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 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 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 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 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™