Second Life Outages

[Prokofy Neva]

So Second Life log-ins were impossible for an hour or more today. I couldn't log in, so I looked at the grid status page, and the engineers said there were no log-ins and they were investigating it.

Then within an hour, they wrote that they had identified the problem, and were working on a fix.

Now both messages about the outage have disappeared completely -- that is, out of the "top stories," as it happens. (Or what I, as a journalist, think of as "top stories").

At first, I thought this information had disappeared completely. Possibly this is done so that they look more appealing to buyers, or because they believe there are "too many" notices and they should only keep more long-term or "larger" issues. 

But there is no such thing as "too many" in a world where the old messages go below the fold, and they should leave all such indications of how the service is working available. An outage that lasts an hour is significant and shouldn't be erased.

A buyer should be impressed not that there are supposedly no down times -- that would seem suspicious -- but should be impressed with how quickly they get the world working again, which has concurrency of at least 30,000 as far as we know.

And as it turns out, those "stories" are there, but you have to scroll down to "Past Incidents". Because this isn't a news ticker, but what used to be called a "weblog," i.e. a log of everything happening.

So here you can find it if you scroll far enough:

Dec 14, 2020

Second Life logins unavailable

Resolved - This incident has been resolved.
Dec 14, 11:59 PST

Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.
Dec 14, 11:49 PST

Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.
Dec 14, 11:43 PST

Update - Our engineering teams are still investigating the cause. We're sorry about the issue, and we have all hands on deck working this issue.
Dec 14, 11:11 PST

Investigating - Logins to Second Life are currently failing. Our engineering teams are investigating.
Dec 14, 10:21 PST

 

I personally would keep it on "top stories" and not make it disappear as it is indeed a "top story".

I've noticed in the past that certain things that happen never get recorded at all on the grid status page. Other things do. For example while I and others had sims that did not work at all for 2 days, but were fixed over the long weekend, something called "Thanksgiving Bakefail" is memorialized, even though that is not related to the sims being down.

It's like the old police blotter, which never reflected reality at all, and wasn't just selective, but downright misleading -- and then was entirely removed.

The problem of the Marketplace listings not being able to be edited existed long before Dec. 6, but at least when it was acknowledged Dec. 6 people could realize that they could stop going crazy and thinking it was just something they were doing that was wrong.

So I have an inworld group called WeatherReport where I will try to record and discuss these issues when possible.

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Rowan Amore]

3 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So Second Life log-ins were impossible for an hour or more today. I couldn't log in, so I looked at the grid status page, and the engineers said there were no log-ins and they were investigating it.

Then within an hour, they wrote that they had identified the problem, and were working on a fix.

Now both messages about the outage have disappeared completely.

Possibly this is done so that they look more appealing to buyers, or because they believe there are "too many" notices and they should only keep more long-term or "larger" issues. 

But there is no such thing as "too many" in a world where the old messages go below the fold, and they should leave all such indications of how the service is working available. An outage that lasts an hour is significant and shouldn't be erased.

A buyer should be impressed not that there are supposedly no down times -- that would seem suspicious -- but should be impressed with how quickly they get the world working again, which has concurrency of at least 30,000 as far as we know.

I've noticed in the past that certain things that happen never get recorded at all on the grid status page. Other things do. For example while I and others had sims that did not work at all for 2 days, but were fixed over the long weekend, something called "Thanksgiving Bakefail" is memorialized, even though that is not related to the sims being down.

It's like the old police blotter, which never reflected reality at all, and wasn't just selective, but downright misleading -- and then was entirely removed.

The problem of the Marketplace listings not being able to be edited existed long before Dec. 6, but at least when it was acknowledged Dec. 6 people could realize that they could stop going crazy and thinking it was just something they were doing that was wrong.

So I have an inworld group called WeatherReport where I will try to record and discuss these issues when possible.

 

It still.shows on my dashboard and the incident report, too.

Edited December 14, 2020 by RowanMinx

[Prokofy Neva]

1 minute ago, RowanMinx said:

It still.shows on my dashboard and the incident report, too.

Yes, as I just added, it shows not on the main view of what I call "top stories" but is pushed "below the fold," i.e. out of the main view, into "past incidents".

And I'm saying in terms of news judgement, versus engineering record-keeping, it deserves to remain as a "top story". For one, people continue to experience the problem sometimes long after it is fixed.

 

[Rowan Amore]

That was page one on my grid status...not sure where else it would be.

That's always where I look.first and then click.on what I want.  But if you log into GS first, it should be tops, I agree.

Edited December 14, 2020 by RowanMinx

[Prokofy Neva]

6 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

That was page one on my grid status...not sure where else it would be.

Are you familiar with newspapers? They were these things we used to have before the Internet, and even still persist.

So the upper right hand corner -- most people are "right-lookers" and look first to that corner -- contains news of war or any huge breaking story.

The top news is "above the fold" i.e. above the place where you would fold the newspaper if reading it on a subway.

The old news or less important news gets pushed "below the fold," i.e. out of the top view.

So these concepts persist even with online news pages as I have found by working on them, in different countries.

So you still put the top breaking news at the top, and the old news is pushed down.

It might technically be "all on one page" or even "page one" as you perceive it. But it's not in the TOP SPOT.

This is how my view of the page looks, on a Chrome viewer on a standard-sized computer screen:

So that means the top view, the first page, *all you can see on a standard computer screen on a desktop* does NOT contain the story of the outage.

So the story is "below the fold".
 

To find that story, literally a minute after the fix was pushed and tested, you had to go out of the top view, the first page, and scroll about 4 computer-screen-size full pages to see

"Past Incidents". And that, in my view, is poor news judgement. A past incident of that magnitude should have remained in the "top story" slot for the day.

For most people, the Grid Status is NEWS. It is not a technician's record. It's NEWS.

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Janet Voxel]

Is a 2 hour outage a "main story?"

[Solar Legion]

There is no need to keep Resolved incidents at the top of the page. None.

[Rowan Amore]

5 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 

Tl;Dr

 

, all I did was log into my dashboard, scroll down to grid status, click on what I wanted and BAM!   Everything about  said incident right there with no fold whatsoever.  

And your condescending tone was uncalled for.

Edited December 14, 2020 by RowanMinx

[MoiraKathleen]

While Grid Status may be considered "news" to us, I don't think the newspaper strategy holds up.  When I look at the grid status page, I want news of issues that have not been resolved yet, and then news of upcoming scheduled maintenance.  So a resolved issue properly belongs under Past Incidents - after all the current and future scheduled items.

[Prokofy Neva]

15 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

Is a 2 hour outage a "main story?"

Indeed it is. It explains why people couldn't log on. And it's a big deal because it's rare.

And as I point out, for an engineer's perspective, which is the perspective of many on the forums (I don't know why they don't go inworld and enjoy Second Life more), it might make sense to remove it from the top view. It doesn't from a different perspective of "news".

If there is some state in the electoral college NOT voting as dictated by the results of their state's elections -- and so far there isn't anything like that -- it will remain NEWS for the entire day, at the top, regardless of whether you don't think it's news, or whether you think it's "resolved". 

[Janet Voxel]

12 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Indeed it is. It explains why people couldn't log on. And it's a big deal because it's rare.

And as I point out, for an engineer's perspective, which is the perspective of many on the forums (I don't know why they don't go inworld and enjoy Second Life more), it might make sense to remove it from the top view. It doesn't from a different perspective of "news".

If there is some state in the electoral college NOT voting as dictated by the results of their state's elections -- and so far there isn't anything like that -- it will remain NEWS for the entire day, at the top, regardless of whether you don't think it's news, or whether you think it's "resolved". 

Ummm...no bubeleh. 

I think what people are trying to tell you is it is there, where it belongs. It's not a headliner and doesn't deserve large fonts. It was a backend event, it was discovered, worked on and fixed. It doesn't matter if the hamsters stopped spinning the wheel or an engineer spilled coffee on something. It's where it belongs and what was reported was appropriate.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

52 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So Second Life log-ins were impossible for an hour or more today. I couldn't log in, so I looked at the grid status page, and the engineers said there were no log-ins and they were investigating it.

Then within an hour, they wrote that they had identified the problem, and were working on a fix.

Now both messages about the outage have disappeared completely -- that is, out of the "top stories," as it happens. (Or what I, as a journalist, think of as "top stories").

