DD for Merchants...Impact on our Inventories

[Pamela Galli]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:I've also worked for bosses that were just as clueless, but for some reason

fancied themselves as "Experts" in every stage of the development process and often overrode the dev team with ludicrous demands ...

for no reason other than to demonstrate their control of the project. (Using their power to stroke their own ego, irregardless of how much damage it did to the software or the company.)

Maybe I'm wrong, but I keep getting whiffs of the latter situation at LL .. I just don't know who it might be or where they are located. But it's those whiffs that keep me from fully roasting the Commerce Dev Team over an open flame pit; I keep thinking they're not doing these things from their own incompetence, they are being instructed to be purposely destructive so that someone else can feel they are "in charge".

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This is exactly the impression I have. I also have the impression that someone is hiring people who simply do not know how to code. If you are saddled with incompetent devs and being given insane directives from above, this is probably what it looks like. 

When I was teaching I often had to break then news of some insane new policy I had to enforce, as a result of directives from above me.

 

[Josh Susanto]

>the only action is NO ACTION

Obviously, yes.

And yet, every time we open the website, the first thing we see if a green bear urging us to migrate. 

How hard would it be for them to take that off the screen?

The message from LL is to keep migrating.

Why?

[Anaiya Arnold]

 By any reasonable measure this implementation fails because it's not good enough.   It's really that simple, no matter how much spin you add to the mix. 

There are numerous clues to this in your own posting.  You asserted that it's not a fail if we don't measure it against the only reasonable standard, and had to restrict your measurement to a comparison of LL to LL in order to justify a claim that it's not a fail.  You would not need to qualify your measurement standards to such a specifically narrow scope of comparison if this implementation were good enough to be deemed not a fail in the grander sense.

Being unprofessional is always a fail for a business.  That's common sense.  You've admitted that this implementation lacked a level of professionalism.  That's a fail, even if people are panicking, even if there is misinformation around, even if LL are too sulky to talk to us unless we coat sugar everything and essentially baby-talk to them.  Not a single thing you've said changes the essential fact that being unprofessional is an instance of fail for a business, and that you yourself assert a lack of professionalism here.

Being balanced is not about putting a spin on things, it's not about creating a reality distortion field or sugar coating things in case someone unprofessionally sulks even more than they already are, nor telling porkies to stop panicking.  Unrealistic assessments are not a fix for misinformation.

Here's the bottom line, either it's not good enough and so by definition a fail, or it's good enough and a pass. 

There's no middle ground.  It's either good enough (aka a pass) or a fail (aka not good enough to merit a pass).  That's what fail means Darrius.  Not good enough to pass.  It does not mean "total waste and ruin" anymore than vegetable means specifically carrots.  Sure a total waste and ruin can be a result of a fail, but not all fails produce total waste and ruin and it's just silly word game to invent new meanings for words that have simple and unambiguous meanings, just so you can assert unrealistic assessments as an unbiased middle ground.  You'd not need to indulge in such creative spin efforts if in fact this was not a fail after all.  

Fail means not good enough.  Is it your position that this implementation is good enough?

 

 

Whatever internal borkage is going on, it's not going to be fixed while LL are able to dellude themselves into thinking that this is good enough.  Of course they can only convince themselves of that if they decide that people who call it a fail and say it's not good enough are malcontents while those who claim it's not a fail are "middle ground voices of reason".    You can call for understanding all you like, LL is a black box so we can only guess not understand, but if your own guess is correct, then enablement for the borker is whatever allows them to convince their bosses that although not perfect, things are good enough,  that those who say otherwise are malcontents, and that while middle grounded voices of reason might see minor problems in the details, they concede it's not a fail.

[Josh Susanto]

>Being unprofessional is always a fail for a business.

Well said.

Even I would probably STFU about at least certain technical failures if they were simply handled professionally.

But the reason that there are so many fails to handle unprofessionally must simply be that the decision process that leads to them is, itself, not a professional decision process.

[Darrius Gothly]

If only the world were so wonderfully black and white .. then living would be simple and easy to comprehend.

But as long as you insist on seeing things in black or white, no amount of verbiage on my part pointing out the varied shades of grey will ever change your mind.

Very well, welcome to your world of black or white and nothing in between. Alas, I cannot justify such simplification when dealing with reality and the never ending range of possibilities and variety.

