DONT STOP MAGICBOX

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

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Magnet Homewood wrote:

 I noticed I have different names on MP listings and different names on my boxes in-world, so I bit myself in the butski there

, didnt i? haha

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Yes ... The transfer that had matching names went very smoothly, and the transfer of the remainder was a PITA. 

I dumped them all across, found that about 2/3 were OK, and just trudged through the rest of them.

 

[Ciaran Laval]

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VonGklugelstein Alter wrote:

I think it is an excellent idea to finally get rid of the boxes for unlimited quantity items. I am curious to see how many really old listings by inactive accounts get wiped.

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That's likely to be a bigger issue going forward, as magic boxes need to be somewhere inworld to function, take that away and dead listings will grow.

I think the drop in listings is more likely to be due to people not bothering to move to DD, which might not be a bad thing initially.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Ciaran Laval wrote:

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VonGklugelstein Alter wrote:

I think it is an excellent idea to finally get rid of the boxes for unlimited quantity items. I am curious to see how many really old listings by inactive accounts get wiped.

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That's likely to be a bigger issue going forward, as magic boxes need to be somewhere inworld to function, take that away and dead listings will grow.

I think the drop in listings is more likely to be due to people not bothering to move to DD, which might not be a bad thing initially.

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That's a point, that bloat may increase in the long run.

Although the "less than L$10" part of the phase-out makes me wonder if it's a precursor to restrictions on free or less-than-L$10 items. It'd be better if they announced that now rather than later if that were the case, because the angst of people who first migrated only to find restrictions later would be more than justified.

It also makes me think that perhaps their view on free and no-copy items are changing as they're both items that take up more resources in the marketplace than copy items (in the case of breedable items for instance an egg or nest can sit there forever without selling).

The move will also help determine just how reliable direct delivery is as more people move. The obvious reason for not moving no-copy items to direct delivery is that it isn't reliable enough to not "eat" those irreplaceable goods.

Of course the one stat they won't publish is the reliablity, other than once when they claimed direct delivery was 2.5% more reliable than magic boxes, which is not exactly a huge improvement. They boasted speed over reliability.

Also interesting will be whether there's an increase in region bleeding during and after the cutoff period.

In the meantime, we can follow Phil Rosedale's lead and count to 10,000 while we ponder, because using up brain cycles on obsessive behavior is surely one way to solve problems. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand ....

[Morgaine Christensen]

Is the migration of MB working these days?  I have avoided migration forever, albeit all my newer stuff has been sent via the Merchant Box options.  Am I going to lose my ratings on older products? Slowly a bunch of these older items are being replaced, but takes time for mbe being slow.

[Dakota Linden]

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Morgaine Christensen wrote:

Is the migration of MB working these days?  I have avoided migration forever, albeit all my newer stuff has been sent via the Merchant Box options.  Am I going to lose my ratings on older products? Slowly a bunch of these older items are being replaced, but takes time for mbe being slow.

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Hello Morgaine!

Nothing will change with your listings themselves.  Migrating to Direct Delivery only changes how the item is sent to your customer when they purchase the product from you.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Dakota Linden wrote:

Hey Porky!

I love the Marketplace.  Honestly.  And I have for a very long time.  Years.  I am very lucky indeed that Linden Lab lets me do and work with what I love.

I also enjoy helping users as I want them to love the Marketplace as much as I do.  Yes, I know that is not always possible and there is much yet to still be done.

This is why I am here in the forums, today, to help those users who normally do not send Support Cases.

We want everyone to have as smoothe a transition as possible for the remainder of the migration.

 

 

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It is really good to hear that you personally enjoy helping your customers.  So the question is, why do we not see you on a much more frequent basis helping the Merchant community on these forums when in countless cases a posting from you or even anyone from the Commerce team to clarify a statement or provide an answer to a posted problem would have been a God-send?

Not only that, as you can see in this thread, when a Linden from the Commerce Team actually participates in a thread and provides actual HELP as opposed to simply staying dead silent as the Merchant community's frustration builds up to a boil when they get no answers at all from the Commerce TEam, the response and interaction between CT (i.e. YOU) and the Merchant community is positve.

I do give you credit in that among all the Linden Commerce Team, you are the only one that actually comes onto the forum threads as DAKOTA LINDEN (not under the anonymous mask of "Commerce Team") and engages with us (as rare as your appearances are).  I have not seen a posting from Brooke or any other Linden from the Commerce Team in I would say over a year.

