Does LL want to fix SL

[Vivienne Schell]

Even after 12 years i cannot differ between premium and free accounts...hmm,  what was it? "Payment Info on File" or something?

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Even after 12 years i cannot differ between premium and free accounts...hmm,  what was it? "Payment Info on File" or something?

You can have payment info on file and not be premium. LL will take your money regardless of your premium membership status

Edited November 23, 2017 by BilliJo Aldrin
fixed a spelling mistake

[Vivienne Schell]

On 19.11.2017 at 8:46 PM, ChinRey said:

Yes, they do want to fix SL and they are actually working hard on it.

I´d be happy if they would not break anything they need to fix.

Almost my entire MP listings got deleted completely without any notification - text, pictures, ratings, inventory. This issue  does not only affect me, but a LOT of creators and merchants (they most probably only did not notice the issue yet..because: no notification by LL).

Yes, they are working hard. Extremely hard. They went for Thanksgiving Holiday.

[Alwin Alcott]

2 hours ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Yes, they are working hard. Extremely hard. They went for Thanksgiving Holiday.

oh yes how dare they, celebrate a special day with their family while Vvienne has a problem.

[Tari Landar]

3 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

There was a very outspoken forumite back in the day that was also a merchant, buildings i believe, that was vehement about Merchants being only Premium members. She wanted each and every merchant to be forced to become premium or never be able to sell on the MP or have an inworld store. Several others agreed with her. There are plenty of premium users that lok down on and criticize non-premium users. 

Yes, ^ that, lol. 

I know I'm not completely losing my mind, I've seen it as well, on the forums, inworld, etc.... Now whether those complaints people make against non-premium members has much, if any, value, or are even founded on fact....is probably debatable depending on who you ask.  But it happens way more frequently than some people think. Like I said though, I don't pretend to understand where people get this logic(or lack thereof as it most often appears to be), I only know that they do it, lol. 

[Tari Landar]

2 hours ago, Vivienne Schell said:

I´d be happy if they would not break anything they need to fix.

Almost my entire MP listings got deleted completely without any notification - text, pictures, ratings, inventory. This issue  does not only affect me, but a LOT of creators and merchants (they most probably only did not notice the issue yet..because: no notification by LL).

Yes, they are working hard. Extremely hard. They went for Thanksgiving Holiday.

Umm, they ARE working on the issue, and if you read the other threads about it Whirly shared the JIRA issues, including the main bug causing this.

God forbid something go wrong, and they have to fix it...and they take their time fixing it so they don't screw anything else up. But, yes, our MP listings are far more important.

You're not alone, and it's not the end of the world, lol. I'm actually pretty sure that not all LL employees have today off, too. So, you can either be patient, or you can continue to be angry, but neither one will really have much effect on how quickly the issue gets resolved (or issues as may be the case here)....so why not choose the option that is far less stressful?  Ie...be patient grasshoppa, they're working on it. 

[Vivienne Schell]

36 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

oh yes how dare they, celebrate a special day with their family while Vvienne has a problem.

Oh yes, this isn´t only my problem, apparently it´s a major issue which affects a lot of people.

https://status.secondlifegrid.net/incidents/nylvk04mplfd

And no, it does not only affect n-copy items, and no, there were not always notifications sent to the people affected. The bug has been reported to LL via JIRA meanwhile,.not only by me but (among others) by Casper, who´s bestselling items were deleted.

And NOTHING has been "resolved". Nothing has been restored. And there is no advice for people who are affected. So what now? Do we all have to rebuild our listings or should we wait until their majesties will return from their well deserved holiday to restore the deleted listings?

The marketplace is a multimillion dollar business, not peanuts or a joke. You know  what would happen at comparable companies which run such a business and bork it like THAT? Oh Uh.

Yes, they work hard. Extremely hard.

 

Edited November 23, 2017 by Vivienne Schell

[Tari Landar]

5 hours ago, Vivienne Schell said:

And NOTHING has been "resolved". Nothing has been restored. And there is no advice for people who are affected. So what now? Do we all have to rebuild our listings or should we wait until their majesties will return from their well deserved holiday to restore the deleted listings?

 

You wait patiently like the rest of us, and not throw temper tantrums while waiting. It really is that simple.

