No More Weekly Release Plan Threads, More Blog Posts

[Signal Linden]

Due to the frequency of Second Life Server updates, the presence of a regular schedule and availability of release notes, we will no longer be publishing weekly release plan threads in the Second Life Server forum. To compensate for this, we will be publishing more blog posts such as the Spring 2023 Scripting Summary and smaller posts when new functionality is introduced. This is intended to strike a better balance between communicating meaningful changes and pushing paper around while allowing SL to share release contents more broadly. This does not mean that we will never publish threads with details on notable server releases, nor that residents cannot discuss releases on their own.

Second Life rolls out updates to Grid almost every week. We host a weekly in-world Server user group meeting to discuss changes and publish release notes to releasenotes.secondlife.com. In-world user group meetings and published release notes may seem like an acceptable level of engagement to some of our residents, but we believe we can better serve the community with more frequent blog posts that provide greater insight into the features and fixes we are releasing and are not as easily lost in internet forum ephemera.

Apologies for the delay in getting a decision communicated, and thanks for highlighting when we are not meeting expectations. If you have ideas on how to better share release news, questions or concerns please let us know below.

[Love Zhaoying]

Thank you!

[Alwin Alcott]

can we do 1+1 ? ... pulling back this, and the non presence on the forums for over more than ten days :  ... Lindens pulling back from the forums?

[Love Zhaoying]

55 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

can we do 1+1 ? ... pulling back this, and the non presence on the forums for over more than ten days :  ... Lindens pulling back from the forums?

No, I think they just got tired of the weekly complaints about "no updates", since there are weekly releases with release notes, server update meetings, etc. 

Not said: I think part of the problem is, if the LL development / release cycle is at full speed, depending on their development cycle (how far in advance they know "exactly" what is being released), it's not really feasible to write up a summary for the user community more than about a day or two in advance. Even then, that would take away from a valuable human resource that could be actually working on the release and/or herding the development cats.

Put another way: Weekly releases. Read the release notes. Trust they won't break it. Anything really major, they'll let us know. For heaven's sake, if you were going to have a breakdown not knowing, wouldn't you find out someone who goes to the meetings and just ask them to give you a summary?

It's not like LL is going to make "breaking" changes every week that people (users) need worry about, or "revolutionary", "transformative" changes every week that people (users) should be updated on lest they "miss out".

</rant>
 

[Aishagain]

Reading the heading post saddens me.

For several reasons:

15 hours ago, Signal Linden said:

This is intended to strike a better balance between communicating meaningful changes and pushing paper around while allowing SL to share release contents more broadly.

So Lindens regard this communication with their users as "pushing paper around"?  All this indicates to me is their misunderstanding of the value of communication.  Yes frequent blog posts will be good but bear in mind that replies are not allowed on the Linden blog posts.

8 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

For heaven's sake, if you were going to have a breakdown not knowing, wouldn't you find out someone who goes to the meetings and just ask them to give you a summary?

Love, YOU may know who to ask but I'm willing to bet the majority do not.

My takeaway from this is that the staff of Linden Lab that remain simply do not have the time to genuinely engage with their customers (there's that awkward word again) in any meaningful  way.

Edited May 20, 2023 by Aishagain

[Alwin Alcott]

5 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

No

but Love.. they didn't engage in ány thread ... if they only skipped the casino/gambling i'd say ok... but none at all? ..nah that's even for the normal forum Lindens a strange thing. 
There;s something brewing in the kettle ..  

perhaps not 1+1 = ..  but 2+2= ...

Edited May 20, 2023 by Alwin Alcott

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

but Love.. they didn't engage in ány thread ... if they only skipped the casino/gambling i'd say ok... but none at all? ..nah that's even for the normal forum Lindens a strange thing. 
There;s something brewing in the kettle ..  

perhaps not 1+1 = ..  but 2+2= ...

Yes, they did engage a week or so ago, with something like, "I'll see what we can do" (not that specifically). I assume that reply started the internal Lab discussion which resulted in the OP of this thread. If you really want, I can go find that post.

Please keep in mind, my earlier post is as a software developer working for a large company, with 35 years experience, including many projects using different methodologies that use accelerated release schedules. I'm not just talking out me arse.

[Qie Niangao]

8 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

projects using different methodologies that use accelerated release schedules

That's the thing. So often when there were release plan announcements here, they'd be obsolete before they were to be executed anyway—and then there'd be complaints about that.

Trying to think how I'd manage a team to get the most customer value from the resources spent, I do not think I'd have them write regular weekly forums posts, especially not when Inara Pey writes a weekly blog post with the news, current as of Tuesday afternoon, about what the week's expected rolls are about, as well as a glimpse into release plans for the next week or so.

I would, however, want to share more information about exceptions: rollbacks, unscheduled maintenance, etc., including reasons for occurrence when that information doesn't pose a security risk. That would be useful for customers to understand what caused events to differ from expectations.

