Outdated, broken content at Linden Village

[Timothy McGregor]

Maybe this has been discussed already, but maybe it's worth revisiting in light of the recent news of Philip returning to Linden Lab as Strategic Advisor. 

So recently I stumbled upon a little cove in Dalton that was for sale, and after I realized it was adjacent to the balloon tour in Ambleside and the Town Hall build and surrounding Linden Village sims and parcels, I jumped on it. It's a cool little spot on the water that looks out toward some historic spaces in Second Life.

I have been doing some exploring in this area recently, and I notice that nothing.. literally nothing is fresh. Every "Linden Village" parcel is the same as it has been since these regions first went up well over 10 years ago. The balloon tour is broken. The content at the Town Hall build is dated at least 10 years, probably more. Most of the parcels are owned by Lindens who are no longer with the Lab. Game tables at the Hidden Lakes telehub in Waterhead are broken. Everything in this entire area is either broken, or outdated by over a decade, or both. 

Why do I care about this? Well, I was standing in front of the "RL Education In Second Life" sign at Town Hall that of course doesn't work, and I dropped down below to those old kiosks offering help changing your appearance, and even helpfully dispensing outfits that are probably from 2009 or 2010, and up the stairway I notice a 1 day old new resident walking. She stops. I say "Hello, welcome to Second Life. First time here?" She says "Yes. What do I do here?"

I'm guessing she was deposited into the world at Hidden Lakes. She's wandering around, lost, trying to figure out what to do, where to go, where all the people are. And her first exposure to the world of Second Life is Linden Village, an area that may as well not exist, considering how neglected and abandoned it appears to be by the Lab. I don't know if she will stick around, but if she doesn't, I don't blame her. I was the only person there when she happened by. She was confused, lost, and not sure what to do. Same old onboarding problems.

Anyway, I don't know if I'm asking a question or making a statement. I'll let you decide.

 

Edited February 4, 2022 by Zaphod Kotobide
spelling error

[Silent Mistwalker]

You've spoken volumes in those 6 short paragraphs.

[animats]

Yes.

As I pointed out in another topic, more than half the display boards at some Linden safe hubs are broken. (And the other half are things like "how to file a JIRA".)

[Mollymews]

i think Linden should not do anything about updating Linden Village. Is a snapshot of the way things were. I think the prim builds are still great

yes the balloon ride could be restarted, but the mahjong game and the blackboard at Waterhead still work. The Prim Attack game is not broken as such, has been turned off and labelled Out Of Order. Can still get popcorn and drinks from the vendors by the balloon ride

and I like the resident art gallery on Kirkby below the temple.  My all-time fav art work is there. Morphing Sculpture by Sansun Steinbeck. Is a fabulous work of prim torture

 

[Orwar]

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

i think Linden should not do anything about updating Linden Village. Is a snapshot of the way things were.

   To an extent, I agree. It is fun to explore old things around the grid, and it's nice to preserve some of it.

   But what they really need to do is stop sending new folks to outdated infohubs. Let it remain as a place to be explored by those who find their way there, but make damned well sure that new folks who peek into SL are met with up to date information.

[Lindal Kidd]

Places like Svarga are a better representation of "the way things were".

I agree with Zaphod and Orwar. If LL is going to maintain old parts of the grid, and I think they should, they should ALSO actually MAINTAIN them. Get the Moles over there to fix stuff, or put in the nearest working substitute, if changes to the underlying code have broken things.

Edited February 3, 2022 by Lindal Kidd

[Timothy McGregor]

7 hours ago, Mollymews said:

i think Linden should not do anything about updating Linden Village. Is a snapshot of the way things were. I think the prim builds are still great

 

From the standpoint of self-indulgent nostalgia on the part of an old fart like me, sure. But new residents are being dispensed from Waterhead into these areas, and this is the first thing they see. That's a problem. If we want Linden Village to be a static display of nostalgia, then get rid of the infohub there.

