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3 hours ago, Chaser Zaks said:

I think you all are giving LL too much of a hard time. LL is aware there are issues and they are around fixing stuff, though there are only so many people that can fix a specific number of issues at once.

A lot of people seem to think the solution is to just add something like this to the code:

bug issue = getBug();
if(issue.exists())
{
  issue.fix();
}

but it isn't that simple.

Second Life's group chats would be, in my opinion, one of the most complex things in Second Life, and when you go to fix it, you either fix it properly or break it entirely. LL wants to do the "Fix it properly" solution, because downtime for one critical feature means overtime for them, as well as an even more upset user base.

Group chat, from what I understand, works as peer to peer, except where peer is a region instead of a user, which means there are a LOT of connections going around. IIRC, it involves the initializing resident's region to tell the simulator "Hey, start a session!", which then asks the dataserver to store that as the current session and get every agent that is online and find the region they are in, and use that to find what simulator the region is on, and then notify every simulator about the incoming chat message. Then every chat message sent to a group needs to be sent to every region(sometimes resulting in over a thousand regions being notified for large groups).

It is a very complex beast, and one mis-step in fixing it can cause the whole thing to collapse.

 

Ideally, my fix to it would be to do what IRC does, and make dedicated group chat servers, which can spin up additional nodes as needed and do load balancing by only having regions communicate with one connection to a chat server, instead of making thousands of connections to many different regions just to send instant messages. But this also involves rewriting a LOT of code, and isn't as simple as just saying "oh well we can take out this circuit breaker and put in a new circuit breaker!". Instead it is more like taking the entire circuit breaker box out and putting a whole new circuit breaker box in.

Linden Lab is charging professional prices for their product.
As a consumer I can expect that at least the basics work properly. At least 99% of the time.
Communication like group chat and things like friends requests are very essential parts of a social platform like Second Life.
They should deliver a proper job in that field. No excuses.

Edited by Sid Nagy
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However bad it's always been, it has gotten progressively and very appreciably worse in recent years and months, to the point all social features involving groups now only work by exception, and as a general rule simply fail. Offline invitations don't work at all anymore whereas they used to work sometimes and, before that, most of the time. Group notices themselves now often fail to distribute whereas before just the attachments would usually need manual retrieval. Group chat has never been reliable but now it's rare that it works.

Discord is not a replacement. It's kinda okay as an asynchronous support tool, but it makes a ridiculously bloated chat vehicle, and for SL it's completely separate from in-world delivery of content. So even if they decided to nuke group chat in favor of Discord, they'd still absolutely need to fix group-scale content delivery (notices with attachments), with the extra added kludginess of gluing together Discord membership and identity of in-world recipients. And speaking of kludginess:  What is more off-putting than an in-world message to join a Discord channel?

I don't know if it's somehow good that it's all pretty much completely broken at the same time now, SL as The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay of social applications. There's no longer much point in trying to patch yet again the perennially broken group chat when none of the rest of it works either. There's just nothing left to save, other than the existing spec which, if properly implemented, could be a perfectly adequate system to support social engagement in SL.

What really worries me, though, is that this—and all the other mounting defects and decay—will get no attention whilst Philip distracts development with his loopy cam-expression-puppeteering-Snapchat-filter boondoggle we're supposed to be ever so excited about. 

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@Chaser Zaks As much as I appreciate the technical explanation and agree that it's not a simple process to replace a group chat system with another (and whoever claims otherwise is clueless), these things don't matter to end-users.

If it's broken, or not working as it should, that's what matters and it should be fixed. It doesn't matter why, because it's broken nevertheless.

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9 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Or how about you accept that the way it is being used is the problem.

You and me have had this conversation before. I know you have it engraved in your brain "this is what it's intended for, so use it that way". I want you to stop and think about one thing for a second... If as good as everyone in SL is using it the "wrong way", don't you think that maybe it was badly designed from the get-go? Should every single person in SL be reeducated? Maybe an entry in the Terms of Service? Or maybe... hear me out now... Maybe the creators of SL could (finally) see that it is being used as it is, and has been for years, and not as they intended, and adapt it, make it more robust to handle the way it's being used?