And when in the fall we escalated an improved relationship between Commerce Team and the Merchants to the level that Rodvik make a token posting in the thread, we suggested that the Commece Team re-enstate weekly USER GROUP meetings like several of the other LL Departments have been doing for a long time.  The response from Commerce Team was "NO WE WILL NOT DO THIS".

That kind of response from the team you belong to Dakota flies in the face of your personal position that you really enjoy working with the Merchant community to help.

So here is my request to you directly Dakota... since you have stated how much you enjoy Marketplace and helping our community....

Forget about the Commerce Team's formal "We are scared of our merchants and do not want to meet with them weekly position".   Take it up personally to call a weekly meeting on the grid - at a linden sim (you can ask Simon L. to use his place where they hold all the other weekly user group meetings) - and invite the merchant community to come and chit chat about topics like the shutdown of MB and answer questions and provide help.

What do you say about that?

[Dakota Linden]

Hi Toy!

There seems to be some confusion.  I am not a member of the "Marketplace Team".  I am a member of the Customer Support Team, with my focus and dedication within Linden Lab being the Marketplace.

Because I am a member of Customer Support, my duties resolve around Customer Support cases that are submitted through the Support Portal.

I received special permission to participate in the Merchants Forum this week because of the Direct Delivery Migration. But please keep in mind, as posted in the stickies at the top of this forum, and as noted almost everywhere else, the forums are not the appropriate place to request support assistance.

This is a special case, and as I am sure you are aware, 99.99% of Customer Support never posts to the forums, nor participates in User Groups in world, nor participates in other public venues.

The forums, and specifically the Merchants Forum, is a public venue for you, the Merchant, to discuss Second Life issues that directly affect you, the Merchant, as content creator/seller, and to have a dedicated location to discuss these issues with other residents who are also content creators and sellers.

This includes, but is not limited to, selling and marketing your products through the Second Life Marketplace web site.

Once this week is over, my participation here in the forums will once again stop, since the Merchant Forum is a user forum, not a support forum.

However, after this week is over, and any other time during the year, all users of the Marketplace are encouraged to submit a Support Case if you, or they, require assistance, or need to be directed to information regarding any issues that affect usage of the Marketplace web site.

 

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

Well thanks Dakota for the clarification.  I did not realize you were not part of the Commerce Team.  Now that makes sense why you are the only one from the Commerce Team to communicate with the Merchants in any interactive way.... its because you are NOT from Commerce Team.

As for your explanation on how you and LL support your customers and that you are pointing out again how the forums are not the place to seek support for problems in the marketplace or in SL, and, that merchants of Marketplace that are encountering problems should simply place Support Tickets since LL will not provide support or answers to LL problems on the forums....

Here is where I completely disagree with LL's position.

Since last summer when Rodvik gagged the Resident JIRA whereby it was an avenue that allowed all users to formally report a problem on the grid or on MP where other Merchants could feed their experiences to the problem and allow fast effective resolution of the problem via collaboration, the SL FORUMS are now the only open visible method for SL and MP problems to be reported to the community for all other Merchants to be made aware of.  It also is the only place where a Merchant who is struggling with a problem that he/she thinks is his own issue can find out its actually a bug in the LL code.

The FORUMS are now the only place where LL staff can openly gather and communicate resolution to problems that likely 100's or more other users are having.

Submitting a support ticket only solves a problem repeatedly one at a time where a simple posting on the forums could effectively solve the problem for the whole community.

As such, since LL gagged the JIRA, you Dakota as well as any other LL Support Personnel should be on the SL Forums more than ever to more effectively resolve problems at a much larger scale by publisizing your knowledge and experience as opposed to telling users to ask for help privately one at a time through a support ticket.

Do you not think / believe this would make your job FAR EASIER?  Think about the valued advice you provide in this thread that has helped 100's that read your helpful comments.  Now imagine if you stayed quiet on the forums as you normally do and all these users struggled in frustration to resolve MB retirement or started submitting support tickets to you - over and over and over?

Which do you think would be a more eefective use of your talents, knowledge, and time?

Soooo... how bout it?  Why not take personal initiative and do for us Merchants what the Commerce Team is too afraid to do.... call a weekly User Group session inworld and provide us the help we need.

