Marketplace acting up

Tishie Miklos · October 24, 2011

I have noticed for about the past month things have been a little wonky in my store on Marketplace. When I choose to show just items that are unlisted, it shows me a list of all most 400 items, which I have listed repeatedly. Some of them even show as listed. I have several items that I have setup and added photos and listed and when I go back and look it is a blank entry for that item. Where is the stuff I'm imputing going? This is very frustrating. I have over 800 items showing in my marketplace list. But showing for sale is only about half of them. Even some that are marked and showing up as listed. Am I doing something wrong? Can anybody give me an idea why this might be happening?

Arwen Serpente · October 24, 2011

Tishie, there are a number of issues regarding the MP right now. The Commerce Team created a sticky here:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Useful-links-for-Merchants/td-p/1159841

with links to release notes and JIRAs. I think you will find that the issues you are experiencing are common across the board due to some glitches that are being worked on (so, no, you probably aren't doing anything wrong).

If you discover something that isn't reported already in the JIRAs, create a new one and let the Merchants know here in the forums.

Hope that helps.

Chelsea Malibu · October 25, 2011

You need to jiggle it a bit. Sorry, making a joke and you're probably not too happy. yes, MP has been wonky for many however, it seems more often than not, these issues are problematic from user to user. i am beginning to think a lot of it stems around where you magic boxes are stored and the lag of those sims in that they are not communicating with the system well.

Just a hunch but I am not having issues and i have little to no lag on my sim.

Arwen Serpente · October 25, 2011

Chelsea, do you have the inventory glitch? I'm still showing double the number of items (duplicates) than I really have (shows 818 and I have 501). The inventory management page also only shows 6 entires when it should show 10 (default).

That's the main glitch affecting my store atm (thought it was affecting everyone).

Darrius Gothly · October 25, 2011

Here's the problem .. and the reason why you're seeing such goofy displays:

When they did the update (that went sideways) they also introduced a new way to index Products, thus they inadvertently created a series of "Ghost Products". These entries are outdated but not always ... and that's the root of the problem.

What they've done is figured out how to NOT display the truly outdated ghost records in the Inventory listings, but they are still counting them in your item totals and in counting the number of items per page. You're seeing 6 items on a page because 4 of the 10 chosen for display were suppressed and not displayed.

They have not yet figured out how to unfuuuuu ... undo the cross-wiring and put things right. Based on the time span this is taking, I'd say they did it REAL good. (Which .. btw .. is a technical term of art. *wink*)

PS: I think they ought to be logging every suppressed record, then overnight using the logs to delete the records that were logged. It's not a quick fix, but it would fix it overtime.

Arwen Serpente · October 25, 2011

is that why my listings seem to be growing? they don't remain static...they just keep on growing almost every day

Darrius Gothly · October 25, 2011

Aye-yup! Every time you edit a listing with an "Old" index then save the changes, it saves it using the "New" index. Presto! Two records, only one valid.

They ought to be doing something like checking for and deleting old records at the time the new one is stored ... but I don't see any evidence of that if ghost products are still being created.

Toysoldier Thor · October 25, 2011

What really does worry me about the SEP 13th screw up that you are detailing Darrius are:

How did the LL Team not catch this major indexing screwup when they tested it on a test (non-production) MP DB? Did they even test applying this new index on a test DB? If they did, what was the purpose if they didnt even take the time to see the impacts from applying the new index? Does anyone in the LL Commerce Team even have test Merchant accounts with about 100 products in MP that they could have gone into to see "what happened? No QA.
Regardless of the huge mess they created over a month ago, the fact that 6 weeks later LL has still not been able to clean it up / fix it... I agree with you Darrius... they MESSED IT UP BIG TIME.
My big fear is that - in true LL fashion of meeting deadlines as a priority over quality of deployment or mitigation of risk to their customer's operations, the LL Commerce Management (we know we are talking about) will still forge ahead and continue to execute on deploying DD into production - if this mess is fixed or not.
What will the screwed up index do to any MP listings that are migrated over from Magicbox to DD distribution? I am sure LL doesnt know and they will just cross their fingers that this mess will not affect them.

My prediction is that LL Commerce Team's Sep 13th Ghosted MP Listings will become a permanent legacy for all us Merchant's of MP to just have to deal with. They will just give up and chaulk it up to ...

"ohh well we tried to clean it up but in the grand scheme of it this is ugly but doesnt hurt anyone - right?? Let cross our fingers and let the next generation of LL Commerce Management / Development figure it out"

Darrius Gothly · October 25, 2011

To quote our fearless Leader: "... prior to my inevitable firing."