Or do you think it would be better to do away with altogether, like that seems to be what the definition of "fixing" has been? Also, i've never read anywhere officially that it was meant for land group-purposes. I'm a little over 9 years in SL now and i've seen group notices and chat being used as they are today. So the talking point of "you're using it wrong!" is mute and hilariously dead. At this point in time you're not going to be able to stop people from using it like they have been for years. It is more then high time that LL gets it s**t together and redesign group chat and notices around how it is actually being used.

You get 100 points and an expired lollipop for knowing what it's original intention was though... 🙄

Yes, LL, i'm yet again criticizing you, go cry me a river. This whole thread is about criticizing you.

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Sure, creating on Blender, chatting on Discord, exploring the world on Youtube, dancing with Spotify, sex through pornhub, discussion on forums.
Why SL any longer? 
For us to pay for tier and premium fees of course.

Edited by Sid Nagy
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Just now, Blaise Glendevon said:

SL can't be all things to all people. It's not set up to do it like that. 

YES, it all was once within Second Life.
But neglected and\or sloppy overhauled and\or not scaled up properly and\or probably even sloppier documented code in the first years.

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2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Rarely use group chat so yeah, it could go and I'd not miss it.  

That may be the case for you, but plenty of people do use them. Some may even rely on its functionality. I don't want to beat that horse into a complete pulp, but We're using the groups as we have been. Not as was "intended". the desperate overhaul it needs is way overdue. OP even proposed a totally new separate system alongside the current group chat and notice system (if i understood correctly), and i can get behind that.

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36 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

You and me have had this conversation before. I know you have it engraved in your brain "this is what it's intended for, so use it that way". I want you to stop and think about one thing for a second... If as good as everyone in SL is using it the "wrong way", don't you think that maybe it was badly designed from the get-go? Should every single person in SL be reeducated? Maybe an entry in the Terms of Service? Or maybe... hear me out now... Maybe the creators of SL could (finally) see that it is being used as it is, and has been for years, and not as they intended, and adapt it, make it more robust to handle the way it's being used?

Or do you think it would be better to do away with altogether, like that seems to be what the definition of "fixing" has been? Also, i've never read anywhere officially that it was meant for land group-purposes. I'm a little over 9 years in SL now and i've seen group notices and chat being used as they are today. So the talking point of "you're using it wrong!" is mute and hilariously dead. At this point in time you're not going to be able to stop people from using it like they have been for years. It is more then high time that LL gets it s**t together and redesign group chat and notices around how it is actually being used.

You get 100 points and an expired lollipop for knowing what it's original intention was though... 🙄

Yes, LL, i'm yet again criticizing you, go cry me a river. This whole thread is about criticizing you.

  1. Don't care how it is being used now
  2. There is no "fixing" it to work the way you want it to work
  3. One can understand the intended/actual usage for the Group system by looking at the feature set, how it actually functions and such - none of which even remotely suggests it was/is for socializing
  4. Stow the attitude

I'll make one thing a fair bit clearer for you: I do not care one whit what your "arguments" concerning "fixing" the system are. As far as I am concerned they are irrelevant.

Save yourself the time in the future: Don't bother to respond.

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8 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

Oh and, @Solar Legion, constructive input from you would be refreshing instead of the "haha"'s. Just saying sweetie ;) 

I gave my input. Last time this cropped up. I stated this time as well that a new system is needed while the old is left as is.

Read.

Quote

The solution is to have a separated system for group socializing while leaving the present one in place for its original use.

I've even quoted it for you.

ETA: Oh and I laugh at both actually funny things as well as utterly ridiculous things - both often without bothering to write up a response. Perhaps you ought to remember that no one is as of yet capable of writing up a response using a neural interface and that thus, any possible response actually takes time to type.

