New Search page how to change it back?

[PixelBerry]

2 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Their problem for being lazy, instant gratification chasing types.

Either eager to explore places, lazy as you say, and sometimes just have no clue how anything works, Second life is a hard apple to munch for some newbies.

[Extrude Ragu]

8 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Their problem for being lazy, instant gratification chasing types.

Not everything you don't understand is that which you hate.

[Solar Legion]

1 minute ago, PixelBerry said:

Either eager to explore places, lazy as you say, and sometimes just have no clue how anything works, Second life is a hard apple to munch for some newbies.

If they're so eager to explore, they shouldn't have any problem going down the list - at all. No clue how things work? They can learn - if they refuse to learn, that's on them.

[Solar Legion]

4 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Not everything you don't understand is that which you hate.

That's nice.

It has nothing to do with "hate" - but then, you already knew that.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Prokofy Neva]

41 minutes ago, Chris Nova said:

That's exactly the problem. There should be.

Or, they can fix their search algorithm or whatever ancient thing they use.

Well, there goes that island order from the Boom Boom Club.

[PixelBerry]

[Chris Corvinus]

Just now, Prokofy Neva said:

Well, there goes that island order from the Boom Boom Club.

Boom Boom Boom Club Club.

[Chaser Zaks]

I personally liked the old theme better. Not to say the new theme is bad, for what it is, it pulled it off quite good. But the whole flat material design meme is overdone in my opinion. The old one had character, the new one just looks like everything else now.

When I see material design, I think "bland, boring, corporate, emotionless, school uniform-esque style for the internet", it is like the whole corporate art style thing. It is a design that tries to play it safe by being as inoffensive as possible by not showing any character what so ever.

When I saw the old design, I saw character, it was unique to Second Life, it had Second Life in it (the theme matched the viewer).

I'm not saying that there isn't anything wrong with a dark theme, you can do a dark theme and it can catch on like Winamp's Bento theme. It is more so the lack of.. well.. character. The flat material design fad needs to go.

 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Chaser Zaks

[Scylla Rhiadra]

42 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Their problem for being lazy, instant gratification chasing types.

Solar, I do wish you'd stop treating SL as though it were some kind of Test of Virtue or Trail by Fire. Whenever you say something like this, I imagine you in black robes, pointing a bony finger at some poor sap of a Millennial while you open a trapdoor beneath her feet, sending her down into the fiery pits of hell.

"YOU WERE NOT WORTHY! PERISH IN FIRE, AS WILL ALL WHO CANNOT MANAGE THE SL GUI!"

C'mon. We want people here. And really, it's not a "better place" because those with less patience, or just less experience with computers, get filtered out.

Chill, already!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

@Solar Legion

You'd better be laughing at my humorous description, rather than at my admonition, or you are in soooo much trouble. 🤨

[Solar Legion]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Solar, I do wish you'd stop treating SL as though it were some kind of Test of Virtue or Trail by Fire. Whenever you say something like this, I imagine you in black robes, pointing a bony finger at some poor sap of a Millennial while you open a trapdoor beneath her feet, sending her down into the fiery pits of hell.

"YOU WERE NOT WORTHY! PERISH IN FIRE, AS WILL ALL WHO CANNOT MANAGE THE SL GUI!"

C'mon. We want people here. And really, it's not a "better place" because those with less patience, or just less experience with computers, get filtered out.

Chill, already!

No. I'm quite sick and tired of people pretending there are problems/issues with interfaces and such when those problems/issues are on the user end. I am sick and tired of people insisting we must chase after end users who are expecting Second Life to be like their favorite MMO or FPS or Insert Game Here. I am sick and tired of people insisting Things Are Too Hard and absolutely refusing to do anything more than click a button. The list goes on and on.

I'm sick of it.

All of it.

If they cannot be bothered to even attempt to learn, good riddance.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

No. I'm quite sick and tired of people pretending there are problems/issues with interfaces and such when those problems/issues are on the user end. I am sick and tired of people insisting we must chase after end users who are expecting Second Life to be like their favorite MMO or FPS or Insert Game Here. I am sick and tired of people insisting Things Are Too Hard and absolutely refusing to do anything more than click a button.

I'm sick of it.

All of it.

If they cannot be bothered to even attempt to learn, good riddance.

No, it's NOT good riddance, because we need them. Otherwise SL continues its transition into a retirement home for aging computer geeks, cyber-utopians, and Canadian feminists who are too enamoured of digital shopping for their own good.

The whole point of good design is to facilitate use. By anyone you want to use the platform -- and that includes people who may be coming with expectations that they have, not surprisingly, brought from experience on other platforms or games.

It's supposed to be easy. And it should change over time, as user interfaces everywhere evolve. What looked spiffy in 2006 just looks tired and old-fashioned now.

You say they should adapt. How about you adapting to new ways of doing things? You're up to it, surely?

/me fingers the lever of the trapdoor.

[Solar Legion]

Now to be quite clear on something: There are plenty of things that Linden Lab can do better, plenty they have indeed messed up, plenty of room in general for improvements. This is not in dispute.

What is ...Is the audience Linden Lab should be targeting. Want to draw in newer, younger users? That's fine - be very selective in such targeting however. Don't cast a wide net, don't target modern Gaemerz, don't "simplify" things to "make it easier" for those that cannot be bothered to do more than click a button to Do The Thing.

In short?

You want something like the MMOs/FPS/Insert Game Here? Go. Elsewhere.

[Solar Legion]

5 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

No, it's NOT good riddance, because we need them. Otherwise SL continues its transition into a retirement home for aging computer geeks, cyber-utopians, and Canadian feminists who are too enamoured of digital shopping for their own good.

The whole point of good design is to facilitate use. By anyone you want to use the platform -- and that includes people who may be coming with expectations that they have, not surprisingly, brought from experience on other platforms or games.

It's supposed to be easy. And it should change over time, as user interfaces everywhere evolve. What looked spiffy in 2006 just looks tired and old-fashioned now.

You say they should adapt. How about you adapting to new ways of doing things? You're up to it, surely?

/me fingers the lever of the trapdoor.

That's nice. We do not need them.

I don't care one whit about chasing The New Hot Fad of any sort. Those expectations? Leave them at the door - period.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Scylla Rhiadra]

29 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

That's nice. We do not need them.

I don't care one whit about chasing The New Hot Fad of any sort. Those expectations? Leave them at the door - period.

The Old Ways . . . are the Best Ways.

Damned whippersnappers!

 

[Solar Legion]

As amusing as that is, it is nowhere near what I have said - not even in the same neighborhood.

Points for trying to add some levity.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Sharie Criss]

So we get the "new search" yet it still lacks BASIC search functionality such as the AND OR and NOT operators. Come on LL, that's a core requirement for ANY useful search engine. The removed metadata from place searching just makes it even more difficult to find interesting places. FAIL.

[Rolig Loon]

I can't be the only one who is somewhere in the middle on this. I can't find myself at the extreme that would say, "It's not supposed to be easy. Figure it out yourself."  At the other extreme, I can't find myself wishing that search were so easy that my 6-year-old granddaughter could use it blindfolded. 

We've been a bit spoiled by Google, which has a huge database of possible answers for any question and a scary memory for the sorts of things you have asked before.  SL's search function has neither, so it's unfair to expect it compare well to Google (which, BTW, offers up a lot of garbage too).  We should expect the SL search function to do some of the winnowing, leaving us with the rest of the job. 

I don't expect my granddaughter to understand how to choose meaningful keywords, wildcard markers, and boolean operators, but I do expect most adults these days to know how. I also expect most SL residents who want me to find their products, rental parcels, and events to know how to tag them with meaningful keywords (and to avoid using a cloud of ambiguous or downright misleading ones). 

In my mind, looking for things in Search should be like grocery shopping.  I expect to find frozen peas in the Frozen Food section and milk in the Dairy section.  It would be unreasonable to get angry because I wandered all over the store looking for milk without thinking "Aha, dairy ...", and it would be dumb for the store to put the milk in with the household cleansers.  Users and service providers each have to accept some basic responsibilities.

That said, I get frustrated when I go to the grocery for olive oil and discover that it's shelved with spaghetti noodles instead of with all the other cooking oils in the bakery aisle.  We clearly have different ways of categorizing things; neither one of us is "right". It would be really nice if the store had a nice query function that I could ask, "Where the hell did you put the olive oil?" and it would be really nice if it told me exactly which shelf it's on and how many bottles are left.  (I suspect the Whole Foods or some other pricey market is getting close, but not here in the backwoods.)  For right now, I know some products are just going to be hard to find. I share the blame for that with the grocery store.  Same in SL.

So yes, SL's search engine needs more than a bit of work.  It's too easily gamed and it isn't smart enough to filter out the really dumb answers that even my granddaughter would roll her eyes at.  LL needs to do more serious engineering under the hood.  At the same time, we need to (a) lighten up and (b) get smarter about how we use Search. Quit putting garbage into descriptions when we make things searchable. And don't get too annoyed when Search doesn't have AI mindreading capabilities.  Yet.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Well, there goes that island order from the Boom Boom Club.

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

32 minutes ago, Sharie Criss said:

So we get the "new search" yet it still lacks BASIC search functionality such as the AND OR and NOT operators. Come on LL, that's a core requirement for ANY useful search engine. The removed metadata from place searching just makes it even more difficult to find interesting places. FAIL.

Quotes dont work either.. Every search engine i have ever seen will search only 100% matches if you put quotes around your search words.  

[Lucia Nightfire]

13 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

There you go, the search results updated. As a sim owner I've declared my sim the most relevant anime sim in SecondLife by simply typing Anime into my parcel name a few times.

I dethroned you.

[ChinRey]

14 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

I can't be the only one who is somewhere in the middle on this.

I feel I'm in the middle too but possibly not along the same axis as you. I certainly agree with Solar that we don't need the kind of people who jump on every new hot fad but I don't agree that SL should only be for the already devoted aficionados.

Let me tie this in with another recent thread. Would I recommend SL to a friend? No, I wouldn't and one of the main reason is that if I did, I would have to spend a disproportionately amount of time and energy explaining what SL is and why they might enjoy it. If I could simply tell them to try it and see for themselves, I would.

My family and friends in RL and on the internet are not the kind of people who tend to be taken in by fads but that's exactly why none of them are in SL. To them SL looks like a fad. Not a hot or new one but a fad all the same. They may be willing to give it a try but not invest a lot of time and effort in it before they have a reasonably good idea what it's all about.

---

Second Life is not important to anybody except for the few who are stuck in a bad situation in RL with no way out. I'm sure lots of people here hate to read this and I understand that - I do myself. But it really, really isn't. Sorry.

Real Life is important and SL doesn't relate to it very much. That's the whole point: It's a distraction, a means to get away for a few hours. There's nothing wrong with that, everybody need a break every now and then, but there are so many other ways to achieve that and even more important in this context: Rest and recreation is something we should gain energy from, not spend it on.

---

Finally, to get back to the actual topic of this thread. I don't really want to criticise the new search page design too much because it genuinely is an improvement over most of the other UI changes LL has made the last decade or so. A small one, yes, but an improvement all the same.

There is still a lot of room for improvement though and perhaps the most important one is to understand that form and function are two sides of the same coin. I could refer back to Rams' third principle of good design but since I grew up with Scandinavian design (which is essentially the same, only less pretentious) I think I'd rather quote a famous Norwegian designer who summed it up in a single sentence: "If it works well, it looks good".

Edited November 25, 2021 by ChinRey

[Extrude Ragu]

6 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

I dethroned you.

Damn! I've been foiled!

[Rolig Loon]

3 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Second Life is not important to anybody except for the few who are stuck in a bad situation in RL with no way out. I'm sure lots of people here hate to read this and I understand that - I do myself. But it really, really isn't. Sorry.

Real Life is important and SL doesn't relate to it very much. That's the whole point: It's a distraction, a means to get away for a few hours. There's nothing wrong with that, everybody need a break every now and then, but there are so many other ways to achieve that and even more important in this context: Rest and recreation is something we should gain energy from, not spend it on.

That's a very good point, ChinRey.  To the extent that it's true for at least some people in SL, I agree.  I have known of quite a few people who come to SL to escape stressful or empty conditions in RL. This past year of the pandemic, I have talked with people who spend time in world to find companionship that is harder to find while we all avoid CoVid. There have always been SL residents who are lonely or mobility-impaired or who have other life conditions that they can escape by meeting in SL. What I do not accept, though, is the assertion that "Second Life is not important to anybody except for the few who are stuck in a bad situation in RL with no way out." That's an awfully broad brush. It ignores a huge number of people who are here for the same reasons that they take up hobbies or travel to exotic places on vacation.  You and I both know creators, merchants, performers, and plenty of others who are not here to escape but to explore.  SL is not a distraction for them; it's a second, parallel life. I don't know how big that population is, any more than you know how big the population of escapees is, but it's not trivial. 

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

What I do not accept, though, is the assertion that "Second Life is not important to anybody except for the few who are stuck in a bad situation in RL with no way out."

Yes, I probably shold have been more clear there: Second Life is not important compared to Real Life.

As I said a few sentences later, there's nothing wrong endulging in a bit of light entertainment. We all need some rest and recreation every now and then and new experiences and a channel for our creativity are both essential parts of a good life for everybody.

However:

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

It ignores a huge number of people who are here for the same reasons that they take up hobbies or travel to exotic places on vacation.

I was mainly talking about potential new users, not so much the "devoted aficionados" who have already found what they are looking for within the realms of SL.

You want new experiences? There's your front door. Put on your coat and you're walking shoes. It's only a few hundred steps away. Provided of course that you aren't too physically disabled to move around much at all or live in the middle of some euclidian zoned dystopian monoculture.

You want to socialize? Skip down to your local pub or café and have a cup/glass of your favorite brew with some friends. It's probably cheaper and definitely more rewarding.

Feeling creative? Get yourself an ukulele and strum away. Oh, you mean visual creativity? Here's a pencil and a piece of paper. What, it has to be 3D? Blender is free and so is Sketchup. Nowadays you have to learn something like that anyway to create or SL and once you've done that, there's hardly any point in uploading your work. (And if you still want to upload, there are certainly better platforms to choose than SL.)

Fancy some more passive recreation? I suppose Netflix is the answer these days although I'd rather recommend a good book.

---

The list of activities and "activities" that fill the same basic needs as SL goes on and on. Most of them do it better and are probably cheaper in the long run. The only real edge a recreation focused virtual reality can have is accessibility and the UI and the learning curve are both vital factors there, although not the only ones of course.

Edited November 25, 2021 by ChinRey