Toysoldier Thor · October 25, 2011

yeah watching the last 3+ years of LL history - specially within the LL Commerce team... it moreso seems that a position at LL is like a Store Rental at a SL Mall.

Dartagan Shepherd · October 25, 2011

Meanwhile, the ones that need firing can't be fired.

As in, take the crowdsourcing ideology from SL, start a company that develops software in a way that said person admits is not good for enterprise level stuff, also includes fake currency, and a few months later then turns around and says they may implement these methods into SL in an even greater way.

Or sitting on the board of a "free" software entity but yet the companies invested in hold oodles of patents, all in the name of freedom.

Being a tad sarcastic, business is business, but therein lies the root of the problem with mutant crowdsourcing dreams and the problem with veering away from business methods that have proven to serve well for over a hundred years.

Welcome to the 99%, micro-payments, fake currency, no benefits, no recourse and a jobless future.

Now that I've got that out of my system, back to your regularly scheduled topic.

Darrius Gothly · October 25, 2011

Josh Susanto · October 25, 2011

For my usual part, I'd just like to point out that if someone is actually getting deliberately screwed in some way, these "glitches" will just make it more difficult to spot and effectively document.

BTW... where are the comments from the usual people who are supposed to be telling you that these imaginary inconveniences are your own fault and that you're just using them as an excuse for your own failures?

Mickey Vandeverre · October 26, 2011

I don't have a clue what any of that means.....

but sounds like Bad Karma.

Today was my slowest sales day ever in 3 years. Came in to see if somethin' ain't right.

I think it is just an accumulation of ain't right that is hitting.....

and it's going to continue to hit.

Looking forward to new CEO announcement in January.

Dartagan Shepherd · October 26, 2011

Oh, the first one being our fearless founder, Phil Rosedale ... you know, the one that did the white knight thing and appeared to fire M. Linden just moments before he was supposed to give a speech at SLBB. Said savior then proceeded to go on about ushering in a new era of "Fast, Easy and Fun", which equated to a return as a CEO for a few months.

My translation: Damage control over Viewer 2. Damage control for allowing a CEO to over spend. Failure to back some good ideas with a real budget or to back basically a good marketing guy with a real marketing budget and getting him to stick to what he's good at.

After a few months of presumably telling employees to get back to work on lag and sim crossings, (shouldn't they have been doing this all along?), firing a third of employees and forgetting this forward momentum idea, fades away in the distance leaving us technically CEO-less for a bit until Rod appears (who I happen to like as a pick as well).

Fearless founder then goes back to work on this concept of the Love Machine to what I believe is now called Coffee & Power ... a cafe in San Francisco where people who work on software projects bring their own laptops and work there or remotely on software that he basically reaps the lions share of the sales on. Or so it would appear.

At one point and probably to this day LL works on Love Machine mechanics (ex partner/founder Corey says Love Machine was his brain child though) where employees can "pay" other employees "love" based on peer evaluation.

The beauty of this little venture (Coffee & Power) is that people get to pick micro-jobs, if you earn enough trust you kinda-sorta get a budget that you can hire others to do jobs that relate to the product(s) that need developing.

In the real world, when you dictate how, when and where people work, they're no longer independent contractors, they're employees and must be treated as such, paid as such, etc. Not so here! Because other people are doing the "hiring" on micro-jobs, no one is an employee, everyone is an independent contractor.

Life is good.

Factor in some fake currency (because things like pay and escrow are alien concepts) and you've got yourself a way around a bunch of those icky things a normal business has to deal with, which also equate to much less overhead and much more profit. And people who do the work make much less than say a 40 hour week. Or perhaps some make much more. Most likely the majority make much less. Kind of like SL.

Not to say this is in any way illegal, people get their W-9s and technically all would seem above-board. In a time when we need jobs and companies that provide jobs though, well. You can also be peer eval'ed right out of a job. All the job security of a one night stand.

In one interview he says this is good for some projects but not for something like SL. This fast and loose approach doesn't work for serious software projects.

In a later interview he says he's going to incorporate more of this into SL, because well ... it's good. Or maybe because you don't have to pay people quite so much or classify them as employees. Or something.

Could go on an on an on, it gets good enough that you just can't make this stuff up. Although it is the biggest reason that I don't place the blame on the employees or the CEO, all employees need is proper structure and guidance. Not ways to figure out how to get everyone else to do all the work, provide all the content and create an environment where those who do the most get rewarded the least.