Edited by Solar Legion
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8 hours ago, Chaser Zaks said:

I think you all are giving LL too much of a hard time. LL is aware there are issues and they are around fixing stuff, though there are only so many people that can fix a specific number of issues at once.

Bingo!

Fixing group chat is not rocket science. It is a question of priorities... where are limited resources allocated when the list of issues is long.

If I were running LL, I would have Lindens/Moles work on THE PLATFORM and let residents create THE CONTENT. This is a formula that allows scaling up Second Life. (Also, residents generally make better content).

Lindens/Moles should NOT do anything a resident can do (e.g. charity events, birthday parties, home construction). They should facilitate content creation by residents and improve/maintain the platform (e.g. group chat).

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2 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

There is no "fixing" it to work the way you want it to work

I don't think i lead on indicating "i" wanted this, did i? It's about 99.999% of current users. you'd be 0.001% there.

 

4 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Stow the attitude

Irony...

5 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:
  1. Stow the attitude

I'll make one thing a fair bit clearer for you: I do not care one whit what your "arguments" concerning "fixing" the system are. As far as I am concerned they are irrelevant.

Save yourself the time in the future: Don't bother to respond.

Irony #2...

 

You do care, you never fail to jump on whenever the issue is raised, and you never fail to go against anyone raising said point. But hey, i can see you're triggered so maybe i'll better back off. I just like to point out your irony. Also, no need to tell me when i should or shouldn't respond to something. I can make that decision on my own. Thanks for the concern though.

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8 hours ago, Chaser Zaks said:

I think you all are giving LL too much of a hard time. LL is aware there are issues and they are around fixing stuff, though there are only so many people that can fix a specific number of issues at once.

No we're really not.

We have been paying LL though the nose for services for the better part of 20 years. It's not unreasonable to expect they hold up their end of the deal.

It's about time we stopped covering for LL and assuming the benign forces behind the scenes operate in our interest, when they have repeatedly proven they don't.

No one wanted a Sansar .. but we paid for a Sansar. No one wanted a Tilia either and off they go partnering with Unity .. 

I don't care if they don't have enough people to fix bugs, that's a them problem.

 

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I did not say I do not care about the "issue" - I said I do not care what your "reasoning" is.

You are an individual. You speak only for yourself - what you believe anyone else to desire is irrelevant.

I will state if a response is desired or required whenever I wish to. Obviously you do not care about wasting time.

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2 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

I did not say I do not care about the "issue" - I said I do not care what your "reasoning" is.

You are an individual. You speak only for yourself - what you believe anyone else to desire is irrelevant.

I will state if a response is desired or required whenever I wish to. Obviously you do not care about wasting time.

And you have the power to speak for everybody else?
Your opinion is just one opinion, just like the ones from the rest of us.

Most residents pay a good chunk of cash for Second Life. Not to be ignored or been told that it is impossible or not meant that way.
Essential parts of what one sells have to function. In fact all the parts one sells have to.  Period.

Edited by Sid Nagy
Quite blunt too if needed.
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Group chats were not created for land use. They were created for people to communicate with a group of people (more than 2), regardless of the size of the group. They weren't intended to be used be really large groups of people like the Firestorm English support group or land baron groups or RP groups. They were intended for groups of friends to communicate.

LL should have two kinds of groups. Business types and personal use. It will never happen though because money.

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2 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

Lindens/Moles should NOT do anything a resident can do (e.g. charity events, birthday parties, home construction). They should facilitate content creation by residents and improve/maintain the platform (e.g. group chat).

That wouldn't free up Moles to do platform work, it would just do away with them altogether. It's a whole employment practices thing: Moles are NOT Linden employees and the whole bunch of them probably cost the Lab less than one Battery Street receptionist.

(I don't care so much one way or another about which content should or shouldn't be created by the platform owner. I am quite disappointed in the quality of much recent user-generated content, but I'm not yet ready to give up on residents and demand all future content be Mole-made.)

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