[Josh Susanto]

Some things are black and white.

If LL has to go to court over this sh##, that's a fact that's going to hit them like a ton of bricks.

And it's not up to me or Anaiya. That's just how it is.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Some things

are

black and white.

If LL has to go to court over this sh##, that's a fact that's going to hit them like a ton of bricks.

And it's not up to me or Anaiya. That's just how it is.

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And indeed, the court would have to arrive at a "black or white" decision. But you completely miss my point as I was not discussing the future or some potential legal confrontation. I was discussing, and this whole conversation has been about, our personal perception of the Marketplace and its performance.

For a large segment of the Merchant population, MP operates flawlessly .. and has done so for some time. For a sizeable segment, it does not. Like you and Anaiya, I want the size of the segment that sees rampant errors and problems to shrink to nearly zero .. or absolutely zero if possible. But from the perspective of those not seeing problems, the MP is not a "fail", it's a "win".

What I find interesting about this whole discussion is that because I recognize that for a large number of people, MP actually works ... I am suddenly an "Enabler" and a "Fan Boy" That somehow my refusal to ignore their successes makes me an evil force that must be argued into the dirt and ultimately "vanquished". The emotional fervor and energy being poured into these posts just astounds me.

To use the old "half full" analogy, I recognize that the glass is half full. Yet you and Anaiya insist on forcing the opinion on me that because the glass is not completely full, it must be completely empty. I'm sorry Josh, but no matter how fervent your arguments, I refuse to accept that the glass is completely empty ... and I never will.

Furthermore, because I won't adopt your black or white opinion, you both have labeled me "The Enemy". You completely ignore the fact that I am also doing everything I can to push LL into fixing the errors that do exist. In my own personal opinion, the sort of extremist perspective you both display is exactly what weakens our position and prevents LL from accepting our input as valid. It forces them to adopt the complete opposite opinion that "there are no errors" and gives them no incentive to actually fix what is broken. As long as you continue to insist "the glass is empty", they have no choice but to reply "the glass is full". You are, in a very real sense, causing the situation that hampers progress and ultimately success.

At any rate, carry on. Continue to protest the state of affairs as you see fit. Just keep in mind that no matter how loud or how adamant your statements, I still have my eyes open wide enough to see that the glass is half full.

[Anaiya Arnold]

Honestly your post is just irrelevant spin in the form of an underhanded ad hominen attack.  I have no problems seeing shades of grey, not to mention many other colors.

Sure there is complexity in the world, but judging whether or not this implementation is good enough or not, is really rather simple. 

 

 

EDITED TO ADD:

What I find interesting about this whole discussion is that because I recognize that for a large number of people, MP actually works ... I am suddenly an "Enabler" and a "Fan Boy" That somehow my refusal to ignore their successes makes me an evil force that must be argued into the dirt and ultimately "vanquished". The emotional fervor and energy being poured into these posts just astounds me.

You labled yourself an "Enabler" (capitalized for extra drama).  I merely suggested that your behaviour might be enabling.  As someone so familiar with shades of grey you should easily appreciate that enabling is not a behaviour itself most usually but rather how someone chooses to react to a behaviour.  Where did Fan-boy come from?

You certainly have a flare for the dramatic for someone concerned about being a "moderate".

What you think I think about you does not reflect reality outside your own head. 

And if it's not bad enough you want to dictate what is in my head to me, now you are putting words in my and Joshua's mouth?  Fail, pass, not good enough, and good enough, none of these things make any reference whatsoever to any volume of liquid or drinking vessels. 

All this spin, twisting things around, bringing in special measurements, ad hominen attacks, these things are usually not necessary for someone who has reality on their side.  If you're frustrated because you find you cannot argue your position realistically, what does this tell you about your position?  I often find when I'm in that position, it's because my position is untenable.  When I find that to be the case, I choose to respond to that by conceding my position as ultimately not entirely correct, rather than lashing out at others, putting words and thoughts in their head, and characterizing them as extremists, anti-LL, unable to see shades of grey and having nasty thoughts about me being a a fan-boy, evil, and wanting to crush me with arguments.  Obviously your mileage does vary.

 

Oh and to top it off, I see that in your view that you expect Ll to respond to criticism like a sulky child, but of course I expect you do not see that as fail either.  No business that wants to stay in business behaves by responding to criticism by refusing to fix things because they were criticized.  Is that how you behave in your professional life?

[Josh Susanto]

>And indeed, the court would have to arrive at a "black or white" decision.

Precisely what LL should demonstrate a capacity to think in black and white at every stage of the process, even if we might choose not to where we don't have to. I don't generally fault my fellow merchants for sometimes thinking in grays. I fault LL for depending upon them, and, in fact, demanding that we do so whenever it's convenient for them.

>But you completely miss my point as I was not discussing the future or some potential legal confrontation.

Great. Maybe you can get a job in the LL legal office burying people's heads deeper in the gray sand while the black and white tsunami continues to roll in on them.

>I was discussing, and this whole conversation has been about, our personal perception of the Marketplace and its performance.

My personal perception is that it already qualifies as criminal in nature. That's a pretty black and white statement, but so are the facts I have used to arrive at it. If the facts were gray, my perception would be gray. But they aren't. They're the black and white facts that LL has stupidly chosen to create and failed to prevent from being made available for our use. If you don't like the black and white, your first step should be to ask LL to stop stealing.

>For a large segment of the Merchant population, MP operates flawlessly .. and has done so for some time. For a sizeable segment, it does not. Like you and Anaiya, I want the size of the segment that sees rampant errors and problems to shrink to nearly zero .. or absolutely zero if possible. But from the perspective of those not seeing problems, the MP is not a "fail", it's a "win".

It appears to operate flawlessly for me in recent months. But only because I don't give LL better opportunities to rip me off by selling me listing enhancements and then making it practically impossible for people to buy the stuff I'm trying to promote. I can tolerate sales outages because my costs are so low, but that's my paranoid business plan. Other people who trust LL to help them develop a more cost-intensive business will tend to lose under conditions where I don't lose. It's partly the merchant's fault for not taking to heart everything that I've discussed on this forum. But it's mostly LL's fault for setting the traps and baiting them.

MP continues to be a win for me. But only because I realize it's a game of deception, and I am playing it on those terms.

>What I find interesting about this whole discussion is that because I recognize that for a large number of people, MP actually works ... I am suddenly an "Enabler" and a "Fan Boy" That somehow my refusal to ignore their successes makes me an evil force that must be argued into the dirt and ultimately "vanquished".

Not at all. I think your contributions here are GREAT. And if I could only get you to see the larger picture...

>The emotional fervor and energy being poured into these posts just astounds me.

Maybe it astounds you because the income you planned to live off of this month wasn't lost to an "upgrade".

 

>To use the old "half full" analogy, I recognize that the glass is half full.

Right. This is in the same spirit as my suggestion about changing "delivery partially failed" to "delivery partially succeeded",

except it's apparently not sarcastic for some reason.

>Yet you and Anaiya insist on forcing the opinion on me that because the glass is not completely full, it must be completely empty.

Not true. My complaint is "substantially less full than agreed upon".

If a dentist only pulled out half your teeth by mistake, how delighted would you be about it?

>I'm sorry Josh, but no matter how fervent your arguments, I refuse to accept that the glass is completely empty

... and I never will.

It's half full AND half empty. But people are not paying for the half empty part they're getting. 

They're paying for a FULL GLASS.

 

>Furthermore, because I won't adopt your black or white opinion, you both have labeled me "The Enemy".

Not at all. I think of your as a friend for my own part, even if you are a bit misguided.

>You completely ignore the fact that I am also doing everything I can to push LL into fixing the errors that do exist.

I'm not ignoring that. I just think it's mostly a distraction from what they really need to do, which begins with firing someone.

>In my own personal opinion, the sort of extremist perspective you both display is exactly what weakens our position and prevents LL from accepting our input as valid.

And yet, reading what other people have to say also has not made a $hit of a difference in changing their basic decision process, which remains utterly dysfunctional. But maybe if we all just play good cop even harder, they'll somehow, suddenly realize the error of their ways? How does that work?

>It forces them to adopt the complete opposite opinion that "there are no errors"

No, they already had that, even before I bought my first magic box.

>and gives them no incentive to actually fix what is broken.

Well, keeping their jobs doesn't seem to be much of an incentive, since it's clear no one can get fired for anything, ever at LL. The only other incentive I have to offer is that, if they fix things, I won't use their own words to make them look so asinine that huge numbers of people will up and quit, and then actively dissuade new users from joining.