A lemonade stand approach would bring in more users and create better software. Or create shopping cart software that worked, because you have people that answer to managers that aren't buddies on the same team.

Thankfully we've got a new board member who also gets this virtual world game/stuff, check out http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/10/will-wright-joins-the-board-of-linden-lab.html

Please, Will ... vote no to bone-headed-ness, and yes to traditional corporate know-how.

And stop your CEO's from pet projects ... it only sidetracks them and gets them fired.

And remember, creating opportunities for the most amount of people gets the most amount of users. You want success stories, it's what got SL on the map in the first place, the lure to make a buck. Your merchants are the key to your future, not your creativity space, as awesome as that is.

Done now I think, whew.

Mickey Vandeverre · October 26, 2011

Very interesting. I'm out of the loop a bit on new news as there were months on end without "real" new news. Same ol', same ol', promises, promises. Gave up.

M. Linden had great vision. Much of it involved things that would be a merchant's dream.

On the new addition, I'm not familiar with how the Sims worked. Did they have commerce there?

I'm not into all the gaming stuff. Just the retail/commerce stuff. Suppose I won't get excited until someone specializing in that aspect jumps on board.

It seemed as if they wanted that Farmville type thing, hamster jumping on a wheel type thing, logging in constantly to check crops (your store), buying stuff (stuff to make more stuff - stuff to sell more stuff - stuff to market more stuff, etc)....

To me, Farmville was already here, ready to explode. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I think it's totally cool that you want to log in and check your store stuff and try to make it "grow" every day.

I'm not sure they recognized that in the merchant population. Recognized what they already had. Ready to go. Make the tools work, and we'll jump on that wheel every morning. Heck, still jumping on it in hopes that it got oiled yesterday. Kind of sick behavior if you think about it. They could exploit that! It's there for the taking.

I wish they would add someone from the Etsy team, or from a similar environment. Have to work that heavy until holidays, and boy oh boy, what they've got going on there is amazing. Combining the social aspect in a big way with merchandising/marketing. Talk about being on a hamster wheel - you've got to log in and feed that beast all day long. But it's not a chore - it's super fun.

We could have something like that. The basics are already in place for it.

But I'm not sure if it will come from a Gamer type person. They seem so anti-social.

ooops. Did I say that out loud?

eta: ok, went back and read that article better, and checked bio - yeah, that's super duper exciting news, I suppose.

If you're a gamer. Or a lab rat.

Darrius Gothly · October 26, 2011

Mickey Vandeverre wrote:

[..] I'm not sure they recognized that in the merchant population. Recognized what they already had. Ready to go. Make the tools work, and we'll jump on that wheel every morning. Heck, still jumping on it in hopes that it got oiled yesterday. Kind of sick behavior if you think about it. They could exploit that! It's there for the taking. [..]

Hear Hear! Totally agree. Well said and very valid point.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote:

[..] I wish they would add someone from the Etsy team, or from a similar environment. Have to work that heavy until holidays, and boy oh boy, what they've got going on there is amazing. Combining the social aspect in a big way with merchandising/marketing. Talk about being on a hamster wheel - you've got to log in and feed that beast all day long. But it's not a chore - it's super fun.

We could have something like that. The basics are already in place for it.

But I'm not sure if it will come from a Gamer type person. [..]

Again agreed. We need a Leader that has done the whole Internet Commerce thing and understands that this really IS Internet Commerce.

Now, before my head explodes from the concept of seeing eye to eye with you Mickey, I'm gonna drift back into the ether and vanish. (But .. very well said .. well done.)

Dartagan Shepherd · October 26, 2011

Can understand about the lack of thrill about the game aspect of it. The plus there is that no matter what side of the fence you're on whether SL is like a game or isn't, the practical application comes down to the fact that no one out there has experience that's more closely related to SL than people with game industry experience.

It's a 3D world, it has all the same basic elements of a game. On the technical side it has all of the same issues. Even we users are more akin to players as a whole mind you, not just the merchant/customer aspect of SL, than say an online marketplace. So those people at top levels are a perfect fit.

Agree with you that we need someone with serious online marketplace experience. We actually did have one, ex Pink Linden came to us from eBay. Not sure that she was high up in the scheme of things over there, but she seemed like a fit, and aside from that whole listing fee thing, most people seemed to agree that she had a handle on what merchants needed, and she and M seemed to be on the right track there.

Don't know what happened there, when they let all those employees go, Pink went with them. There might have been good reason.