[Kenbro Utu]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Soooo... how bout it?  Why not take personal initiative and do for us Merchants what the Commerce Team is too afraid to do.... call a weekly User Group session inworld and provide us the help we need.

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"I received special permission to participate in the Merchants Forum this week because of the Direct Delivery Migration."

With this statement by Dakota, I doubt there is any room for "personal initiative" as far as User Group sessions.  Sounds like LL is holding a short leash...

[Alexandra Kavanagh]

For new item postings I dont mind the new way of uploading things to the marketplace.. the merchant outbox is nice.  For older items & migrating  there seems to be still a lot of issues with it and yet LL sets a date for doing away with the magicboxes.  One issue is when trying to delete unassociated items.  I've been getting this error:

So sorry to keep you waiting. We'll be right back!

We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.

Continue shopping

So things arent deleting and deleting one by one is a very slow process and sometimes it still doesnt work. The other issue is with the limited items. Are they doing away with limited item sales?  Its just all frustrating when trying to migrate items over from magic box and things are buggy and very slow. I put it off for awhile hopeing they would fix the issues but seems not .. and now to set a date to discontinue magic boxes. 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Kenbro Utu wrote:

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Soooo... how bout it?  Why not take personal initiative and do for us Merchants what the Commerce Team is too afraid to do.... call a weekly User Group session inworld and provide us the help we need.

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"

I received special permission to participate in the Merchants Forum this week because of the Direct Delivery Migration."

With this statement by Dakota, I doubt there is any room for "personal initiative" as far as User Group sessions.  Sounds like LL is holding a short leash...

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Yes you are right.  Its very clear from Dakota's statement that LL has a major tight short leash on most of their staff communicating with LL's SL customers.  Only specific LL staff like Oz or Andrew or Simon are allowed to freely communicate with residents (i.e. during weekly user group meetings). 

That Dakota actually need permission from the Commerce Team to even post helpful support advice to LL customers is a sad testiment on how much Rodvik wants to isolate his staff from his customers.  It was already proven when he gagged one of the most effective and helpful support avenues for SL...  the Resident JIRA.  Even his own staff quietly grumbled how stupid an idea it was.

So I suspect since Brooke and team dont want any engagement to happen between them and the Merchants... Dakota would not be allowed to host the weekly meetings even if I were to call the meeting and invite her.

PRETTY SAD!

PS:  nice seeing you around Dakota on the forum... see you in a few months.

[Mo Noel]

I just post to vote on the topic:

Don't stop maicbox

 

Some reasons: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/How-to-update-products-with-DD/td-p/1924143

 

In short, if you stop the magicbox:

- you loose efficient workflows, that worked fine for years and take zero time to update products

- you replace that by implementing an unefficient, time consuming and not reliable working workflow

[Pamela Galli]

OTOH it is nice not to have to put things in Magic Boxes anymore.

[Mo Noel]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

OTOH it is nice not to have to put things in Magic Boxes anymore.

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I never needed to do that. It always was done automatic, even new versions of products I had been replaced automatic by my in world servers. You obviously did not read my reasons about what a loss it is to loose the box. It replaces a zero minute reliable working workflow to dozends of minutes workflow with unreliable working tools, that cannot be automated.

For example, now there is a 7 pages(!) manual about what you need to do to update a marketplace product. - something that could be done 100% automatic before.

 

I also don't say: Take away that DD. If you are happy with that, use it. If others are happy with the box, let them use that. Whats wrong with that idea?

[Alicia Sautereau]

I`d make a joke that it`s better to have two half arsed implementations then a full one, but i`m thankfully not a merchant anymore :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

[Czari Zenovka]

I'm with you, Mo.  I'm not AT ALL happy about this whole DD fiasco and have now decided to wait to migrate in case the date gets pushed back again. 

Totally agree that if some people prefer DD, great...but please keep the MBs for the others that prefer them.  I like knowing my items are physically in a box where I can "see" them rather than them disappearing into "the cloud."

[WADE1 Jya]

yes czari, i too hope linden relents. i will be sad to see my boxes go. if in fact linden decides my marketplace store must be killed then i guess that is the end of it.

:catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad: :catsad:

oh well i at least hope linden has fun breaking one of the last few things around here that was still functional.

≡⦿ ﯩ ⦿≡  ...meow