Personally, as a customer with some parcels on Release Candidate regions, I would prefer communications uniformly revert to using channel names instead of the weird charade where they're unmentioned in some messaging, commonly used in informal discussions, and universally discoverable given enough history and patience. It's just silly at this point and must surely burn more resources in confusion than it saves in discouraging customers from ascribing false significance to channels (or whatever the hell it was supposed to do).

[Love Zhaoying]

19 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

That's the thing. So often when there were release plan announcements here, they'd be obsolete before they were to be executed anyway—and then there'd be complaints about that.

Yep, things can change at the last minute!  More likely about the "RC" releases hopefully, than the "main channel" releases!

20 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Trying to think how I'd manage a team to get the most customer value from the resources spent, I do not think I'd have them write regular weekly forums posts, especially not when Inara Pey writes a weekly blog post with the news, current as of Tuesday afternoon, about what the week's expected rolls are about, as well as a glimpse into release plans for the next week or so.

I think the person who has been umm...vociferously...wanting updates, needs to be informed that Inara Pey has some update to share.  I should have tried to ask earlier "Who has an update to share?" but could not formulate the question.   I knew someone must have been attending the meetings and building summaries!

21 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I would, however, want to share more information about exceptions: rollbacks, unscheduled maintenance, etc., including reasons for occurrence when that information doesn't pose a security risk. That would be useful for customers to understand what caused events to differ from expectations.

Personally, as a customer with some parcels on Release Candidate regions, I would prefer communications uniformly revert to using channel names instead of the weird charade where they're unmentioned in some messaging, commonly used in informal discussions, and universally discoverable given enough history and patience. It's just silly at this point and must surely burn more resources in confusion than it saves in discouraging customers from ascribing false significance to channels (or whatever the hell it was supposed to do).

Agreed.  However, on the other hand..if you read the posts where someone is.."requesting" updates here. You have to wonder, why is it so very important that they get updates?  If they do not get an update..what in the world could be so important that they absolutely must get updates weekly?

[belindacarson]

9 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yes, they did engage a week or so ago, with something like, "I'll see what we can do" (not that specifically). I assume that reply started the internal Lab discussion which resulted in the OP of this thread. If you really want, I can go find that post.

Please keep in mind, my earlier post is as a software developer working for a large company, with 35 years experience, including many projects using different methodologies that use accelerated release schedules. I'm not just talking out me arse.

hmmmmmm, not sure i entirely agree with you on that

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, belindacarson said:

hmmmmmm, not sure i entirely agree with you on that

 

[Solar Legion]

Frankly this is not too different form the way it has always been and the update threads were far more than one often gets outside of specific games/platforms.

At the least they're going to still do release announcements in some way.

[ST33LDI9ITAL]

Release notes still gonna be there (linked in OP) just not a forum post.. not a big deal, if you wanna talk about em then make a thread imo. I agree and think blog more suitable for most.

[Aishagain]

So, in the absence of any meaningful communication we must employ educated guesswork as to what will happen this week (commencing 29.05.2023). 

The silence from LL following the rollback last Wednesday is deafening.

Edited May 29, 2023 by Aishagain
spelling

[Love Zhaoying]

24 minutes ago, Aishagain said:

So, in the absence of any meaningful communication we must employ educated guesswork as to what will happen this week (commencing 29.05.2023). 

The silence from LL following the rollback last Wednesday is deafening.

I believe this explains it:

On 5/19/2023 at 7:04 PM, Signal Linden said:

Due to the frequency of Second Life Server updates, the presence of a regular schedule and availability of release notes, we will no longer be publishing weekly release plan threads in the Second Life Server forum. To compensate for this, we will be publishing more blog posts such as the Spring 2023 Scripting Summary and smaller posts when new functionality is introduced. This is intended to strike a better balance between communicating meaningful changes and pushing paper around while allowing SL to share release contents more broadly. This does not mean that we will never publish threads with details on notable server releases, nor that residents cannot discuss releases on their own.

Second Life rolls out updates to Grid almost every week. We host a weekly in-world Server user group meeting to discuss changes and publish release notes to releasenotes.secondlife.com. In-world user group meetings and published release notes may seem like an acceptable level of engagement to some of our residents, but we believe we can better serve the community with more frequent blog posts that provide greater insight into the features and fixes we are releasing and are not as easily lost in internet forum ephemera.

Apologies for the delay in getting a decision communicated, and thanks for highlighting when we are not meeting expectations. If you have ideas on how to better share release news, questions or concerns please let us know below.

 

[Aishagain]

Once again I totally fail to see your point, Love.

Whatever Signal Linden's post says does not explain the absence of ANY communication from LL since his post.

Never mind, we will not agree, so it goes.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Aishagain
grammar... she wouldn't agree with me, either.

[Logan Elf]

My guess is that the non-BlueSteel channels will get a restart. BlueSteel will get a restart if they haven't got ready to deploy a fix to last week's RC server, otherwise BlueSteel will get the "fixed" server.

There are other scenarios, but based on recent deploys I think the above is most likely -- though I have been wrong in the past.