[Mollymews]

6 hours ago, Orwar said:

   But what they really need to do is stop sending new folks to outdated infohubs. Let it remain as a place to be explored by those who find their way there, but make damned well sure that new folks who peek into SL are met with up to date information.

i am not sure that new residents are sent to the old Welcome Areas and Infohubs anymore in the normal course. The onboarding system places them on the Social Islands and Community Gateways. Which these days are automagically set as their Home when they first enter the world, which is a vast improvement on how it used to be where No Home was set resulting in new people being shoved to some random place on the grid when pressing the viewer Home button or getting killed by a script

a new person ending up at an old place today has in the main, had to search and find it for themselves. So this person does know how to navigate the world before they end up in these backwaters

only other way to end up in the old places like Waterhead/Morris/Korea1 etc is when our Home region is offline when we log in

i think also that new people who do search for and find infohubs are those who try to set their Home to someplace other than their starter Social Island/Community Gateway and get the system message: "You can only set your 'Home Location' on your land or at a mainland Infohub." Which leads them to search for "infohub"

i do agree tho that Help information kiosks at the Welcome Areas should be relevant, and I just say that to be fair to the LDPW some of the old Welcome Areas have had makeovers. And the Infohubs that are maintained by residents are generally up-to-date in the helpy info department

i think too that for helping new people to continue their explorations it probably be a good idea to put portals on the Welcome Areas same as the ones on the Social Islands. Just so that there is some little consistency for the few new people who end up in these backwaters

[Sid Nagy]

Seems like LL wants the new kids of their lawns.

[Coffee Pancake]

This is why SL is perceived as a dead.

Content doesn't get updated, ages badly and eventually breaks.

Linden content is the worst of it.

 

The "everything is a time capsule" mentality needs to end. Prims are not sacred.

SL must be a living world first, not a mausoleum littered with memories of better days, places Philip walked back when there were only 16 regions .. 

[Aiyumei]

12 hours ago, animats said:

(And the other half are things like "how to file a JIRA".)

I have the pleasure to work this "amazing" tracking system on daily basis for years and explain to very experienced professionals how to properly report issues in it. Guides are a MUST.

[Timothy McGregor]

6 hours ago, Aiyumei said:

I have the pleasure to work this "amazing" tracking system on daily basis for years and explain to very experienced professionals how to properly report issues in it. Guides are a MUST.

Not disagreeing, but I'm not sure that identifying bugs, documenting repro steps and creating Jira submissions are really things a 3 day old resident should be expected to deal with. I don't think there is much value in putting Jira help signs out next to "How to push a beach ball around" help signs.

[Lindal Kidd]

The SS Galaxy is another case in point. I was very glad when LL took it over as a museum, rather than let it vanish into the mists of history. But I visited her yesterday, and the ballroom had no music stream. The dance machines were working, but it's no fun to dance to silence.

[Silent Mistwalker]

57 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

The SS Galaxy is another case in point. I was very glad when LL took it over as a museum, rather than let it vanish into the mists of history. But I visited her yesterday, and the ballroom had no music stream. The dance machines were working, but it's no fun to dance to silence.

My good friend Carlton would like to have a word with you.

[Mollymews]

12 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The "everything is a time capsule" mentality needs to end. Prims are not sacred.

SL must be a living world first, not a mausoleum littered with memories of better days, places Philip walked back when there were only 16 regions .. 

on this we disagree in a broader general sense

i think that bulldozing history for the sake of the latest shiny just because we can is not a good thing. I live in Auckland NZ, where the practice is to bulldoze everything and stick up shiny new , where ever, whenever, however. The end result of which is that Auckland is a dull and souless place, build-wise, even tho it sits between two quite beautiful harbours. There is a sameness to the city no matter where you go. Unlike cities like Melbourne in Australia where they have been careful to integrate their past with their present. Which makes that city look like what it is, vibrant and cosmopolitan 