Moreover, my conspiracy talk essentially forces them to fix DD, in spite of the fact that neither fixing it nor not fixing it affects whether they can keep their jobs.

Conspiracy talk forces them to fix DD because, if they don't, it will be entirely reasonable for people to believe that I was right about them not intending to let it work properly in the first place... and this is a point I will be sure to make abundantly available to any of about 1 billion people who may care to look into the matter a little bit. 

>As long as you continue to insist "the glass is empty", they have no choice but to reply "the glass is full". You are, in a very real sense, causing the situation that hampers progress and ultimately success.

YOUR glass is full. Others, maybe not so much. There's at least one person who reports making 20K per week on the SLM, and then, after the "upgrade", ZERO. How is the glass even half full for that person?

>At any rate, carry on. Continue to protest the state of affairs as you see fit. Just keep in mind that no matter how loud or how adamant your statements, I still have my eyes open wide enough to see that the glass is half full.

And again, it's BOTH half full AND half empty.

But we didn't agree to half full.

We agreed to FULL.

[Darrius Gothly]

I had this big ole nicely worded response to your latest reply .. then decided why bother?

Here's the issue at hand. I do not see Marketplace as total fail. You do. We disagree. Hooray. Is there anything else you wish to add?

[Darrius Gothly]

Everything else is of no import except this part:

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Josh Susanto wrote:

(..snip..)

But we didn't agree to half full.

We agreed to FULL.

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We both agree, we want the glass full, and I will continue to push on LL in positive and constructive ways with an eye toward getting them to finish filling the glass. But I will not engage in mud-slingng to attain that goal. Deal?

[Josh Susanto]

> I do not see Marketplace as total fail. You do. 

I don't see it as a total fail.

I see it as working as well as it does in spite of ongoing tampering.

God knows, if LL hadn't "tried to improve it" so much, but instead focused on getting more of the grid deborked on a regular basis, it could probably have been working almost perfectly from the start. 

[Josh Susanto]

> But I will not engage in mud-slingng to attain that goal. Deal?

I don't have to concede that what I do is mud-slinging in order to acknowledge that what you do is definitely not mudslinging.

AND, I say that if someone perceives something to be mudslinging, they have an ethical reason not to participate in it, personally.

So, yeah, I think that has basically been the deal all along.

I may still push you to be more critical, but it's fair for you to push back if you see it as a matter of your personal integrity. 

In fact, PLEASE DO. 

We don't have to agree on anything else in order to agree that personal integrity is worth protecting. 

[Anaiya Arnold]

I called the implementation a fail.  You inserted the word "total", changing what I did say into something much more extreme and significantly different to what I've actually said. 

And you did bother to post, so pretending you actually had a point but could not be bothered to post that, yet could be bothered to post a pointless mini-straw man, is not a convincing act.

 It's odd a self professed, moderate, middle ground dweller who takes a nuanced view and sees shades of grey rather than black and white, cannot detect a single shade, or an inch of ground, between "fail" and "total fail, including waste and ruin".  You certainly have a rather extreme, black and white, middle-groundless interpretation of fail, and one that obviously others do not universally share, because otherwise the word "total" in the phrase "total fail" would be meaningless and redundant, yet you still inserted it into my mouth for no good reason.

Please don't insert your stuff in my mouth without asking and receiving permission first, thanks.

 

[Josh Susanto]

>I called the implementation a fail.  You inserted the word "total"

For me, the simplest measure of whether it's a fail is whether it has increased or decreased daily SLM revenues, over-all.

So which is it?

[Darrius Gothly]

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

I called the implementation a fail.  You inserted the word "total", changing what I did say into something much more extreme and significantly different to what I've actually said. 

And you did bother to post, so pretending you actually had a point but could not be bothered to post that, yet could be bothered to post a pointless mini-straw man, is not a convincing act.

 It's odd a self professed, moderate, middle ground dweller who takes a nuanced view and sees shades of grey rather than black and white, cannot detect a single shade, or an inch of ground, between "fail" and "total fail, including waste and ruin".  You certainly have a rather extreme, black and white, middle-groundless interpretation of fail, and one that obviously others do not universally share, because otherwise the word "total" in the phrase "total fail" would be meaningless and redundant, yet you still inserted it into my mouth for no good reason.