One of the problems is that no matter how good that commerce leader might be, if they can't get the people who build the software to do their job and provide the tools swiftly and meet the kind of needs merchants have, it's going to be more hurry up and wait.

Also, the supply and demand thing requires steady growth. Not another boom, one of our own wrote a great blog post about what we need is linear growith with new users, not exponential growth. I think she nailed that bit perfectly and had some great insights there. I don't remember the name of the person or blog offhand, but absolutely worth the read.

With you on the "Farmville" thing, although there's a big draw to that kind of simulation environment. Those kind of virtual goods on the rise still, so that's great to tap into. Although if they try to "own" too much of the "game", they'll close the doors on user opportunity and continue to decline, not quite comfortable that they understand that. And they'll never compete going head to head with "game" ... SL just isn't that and it's done much better elsewhere for far cheaper to the end user. And aside from things like WoW, the shelf life is shorter.

Their greatest strength is a "share the wealth" strategy, but they need to get how to pull that off, rather than come up with new sinks and an outdated economy that serves to take away wealth from their users.

They don't quite seem to get that their users don't consider it an exceptional value. Maybe they're seeing the light a bit after their weekend of discount sales on regions. But in the end, no on can justify a $1k setup and a $300/month fee for a region that doesn't come with a dedicated machine, while out of the other side of their mouth they talk about overtaxed resources, script limits, mesh limits, etc. What resources? Stuffing regions on machines like sardines aren't resources and most of their customers know that. So they'd have to be less greedy and bite it on less of a profit margin on the hardware.

All of this contributes to drawing in more users ... if you want to hook the gamers, or Farmville, or Facebook or modern mobile users, you can't throw these kind of price tags at them ... they won't bite. Or the lack of value for dollar, or the multiple ways SL has of parting you from your real or virtual money. Less greed, more value, more service, cooler tools that sing and dance.

And lower entry cost on regions, forget mainland parcels, let them have their $99 limited regions without needing to own full regions ... that's where you get to stuff a whole bunch of them on sub-par machines. Land barons are capable of providing the smaller parcels on their own without mainland.

That means more sales for merchants, more sales for them. You'd think with a board that knows money makes the world go 'round, they'd get that money makes "this" world go round for us as much as them, but that seems to elude them in favor of some experimental management and culture.

Screw their culture, get some managers that dictate product requirements and deadlines and find people that can code to those deadlines or show them the door, plenty of companies out there in the world make this happen with less employees. Pretending you're in logistics or manufacturing would help, where if you don't get something from point A to point B on time, you don't get paid. Or that if you get an order for X amount of widgets and you don't deliver those widgets on time, you don't get paid.

Absolutely shameful that users just raised $5k to get an "ex Linden who's not quite an ex" to get him to code what LL should have listened to and done themselves for mesh stuff, not sure if you followed that. Those poor saps parting with even more of their money to cover ineptness.

Sims had commerce in a way sure, but this should be a more unique model than the Sims by far, and it is.

With you a thousand percent on tools, give people ways to re-sell, afilliates, partner stores, support for partners, multiple storefronts, auctions, reporting and tracking, marketing and merchants will do what they do best, but before we can get there, we have to get past the quirky bits of a company that just can't develop the tools in a timely manner, or get a handle on what their customers want.

Nix the concept of self governed "teams" at LL. If these people were managers they'd be managers not peers and wouldn't be working at LL, they'd be doing well ... management stuff at some other company. There's good reason for a difference between mooks and managers, mooks mook and managers manage. This isn't rocket science. No offence to mooks who make things work.

And then let the world know once you've got the tools that you can come here and sell everything from your real life product to your virtual goods. They'd double their revenue in a year. But don't even try it without being able to deliver on the tools, you'll just flush money down the toilet, you can't fool the new generation for long with hurry up and wait ... they don't wait for anything.

Chelsea Malibu · October 26, 2011

Arwen Serpente wrote:

Chelsea, do you have the inventory glitch? I'm still showing double the number of items (duplicates) than I really have (shows 818 and I have 501). The inventory management page also only shows 6 entires when it should show 10 (default).

That's the main glitch affecting my store atm (thought it was affecting everyone).

I have had this happen when setting up boxes where you change things around and it shows the last update along with the new items or updates. Their database is not real time and often needs a little time to catch up. I always look at this place as with any other virtual world as pretty much a beta test still. In time, it many things correct themselves and if you give it a little time, it usually works out.

Pamela Galli · October 26, 2011

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: