Sayoko Takeda Posted February 1, 2023 Share Posted February 1, 2023 Why was the interests tab in profile abolished? old new 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted February 1, 2023 Share Posted February 1, 2023 Yes, it's stupid... Especially as this tab also contained the spoken languages, and any custom/personal site URL... It still exists in the Cool VL Viewer: I coded it so that it can use both the new capability, that provides longer text for SL and RL profile text, and the old UDP request method to still retrieve the info for the Interests tab... 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aishagain Posted February 2, 2023 Share Posted February 2, 2023 (edited) All the info that was usually put into "interests" can now be place in the "about" section on the Secondlife "front page", which is greatly enlarged. It does require some work to actually do this and of course folk have to know where to look rather than it being intuitive. I have to wonder if LL did any client research before ammending the profile format? Edited February 2, 2023 by Aishagain small revision 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Pole Posted February 2, 2023 Share Posted February 2, 2023 I'm pretty sure that the interests tab was dropped simply because it is irrelevant due to..... 1) Most people never looked at it or even knew it had existed 2) Profiles can (and should) contain all that info in the About / 1st Life tab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gwyneth Llewelyn Posted February 2, 2023 Share Posted February 2, 2023 All of the above makes sense, sure, but, in that case, we'd like to have at least some basic formatting options on the profile. The basics — bold, italics, bullet lists, and external links. Because doing a full-blown WYSIWYG editor in pure OpenGL (as LL is so fond of doing...) is a lot of work, they could stick to good old Markdown instead — which would be perfectly adequate for most purposes... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted February 2, 2023 Share Posted February 2, 2023 4 hours ago, Randy Pole said: I'm pretty sure that the interests tab was dropped simply because it is irrelevant due to..... 1) Most people never looked at it or even knew it had existed 2) Profiles can (and should) contain all that info in the About / 1st Life tab 1.- I always look at it, if only for the spoken language (mind you, not every SLer is a native English speaker). 2.- 1st life is empty in my profile, as it is in many people's profile, because 1st life is private ! And it is way easier to have an ”Interest” tab with formatted entries/fields, than having to read through lines of 1st (or 2nd) life profile text to see what is the spoken language or the in-SL skills or interests of the person behind the avatar. It is not because you are not using a feature (that always existed in SL, or at least was already there when I joined, over 16 years ago), that it is useless for others... 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aishagain Posted February 2, 2023 Share Posted February 2, 2023 5 hours ago, Randy Pole said: I'm pretty sure that the interests tab was dropped simply because it is irrelevant due to..... 1) Most people never looked at it or even knew it had existed 2) Profiles can (and should) contain all that info in the About / 1st Life tab Well Randy, perhaps you never bothered to look at it, I did (as did many others of my cohort) and I found it very useful for identifying folk who perhaps had limited command of English when giving them assistance. I suspect your consumer research was about as thorough as LL's. Yes, all that information CAN be placed in the Secondlife/about field but it is (in my opinion) far less intuitive to put it there. If you really think that many would look as far as the Firstlife tab, you think differently to many folk that I meet in SL. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solar Legion Posted February 2, 2023 Share Posted February 2, 2023 Honestly the decision to remove both the Interests and Web tabs was very poorly thought out - people actually did use them. Yes, it is nice to have the extra space in the About and 1st Life sections ... That is not a proper replacement however. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prokofy Neva Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 I wonder if this is a sign of collusion collaboration w -- oh, never mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panterapolnocy Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 (edited) It may be that the Lab removed the Interests tab to lower the overall level of complexity in profiles (and database) and allow for better search results, as the search engine (I can only assume: because of the needed efficiency / speed) didn't check this legacy tab, yet it does the "about". If you put your spoken languages there - there is a greater chance someone will find you. Someone from the Lab's web team would need to actually confirm or deny this. For now, see comments under this JIRA ticket: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233223 Edited February 3, 2023 by panterapolnocy 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 12 hours ago, panterapolnocy said: For now, see comments under this JIRA ticket: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233223 Added a comment there, requesting the reinstatement of the Interests tab, that should never have been removed in the first place ! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 The interests tab was bad and meaningless programmer art. Lets not ask for the junk to be added back, lets come up with a better alternative that actually does something of value. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted February 4, 2023 Share Posted February 4, 2023 1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said: The interests tab was bad and meaningless programmer art. It served (well, still serves, for my viewer) several useful purposes. I do not care much about how ”artful” it is, as long as it provides interesting info. 1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said: Lets not ask for the junk to be added back, lets come up with a better alternative that actually does something of value. If you look at Kyle Linden's reply to the original request in BUG-233223 then you can hope for your better alternative to be implemented... ”at a future date” and in the mean time, you can ”refer to Release Notes in upcoming viewers to see when this may be implemented”... 