Please don't insert your stuff in my mouth without asking and receiving permission first, thanks.

 

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What you claim to have said, and what myself and others perceived you to say are two different things. To expect others to read exactly your full intention and meaning from everything you write is a hopeless expectation. Unless you are extremely crystal clear in everything you write, people will from time to time misunderstand you. My "amplification" of your "fail" into "total fail" could be such an example of just such a situation ... but it isn't.

In several of my replies to you, I have requested that you provide some examples of how the Marketplace is not broken. To date you have insisted that because the failures that exist are so damaging and of such a magnitude that no valid examples could be supplied, there was no point in providing any examples of non-failure. If there are no non-failures then by inference the site is a "total fail". Thus my "amplification" was simply a restatement of exactly what you said. It you will admit there are situations for which the Marketplace works, then I will allow that my "total fail" is not the same as your "fail". Until that time, I submit they are exactly the same.

I wrote and then deleted my first reponse to your previous post not because I found myself unable to defend my point, but instead found myself laughing at the idiocy of this conversation. No matter what I say, no matter how I have pointed out that I see non-failures and thus cannot declare the site a "Fail" .. you insist on responding with more verbal gymnastics and hypocritical justifications .. claiming I am unable to comprehend the meaning of your arguments or blasting me for putting "spin" on this situation. And all the time you "spin" it to suit your own needs. To me, it's just become ludicrous. Clearly you will not admit in any way, shape or form that the Marketplace is anything except "fail" (which I say again is a direct example of being a "total fail")

But to finally bring this argument back around to my original point, a point you have very carefully avoided discussing by the tactic of blasting me for engaging in "ad hominem attacks". The point .. MY point being that by constantly asserting that the Marketplace was below acceptable for ALL uses and ALL cases, you were doing needless damage to the Merchants and Customers alike.

Many people are using the site on a daily basis, and using it without failure. Yet you turn a blind eye to this obvious truth and continue spinning it in a way that makes it seem the Marketplace is useless for all purposes. I continue to ask that you stop overstating the situation, admit that many are using the site without troubles ... and stop insisting that because it is not functional at a level we ALL want, then there is no point using it at all.

[Anaiya Arnold]

Now you're just making stuff up.  Outright fairy tales.  For goodness sake!

"To date you have insisted that because the failures that exist are so damaging and of such a magnitude that no valid examples could be supplied..."

Never happened, and now you're just making nonsense up, there's no point bothering.

Unbelievable.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

I support what you've stated, Anaiya.  one can read the Jiras to interpret.

There is a belief here, that "if it is not happening to me"  in general....".then it is not happening."

Although there is phrasing going on such as "a few merchants'...a "limited number of merchants"....

sure doesn't read that way in the Jiras.

eta:  added quotation marks

[Darrius Gothly]

Welcome back Mickey. I thought you were perma-banned. At least, that's what you said in your tweets. (You remember the ones .. where you accused me of attacking and insulting you in the Forums because I knew you were banned.)

Interesting how your return to the forums is heralded by taking up a position that not only flies in the face of your past attitudes but reinforces the negative image Anaiya has drawn of me. (Remember how you used to whine and kvetch about people that took up issues for others rather than just state their own personal opinions? You used to really chew me a new one simply because I sympathized with others even though I personally wasn't affected.)

Y'know .. if I happened to be paranoid, I'd think you were purposely out to get me or something. Bloody good thing I'm not, huh?

At any rate, glad you're back. Always good to have differing points of view to keep thing in balance. (As long as it's an honest balanced opinion and not one that's stated just for personal motives.)

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Welcome back Mickey. I thought you were perma-banned. At least, that's what you said in your tweets. (You remember the ones .. where you accused me of attacking and insulting you in the Forums because I knew you were banned.)

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Well, I can understand how it might have been construed that way. Apparently you didn't know she's gone again this time either.

 

 

[Darrius Gothly]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Welcome back Mickey. I thought you were perma-banned. At least, that's what you said in your tweets. (You remember the ones .. where you accused me of attacking and insulting you in the Forums because I knew you were banned.)

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Well, I can understand how it might have been construed that way. Apparently you didn't know she's gone again this time either.

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Wait .. what?!? She's been banned again? *SIGH* I suppose it's my fault again too. Dangit, I really need to stop doing that to her ... whatever the heck it is I keep doing.