly]

Just like Zanara mentioned in her post, I log in automatically when my browser opens and loads the Transaction History page. I never see the Merchant Home Page unless I need to do something that I don't have a favorite/shortcut for. But really the main point is .. why did we need this change? What was wrong with the previous address? I mean, it's fine they made such a miniscule change and it's very easy to handle, but why make this change when there are so many other much higher priority fixes that need attention?

[Arwen Serpente]

Thanks Nefertiti,

I see that now. Like Darrius, I don't go to that page unless I have some kind of maintenance to do on my store. In the past, these kinds of updates have been added to the CTL thread/sticky here in the forums. Guess not any more.

[Pamela Galli]

This is yet another example of CT making stuff that they don't understand anything about how it is used. They think we log in to our store every day! 

[Arwen Serpente]

I do go to my marketplace store everyday, but not necessarily the Merchant Home page. My regular system is to log into the Transactions on the Dashboard and check overnight business transactions, check my emails, and come here to the Forums to see what's been going on. I'm fine with going to the Merchant Home page to see announcements, but I think that there should be an announcement here on the Forums saying something like "We will no longer be posting updates here in the Forums. Please check your Merchant Home page for post-Maintenance changes from now on."  I don't think I've seen that kind of message.

While this particular change is "small", many people are waking up and wondering where their emails went and don't know that they may be accumulating in their spam folders and that they need to either look there going forward or create a new email filter.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

My guess is that it was on their list of things to do and it was the easiest. Isn't that how everything gets fixed in SL. The low hanging fruit gets picked away, while all the rest rot on their high branches.

[Lasher Oh]

"but why make this change when there are so many other much higher priority fixes that need attention?"

 

Possibly a little bit of system integration work before moving full "Steam" ahead!

 

^L^

 

 

[Darrius Gothly]

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Lasher Oh wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

but why make this change when there are so many other much higher priority fixes that need attention?

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Possibly a little bit of system integration work before moving full "Steam" ahead!

^L^ 

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ROFLMAO!!! Okay .. pass me the tissues. I have tears rolling down my face now. Thank you Lasher!

[Darrius Gothly]

I set up an RSS Feed so that any time Commerce Team Linden makes a Blog or Forum post, I get a "Feed" of it in my RSS Reader. That way I get notified for anything they say, just like I get feeds for the Second Life Grid Status updates. It's a very handy way for me to get notified as soon as they make any announcements.

You can use the following URL to add to your own RSS Reader to get the same "Commerce Team Linden Tracker" feed:

http://community.secondlife.com/secondlife/rss/tracker?user.id=6166

 

Of course that does NOT happen when they only update the Merchant Home Page notice .. and thus the update escaped my notice. The only indication I had was the Second Life Grid Status update about Planned Marketplace Maintenance, but that gives no details other than to say when it started and when it ended.

If they had included a link to the Release Notes in the Second Life Grid Status posting then all of us that follow it via RSS would have had a direct link. Instead the notice simply said:

 

[Resolved] Scheduled Marketplace Maintenance

[Resolved 1:20pm PDT, 26 September 2012] Marketplace maintenance is complete, the delayed orders should be completed shortly.

[Posted 11:10am PDT, 26 September 2012] We are currently performing maintenance on the Second Life Marketplace. While this maintenance is in progress, the completion of some orders may be delayed. Please keep an eye on this blog post for updates.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

My guess is that it was on their list of things to do and it was the easiest. Isn't that how everything gets fixed in SL. The low hanging fruit gets picked away, while all the rest rot on their high branches.

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Low hanging fruit indeed, all the way back to March.

Rule of thumb seems to be that if you can't reach it from a sitting position it doesn't exist.

Low hanging fruit ... check.

Beer fridge ... check.

Job security ... check.

Breakfast burrito ... check.

One lonely known issue listed ... check.

I'm thinking the average merchant gets more done in a day than the commerce team gets done in a month. Which may be the only difference that matters between an entrepreneur and a salaried employee.

Just in case they were wondering where the angst comes from.

[phaedra Exonar]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

My guess is that it was on their list of things to do and it was the easiest. Isn't that how everything gets fixed in SL. The low hanging fruit gets picked away, while all the rest rot on their high branches.