LL employees, whether we always agree with what they do, or rather that they are told to do..or not do....are in fact, working just as hard as you, I, or anyone else at the *job*(s) they are given. To pretend they don't just because you're angry about an issue that happens to affect you right now, doesn't change this. Do you get this angry about issues that don't affect you?

If you're concerned, follow the JIRA issues, as has been suggested countless times, and wait. What more do you want people to do? They can't magically fix your issue(s) at the drop of a hat, it's a serious problem, which they are *taking serious, and it's plagued loads of folks....Most of them just seem to have way more patience. 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

9 hours ago, Vivienne Schell said:

They went for Thanksgiving Holiday.

And you know this for fact because? You really think they don't have technicians working on this? Just because the support staff is on vacation for the Holiday doesn't mean they don't have staff working on this. I called Comcast earlier because there was an outage in my area. Guess what, they answered the phone and told me techs were on site working on the issue. Funny how some people don't actually have a holiday off. 

[Vivienne Schell]

1 hour ago, Tari Landar said:

LL employees, whether we always agree with what they do, or rather that they are told to do..or not do

Sure. Someone told them to mess up the database, oh wow.

Seriously, you make me gasp. Obviously you share that naive opinion that Second Life is not a business, but a hippie flower power event. Exactly this kind of opinion lead to the constant decline of user and customer numbers over the past years, prevented Second Life from going mainstream,  and at some point the straw will break the camel´s neck. They can add the most glorious features, kudos, but as long as something not excusable like messing up a commerce database in operation happens, any kind of confidence in this business gets discredited and shattered.

And no, no one sits there and waits patiently. Everyone affected should be angry. Because everyone affected has ALL the reasons to be angry. Not only because of the inexcusable, massive and lousy error/bug they produced, but also because of their lame reaction in regards to customer relations.

But yeah, sit down and wait patiently and hail the holy Lindens until Second Life will experience the next, even more disasterous blackout - probably the final one.

[NevaehHeartstrings]

24 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Sure. Someone told them to mess up the database, oh wow.

But yeah, sit down and wait patiently and hail the holy Lindens until Second Life will experience the next, even more disasterous blackout - probably the final one.

[Tari Landar]

3 hours ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Sure. Someone told them to mess up the database, oh wow.

Seriously, you make me gasp. Obviously you share that naive opinion that Second Life is not a business, but a hippie flower power event. Exactly this kind of opinion lead to the constant decline of user and customer numbers over the past years, prevented Second Life from going mainstream,  and at some point the straw will break the camel´s neck. They can add the most glorious features, kudos, but as long as something not excusable like messing up a commerce database in operation happens, any kind of confidence in this business gets discredited and shattered.

And no, no one sits there and waits patiently. Everyone affected should be angry. Because everyone affected has ALL the reasons to be angry. Not only because of the inexcusable, massive and lousy error/bug they produced, but also because of their lame reaction in regards to customer relations.

But yeah, sit down and wait patiently and hail the holy Lindens until Second Life will experience the next, even more disasterous blackout - probably the final one.

My store was affected, and I see no reason to be angry, it changes nothing. But I can assure you that your level of anger displayed here, is only going to push people *away from your product line, not to it, even once it is fixed again. ::shrugs::

You sound like you need a hug though, so....

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

On 11/23/2017 at 8:05 PM, Vivienne Schell said:

Sure. Someone told them to mess up the database, oh wow.

Seriously, you make me gasp. Obviously you share that naive opinion that Second Life is not a business, but a hippie flower power event. Exactly this kind of opinion lead to the constant decline of user and customer numbers over the past years, prevented Second Life from going mainstream,  and at some point the straw will break the camel´s neck. They can add the most glorious features, kudos, but as long as something not excusable like messing up a commerce database in operation happens, any kind of confidence in this business gets discredited and shattered.

SL didn't go mainstream because it was never designed to be a mainstream product. There is nothing in SL that a hard core gamer user would want. They don't want to have to create a game, they want to play one. 

And no, no one sits there and waits patiently. Everyone affected should be angry. Because everyone affected has ALL the reasons to be angry. Not only because of the inexcusable, massive and lousy error/bug they produced, but also because of their lame reaction in regards to customer relations.