At first, I thought this information had disappeared completely. Possibly this is done so that they look more appealing to buyers, or because they believe there are "too many" notices and they should only keep more long-term or "larger" issues. 

But there is no such thing as "too many" in a world where the old messages go below the fold, and they should leave all such indications of how the service is working available. An outage that lasts an hour is significant and shouldn't be erased.

A buyer should be impressed not that there are supposedly no down times -- that would seem suspicious -- but should be impressed with how quickly they get the world working again, which has concurrency of at least 30,000 as far as we know.

And as it turns out, those "stories" are there, but you have to scroll down to "Past Incidents". Because this isn't a news ticker, but what used to be called a "weblog," i.e. a log of everything happening.

So here you can find it if you scroll far enough:

Dec 14, 2020

Second Life logins unavailable

Resolved - This incident has been resolved.
Dec 14, 11:59 PST

Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.
Dec 14, 11:49 PST

Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.
Dec 14, 11:43 PST

Update - Our engineering teams are still investigating the cause. We're sorry about the issue, and we have all hands on deck working this issue.
Dec 14, 11:11 PST

Investigating - Logins to Second Life are currently failing. Our engineering teams are investigating.
Dec 14, 10:21 PST

 

I personally would keep it on "top stories" and not make it disappear as it is indeed a "top story".

I've noticed in the past that certain things that happen never get recorded at all on the grid status page. Other things do. For example while I and others had sims that did not work at all for 2 days, but were fixed over the long weekend, something called "Thanksgiving Bakefail" is memorialized, even though that is not related to the sims being down.

It's like the old police blotter, which never reflected reality at all, and wasn't just selective, but downright misleading -- and then was entirely removed.

The problem of the Marketplace listings not being able to be edited existed long before Dec. 6, but at least when it was acknowledged Dec. 6 people could realize that they could stop going crazy and thinking it was just something they were doing that was wrong.

So I have an inworld group called WeatherReport where I will try to record and discuss these issues when possible.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/14/google-suffers-worldwide-outage-with-gmail-youtube-and-other-services-down

[Prokofy Neva]

4 minutes ago, Tarina Sewell said:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/14/google-suffers-worldwide-outage-with-gmail-youtube-and-other-services-down

Yeah, the world should not be so dependent on Google, that's for sure. 

[Prokofy Neva]

9 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

Ummm...no bubeleh. 

I think what people are trying to tell you is it is there, where it belongs. It's not a headliner and doesn't deserve large fonts. It was a backend event, it was discovered, worked on and fixed. It doesn't matter if the hamsters stopped spinning the wheel or an engineer spilled coffee on something. It's where it belongs and what was reported was appropriate.

Ummm, no dusheshka. An outage is big news. And pushing it out of the view means the real picture is distorted. But then, perhaps that's how you'd like to live.

[Prokofy Neva]

46 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

Is a 2 hour outage a "main story?"

Yes for an "always on" 24/7/365 service, it's a story. Note that the Lindens did not say it was related to Google, although it might have been. And if related to Google and searches, in fact, it's still not fixed.

[Prokofy Neva]

3 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

Kind of a common theme around these parts these days, amirite?

If you're done with this topic, understood, then come over to this one, which may be related as it just started now after the "fix".

You and others will likely a) not understand its importance, as it is not important to you as you are not in the economy or in some very niche part of the economy or b) deny it as you are on Firestorm and it may not be broken then or c) think it doesn't matter.

That's ok, you can churn all you like on it, hopefully the Lindens will realize that they did something before, for the last 16 years, and now it is different and broken, and fix it.

[Janet Voxel]

10 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

That's ok, you can churn all you like on it, hopefully the Lindens will realize that they did something before, for the last 16 years, and now it is different and broken, and fix it.

Sweetie, I'm not going to churn on anything. I logged in just now, no problem.

Had you linked it to google in your initial post, you might've gotten a different reaction overall, but I doubt it. The fact remains, as it was pointed out to you. It's there under Grid Status, where it belongs, anything else is just speculation and quite frankly I've never seen LL speculate about anything on the the Dashboard for anything like this, and they really shouldn't start now, because you feel there might be an issue. 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

I worked in a NOC for some years,  we were always told, only report what is physically wrong on our end only,  upstream service providers falling on their faces had nothing to do with us, so if it's not within our own internal systems,  no report it on the status page. 

