Why does Linden call it a Maintenance in the Grid status when the Support is closed during the Christmas days and dont tell us true that hey are at home for celebrating Christmas?

[Miller Thor]

No one would rip their heads off if they are honest and say that they, like everyone else, also spend consecrated with the family. One would wish the Lindens a Merry Christmas and thank you for the work throughout the year. But to call the whole thing maintenance shows not exactly humanity, but only that one takes standadtexts because one obviously has no ambition to create a text yourself.

[Love Zhaoying]

Why? Because reasons!

[LittleMe Jewell]

It is actually very possible that they are doing maintenance.  A holiday where all of your  Phone & Live Chat folks are not working is a great time for engineers to do some patching because it will not impact customers.  If said engineers were planning on working those days anyway -- we have some that do not celebrate Christmas and so they work through it -- then it can be a good time for some maintenance work.

They have simply said that various services would be unavailable during a holiday -- look at the outage notice for Dec 31st and Jan 1st -- just not for Dec 24/25 this year.  That is what leads me to believe that someone really is doing some maintenance work.

The actual word "Maintenance" in the title is possibly just due to how they have their categories set up for Grid Status announcements.

Edited December 22, 2020 by LittleMe Jewell

[AlettaMondragon]

This is not a new occurrence. I took a few minutes now to dig up the Grid Status History from all the relevant months from this and last year.

If you take a look at the maintenance posts of December 2019 https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/history?page=5 you can see a lot of scheduled maintenance posts before, during, and after Christmas, and between the holidays, and then on Dec 31, Jan 1, and also Jan 2: https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/incidents/t2s1ffwkl094 and https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/incidents/bcv9ngjq4dsf respectively. If they wanted to let us know they simply wouldn't work during the holidays, they would. The last historical occurrence of such was at Thanksgiving, 2019: https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/incidents/5by9rk314fsf

Ever since, they don't post "Holiday Observance" notices anymore, and in fact, they do have at least one Linden working during holidays, to watch out for serious issues. In light of what used to happen whenever they posted a "Holiday Observance, Support Closed" notice, this all makes sense, and it is necessary to have someone watching out for SL even during holidays. They're doing a good job at it since last Christmas. And we can definitely wish them a Merry Christmas and Thanks for their work throughout the year.

[Aishagain]

31 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

The actual word "Maintenance" in the title is possibly just due to how they have their categories set up for Grid Status announcements.

And in a nutshell that is the problem, as I see it.  Communication, yet again. It's been the achilles heel of LL right from the Get-go and this illustates it beautifully.  Now quite frankly I don't think LL will be beavering away on arcane back-end systems maitenance during the holiday break but they just do not seem capable of phrasing their downtime in any other way.  It is as though they are afraid to admit their abscence from full time monitoring of reports of issues during their holidays.  Franky I find that faintly ridiculous.

@AlettaMondragon I'd like to believe what you write and think that there were some technicians at work on the substructure of SL at these times, but I am afraid I don't.  LL are rarely pro-active, their modus operandi is re-active almost exclusively.  If LL would treat its userbase as if they had more than half a brain, they might actually find that the userbase would respond well to it.

Edited December 22, 2020 by Aishagain
Additional text and grammar correction

[AlettaMondragon]

36 minutes ago, Aishagain said:

 

@AlettaMondragon I'd like to believe what you write and think that there were some technicians at work on the substructure of SL at these times, but I am afraid I don't.  LL are rarely pro-active, their modus operandi is re-active almost exclusively.  If LL would treat its userbase as if they had more than half a brain, they might actually find that the userbase would respond well to it.

 

Okay. I'll go further explaining the situation from my side. While Support closed down for Thanksgiving in 2019, I've spent several hours around the Blake Sea to trace a griefer that attacked multiple places with "bombs". While I was messing with that, and knowing there was no Support for 2 days, so I reached out to landowners at private places to deal with them, since the objects withstanded autoreturn as well, and I just left the Linden-owned public places like Barbarossa as is, with nothing to do there at the time, some others even started other kinds of attacks in the Jeogeot Gulf, and possibly at other areas which I didn't even know of. This was quite typical, that some people started massive griefer attacks right when LL announced that Support would be closed for one day, two days, or even three days for a holiday weekend.

The same thing happened on December 23rd as well, continuing on the 24th. Look at this, a scheduled maintenance post for the 24th: https://secondlife-status.statuspage.io/incidents/2j03l1mt9zr4

"Ticket submissions" are obviously available, since you send a ticket, and it can sit there until a Linden would eventually read it. You can easily determine if there's a Linden working at Support. They respond to your ticket.

