JoJo Aurelia Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 If LL forces out Magic Boxes, how many items will disappear forever from MP? Think of all the people who have products on MP who have left SL, or rarely log in? OR, think of people who just don't make enough money or any to go through the trouble of relisting a large catalog? I see a clearing coming. Might be good, might be bad, depending on where you stand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knowl Paine Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 July 01, 2011 : Hello, quick question about your product, I need some help with..... July 10, 2011 : Hello, I purchased ... and still need.... July 30, 2011 : I bought your product and have a quest..... August 8, 2011 : I understand you are busy and have a lot of customers..... September 1, 2011 : nm, I'm just not going to use it..... I was standing there one day, It was crappy. :matte-motes-sour: I won't miss the people, who are already missing, if they go.... missing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pamela Galli Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Yes, ridding the marketplace of items for which there is no customer support at all is probably a good thing over all. There will be some exceptions I am sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zanara Zenovka Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Pamela Galli wrote: Yes, ridding the marketplace of items for which there is no customer support at all is probably a good thing over all. There will be some exceptions I am sure. This. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea at the time of the migration from xstreet to SLM, to say, give merchants a month's notice to mark their store to "yes, migrate" and leave the rest behind. But um, yeah, there are a lot of things we know now that we didn't know then... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rya Nitely Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 The Development team knew it back then too. Just like they know it now. They chose not to do it. Let's just hope this time they take the opportunity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 I support absolultely NO automatic migration and since Magic Boxes are going poof then yes I feel it's a good thing. Making migration tools available is one thing, continuing to carry forward items that are unsupported isn't. Where are these magic boxes living if the "merchant" (in the loosest terms) isn't logging in to pay tier? (other than squatting on a friends place) Then again DD could end up worse, since a basic avatar keeps its inventory forever. I'd love to see "Last merchant log in time" on each listing and also a requirement that merchants do *something* to keep products listed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 Faye Feldragonne wrote: I see a clearing coming. Might be good, might be bad, depending on where you stand. It is good for the customers. You can better buy from merchants who are around to support their products. It is good for merchants who are active as a merchant. Clearing gives less competition, so the visibility of their own products might increase. It is good for Linden Lab. There will be more customers satisfaction when customers can rely on merchants who take responsibility for the support of their products. Abandonned lands and unsupported products have a negative impact on the overall SL experience from residents. It is not good for the ones who left and left their marketplace shop unattended. But who is to blame for this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoJo Aurelia Posted November 13, 2011 Author Share Posted November 13, 2011 The only downside for me is learning something new, and relisting all my products. So... We'll see how hard it is to move everything. I haven't had time to mess with the beta. It's so much work to be a merchant in Second Life. I think many give up with it, and leave their items in hopes of a few Lindens here and there. I hadn't thought of unsupported items. This hasn't been a real issue for me. Maybe 2 purchases in 2 years that I didn't get help on if there was a problem. As far as clothing, which I sell, there are a lot of old, old styles on MP, so I'd love to see some of that gone. But, there are a lot of free building items, and scripts, and those I think will be less. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 I have good news for you Faye, you dont lhave to relist all your products. They will stay on the marketplace just as they are now. The difference will be that you do not longer drop your finished products in a magic box, but in a folder in your inventory. To keep your existing items in the marketplace, you only have to drag all your items from your magic box to the outbox folder in your inventory. At least that is how it looks now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nefertiti Nefarious Posted November 14, 2011 Share Posted November 14, 2011 Faye Feldragonne wrote: If LL forces out Magic Boxes, how many items will disappear forever from MP? Think of all the people who have products on MP who have left SL, or rarely log in? Interesting. If they don't automatically port all the objects into a resident's folder, and create the folder for them, I foresee a lot of the old products vanishing because the resident is no longer active.They should have done it with the move from SLEX to prune out the dead stuff. It will make things easier to find. OR, think of people who just don't make enough money or any to go through the trouble of relisting a large catalog? If they have it organized for marketplace, I think moving it to the DD folder should be easy. From discussions about DD, the listings will stay the same, it's just a matter of where the product is stored waiting for a sale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunshine Juneberry Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 It might actually make it worse. As it is, someone has to get and maintain a magic box somewhere to sell on MP. If all that is needed in the future is dragging items to a outbox folder then any one could list anything without having any responsibilty or worry about marketabilty. People could list basic cubes for sale even if theres no chance anyone would ever buy it without having to do anything other than setting