I am waiting patiently. What good does flipping your lid do? Its a national holiday in the US. That's kind of like flipping out because you package got delayed a day or two because of Christmas.. You need to curl up with a good book in front of a roaring fireplace with a mug of hot cocoa. 

But yeah, sit down and wait patiently and hail the holy Lindens until Second Life will experience the next, even more disasterous blackout - probably the final one.

Here's an idea, why don't we go back to not being able to log in at all once a week for maintenance... 

 

[Penny Patton]

Actually, Linden Lab did try to push Second Life as a mainstream product in the beginning. They expected corporations would have sims the same way they have websites, that people would flock to SL like they did to Facebook, and yes they believed gamers would enjoy SL as well (there was even a planned Steam launch that was quietly shelved).

The problem is that those in management at LL have never seemed to understand their own product. They've allowed crippling bugs to remain unfixed. They've essentially punished content creators who try to create optimized content and encouraged poorly made content that is the source of most of SL's performance issues. They've resisted adding features the userbase has begged for while introducing features nobody asked for. Aspects of SL such as design, presentation, and the interface have been all but ignored by LL. My understanding is that SL's development team has always lacked designers. No artists or game designers have ever had any input in the way SL is developed, or if they have it was minimal. Most art assets made by the lab were created by programmers or donated by talented but unskilled amateurs. Likewise with the new user sims and all of LL's attempts at tutorials. That's not to say LL has never had artists on staff, just that they weren't hired to offer any input on development.

 LL isn't sabotaging SL, they're just really bad at keeping it going, and worse at improving it.

[Parhelion Palou]

Second Life was created as a social experiment. Philip Linden (I'll stick to SL names) wanted to see what happens when you put a bunch of people in a world and let them do their thing. It didn't go the way he expected, but SL grew. Around 2006 the prognostication companies got wind of virtual worlds (SL was only one of them) and started doing their thing -- hyping virtual worlds. The internet was going to go 3D. We'd all be shopping online by walking through virtual representations of RL stores. People all over the world would hold meetings in virtual space, saving millions in travel costs. Linden Lab wasn't immune to the hype, and companies weren't either. They got into SL whether LL pushed it or not. MacArthur Foundation started studying virtual worlds (and had several regions in SL). The hype wave hit the rocks and collapsed, just as has happened since with 3D TV and will happen with virtual reality displays. M Linden was the one who really tried to push SL to corporations, but by then corporations had already decided against virtual worlds.

M's time with LL was when things really went downhill. LL got rid of staff, including many who were good for SL. Things have been improving since M's time; at least LL is listening to us again. They're actively working on improvements and spending a lot of time fixing underlying problems that have been festering for years.

@Penny Patton: What features has the userbase begged for? Most of the userbase barely knows LL exists. They don't read the blogs or these forums and certainly don't know about Jira. To be generous, I'll guess that 0.5% of the userbase deals with LL outside of buying/selling Lindens and paying tier. Some of them request new features, but that 0.5% represents a lot of different factions that want different things. LL isn't a big company; only a few requests can be satisfied. I suspect the only feature the userbase in general wants is no lag (and free land).

[Vivienne Schell]

2 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

What features has the userbase begged for?

No one has gto beg for a functional, reliiable commerce database.

Imagine the Amazon ior Ebay or Facebook databases had been - sluggishly - messed up like this by only 0.01 %. Do you ACTUALLY think that someone there would go for  a holiday, without customer notification, without  customer support and some lame and inaccurate if not false two line explaination? Do you actiually think that? Weöö, if you do not think of this you are right, because it DOES NOT HAPPEN there. They simply DO NOT mess up their commerce database.

You can claim that LL is a small company, which is right, and now ask yourself why it still is a small company after 15 years, and in decline. Right. Cause Linden Lab apparently does not respect the most simple and basic rules of business. Amazon and Ebay were small companies, and they grew big because something like THAT never happened. Never ever.

And now consider that the messed up  Linden Lab database  is connected to commercial transactions, to sensible data, to whatever involved in Linden Lab business and data management. Don´t you SHUDDER when you think of that?