So Dec 23, afternoon SLT, nighttime for me (out of Linden work hours) a massive griefer attack hit 13 regions in an area where a group of us had an event, and subsequently, other areas as well. I filed a ticket listing all the affected places, etc. Wendi got to it on the 24th, responded to the ticket, then Governance Lindens showed up at the sites as well to deal with the griefing. They even kept running after newly discovered issues for several hours that day. She even gave me her bear afterwards.

 

Ever since, they never entirely close Support, they're watching for issues, and there are actually way less ad-hoc inworld issues than last year. If they don't say they don't work, then they work.

Edited December 22, 2020 by AlettaMondragon
typos, missing words again

[Aishagain]

@AlettaMondragonpoint taken.

[Miller Thor]

I remember the days when Linden Labs wrote in the Grid Status: "Live chat and phone support are closed for Christmas. .......... The live chat and phone support is closed from December 24 to December 27 6am so that our staff can celebrate Christmas with their families. The Ticket submission remains open.".  This still sounded really human for everyone and showed that Linden Labs pays attention to its employees and makes this public. And now they call it a maintenance .............. . The same also for Thanks giving, New years day or Easter days etc. . It is the sound that makes the music and the word that makes an announcement human, or derisive.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Miller Thor

[LittleMe Jewell]

42 minutes ago, Miller Thor said:

I remember the days when Linden Labs wrote in the Grid Status: "Live chat and phone support are closed for Christmas. .......... The live chat and phone support is closed from December 24 to December 27 6am so that our staff can celebrate Christmas with their families. The Ticket submission remains open.".  This still sounded really human for everyone and showed that Linden Labs pays attention to its employees and makes this public. And now they call it a maintenance .............. . The same also for Thanks giving, New years day or Easter days etc. . It is the sound that makes the music and the word that makes an announcement human, or derisive.

Yes, but wording it that way that these days is not politically correct.  Many people do not celebrate those specific holidays, so companies have to move with the times and rephrase things.

Sad, yes, but it is what it is.

[Luka Hexem]

Must be a USA thing with this "OMG you can't call it that" as businesses in the UK have no problems with perception when they publish their Christmas Opening times - yep we call it Christmas not "holidays".  We also call Diwali what it is and there was coverage of Guru Nanak Ji’s Birthday on the same media that has a Christmas schedule. We don't all celebrate those three (of a great many) events but we do have the courtesy to just call them what they are actually called and not tip toe around on eggshells.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Luka Hexem

[Miller Thor]

Just as we do in Austria. Nor do we have any problems with the fact that certain services are closed over the holidays.

To say that it is politically unwise to say that you are at home over the Christmas holidays is not seen as political, but rather as a sign of poverty. Second Life is, as we should all know, an international platform and if we are already on international soil, then we should also be able to respect and accept the traditions and customs and holidays of the country that provides us with this service. You also can't expect that when you come to a foreign country, the shops are open on a holiday just because its you who want to go shopping.

[AlettaMondragon]

9 hours ago, Miller Thor said:

I remember the days when Linden Labs wrote in the Grid Status: "Live chat and phone support are closed for Christmas. .......... The live chat and phone support is closed from December 24 to December 27 6am so that our staff can celebrate Christmas with their families. The Ticket submission remains open.".  This still sounded really human for everyone and showed that Linden Labs pays attention to its employees and makes this public. And now they call it a maintenance .............. . The same also for Thanks giving, New years day or Easter days etc. . It is the sound that makes the music and the word that makes an announcement human, or derisive.

 

I see why it would make sense to you, but why should it be on the GSP if LL actually did this?

 

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

The LL thread and pictures is all "SEASON'S GREETINGS".  Nowhere in there do you see the word Christmas. 

Yes, the US is way too overly "politically correct" - and in more than just that area.

If anything might offend anyone, companies try to avoid it so that they don't end up with negative publicity.

[Aishagain]

@LittleMe JewellOutside of the USA it's called paranoia.  Similar associations exist between  "Politically Correct" and "Snowflake".

[arabellajones]

I have seen a lot of times when it has seemed that the status page has been picking from a very limited set of standard messages, sometimes popping up at the last minute while still a "scheduled maintenance" message.

Not having a holiday message, and the need is quite predictable, does not look competent. I don't mind such messages not being explicitly linked to a particular religion, but I am getting sensitive to the apparent bias of our local politicians.

I expect I shall be consulting with William Tare Fox every time the Lindens announce something. He's already quite busy enough with our politicians.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

18 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

The LL thread and pictures is all "SEASON'S GREETINGS".  Nowhere in there do you see the word Christmas. 

Yes, the US is way too overly "politically correct" - and in more than just that area.

If anything might offend anyone, companies try to avoid it so that they don't end up with negative publicity.

You sound offended.

[LittleMe Jewell]

More annoyed with it all than anything else.

[Rowan Amore]

I think they should just offend everyone equally

[Aishagain]

Seems to me that they already do!