🤣 Let's not complicate things... The Interest tab exists already (in old SL viewers and in some TPVs): let's just revert it to its previous state, for a start ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted February 4, 2023 Share Posted February 4, 2023 Clinging to the old junk gives the Lab an excuse to keep the old junk and do nothing. Nothing is honestly better as it allows people to express a need and work to go into creating a better solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Pole Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 I'm pretty sure (and I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong) but the interests tab was actually dropped by LL in their viewer when web profiles replaced the "legacy" profiles. When they reverted back to the "legacy" profiles from the standpoint of LL it made perfect sense not to add back in the interests tab as it had not been in their viewers profiles for many years. Granted it was still in a great many 3rd party viewer profiles and it's still within the database so those 3rd party viewers that think it adds value can still support it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 On 2/4/2023 at 6:08 AM, Coffee Pancake said: Clinging to the old junk gives the Lab an excuse to keep the old junk and do nothing. I am not ”clinging” to anything. I am all for progress and I am an eager early adopter of new cool features. However, I am totally unforgiving when regressions and loss of useful features happen, or when some new hype-ish way of doing things is implemented at the cost of a loss of usability or productivity. When you age, you realize that there are quite a few ”good old things” that do work better than ”cool new shinies”... On 2/4/2023 at 6:08 AM, Coffee Pancake said: Nothing is honestly better as it allows people to express a need and work to go into creating a better solution. If you have ideas about how to better implement or even present the Interests tab, then be our guest, and please, do submit code or suggestion. However I do not understand your reaction neither the rationale behind oh, this tab is not looking good, and I personally do not use it, so let's remove it for everyone else !... If anything, LL could have reimplemented the tab as it used to be (and exists in most of today's TPV). The cost for LL was zero, and the benefit (or rather the absence of loss) for many SLers would have been great. And if they are not satisfied with it, they could have improved it; what about adding ”achievements”, for example ?... These could even be gained in an automated way and would likely incite new SLers to get them done, helping them to improving their in-SL skills in the process. 56 minutes ago, Randy Pole said: I'm pretty sure (and I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong) but the interests tab was actually dropped by LL in their viewer when web profiles replaced the ”legacy” profiles. Back when LL implemented their web profile, I was one of the many SLers who told them it was a huge mistake, and they finally had to admit it and revert profiles (more or less) to the way they used to be in v1 viewers (and during all these years, pretty much all TPVs kept v1-like profiles too); sadly with their web profile they also buried some info deep down menus and tabs that were loading slowly and were not prominent enough for new SLers to bother looking at them... 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 You're getting mighty upset over 14 check-boxes, 3 single line text fields and a whole mess of empty space full of vital nothing. I've honestly seen better government UI. It's not that it looks bad, it's that it's not even nearly fit for purpose. Good riddance, lets dream up and present something better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 (edited) 51 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said: It's not that it looks bad, it's that it's not even nearly fit for purpose. Your opinion, not mine, neither the one of, I would bet, many thousands of SLers... 51 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said: Good riddance, lets dream up and present something better. Again, please do a proposal to replace it (and I am eagerly waiting for what could be improved and be made ”better”). But asking or applauding for its removal is just showing disrespect and condescendence towards people who, like me, find it incredibly useful and valuable. Oh, also, I'm not a dreamer... Dreams rarely ever become true ! Edited February 5, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 On 2/1/2023 at 4:56 PM, Sayoko Takeda said: Why was the interests tab in profile abolished? old new They were hoping nobody would notice..? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 9 times out of 10, when I looked at the interest tab, it was blank. I read a LOT of profiles, too. 3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said: They were hoping nobody would notice..? Lack of Interest? 😅 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 17 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said: Lack of Interest? 😅 Most people just aren't very interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aishagain Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 I might posit a couple of reasons for many accounts having an empty "interests" field 1) They speak English (American or UK flavour) and really don't care about foreigners - if you speak or comprehed another language most folk would want others to know it. 2) They do not know what they are for. I know I tend to bang on about the insularity of some large English-speaking nations, but I have found those views borne out in nearly 15 years experience in SL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 1 hour ago, Aishagain said: I might posit a couple of reasons for many accounts having an empty "interests" field 1) They speak English (American or UK flavour) and really don't care about foreigners - if you speak or comprehed another language most folk would want others to know it. Most profiles state languages in either the 2nd life tab or 1st life tab, I've found. There are numerous other places to put the information aside from a tab rarely used by ANYONE. If a profile is written in another language, it's safe to assume they speak something other than English. We're all also assume people even bother reading profiles which is not always the case either. I don't know how often I've been asked where I'm from when it state clearly that I'm in the US and my time zone. You can lead a horse to water... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aishagain Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 33 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said: We're all also assume people even bother reading profiles which is not always the case either. That is a very valid point, Rowan and it has been an irritation to me for years when folk ask me in IM questions which are clealy answered on various pages of my profile. Your experience of what is contained in profiles is different from mine, but maybe that is due to the type of profiles I read! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Pole Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 I seem to recall that in the very distant past there was more on the interests tab where you could rate the avatar and their profile. That was obviously removed once it was seen to be a tool to abuse others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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