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I wouldn't call changing a email address low hanging fruit, that more like fruit that has all ready fallen to the ground as far as effort goes. lol   With the rate they are picking the low hanging fruit, 90% of that is rotting to.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

Hilarious!

Let's not put all this onto the employees tho. Just look at how anything gets done at the Lab. The clothing deformer is a 6 month project, from start to finish. We are quickly coming up to a year now. Go to any User Group Meeting. The most common statement from a Linden is, "I have to get to my next meeting". What company in the world needs this many meetings? I'm not talking user group meetings, even tho I feel we could drop the total amount to 3 User Group meetings. Meetings for company stuff should not be weekly, or daily. This says that people need their hands held. I'd love to see the total amount of meetings these guys have to attend every week and how many actual productive hours they put in. Again, I don't think it is their fault. You always have to put this on the higher ups.

It would not surprise me at all if they have meetings about meetings.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Clothing deformer, ugg.

Meanwhile in another galaxy, on another planet in the 'verse 4 guys finish new avatar rigs, complete with sliders, and that along with a new from scratch marketplace and other work since July.

I think something is wrong with the hamster wheel physics at LL.

On the meetings front, there's an interesting new concept. You get fewer people to "think stuff up" and replace them with managers to vet customer feedback and build the workload and everyone who used to think stuff up gets to know what they're doing when they come in, in the morning. Then you have far less meetings.

I don't envy the employees on the lack of sound direction, which seems to be an issue with LL based on some ex-Linden feedback on sites like glassdoor and such.

The think tank, love machine, "lab"  kind of thing is a failed experiment. It just resulted in too little bang for the buck.

[Arwen Serpente]

FYI - For whatever reason, the email change was just rolled back today. So, if you reset your email filters for the service@mail.secondlife.com, I suppose you should reset it back to no-reply@marketplace.secondlife.com

From Merchant Home Page:

September 28, 2012

The latest Marketplace deploy was rolled back, restoring the email address Marketplace emails are sent from to "no-reply@marketplace.secondlife.com". Please see the Release Notes for more information.

Additionally, we are aware of some issues with Product Listing Enhancements. Keep an eye on the Grid Status page for more details.

...when you go to the Release Notes, there's really no information other than this:

Released September 26, 2012

ROLLED BACK

 

[ab Vanmoer]

 

Wow, that must be so disheartening for the commerce team,  a whole months worth of work rolled back

[Porky Gorky]

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ab Vanmoer wrote:

 

Wow, that must be so disheartening for the commerce team,  a whole months worth of work rolled back

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That's an hour of their lives they will never get back. :smileyhappy:

[Lasher Oh]

Their server was probably getting  swamped with futile replies having dumped the 'no-reply' from the subject line. Next  attempt from CT 'service-no-reply' perhaps !

If nothing else they have created another months worth of work for themselves that doesn't actually involve fixing something important or adding a useful feature.

 

^L^

[Couldbe Yue]

be scared everyone - Rod threatened that they were going to make it easier for us

 

We may may mistakes, perhaps even bone headed mistakes but we genuinely beleive in empowering our customers with more and more ways to be creative and (hopefully) monetize their creations. Not less.

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/76184-jira-shutdown-limit-scripting-smaller.html#post1634050

Now why does that remind me of the time just before they unleashed slm on us?  Am I the only one getting tired of their antics?

[Dartagan Shepherd]

The idea is that if you're on the ball you don't make boneheaded decisions in the first place.

And that when people do make too many boneheaded decisions, they're shipped back out into the world so that the boneheads can make boneheaded decisions elsewhere.

Calling attention to your own boneheaded-ness only empowers your right to continue to be a bonehead, it doesn't empower your customers to do anything but use a boneheaded product that's even more difficult to monetize for anyone.

Decline should be a pretty great indicator that it's not working, the rest is denial and boneheaded management.

We should teach this in school. It's ok to be a boneheaded failure, as long as you want to empower people and change the world.

Jeez, trying to communicate with LL to make a better product suited to non-boneheaded customers who value stability, consistency and a platform that's not already overly priced and monetized is like talking to a bunch of boneheads.

