When will group chat ever be fixed?

[MB Robonaught]

When will group chat  ever be fixed? Either the chat won't start or is so lagged it isn't funny. Some of us need group chat to run events in the background for communications. It's 2013 and chat lag like this went out with IRC in the mid 90's.

[Nalates Urriah]

Good question.

From talking with Lindens we now that there are plans to make another pass at improving chat. A bit over a year ago effort was made to improve the group chat system. The improvements let them take the group limit up to 42. But, as time has passed the use of chat has increased and eaten up the improvements.

Basically the load chat could carry was increased. Then users increased their chat and used up the extra capacity. So, we are back to an over loaded chat system.

Currently they are working on the user interface for chat. There is a project viewer for the new Chat Hub User Interface (CHUI). As best I can tell there are no 'chat system' improvements, like less lag.

Apparently getting 4,000+ servers and 60k+ people divided into thousands of groups' chat communications coordinated is not the simple IRC process most of us are familiar with. Whatever the case, SL chat sucks. 

Is there anything the users can do? Yes. Each time you hit a chat error like cannot connect or open chat session or lag gets bad and chat text is out of order by 60 or more seconds, report it in the JIRA. Don't expect to file just one report and get anything done. You will need to report the problem each time you run into it. You will also need to get your friends to report their problems.

Reports need to be explicit and contain actionable information. That means times, places, group names and good descriptions of what is happening. Include your PING, server FPS, region name and other pertinent information.

Currently there are only 200+ BUG reports per month. So, if your group that is having problems starts to complain, it could make a significant impact. Don't expect to get a fix without some significant effort on the community's part.

Even if you do make a major impact and the Lab changes priorities and moves chat to the top of its list, this is a complex enough problem that it will likely take some time to get a fix... think months.