You and the other Linden apologists seem to have adapted to some kind of hilarious phlegma, apparently. It´s more like "Who cares at all, it´s fine as it it is and this includes the weekly kick in the teeth...who cares...let´s sit there and applaud them for letting it exist at all...". Well, ok, that´s an attitude which does not help anyone and certainly won´t improve anything, nor will it prevent even more devastating idiocies and  balant malfunctions.

[Whirly Fizzle]

37 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Imagine the Amazon ior Ebay or Facebook databases had been - sluggishly - messed up like this by only 0.01 %

Imagine if LL had the same budget as Amazon, Ebay & Failbook....

[Qie Niangao]

On 11/23/2017 at 9:19 AM, Drake1 Nightfire said:

There was a very outspoken forumite back in the day that was also a merchant, buildings i believe, that was vehement about Merchants being only Premium members. She wanted each and every merchant to be forced to become premium or never be able to sell on the MP or have an inworld store. Several others agreed with her. There are plenty of premium users that lok down on and criticize non-premium users. 

I don't know that specific history, but now that you mention it, if one had to choose whether a premium subscription should be required of merchants or of landowners, it's not obvious to me that the better business decision is the one the Lab took back on June 6, 2006.

[Tari Landar]

1 hour ago, Vivienne Schell said:

No one has gto beg for a functional, reliiable commerce database.

Imagine the Amazon ior Ebay or Facebook databases had been - sluggishly - messed up like this by only 0.01 %. Do you ACTUALLY think that someone there would go for  a holiday, without customer notification, without  customer support and some lame and inaccurate if not false two line explaination? Do you actiually think that? Weöö, if you do not think of this you are right, because it DOES NOT HAPPEN there. They simply DO NOT mess up their commerce database.

You can claim that LL is a small company, which is right, and now ask yourself why it still is a small company after 15 years, and in decline. Right. Cause Linden Lab apparently does not respect the most simple and basic rules of business. Amazon and Ebay were small companies, and they grew big because something like THAT never happened. Never ever.

And now consider that the messed up  Linden Lab database  is connected to commercial transactions, to sensible data, to whatever involved in Linden Lab business and data management. Don´t you SHUDDER when you think of that?

You and the other Linden apologists seem to have adapted to some kind of hilarious phlegma, apparently. It´s more like "Who cares at all, it´s fine as it it is and this includes the weekly kick in the teeth...who cares...let´s sit there and applaud them for letting it exist at all...". Well, ok, that´s an attitude which does not help anyone and certainly won´t improve anything, nor will it prevent even more devastating idiocies and  balant malfunctions.

You haven't been around the internet for too long, have you?

Stop assuming people with more common sense are simply apologists, that's such a tired argument...the world over. Just, stop with that crap, lol.  Yes I DO applaud them for letting it exist at all, because I don't see you, or anyone else for that matter, doing any better. You should applaud them too, because without them, you'd have no business. If you think you can do better than them, why haven't you? If you know you can't, then yes, you need to employ more patience and way more common sense.  Ebay hasn't been a small company since barely a couple of years after its inception, the same goes for Amazon. They don't even cater to the same type of audience, nor do they offer even remotely the same kind of services. Why you're using them as a comparison, is beyond me, but it DOES tell an awful lot about how much you understand. The scope of those businesses isn't even remotely comparable, much less the database environments, technical requirements, security, fiscal responsibilities, user base expectations, hell even the basic functionality..and the list goes on and on.

Yes, issues have happened on Ebay, even, gasp, during the holidays. Again, you'd have to be on the internet more than a couple of years to actually know this.  I had a brick and mortar business(two actually, but I am speaking of one solely here) that also utilized Ebay, almost two decades ago. There were frequent issues, even back then(there still are), and Ebay was far, far from a small company back then. They even shut down almost completely, and everything that didn't was slowed to a snail's pace through frozen molasses over the holidays on more than one occasion-it was dreadful, and we are talking about rl money, rl businesses, rl economics, rl livelihoods...not pixels and stuff which can be reproduced and sold over and over and over, at little to no cost.  Did they always inform us? Nope, in fact, it's a rarity that they ever did, still is. What did we, as merchants, have to do about it? Let our problems be heard and then sit and wait, there was, and remains, no other solution. Do you think Ebay took kindly to the kind of verbal spewage coming forth from some mouths we see here about LL when things go sideways? Hell to the no, and that's a quick way to get your ***** shut down too. Because, much like LL, the powers that be at Ebay have no obligation to allow you to do squat. Amazon, has had it's fair share of major issues too, even Facebook has(and until recently, it wasn't in the business of allowing people to DO business) Does the general public know about them all, or even most? Nope...and there's good reason for that..a huge part of which is to avoid people yammering on about things they don't understand, getting others riled up for no reason whatsoever, or at least piddly little reasons, because they think they know what they're talking about. 