This is just embarassing.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

(snip) ... This is just embarassing.

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You've perfectly summed up my exasperation too Dart. It's like we're watching someone pounding their head against a wall. No matter how many times and ways we say "It will stop hurting if you stop pounding your head on the wall..." they seem to feel it's not only smarter to continue but that somehow we are dumb for suggesting they stop.

Frankly I wouldn't mind them continuing, but it's my blood that winds up on the wall and I've already got a headache that will not stop!

[Dartagan Shepherd]

You know, if I could babble at you a bit, since this OP topic is resolved anyway ...

Finished reading that thread that Couldbe referenced, so in the context of Rod's statement being about the Jira, and because I rarely say anything positive these days ... I partially agree with what they've done with Jira.

Partially being the key word.

On the plus side, Jira to a casual user is a death sentence. No average user should be exposed to that beast. If they want new users, making bug reporting painless is a great move.

It was also being abused by customer support. A bug should have nothing to do with customer support. If a user reports something that may be a bug, the customer support person should be submitting it for the customer. Never, ever should they have been using it as a cog in the support machine.

On the negative side, it was valuable to everyone to be able to work on a more than casual level. I know I'd built things that if not for being able to see which bugs applied to scripting, I'd not have been able to build anything resembling a stable product.

But therein lies the bonehead rub ... if the boneheads were on top of quality control you wouldn't need to compare every single script function in the wiki against the situations where it didn't work (the bugs).

So rather than finally admit that they need to up their game in quality (across the board), they target the entire mechanism of bug reporting.

If that comes with making scripting and other areas that people rely on the Jira for as a knowledge base better over the next year ... great! We're now adding stability and reliability to SL that it's sorely needed, and the Jira is no longer needed as a knowledge base or a crutch for customer support.

Unfortunately, admitting the underlying problem of quality as a priority, or to "our" level of expectation isn't likely.

It's crazy in that on this forum alone there a dozen people that you could get together that overall could improve SL in a significant way.

Problem is that it has to start with their monetizing, and that's something they just refuse to address that they've become too greedy.

Even now they're looking to hire a specialist in "currency" and part of their interview questions have been (paraphrased) "what would you do to creatively monetize SL in interesting new ways?" in their hiring process.

The monetization here has just gone way too far. Most people don't understand the 50,000 ways SL actually monetizes, although more and more people are becoming aware of game monetization mechanics, some of them being the creative people who SL "might" attract if it didn't reek of monetization. People sense it, regardless and it's distasteful in underlying ways.

There are so many paths to SL growing again that it's crazy, but if they can't overhaul their ideas of monetization into simpler payment and packaging and reasonable prices instead of being so clever with (increasingly outdated) business models, it's kind of moot.

To take something like this, a no brainer virtual world platform, with a die hard user base and then kill it because their implementation of their wet dreams of monetization don't mesh with an old fashioned userbase that want excellence at a reasonable (and simple) price is just well ... boneheaded.

[Darrius Gothly]

(babble accepted)

You struck an interesting note with your commentary on the underlying "ick" feeling of all these creative ways to monetize the platform. Way back when you and I first locked horns, the argument of the day was the Freebie Roadmap. When you strip off all the emotional folderol that went with it, it was essentially a disagreement between those that wanted to totally monetize every action and service versus those that felt like most if not all of the "stuff" in Second Life should be free for all to enjoy. Two polar opposite perspectives embodied in a "rubber meets the road" predicament.

I do agree with you on the fact that there are so many examples everywhere of how the platform can be and is being monetized. So many so that it seems that just "letting go" and letting the organic nature of the platform take over would result in a natural and very positive cash flow to the operators (Linden Lab). But because it is being managed by a "Company" .. and one with a management overstocked with money people .. the risk inherent in just letting go would never fly. (Can you imagine trying to answer that first question of "and how much will this method make in the first six months?" LOL)

I had not thought of looking at the JIRA as a "crutch" for customer support ... however now that you've mentioned it, I totally agree. I was aware that it was becoming almost a dumping ground for those sorts of support questions that go beyond the scripted answers, but I hadn't conceived of that as being a problem in the broader corporate sense. I think you are right on with that analysis as it now seems apparent the "Support dumped to JIRA" path was not only being overused but also was winding up being the final resting place rather than the launching pad for improvement that it should have been. In that light I can also (as you say "partially") understand why their solution of locking it up kind of makes sense. We also agree though that as only a partial solution, perhaps a poorly aimed solution, it will eventually prove ineffective as it doesn't really solve the true problems .. lack of quality and improvement through growth.