[Roxy Couturier]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Are you familiar with newspapers? They were these things we used to have before the Internet, and even still persist.

 

To find that story, literally a minute after the fix was pushed and tested, you had to go out of the top view, the first page, and scroll about 4 computer-screen-size full pages to see

"Past Incidents". And that, in my view, is poor news judgement. A past incident of that magnitude should have remained in the "top story" slot for the day.
 

Yesterdays newspaper is todays fishwrap.

Cranks that keep banging on about something were called "Letters to the Editor".

A boil water notice doesn't need to be repeated after the need to boil water is no longer necessary.

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I worked in a NOC for some years,  we were always told, only report what is physically wrong on our end only,  upstream service providers falling on their faces had nothing to do with us, so if it's not within our own internal systems,  no report it on the status page. 

And yet it was reported, to the Lindens' credit. Go know.

It's not yesterday's news; it's today's news. And some people don't understand why they couldn't log in.

[Roxy Couturier]

35 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

It's not yesterday's news; it's today's news. And some people don't understand why they couldn't log in.

Newspapers only refresh once every 24 hours.

 

1 hour ago, Roxy Couturier said:

A boil water notice doesn't need to be repeated after the need to boil water is no longer necessary.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

25 minutes ago, Roxy Couturier said:

Newspapers only refresh once every 24 hours.

 

 

Actually, newspapers nowadays refresh way more frequently than "every 24 hours" but they do updates on the top stories.

There's the engineering record; then there is the customer facing staff which are called "community liaisons" or something like that. So they could do a blog post separately, even.

If SL had more customers, there'd be way more complaints, more demands for explanations, etc. But it doesn't, so there aren't.

Meanwhile, what could well be related to the outage and its fix is not yet acknowledged, although given that this sort of thing has happened in the past, I think it will be. If nothing else, when the Lindens notice that thousands of people stop paying $30 a week to keep a parcel in search, they may notice.

[Roxy Couturier]

15 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Actually, newspapers nowadays refresh way more frequently than "every 24 hours" but they do updates on the top stories.

There's the engineering record; then there is the customer facing staff which are called "community liaisons" or something like that. So they could do a blog post separately, even.

If SL had more customers, there'd be way more complaints, more demands for explanations, etc. But it doesn't, so there aren't.

Meanwhile, what could well be related to the outage and its fix is not yet acknowledged, although given that this sort of thing has happened in the past, I think it will be. If nothing else, when the Lindens notice that thousands of people stop paying $30 a week to keep a parcel in search, they may notice.

wut?

What does the 30L$ (that's 30L, not $30) weekly parcel search cost have to do with .. anything? You're actually kvetching about *does the math* 0.1785714285714286L$ lost due to SL being down for an hour? Even if it were 1000 parcels, it's only what 179L? About 75 cents.

Get. A. Grip.

People pay $15.00 a month for MMOs that have a weekly down time of 8 or more hours.

No where does LL promise to have SL up and running 24/7. No where. That they largely do, and with free accounts, makes SL one of the more economical and available pastimes.

[Solar Legion]

3 minutes ago, Roxy Couturier said:

wut?

What does the 30L$ (that's 30L, not $30) weekly parcel search cost have to do with .. anything? You're actually kvetching about *does the math* 0.1785714285714286L$ lost due to SL being down for an hour? Even if it were 1000 parcels, it's only what 179L? About 75 cents.

Get. A. Grip.

People pay $15.00 a month for MMOs that have a weekly down time of 8 or more hours.

No where does LL promise to have SL up and running 24/7. No where. That they largely do, and with free accounts, makes SL one of the more economical and available pastimes.

The gripe appears to be concerning search being "broken" in some way .... when in their own images on the thread they've linked to several times now, one can clearly see a new category titled .... Land & Rentals ....

[Roxy Couturier]

1 minute ago, Solar Legion said:

The gripe appears to be concerning search being "broken" in some way .... when in their own images on the thread they've linked to several times now, one can clearly see a new category titled .... Land & Rentals ....

Ahh, okay, so it has to do with someone wanting everyone, looking for land or not, to see an ad?

"Google, how many times can I roll my eyes in one day without damaging them?"