Why I hate MP, Episode 1,287,978

[ChinRey]

I'm adding a new 14 trunk varaiant to my Aspen 01 series on MP. And of course I want to add some of the variants already there as related items.

So I click on:

Search for Aspen and:

Now, in case any non-merchants read this, as the box says, the related products search only looks in the product name and SKU fields of existing listings nowhere else. There are 11 listings in that store with the word aspen in both of those fields.

Interestingly, if I remove the last two letters of the search string, they all show up:

And yes, since we're there, that's actually how the search results are presented: a total mess of barely readable text sorted randomly (and with no way to expand the window to show the whole list). Did I mention that the window closes automatically every time you select an item so you have to click that "Add related item" button eight times to fill up the list? It does. And did I mention that every time you add a new item to the list that button changes position? It does that too.

Oh well, I suppose this is just me venting my frustrations. But maybe a few non-merchants would be interested to see what we are struggling with. This is just one of countless examples of the ... ummmm... "creative solutions" the moron who programmed MP managed to come up with in his delusional brain.

Oh and Dakota, don't bother replying. Your lame excuses wore out long ago and we've already called your "post a JIRA" bluff. I know part of your job is to cover up the mistakes of incompetent co-workers and I know you're very good at it. But this one is a lost case.

Edited May 10, 2020 by ChinRey
Typos

[Axel Naxos]

If there is correction, the rates will be 15% per sale ... Better to leave it anyway, at least discovered the fault ... laugh so as not to cry ...

[ChinRey]

10 hours ago, Axel Naxos said:

If there is correction, the rates will be 15% per sale ... Better to leave it anyway, at least discovered the fault ... laugh so as not to cry ...

Maybe but keep in mind this is something that pretends to be a part of a "professional" piece of software written by somebody who is supposed to be a professional (and got paid accordingly), not somebody who flunked an high school extras class on IT. It has also presumably passed several QC steps at what pretends to be a serious software manufacturing company. Yet it fails to identify exact string matches within a fairly limited data set. How low is it possible to sink? I mean, even in the stinking garbage code heap called MP, this stands out as a low point!

I do see your point about keeping quiet but remember that it wasn't that long ago they increased their blood price from 5% to 10% even though we had all been very quiet for a long time. SL is a cash cow according to @Ebbe Linden, so they can't possibly say they need a fee increase to keep LL in the black. They may however be delusional enough to increase the fee because MP offers such a great service to the merchants. I think it's better to keep reminding them and showing them how incompetent they are.

Edited May 10, 2020 by ChinRey

[Elvina Ewing]

12 hours ago, ChinRey said:

They may however be delusional enough to increase the fee because MP offers such a great service to the merchants. I think it's better to keep reminding them and showing them how incompetent they are.

Except that they don't give a rats ass about us merchants, and even less so about what we think. Next step will be to create a way to take a cut from every in-world sale, too, and i am sure they are working on it behind the scenes as we speak.

[Luna Bliss]

x

 

Edited May 10, 2020 by Luna Bliss
x

[OptimoMaximo]

18 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

. Next step will be to create a way to take a cut from every in-world sale, too, and i am sure they are working on it behind the scenes as we speak

They told us that they are with the announcement of working on a built in vendor system. Would you think they are doing it out of generosity to ease merchants experience? 

[Alwin Alcott]

can't hear you....

[ChinRey]

  

8 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

Would you think they are doing it out of generosity to ease merchants experience? 

Yes, I do actually think so, or at least I won't rule the possibility out.

This is going to be a bit long winded here but the situation remind me of the first two JIRAs I submitted. Without going into details, both were well known mesh related issues (one bug and one deliberate hack by the developers) and there were already several JIRAs about them. But I was new - only a few months old in SL and I had only been building half of that time - so I didn't know. However, it turned out Maestro Linden didn't know either. In fac, it was soon obvious I already knew far more about mesh than he did. Yet he was absolutely convinced he was the expert and unable to face the facts. The way I interpreted it, it was not arrogance but rather a total lack of self-awareness but in any case, it was a truly bizarre experience. Both cases for a few rounds with me poviding more documetnation (down to and including pictures showing the issues so clearly even a three year old child would grasp it) and him replying with incomprehension until he suddenly didn't reply at all and both cases ended up in the mañana heap.

I've yet to hear of a Linden who knows how to make mesh but several of them, like Maestro, believe they do and they approach it with a Clarksonish how-hard-can-it-be attitude and end up with a Clarksonish mess (except Jeremy Clarkson is a comedian, his messes are supposed to fail). I think that's why we have all these silly mistakes and misjudgements in SL's mesh handling.

---

I believe it's exactly the same problem with MP.

Linden Lab doesn't have any web designers or web programmers among their staff. That's easy to see and not only on MP. Look at the event calendar, the destination guide, my.secondlife.com etc., etc. They're all certified web design disaster zones. Nor do they have any UI designers.

Web and UI are specialized fields you don't usually delegate to "generic" developers/programmers. In fact the programmer stereotype is notoriously bad at those two tasks and in this case the stereotype isn't too far off from reality.

---

Linden Lab doesn't have anybody who knows much about web commerce either. They must have shopped at eBay or Amazon every now and have some idea about the customer UI. So that part looks right - at least until you scratch the surface and see it's mostly cargo cult underneath. But they have no idea how a typical merchant's interface look or which functions are actually relevant for merchants. So they make it up as they go along, basing it on assumptions only.

---

I asked Dakota not to comment on this thread. That applies to Grumpity and Oz too of course. We already know from previous threads none of them have anything of value to contribute so there's no point in wasting their or our time. (I'm not holding that against them though. They have to be loyal to their employer which means they're stuck between a rock and a hard place and trying to do their best.)

But Linden Lab does owe us honest merchants and cotnent creators an apology, and explanation and - above all - a proposal how to get out of this mess. I've already mentined @Ebbe Linden once in this thread. I know we can't force anybody to respond but in this case the buck really stops there.

 

Edited May 11, 2020 by ChinRey
Typos

[OptimoMaximo]

8 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Yes, I do actually think so, or at least I won't rule the possibility out.

I'm sorry to cherry pick this sentence out of your post, full of well reasoned out points, but this is where you lose touch with reality. If they cared enough for such things, all your points that followed wouldn't be the facts those are, which are led by a "whatevva, gimme ya maneh" sort of mentality, which is exactly the same motivation to start such built in vendor system in conjunction with the MP fee raise. The only thing that could make this system go to the Manana stack is finding out how to force merchants out of any other options. That's why we haven't heard of this little project anymore, I for one (and I bet many others) would switch to single prim content givers if they found a way to shutdown other vending systems to force us to use theirs with more fees. 

Edited May 11, 2020 by OptimoMaximo

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

I'm sorry to cherry pick this sentence out of your post, full of well reasoned out points, but this is where you lose touch with reality.

Mind you, I only said I kept the possibility open, I didn't draw any conclusion. It doesn't really matter anyway. Whether it's intentional or due to ignorance, LL is putting a much heavier burden on the merchants than they do on any other group of SL users.

[OptimoMaximo]

On 5/11/2020 at 12:46 PM, ChinRey said:

Yes, I do actually think so, or at least I won't rule the possibility out

My bad, I interpreted the "I do actually think so" as your actual thought on the subject matter. 

[sirhc DeSantis]

21 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

I'm sorry to cherry pick this sentence out of your post, full of well reasoned out points, but this is where you lose touch with reality. If they cared enough for such things, all your points that followed wouldn't be the facts those are, which are led by a "whatevva, gimme ya maneh" sort of mentality, which is exactly the same motivation to start such built in vendor system in conjunction with the MP fee raise. The only thing that could make this system go to the Manana stack is finding out how to force merchants out of any other options. That's why we haven't heard of this little project anymore, I for one (and I bet many others) would switch to single prim content givers if they found a way to shutdown other vending systems to force us to use theirs with more fees. 

Yes. Like 2007 all over again except we have a lorry load of custom multi item low LI (<1) and low script (haha just the one) custom jobs all available as they were fun to make (I think I may even have the original Major Vendor ones where one prim == one button. That was the bomb back then and rightly so)  - unless the LSL gets nerfed. Oh won't that be fun

Now tax user to user in world currency transfer and see how they run