We'll find out Soon™

[EdmundPendragon]

I very rarely post or even read much of what are in the Forums (have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in reading the babblings of the Linden Lab marks) but in this instance, I have felt a need to register my complaint. This action shows a COMPLETE lack of customer support from Linden Lab. While I have had the opportunity to interact with several Lindens in the past few months after returning to Second Life after a two year hiatus and have been happy with their help and professionalism, this policy is WRONG.

[Love Zhaoying]

On 5/29/2023 at 9:24 PM, Aishagain said:

Once again I totally fail to see your point, Love.

Whatever Signal Linden's post says does not explain the absence of ANY communication from LL since his post.

Never mind, we will not agree, so it goes.

You don't get the release notes? That is communication.

You don't get the "restart notices"? That is also communication.

 

[Aishagain]

43 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You don't get the release notes? That is communication.

You don't get the "restart notices"? That is also communication.

Nope.  Didn't get either this week. And yet the SLS channel is being restarted. In what universe does not communicating constitute communication?

Edited June 6, 2023 by Aishagain

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Aishagain said:

Nope.  Didn't get either this week. And yet the SLS channel is being restarted. In what universe does not communicating constitute communication?

I can only guess that either you don't trust LL to be doing "the right thing", or you just gotta know about every restart and deployment. For reasons.

It's ok. You be you!

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

I think the current situation is very reasonable.

[Jaylinbridges]

9 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You don't get the release notes? That is communication.

You don't get the "restart notices"? That is also communication.

There was no release notes for this week.  Latest notice was May 30.

There was no "restart notices" for this week, UNTIL they started.  TikTok blog Main Channel notice was at 6:00 AM SLT today.  

Status Event notices let us know when our regions will be restarted,  and were finally listed 17 minutes before restarts began.  For those of us who actually build, rezz and have timed events as a business in SL, we need to plan around the weekly restarts.  17 minutes is not enough warning time. Just because you are not affected does not mean everyone is not affected.  I seldom post here about the restarts even though they affect me and my businesses.  I'll wait for your usual response of "who cares" followed by defending the lack of communication by the lab.

Scheduled - We will be performing rolling restarts for regions on the main Second Life Server channel on Tuesday, June 6th, beginning at approximately 6:00 AM PDT. Please refrain from rezzing no copy objects before and during the restart, and remember to save all builds. Please check this blog for updates.
Jun 6, 05:43 PDT

And the first notice in tik tok SL Grid Status:

[status] In Progress: Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress. We will provide updates as necessary.

 

 

status.secondlifegrid.net

Rolling Restarts for Second Life Main Channel

Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress. We will provide updates as necessary.

 

6:00 AM · Jun 6, 2023

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Qie Niangao]

Maybe these restarts aren't as predictable as I've come to expect, I don't know. Does it come as a surprise when the main channel restarts on Tuesday, and the RC channels on Wednesday, beginning whenever they do? My in-world time isn't scheduled tightly enough to notice fluctuation in those restart schedules, week to week, and I can appreciate that a lot of variance indeed could be a reason folks would need specific notice, beyond what's the "standing" schedule for these things. But I don't know if that's the issue.

I guess holidays affect the schedule, and California holidays aren't universally observed, so that may be another need for updates beyond the standing schedule.

As for what's in the releases, that's very much of interest to everyone, but I don't think there's advance notice to be had about that, which is why I suggested Inara's blog for a weekly current reading of what to expect. I really don't think there's any more information than that, at least not in advance.

(Again, I'd personally appreciate more information on events that are exceptions to what's planned—not a full after action review or anything, just a timely notice that things didn't go according to plan and what happened instead.)

I do remember a time when the Simulator User Group meetings would start with the hosting developer referencing the weekly release plan posted that morning on the forums. Somehow now they know without having to consult such a thread. I don't know if that reflects any deeper change in processes, or it it even means anything at all.

[Ardy Lay]

20 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I do remember a time when the Simulator User Group meetings would start with the hosting developer referencing the weekly release plan posted that morning on the forums. Somehow now they know without having to consult such a thread. I don't know if that reflects any deeper change in processes, or it it even means anything at all.

Note:  Do not conflate RELEASE with DEPLOYMENT.

I attended those meetings for several years prior to and after the start of forum posts about release and deployment plans.  Lindens were mostly pointing out that Residents could read the plan in the forum after the automated release and deployment page generator broke shortly after the person running it left the company.  The forum post was one man's proposed temporary solution to fill the void until the current release page was developed.  The current release page does not include the intended deployment date.  As you should all be aware by now, Linden Lab has adopted a policy of not making predictions, primarily because a few Residents get really dammed nasty when the predictions didn't become fact.  (Those Residents will probably speak out publicly for our amusement soon.)  Publishing a deployment schedule that includes product versions that have not yet been released (passed Quality Assurance testing) is making a prediction.  Linden Lab likes to deploy server versions as soon as possible after they are released (pass Quality Assurance testing), thus, we often see a server version deployed mere hours after QA releases it for deployment because that release happens to be shortly prior to the regularly scheduled weekly simulator restarts.  Released simulator versions are deployed during these regularly scheduled simulator restarts.