up marketplace account. and dragging the cube to the outbox folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 sunshine Juneberry wrote: It might actually make it worse. As it is, someone has to get and maintain a magic box somewhere to sell on MP. If all that is needed in the future is dragging items to a outbox folder then any one could list anything without having any responsibilty or worry about marketabilty. People could list basic cubes for sale even if theres no chance anyone would ever buy it without having to do anything other than setting up marketplace account. and dragging the cube to the outbox folder. Well selling basic cubes has been done before, usually as joke items I mentioned this earlier in this thread though, that on the one hand, this is an opportunity to cull items that are without merchant support but by creating a system that requires only an everlasting basic account with an everlasting inventory, over time I agree that it could be a worse situation. LL really does have to consider a method of regular merchant input to relist. Ebay does it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnet Homewood Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 I agree, there must be some kind of system in place to check whether a merchant is still active. Sometimes I have seen something on the marketplace and wanted to know more, so I contacted the merchant selling it in-world to find out. Some of these IMs have gone unanswered, although the listing is there forever. I really don't think making a merchant log into SL, let's say every 3 months or so, hell, make it every 6 months, would be a problem, and it would clear the marketplace of listing that simply are not backed by merchant support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Magnet Homewood wrote: I agree, there must be some kind of system in place to check whether a merchant is still active. Sometimes I have seen something on the marketplace and wanted to know more, so I contacted the merchant selling it in-world to find out. Some of these IMs have gone unanswered, although the listing is there forever. I really don't think making a merchant log into SL, let's say every 3 months or so, hell, make it every 6 months, would be a problem, and it would clear the marketplace of listing that simply are not backed by merchant support. I think with DD as was the case with Xstreet to SLM last year, the issue again will be how to get a notice out to the ~70,000 that are on SLM but do not spend ANY time on the forums to keep aware of LL's upcoming changes. I have even talked to a couple SLM Merchants and one of them had no clue what Direct Delivery was much less that it is only a couple months from going live. Heck, if even us Forum Rats cant get LL Commerce to talk about Direct Delivery except for the rare obscure blog posting or WIKI, how will the vast majority of ACTIVE LIVE Merchants of SLM keep in the know? As for dead items being filtered out during the migration to DD, I think a lot of you might be wishful thinking again if you believe that DD will clense SLM of inactive Merchant items. It pretty much didnt happen when LL converted us over from one entire system to another (xstreet to SLM). Why would any of you believe that a cutover from Magicbox to DD will accomplish this? IF (this is a big IF) LL does a good job of making the transition smooth for all us SLM Merchants, then when DD goes live, it should not impact ANY LISTINGS on SLM. So those SL Merchants that have become inactive and left SL - their listings will still be up and their items in theory should still be delivered from the Magicbox. IF in the summer of 2012 LL decides to disable magicbox functionality, then YES the delivery will break but the listin in SLM will still be running. So now we got even a bigger mess since in theory we have these so-called countless listings from inactive merchants that that are still live but their delivery is broken. The reason I say IN THEORY is because contrary to all your fears that SLM is selling items from Merchants that may have abandoned Secondlife, ask yourself this question... for the most part, if you were one of these Merchants that left SecondLife and you HAD TO HAVE A MAGICBOX rezzed somewhere (likely you rented or owned land), do you think that the MagicBox would not have already been De-Rezzed for failed payment on the land? Yeah I know some of you will say that some merchants place their magicbox on lands they do not own and the box might have gone rogue / forgotten, but this would be an uncommon scenario. I truly think many of you are making a mountain out of a molehill on the number of abandoned SLM listings from inactive Merchants. If you want to lose sleep about something regarding SLM, the amount of cluttered abandoned listings should not be one of them. Be more afraid of LL Commerce's ability to properly deliver DD without any serious impacts to ALL OUR SLM BUSINESS OPERATIONS. That is what you all should be much more fearful of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Toysoldier Thor wrote: I think with DD as was the case with Xstreet to SLM last year, the issue again will be how to get a notice out to the ~70,000 that are on SLM but do not spend ANY time on the forums to keep aware of LL's upcoming changes. As for dead items being filtered out during the migration to DD, I think a lot of you might be wishful thinking again if you believe that DD will clense SLM of inactive Merchant items. It pretty much didnt happen when LL converted us over from one entire system to another (xstreet to SLM). Why would any of you believe that a cutover from Magicbox to DD will accomplish this? The long gone merchants and the issue of needing land for a MB, yes, depends on why they've left, death could easily have paid for land a year in advance for example. Friends who can spare a prim on their own land won't care if a "friend" isn't around. The question is though, when these merchants are contacted, how come so many don't respond? That is pretty common. Contacting the 70,000 merchants? That'll be documented under the Project Plan in the "Communications" chapter and will make key references to "Stakeholders". As to the other parts, this migration should be an opportunity to clear stale merchants because with the xstreet migration it was all done for us. This time, it should be easy but it should require a merchant input. There's no good case to auto migrate everything though there will be different degrees of "ease". Options might include, "drag all your MB content to the outbox and re-associate". Easy but with effort for those that have lots. Another option might be "Go to your merchant home page and check a box [ ] please migrate me". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 But Sassy, your missing the point regarding your proposed options... Since when the DD goes live the current MagicBox will not be disabled (i.e. for ACTIVE merchants like me that will avoid DD until LL Commerce decides to technically shut magicbox functionality off) for several months after, there is NO MIGRATIONS TO DD at this time. DD's deployment will not change my functionality one bit. I do not have to even migrate. So now Fast Forward to June 2012 when LL Commerce decides to shut off Magicbox functionality. Assuming the worst case scenario that LL will not be synching current SLM Magicbox items into this new DD SLM inventory DB, when LL shuts off the magicbox distribution, those merchants that are not active and dont cut over will still have active listings in SLM but these listings will be broken when a customer tries to buy an item from it. So based on your fear that SLM is loaded with massive piles of inactive merchants and their items, they will still be in the SLM but simply broken. They will still show up in search - which is another one of your fears that this is somehow hurting your SLM business (not my fear). BUTTTTTTTT... I will say it again, if your fear is that there are so many inactive merchants (those that have left / abandoned SL long time ago) with their unsupported rogue SLM listings, how is that possible if in most cases these departed Merchants likely have magicboxes that have long since been derezzed as well? Please explain to me how you and others are so concerned about SLM items from abandoned Merchants. Their magicboxes should have also POOFED along with them since they were not around to pay the tier or rent of the land that their magicbox was on. The reason I am making this point is this and I know you read my capped phrases more clearly ... LETS NOT GIVE LL COMMERCE ANY IDEAS THAT REQUIRE MORE SOLUTION LOGISTICS CODING INTO SLM !! We all know how horrid LL Commerce is with developing solutions and making a simply idea turn into a screwed up mess of poorly thought out bug-ridden solution coding. Your proposed LL-developed cure for inactive SLM listings will likely be more painful than the little impact that these listings currently have on SLM. LEAVE SLEEPING DOGS LAY. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Well for starters I never used the word "fear" in any part of my post. Reasons why inactive merchants still have boxes inworld include "they're dead but paid a year in advance". Or, they have a box on a friends parcel. Friend pops in once every 6 months and says "Hi" so they're assumed to be "active" and hey, it's only 1 prim. Here's an alternate suggestion then, any merchant that fails to respond to a notecard/IM within 3 days has their items delisted . If there are so few really inactive merchants, how come there are so many reports of merchants that never respond to either IM AND notecard? All i'm suggesting is that listings be automatically active for only a set time1 month, 3 months whatever and after that they're auto delisted. Any true active merchant would have no issue with logging in, choosing "reactivate listings" and log out. If it was as easy as this, i'd propose once a week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Sassy Romano wrote: Well for starters I never used the word "fear" in any part of my post. Reasons why inactive merchants still have boxes inworld include "they're dead but paid a year in advance". Or, they have a box on a friends parcel. Friend pops in once every 6 months and says "Hi" so they're assumed to be "active" and hey, it's only 1 prim. Here's an alternate suggestion then, any merchant that fails to respond to a notecard/IM within 3 days has their items delisted . If there are so few really inactive merchants, how come there are so many reports of merchants that never respond to either IM AND notecard? All i'm suggesting is that listings be automatically active for only a set time1 month, 3 months whatever and after that they're auto delisted. Any true active merchant would have no issue with logging in, choosing "reactivate listings" and log out. If it was as easy as this, i'd propose once a week. Maybe because there are a lot of customers that run into Merchants that are Active SLM merchants but poor customer service Merchants. So you are basing your count of inactive merchants by how many people on the forums complain that a Merchant doesnt get back to them?? lol Is your next objective to filter out all Merchants that are active neglectful merchants? If there are Merchants inworld or on SLM that are in scenarios that keeps their SL business alive by heartbeat keep-alive triggers and events (like only coming in to pay tiers) then you are really not going to stop them in SLM by putting in SLM based quarterly manditory keep-alive checkpoints. They clearly are taking actions to stay alive now - why would they not make a point of keeping their SLM items alive the same way? You are trying to solve a problem that the NEGLECTFUL Merchant will simply abide by. The Merchants that truly are gone and have never come back are not an issue like I have already explained. Al you are trying to promote is to get LL Commerce to put their efforts into a function / feature that serves little value and only increases the risk that LL will screw up SLM for all the active GOOD merchants. You know as well as I do - if there is a way that LL can screw up coding and functionality to hurt us... THEY WILL FIND A WAY. Best solution for this issue... DO NOTHING! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 All that being said... I still Luv ya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Toysoldier Thor wrote: All that being said... I still Luv ya I wanna divorce, there's a communications issue, this is how it all starts... Dead merchants don't login and friends keep rezzed boxes for friends without a care. Nuff said Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoJo Aurelia Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 I live on Mainland and there are a lot of abandoned lands full of stuff that belonged to the previous owners. Some of my neighbors have had to contact Linden to to clear out unsightly items. I think there are magic boxes hanging around. And I also know people pay for their SL account because it comes out automatically, and might have the mentality they will come back one day. Not everyone reads their bank statements. Amen...I had a YMCA bill coming out every month unknown to me when I'd quit them a year before! It happens. Anyways. I'm just saying. I do think people will list indiscriminately. There should be some serious checks and balances. I know a a few people who tried to make clothes, listed a few, then stopped, but keep putting out their magic box (as they move around). Since the last upgrade my sales flattened even with preferred listing. It has nothing to do with my clothing, because I sold well until then. Tho I have made many improvements on my overal branding, nothing seems to really help, in world or out. Hunters want free. Without hunts, my store remains empty. I doubt I'll continue to struggle much longer here for sales against a system that makes little sense to me. I have a business background, but the business here is "monkey." I'll wait and see before I make a final call. I do love it, but it's time consuming, and frustrating. One other note, I know that the ppls I talk to, do not know about this Market Place change, and they're merchants. It seems to me that few of the users, as far as percentages, really read forums or updates. I hope it all goes well, but I know the writing is on the wall for this designer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 From my perspective, Direct Delivery has the promise to massively improve and streamline the process of purchasing and accepting Virtual Goods in Second Life. When complete, Second Life will be the only Virtual World with a Product Delivery system included as part of the infrastructure. The future benefits to Direct Delivery extend a few paces past the end of our imaginations. It is up to us, the SL Customers, to keep communicating our needs and wishes for tools like Direct Delivery to the LL Management team. However, right now the DD ball is in LL's court. It is up to them to either bring home a major win .. or limp across the finish line having once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They have to believe that not only is their DD facility solving a number of existing problems, but that it can also add massively to the ease of use and functionality for much more than its initial intention. Back on Topic: The move to DD should be an opt-in process from start of transition until the day they turn off Magic Boxes. There should never be an automatic migration like there was when we moved to SLM from XStreet. However, that's no reason they can't make it EASY too. For example, one way to do it would be to add "Move to Direct Delivery" and "Move to Inventory" options to the "Modify selected items" dropdown at the bottom of the Manage Inventory page. Merchants could just select a group of products then move them from their existing Magic Box(es) into the Direct Delivery internal storage location with one click. Same for pulling them back to your personal Inventory from DD internal storage. The net result is .. it's fast, easy to understand .. and REQUIRES people take action to keep up to date. Eventually those products that never moved into DD internal storage will be delisted when all "Magic Box Only" listings are deactivated. Thus anyone not taking action will be ... left home alone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Montana Corleone Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 What automatic migration from SLX to MP? It was yet another SL bork, I and several hundred others never had the stuff migrated and had to re-enter everything. Nothing ever goes seamlessly with SL. The boxes do at least have to be there for the current system to work, with it being a folder in inv it will be there forever when the merchant stops logging in. There might be a slight benefit in the short term, for those merchants who don't realise will be delisted, but in the long run it will be worse. A glance at total registered users versus regular loggers will show you that. I'd far rather see the MP search and sort correctly first, and get rid of the resellers and people who sell freebies for money to unclutter the system. This is a problem that is not going to go away. Unlike RL, stuff never wears out. LL could simulate that, or at the very least require merchants to relistthe items, or confirm they are still for sale in some way. Additionally, it would do the economy a lot of good if people were required to have an inworld presence, that would bring back stores and land usage. Magic boixes aren't much, but they do contribute to that. Additionally, it helps keep LL on their toes in off-world communication technology. And of course, what happens if inventory doesn't load, or as often happens, you get inventory loss? There are also problems with accidentally putting things in the folder that shouldn't be there, and noobs in the future thinking they can drop stuff in there and have it listed automatically, leading to greater stress on the inventory and asset servers. At the very least it will mean everyone's inventory wil load slower. For large merchants, the amount of items could become a problem, which is got around now by having different stuff in different boxes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnet Homewood Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 Different stuff in different boxes, good point, perhaps we will be allowed to have different folders within the main DD folder to replicate that? Who knows Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted November 16, 2011 Share Posted November 16, 2011 Inventory failing to load is a local issue. It has no bearing on Direct Delivery being able to deliver. Inventory getting larger is a shopping issue, the merchants products that are listed do NOT sit in their inventory but are swallowed up to Marketplace and removed from the outbox. This is explained in the Direct Delivery FAQ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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