 

about the older WA/Infohubs

quite a few of them are still quite nice. Like Moose Beach, Hau Koda, Wengen, Miramare, Degrand, Castle Valeria, Violet, Zebrasil, Idu and Lewis to name some. Waterhead in my view is quite nice also as it is. I have always liked the totem there and would not like to see it replaced with a new improved version just because mesh more shiny

on some of the really old WAs/Infohubs the Moles have done a bit of a spruce/tidy up. Put in complementary things like gardens and taken away all the no longer relevant helpy boards and put in more current info boards, without bulldozing the main builds themselves. I notice they have been doing this incrementally (as time permits I suppose) which is a good thing and addresses the concerns of irrelevant information kiosks

the new resident signup retention problem is not solved tho by bulldozing the 40 or so old prim built public regions out of the about 5,000 public access regions that Linden also  provide

for new people then they do already get latest shiny when they login - the Social Islands

Edited February 4, 2022 by Mollymews
about

[Sid Nagy]

If our RL world still had to be compatible with the 18th century, that would not be funny at all.
Just saying.
The the present and certainly the future don't have to be 100% backwards compatible.
If LL wants to stay even somewhat relevant like they are now, they have to let go certain ancient programming choices.
20 Years ago in software development is from light years away from what is doable these days. 

There is no reason to keep MS Windows to a halt because someone out there still insists to work with the DOS version of Word Perfect.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Istelathis]

If for some reason they were to ever dismantle the old zones, I really wish they would allow us to host them on opensim.  Even though I was not there for the earlier days of Second Life, I still enjoy exploring them.. hey.. don't judge me!  I'm weird like that ;p  I get a kick of seeing how people created things using primitive technology, wandering through the relics of Arcadia's slum city is fascinating to me.

[swedishfox Ghost]

on the fence about preserving old builds to a degree, what is a must is keeping information to date, whatever games/attractions/etc. functional. what does hurt is going to the memorial park to go plant a name every so often and only one of the dispensers work, honestly feels a bit disrespectful to be left in in a dilapidated state

[Istelathis]

@swedishfox Ghost If it is the site that I am thinking of, they have fixed it.  There is a pillar with multiple names on it,  I noticed that they did not all work when I first used it - now they all do.  I like to stroll through the memorial park on the occasion, and leave them all a flower or candle when I pass by it.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood and was thinking of something else entirely.  I swear my brain likes to go off on its own at times 🤪  I too would like it if they fixed those.  I am happy that the candles work though, I have sent off old friends and family from the beach while watching them float off into the horizon.  None of them ever were in SL, but they are remembered through it.  I love that Linden included that area.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Istelathis

[Coffee Pancake]

14 hours ago, Mollymews said:

on this we disagree in a broader general sense

i think that bulldozing history for the sake of the latest shiny just because we can is not a good thing.

 

We need fundamental platform advancement by people who are intimately involved with the platform as it is being used today.

It's not history. It's broken garbage content that's only important to a limited number of people, the most vocal of which don't even use the platform recreationally.

No one logging in for the first time sees "history", they see janky crap and then they leave.

[Chris Corvinus]

9 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

We need fundamental platform advancement by people who are intimately involved with the platform as it is being used today.

It's not history. It's broken garbage content that's only important to a limited number of people, the most vocal of which don't even use the platform recreationally.

No one logging in for the first time sees "history", they see janky crap and then they leave.

This. 

But, I will say that there should be a museum-style sim dedicated to the ways of old. Just make sure new people never see it.

[Mollymews]

46 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

No one logging in for the first time sees "history", they see janky crap and then they leave.

people logging in for the first time see the Learning Islands, Social Islands and Community Gateways. To end up at old Linden builds elsewhere on the grid then new people have to actively find them (other than logging in to a offline region where they can get diverted and for most people who have GMA set then they get diverted to the Zindra WAs)

in the context of this discussion, I just reiterate that we are talking about 40 regions out of the whole number available to residents to explore

i just say also that where the Moles have replaced info boards at the old WAs the new boards are all destination-oriented to builds like the Portal Park etc. None of the newer info boards at the WAs are about how to dress your avatar, use your camera, etc; as the info for how to do all this is provided as context-sensitive help in the viewer

should the LDPW be more aggressive in scheduling this kind of work ? Maybe possibly, but given everything else the LPDW has on their plate then I think their rate of progress is ok. And also last week, Linden put out a notice for hiring more Moles (paid platform content providers). So maybe some of the residents who are intimately involved with the platform as it is being used today can apply for the jobs and bring to bear their knowledge and understanding of how SL is supposed to work

 

on the general thought line, about how the world should perform better in terms of platform efficiencies both server and client sides

tbf to Linden they seem to me to be keenly aware of this as readings of the various user group transcripts attest. And they are moving forward on this. The  Performance Improvement Project Viewer gives a 20-40% performance gain depending on client hardware, which is pretty significant given that this gain has been achieved with out obsoleting anything

this all said tho I just say that generally speaking, I am more in the incrementalist improvement camp.  Less in the improvement by obsolescence camp. The incrementalist approach influences my view of how I prefer things to move along

[Coffee Pancake]

10 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

So maybe some of the residents who are intimately involved with the platform as it is being used today can apply for the jobs and bring to bear their knowledge and understanding of how SL is supposed to work

We can't even get Linden devs to agree to do something .. anything .. without it getting run by product and business .. which of course never happens. We've just wasted the last few TPV meetings trying to explain what an AO is and why people would want one in the viewer.

10 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

 

on the general thought line, about how the world should perform better in terms of platform efficiencies both server and client sides

tbf to Linden they seem to me to be keenly aware of this as readings of the various user group transcripts attest. And they are moving forward on this. The  Performance Improvement Project Viewer gives a 20-40% performance gain depending on client hardware, which is pretty significant given that this gain has been achieved with out obsoleting anything

this all said tho I just say that generally speaking, I am more in the incrementalist improvement camp.  Less in the improvement by obsolescence camp. The incrementalist approach influences my view of how I prefer things to move along

Platform performance has finally been recognized as a major problem impacting growth and uptake, this isn't an incremental improvement, this is a fundamental problem that has been ignored for over a decade and is finally getting a little limited attention.

 

[Mollymews]

59 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Platform performance has finally been recognized as a major problem impacting growth and uptake, this isn't an incremental improvement, this is a fundamental problem that has been ignored for over a decade and is finally getting a little limited attention.

this to me is incrementalism. Short steps that are limited to the scope of the task at hand. Short meaning when compared to the previous lifetime of the product and short when compared to the anticipated future lifetime of the product. So while 1 or 2 years might be seen as a long time in isolation to bring a task to fruition, is not all that long compared to a 20-30 year (potentially  more)anticipated product lifetime

another way incrementalism can be thought about is as continuous improvement. Which may be a better way to describe Linden's approach, as it can be borne out by their actions

Viewer 1 had about 23 or so major improvement steps/iterations/versions as I remember. The 2-6 versioned viewer I don't know how many iterations. But each release has given some improvement to the user experience. On the long lifetime today's 6.x viewer gives a significantly better user experience than did 2.x, 3.x, etc

also a quantum big leap that Linden did make was moving the servers to AWS. And now that this is largely bedded in then is unsurprising to me that more resources and attention have been directed to the viewer. The Performance Improvement project viewer being the most noticeable improvement as a consequence of the freeing up of resources previously dedicated to the AWS transition, which to me is the normally expected outcome

[Timothy McGregor]

18 hours ago, Mollymews said:

about the older WA/Infohubs

quite a few of them are still quite nice. Like Moose Beach, Hau Koda, Wengen, Miramare, Degrand, Castle Valeria, Violet, Zebrasil, Idu and Lewis to name some. Waterhead in my view is quite nice also as it is. I have always liked the totem there and would not like to see it replaced with a new improved version just because mesh more shiny

Honestly I don't have any problem with "old content" in general, especially primitive based. I also enjoy seeing it around, and there are a lot of prim builds out there that are absolutely stunning, easily holding their own against many newer mesh builds. 

My primary concern is with Linden owned builds that dispense "help" and "information"  and other content that is over a decade out of date. If they do nothing else at all, I think they should either update those where warranted, or remove them if they are no longer relevant or useful.

As an aside, still a fair amount of great historical content around the original 6. Ivory tower is still there in Natoma. But that's residents preserving history, which I think is the way it should be for the most part.