Prokofy Neva Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 18 hours ago, Rolig Loon said: 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. Whatever Nuts 'n Bolts Snack Mix this search engine is making, it can return 20 or better 100 returns per page, not 7. That is all. Surely you can't disagree with that. And is that a few lines of code difference? It might well be! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVeryFirst Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 In the last iteration of search the results did not page, you could scroll up and down looking at the results. Now it pages and when you go back a page it goes to the top of the page. So when looking at results that span two pages you don’t even come close to seeing the group you are looking at. And, when in the old version I could open two different selections, one above those of interest and one below those of interest and then scroll up and down to see all in between. With the paging of the output that can’t be done any more and makes it a lot harder to look at any group of items in the results. It really stinks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rolig Loon Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 I certainly won't disagree with your basic point, ChinRey. My own list of enjoyments includes long walks in the woods, listening to good music, and writing poetry. None of those involve coming in world. I do worry about anyone who spends all her waking hours on line (except those who work here, and I worry a little about even them). SL is one among many ways to spend time, though, and there are plenty of people who enjoy it not as an escape but as yet another way to relax and express themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 Well, here's something rather interesting that I've discovered. Using the old engine, I was able to search -- and invariably find -- groups, places, and profiles that included racist terms (such as the N-word) prohibited by the LL ToS, but still appearing in many descriptions. These profiles and descriptions are still there (I know these descriptions already) -- but now one can't search for them. I . . . guess that's a good thing? Or is it simply tucking the some of the nasty stuff under the bed where no one can see it? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 8 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: I . . . guess that's a good thing? Or is it simply tucking the some of the nasty stuff under the bed where no one can see it? Policing content that is against the ToS has always been reactive on the part of LL. They just don't have the resources to check every parcels text or profile every time it changes. They could "ban" key words and prevent people adding them to profiles, but it's only a matter of minutes before misspelling and Unicode make it a pointless exercise. There will always be people who take no as a personal affront and then go out of their way to do it anyway. Search isn't immune to these circumventions to a lesser extent, but it's a much smaller surface to monitor and apply changes. It also doesn't waste time informing someone their choice of terms isn't allowed, making discovery and circumvention a slow process of trial and error. At least this way such content isn't front and center in the search .. So .. good, on the whole. I guess .. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said: They could "ban" key words and prevent people adding them to profiles, but it's only a matter of minutes before misspelling and Unicode make it a pointless exercise. Well, exactly. A slight spelling variation on the N-Word (you can guess what) still pulls up no shortage of hits. 2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said: At least this way such content isn't front and center in the search .. So .. good, on the whole. I guess .. I'm honestly not sure. The stuff is still out there -- and can be found by anyone actively looking for it (as I am) relatively easily. It just renders it a bit more invisible. My attitude has always tended to be that, if SL is going to host nasty sh*t -- and there's no shortage of that that apparently does not violate the ToS -- then they should own it. It's hypocritical and a bit sleazy to allow stuff like snuff, dolcet and "daddy dom -- babygirl" incest sims, but quietly tuck it away so that only those who want access to it know it's there. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 Are we expecting a "Second Life's Metaverse is INFESTED WITH ______ PORN" media hit piece again... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 (edited) 3 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said: Are we expecting a "Second Life's Metaverse is INFESTED WITH ______ PORN" media hit piece again... The media are not, it's true, known for managing nuance and complication. I love Second Life. I wouldn't be here after more than 13 years if I didn't. I love its potential, and, sometimes, its actual accomplishments. And most especially I love the people. And, I want SL to succeed. But it's not my job to produce carefully laundered PR for Linden Lab. In fact, I wouldn't take that job were I offered pay to do it. I think that most of my posts here, and what I say elsewhere, strike a sometimes difficult balance between extolling the virtues and wonder of the place, and critiquing some of the darker aspects of what it offers. I try to do that anyway. I'm not oblivious to the impact of what we say here and elsewhere about the platform, and I think that criticisms and "exposés" need to be couched responsibly so that nuance and complexity are not lost. But I'm a consumer advocate, and an advocate for informed consent and participation -- not to mention critical thinking. And that means talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Edited November 26, 2021 by Scylla Rhiadra 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prokofy Neva Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 (edited) I just had an epiphany today about why the search has been broken for a year (even before this "facelift" disaster). I will test this hypothesis and of course walk around the usual forums naysayers. If you look on this new art project, "Places" has a list of categories. You can either just use "All" or pick out a category. But guess which category is missing there -- "Rentals". That seems odd, given that on the "About Land" menu, "Rentals" remains as a category. So search pulls from the "about land" category, but one of the categories --Rentals -- is blocked -- although it is the most important feature of that parcel (a person has offered it for rent). I'm not sure it was like that before, but frankly, I don't remember, as I always kept it on "All". Does anyone with good will remember what it was? Or a Linden may pronounce on this. And of course the reason for this block is heavily ideological. First, the immediate "technical" reason is that removing it there "avoids duplication" supposedly, because you already have another whole separate menu called "Land & Rentals". Of course, as I keep saying, THAT menu is clunky and works with the "prices" filter only for sales -- NOT for rentals. I don't think it gets the use that search/all or search/places does, at least from what I gather from polling my customers. Of course, that same zeal for "conformity" and "consistency" could be used to argue that "Rentals" should be left in as a category for places, because it's on the "About Land" menu. Why discriminate? Second, the reason is more psychological/ideological. the Lindens basically hate land -- they want to get out of the land (server) business, and only get revenue from LindEx sales and taxation of content, and perhaps some day selling the software along with a hookup to their grid for your own server. Anything to get out of that expensive server farm operation, now outsourced to Amazon, but still a big cost and headache. The deeper prejudice around this, however, is cultural/ideological -- the hatred of the hipster urbanite for the backward farm, the conservative opinions, the flyover states, the Red states, whatever. These tend to be mainly agricultural. And that prejudice carries over to virtual life because people who don't buy land are "more free and creative" -- they live in sandboxes or at Linden office hours; if they have a home it's in Bellisseria, which isn't land you can control (you can't terraform it, put it in search, or sub-divide it) and is really only a bracket for content -- the subservient role that LL and techs in general want land to play. Land in the hands of a landowner class becomes a threat to the platform providers and their fanboyz because it is a form of valuation that is not in code, not in content creation, but merely in space and the human heart -- and often geographically contiguous space, or space that has been terraformed and decorated to give a sense of location and attachment for reasons of experience -- an intangible that LL would just as soon be rid of because it ties to those expensive servers, and ties to that 10% of the user base who complain the most about griefing, encroachment and everything else tied to land they can't fully control on Estate Number 1 (the Mainland). It's like that Norman Rockwell painting, where the careworn farmer father is sitting on his truck's step, a crate with a lantern and flag nearby as he lives in such a remote area that he has to flag down a passing train to stop for his son, whom he is sending off to college, having scrimped and saved. The boy is in a brand new suit and shiny shoes -- and you know he is not going to be ever getting into the pig sty again, you know? He will be on Twitter and drinking lattes and eating free-range chicken from some faux organic farm owned by a mega agri-business company that has put his dad out of business -- he had to sell out to pay for back taxes. If you don't believe me about this prejudice and can't see it, you likely haven't been paying attention to Linden pronouncements and projections over the years, and don't remember the old forums in 2004-2005, when a concerted minority of oldbies ranted and raged against land barons and any kind of land business. They wanted to remove the 10% group discount, put in to encourage land purchases by the Lindens and get people to cooperate in groups -- the FIC felt it was only greedy, tacky hustlers who made use of it. Several ominously implied that renting land was illegal, not allowed, either sell it or get out. Finally, Ben Linden got on the forums and made a statement that land rentals were *encouraged* by Linden Land. They knew which side of the bread was buttered. So my theory is this: in 2018 when search/places broke, the Lindens may have been tinkering with search and blocked "Land" from the Places menu. Then they realized all these people like Prokofy were complaining, both due to the lack of neat lists of returns, and the thousands of dollars paid for search/places ads at 30L a pop -- because with search returning kasha, that payment was rendered meaningless. They put it back the way it was -- the OP's request as well. But when it broke last year, it's because they had already started "training" those algorithms, like a herd of stallions to "not look at land twice" and blocked that category "rentals" in the list for search/places. And that's because along with their aversion to land, which is heavy, the Lindens are egalitarian to a fault -- they push for equality so zealously that it's odd that they don't have more equitable outcomes, but I guess it's selective. So they believe that land "shouldn't" get two shots at search as this would "weight it unfairly," even though of course, everything in SL that you are searching for is...on land. You know? And that if you are in search/places, you want to find rentals just as much as "men's clothing" or "romantic forest". So this does open up the question of the rationale for 30L ads at all -- except for your audience on the TPVs which can still type in an exact name, and get an exact list of not thousands but a few, or hundreds if that many lots have that name in it. Why have them? More to the point, why pay them? (In terms of the SL Viewer). And I think IF this is what happened -- and that has to be confirmed and in any event explained -- it is also debatable because I think given the role land plays in the world -- everything sought by inworld search as distinct from Marketplace is on it -- that two bites of the apple makes sense, especially if someone bothered to pay 30L for search/places' ads. And especially given that Land & Rentals category does not work with prices for rentals! So typing "$300 cottage" into search/places produces some useful listings whereas you can't set the filter on Land & Rentals, it gives you "whoops". And before you get too wound up pointing out that through the luck of the draw, my $300 rental happened to show up with those terms on top, go look at what happens to $50 Cottage -- not $50 and not cottages. The Lindens may not know what they did to break search last year (before now); my theory could be completely wrong. As a Linden pointed out recently, it's ok to be wrong on the forums. It is, in fact, the scientific approach to mount a hypothesis, see if it fits, and if it doesn't, go to the next hypothesis. Edited November 26, 2021 by Prokofy Neva 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 If LL were anti land, they would have come up with a plan to get out of land rather than sink a years development time into an AWS move at great expense, they also wouldn't be adding all the new land .. Why should anyone at LL take anything you say seriously on the matter of search under performing after that 1300 word rambling conspiracy theory about how LL are out to get your rental business ... for reasons ? Could have just filled a JIRA .. "rentals" is missing from search is either an oversight and needs to be added, or the category has been depreciated and it remaining in the viewer is an oversight and it should be removed. Done it for you ... https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-231482 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solar Legion Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 18 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said: If LL were anti land, they would have come up with a plan to get out of land rather than sink a years development time into an AWS move at great expense, they also wouldn't be adding all the new land .. Why should anyone at LL take anything you say seriously on the matter of search under performing after that 1300 word rambling conspiracy theory about how LL are out to get your rental business ... for reasons ? Could have just filled a JIRA .. "rentals" is missing from search is either an oversight and needs to be added, or the category has been depreciated and it remaining in the viewer is an oversight and it should be removed. Done it for you ... https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-231482 Or ... It already exists elsewhere in the new search (which it does) and thus does not need to be duplicated. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 24 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said: Done it for you SUCH a good neighbour! This is what I love about SL -- people helping out people. 😊😏 I don't know how to create a JIRA, but I am very good at loaning sugar to people when they run out. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prokofy Neva Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 (edited) 39 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said: If LL were anti land, they would have come up with a plan to get out of land rather than sink a years development time into an AWS move at great expense, they also wouldn't be adding all the new land .. Why should anyone at LL take anything you say seriously on the matter of search under performing after that 1300 word rambling conspiracy theory about how LL are out to get your rental business ... for reasons ? Could have just filled a JIRA .. "rentals" is missing from search is either an oversight and needs to be added, or the category has been depreciated and it remaining in the viewer is an oversight and it should be removed. Done it for you ... https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-231482 It's missing because it was removed, dear. Deliberately. And that's a report, not a conspiracy. And someone will be along any minute to close your JIRA and explain that to you. And no thanks for putting more ideas into their heads and having them "depreciate" (you mean deprecate?) it on the land menu. There's no reason to take it off the land menu, it's useful -- even if it is now blocked on search/places. Of course people can write "rentals rentals rentals" and even name an entire island "Rentals" to try to get themselves into search. Maybe I should re-name my company "Ravenglass Destinations". I guess you have never been to any of these SLCC meet-ups, "Metaverse" conferences, etc. which I have attended since 2004, with various Lindens giving presentations. They don't want to stay in the land business. I mean, who would? It's not their wish, they think it's a dead end, and that's why they got into the whole Sansara fandango. My father, who was a ceramic engineer, explained these things to me when I was a child. He would say that he could go into the brick-making business, but bricks are heavy, they break, it's expensive and difficult to haul them long distances, etc. It seems less and less buildings are made of brick any more. Or he could work on carrier beads, which are these very tiny products of ceramic engineering that are fused to paper in the Xeroxing process, and that was the wave of the future. At least...until the Internet came along. Moving to AWS isn't inconsistent with wanting to get out of the land business at all -- indeed, it's the first rational step. And once again, it's a hypothesis awaiting an actual informed Linden statement -- which still may not be the last word on the subject. When "Rentals" is removed from the "places" categories -- if this is new, or it is old but now has more consequences, messing up search -- the response is to sell your land and not buy more land. And if thousands of people did that, it would be put back by tomorrow. But in the atomized and randomly suppressed and incentivized society of SL, this is not likely to happen. Edited November 26, 2021 by Prokofy Neva 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 21 minutes ago, Solar Legion said: Or ... It already exists elsewhere in the new search (which it does) and thus does not need to be duplicated. Exactly. Land has a category all by itself...on the first dang page. What more does one need? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prokofy Neva Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 (edited) 8 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said: Exactly. Land has a category all by itself...on the first dang page. What more does one need? Yeah, that's exactly what I said. And if you read past your hand, you see that I argue in fact that it's ok to have it appear twice, as it is a type of place for a place searches, and the Land & Rentals category is clunky and unusable for prices -- prices can only be used as a filter on SALES of land. If you try to use the prices filter on RENTALS you get "WHOOPS", no answer. And there are other aspects of the Land & Rentals category that are clunky and never have been fixed in the many years I've seen it in operation -- and not used it. So if you want to find a $100 cottage, you use search/places -- and note that I even said that even with land blocked, this still provides some useful entries, but only up to a point. PS Land & Rentals has existed for many years, and is not new. The question to determine is whether the search PLACES menu which is separate had "land" removed as a category. It might well have, but may not have. And you don't have an answer to that pertinent question. The idea that it "doesn't need to be duplicated" isn't a concept that the Lindens adhere to, across all frontiers. So that alone is not a rationale. Neither you nor Solar are in the land business and I'm not sure you even own your own personal land or that it is in search. So I am waiting to hear from others with knowledge about this, not the useful hateful and sneering opinions. Edited November 26, 2021 by Prokofy Neva 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 Who you really need to hear from are people who use search to find rentals and to me, one who has rented almost entirely for 12 years, I'd look in Land/ Rental and Sales...the new front page option...first and probably only. Most people wth a hint of intelligence would find the new option, better. It's a rental. It has it's very own front page box. Awesome! Not more flipping through places. Just rentals...omg...amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prokofy Neva Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said: Who you really need to hear from are people who use search to find rentals and to me, one who has rented almost entirely for 12 years, I'd look in Land/ Rental and Sales...the new front page option...first and probably only. Most people wth a hint of intelligence would find the new option, better. It's a rental. It has it's very own front page box. Awesome! Not more flipping through places. Just rentals...omg...amazing. I have heard from them. And they don't use it. Because it doesn't work well. And they tend to use search/all and search/places more. No "amazing" about "Land & Rentals" with its non-working filters. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaelFaye Posted November 26, 2021 Share Posted November 26, 2021 Geocities... What a throwback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColeLaScotta Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 On 11/22/2021 at 11:28 PM, SheriBalto said: I am on firestorm and it looks horrible on it if i wanted it to look this bad I would be using singularity. Yep, me too. I am on Firestorm and it's just yuk!🤕 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted November 30, 2021 Share Posted November 30, 2021 Shrike Linden has responded to (and closed) the JIRA issue I raised (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-231482) Mystery resolved. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solar Legion Posted November 30, 2021 Share Posted November 30, 2021 2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said: Shrike Linden has responded to (and closed) the JIRA issue I raised (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-231482) Mystery resolved. Oh hey ... exactly what I already figured was going to happen! Imagine that .... someone finally did something that made sense when retooling one of their internal pages (removal of an utterly redundant results category). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeDragon Destiny Posted November 30, 2021 Share Posted November 30, 2021 I strongly dislike this new search page we have to deal with, its layout looking like something from the past, not user friendly at all, if looking for a new destination to visit but not knowing the sims name is pretty impossible to search for...Right? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted December 1, 2021 Share Posted December 1, 2021 22 hours ago, Solar Legion said: Oh hey ... exactly what I already figured was going to happen! Imagine that .... someone finally did something that made sense when retooling one of their internal pages (removal of an utterly redundant results category). This is all very well and fine . . . . . . but why isn't there a separate "Ravenglass" search category? Hmmmm? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Mistwalker Posted December 1, 2021 Share Posted December 1, 2021 13 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: This is all very well and fine . . . . . . but why isn't there a separate "Ravenglass" search category? Hmmmm? You like living dangerously, don't you. 🧐 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucia Nightfire Posted December 1, 2021 Share Posted December 1, 2021 5 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said: You like living dangerously, don't you. 🧐 Maybe they love reading 10,000 word casual responses. 😆 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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