Again, if people HATE LL, and HATE sl this much(and yes, this kind of vitriol comes across as hate, not concern, not even dislike, but pure hatred), why in crepe's sake are people *still here? Obviously there is some merit to it, and it might help some folks to sit back and ask themselves that question, in order to give themselves a wee bit of perspective. 

I really think you need to let go of what you think you know about business, lol. "Sensible data"..dafuq are you even on about there? The entire database isn't messed up, and if you actually understood databases, you would know it's not a singular issue, or even a singular database. I'm not even certain you know what databases are, or how they work...your words clearly show that you don't..but perhaps that's simply fueled by your sheer anger and hatred at the moment, so you're unable to express it through the madness. Maybe you, like the rest of us ought to give them time to FIND the dang issues so that they can fix them...instead of yammering on about the world coming to an end, and how horrible a company they are...You're still in business, you still have products, you still are making money...so..yeah, calm your ***** like the rest of us(and "sit and wait" is the response you'd get from Ebay, Amazon, Facebook, and any other large corporation too, btw..). No one likes when things go sideways, but there are a LOT better ways to go about affecting change...posts like this, aren't really going to do it. They're just going to get other folks who also don't know what they're talking about all up in arms...and then you've got a room full of people running in circles screaming about the sky falling, when they're not even outdoors. It's not rocket surgery, but it is tough, and if YOU can do better...go forth and do it...prove it, otherwise..yep, you're with the rest of us on the bench, and should probably get used to that, we don't run the show here, lol. No one forced you to try and make money, and no one at LL has ever once guaranteed you could, or would. 

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, Vivienne Schell said:

No one has to beg for a functional, reliiable commerce database.

Do you mean like the functional, reliable commerce database that shuttled my six pound bag of popcorn back and forth four times between UPS depots in New Jersey and Wisconsin until my phone call broke the endless chain of system errors? Or how about today's UPS fiasco, in which the system told me my package was to arrive (signature required) between noon and 4PM, only to have it arrive a 9AM, while I was having breakfast next door. When I called to have them fix their mistake, I was informed by a manager that she couldn't get anyone, anywhere else in UPS, to answer a phone. Do you mean that kind of functional reliability?

Don't get me started on Amazon's recent delivery quality, or Wells Fargo's "ability" to handle my accounts.

Edited November 25, 2017 by Madelaine McMasters
More typos than words!

[Vivienne Schell]

24 minutes ago, Tari Landar said:

this kind of vitriol comes across as hate, not concern, not even dislike, but pure hatred

Hahaha, well, sweetie, your entire post is an expression of hate.

Btw., are you an employee at Linden Lab? Are you a buddy of someone there? Or what?

 

[Vivienne Schell]

1 hour ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Imagine if LL had the same budget as Amazon, Ebay & Failbook....

There were times when LL had a bigger budget as Facebook had.

[Solar Legion]

2 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Hahaha, well, sweetie, your entire post is an expression of hate.

Btw., are you an employee at Linden Lab? Are you a buddy of someone there? Or what?

 

Why yes, everyone that disagrees with your assessment works for Linden Lab or is friends with an employee of Linden Lab.

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 minute ago, Vivienne Schell said:

There were times when LL had a bigger budget as Facebook had.

But there was never a time when LL had a vision with the potential of Facebook's.

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 hours ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Amazon and Ebay were small companies, and they grew big because something like THAT never happened. Never ever.

You obviously do not remember the early days of either of those businesses.  Or even semi-recent times with eBay who managed to have 10 outages from Jan - April 2014 - i.e within a 4 month time frame (and early 2014 is definitely long after their early small company days).