I have to admit to allowing myself a good chuckle at the interview question you posted. I'm not sure I want to know how you came to learn of it, but I can certainly imagine reading it on the questionnaire .. especially from a "Left Coaster" company such as the Lab. (Is my red neck showing again? dadgummit!) I think I'd rather read such questions as "Do you understand how the Second Life platform operates now and how it is currently being monetized? Suggest a more organic solution to increase monetization without souring the love quotient that defines the current customer base." If they can find someone that can answer the first one and remain intelligible through the second then they might just have a chance of infusing some energy in the right direction.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Hmm, sorry about the hiring question. I'm coming up empty. Have scanned some old logs, re-skimmed previous interviews and announcements.

You did make me realize that I used to include links to most statements that I would make like this. They seem to have sucked so much of my brain through a straw that I've gotten sloppy with SL discussions and descended into more rant and snipe than healthy discussion.

Regardless, it was sometime around the M and Pink era. Odd that you mention that old listing fee debate which was from around then as well. I know Pink mentioned that choosing a name in itself was part of their cultural creativity test.

That whole time was a case in point of monetization. Pink used to say "I can monetize anything". At that time, if you remember the whole set of office hours ... lots of talk about how to monetize various aspects of the marketplace. When the old team actually engaged here in the forums they used to pretty much lay out their plans for influencing sales as much as their desire to build in any features, and even at that, all features led back to further monetization (advertising, listing fees, etc.).

Embarassing that I was on the wrong side of that old debate, as you and I both knew at the time that the acquisition of the marketplace was a blatant disregard and end to independently run markets and a healthy ecosystem.

Used to joke about it, but it's true that a great thing brought into SL falls under "our world" until it reaches 7 figures and then it becomes "their world" and gets acquired. So much for developing killer applications that will bring people in.

Ultimately this is a "cake and eat it too" company. They've simply used every model they could and stuffed into into the kitchen sink that is SL (subscription, free play, currency, advertising, etc.). And that has resulted in less money flow for everyone except the lab (actually less for them as well, due to decline because of overpricing)..

Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge them profit. Just that it should have been scaled to a simpler model and pricing that would have allowed them growth and flexibility rather than a decline that could lead to a point of no return.

I could point to another virtual world out there (CP) that's starting off with a far more realistic model, or that the only realistic and consistant argument for opensim is that the pricing is reasonable.

I probably harp on this subject a lot, but they're so out of date that even breathing $1,000 setup and $300/month fee for private estates or their practice of doubling tier too steeply for mainland parcel sizes is enough to be a non-starter for new users.

Now they're taking SL from virtual world to the new thing a "sandbox game", which means yes we're becoming a game, where we used to be something different.

You would think at some point they'd wake up and quit with the culture and reward employees for focusing on doing what they do best, rather than create this hodge podge of employees being creative, choosing project ownership and just realize the only path is to forget what they want to do with SL, and what they want out of it, and just develop it for the customers and the customers only.

But the next time I want to lose money I'll surely hire someone great with say networking and let them do ...oh, whatever they want to take ownership of, whether they've got experience in that or not. If they say they can handle it, why not let them work on 3 projects. Heck, maybe I'll even spread them across the country and let them work remotely.

The company excels at creating no-win scenarios for themselves.

"Would you like to play a game?" -- War Games.

[Arwen Serpente]

Hey Guys (Dart & Darrius), I'm enjoying your conversation but since it's a weeee bit off from the OP, it could start to get kind of confusing if people look to this thread for info about the now defunct :matte-motes-dead: email address change.

Maybe a new thread would be good?

 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Sure thing. Sorry Arwen.

Out of gas, unless Darrius gets me wound up again in another thread.

[Arwen Serpente]

No need to apologize! Good discussions are pretty rare. I just thought this thread has seen it's day and should probably just be left to fade away....