Prokofy Neva

It has to be done by the free market, not by lottery. And it has to be a separate place, not the same spawning sim. People find shame in remaining on a spawning sim, especially with bots who won't talk, or with newbies who are rude or clueless. They immediately want to separate themselves from that feeling and that crowd. So they need to have the sensation of "going elsewhere". That's why there need to be teleport boards.

So I recently joined Free Sims Online (FSO) which is a re-implementation of The Sims Online, from which a number of us came in 2004-2005 to Second Life. I actually was a founder on FSO but I didn't go on it much until recently when I found SL working so poorly I couldn't enjoy it. FSO is small, and there aren't more than say 300-500 on it, and possibly only 70-100 concurrent. But on every single lot, nearly every single person you meet tells you they were once in SL, but they hated it and never went back. And some still have an avatar in SL but don't come here often -- they dislike it. If you ever wanted to go to a place and find the other 9 who left when there was only one who retained in SL-- who are NOT the war gamers like the kid in the video -- it's FSO. These are the SL demographics -- older women, married men who aren't interested in war gaming or hooking up, young people from countries like Poland or Russia or Singapore or even Syria, somewhat new to Internet socializing. The first thing you realize -- or remember -- about FSO is that the people are a lot nicer than they are in SL. Everyone uniformly says that. They describe awful experiences they have had in SL of griefing, of sexual harassment, of idiocy, and they flee. Flee to a place where for various reasons, various social norms of politeness and cooperation seemed to have been engineered into the world from the get-go by the socially-conscious Will Wright. Of course, it's a very different set-up where the "something to do" is solved instantly by the need to fill needs and so on. But it's enough similar to SL that you have to wonder -- why are people polite, helpful, sociable, not as AFK here as distinct from SL? Could it be due to the dirt-simple interface? There is a lack of choice of avatars, of course but there's enough variety that it's ok, and there are no mesh-like problems. Then you can buy more outfits later as you earn money. FSO is even in 3-D, and some have built lots specifically for 3D, and are re-meshing the objects to make them look better. Yes, FSO doesn't have all the richness of SL. But you can be drawn there because you can still be creative there AND the people are SO MUCH NICER. There's a live Discord where the devs and oldbies help instead of scorning everyone who asks for help and ridiculing them. And so on. A different culture, perhaps induced by a different UI (this needs further reflection), and hence a nicer place.

I found that very interesting, thank you. It was especially interesting because his "spawn" place is Iris, where there's an infohub where I guess some newbies are sent (I am never sure they still do this, or how they do this). We happen to have built a village next to that hub with all kinds of tutorials, freebies, etc. One of the things I put in steps from the Moth Temple is a phone with the text "how do I get out of here," since that's a question I find a lot of people first landing want to know. They don't like being forced to be in one place, especially a place filled with a dozen or more AFK or soul-less bots. So that's job one -- which I constantly raise, and constantly deal with on that sim: stop letting bots go to random infohubs. Make them go to the home of their deployers, or if that sim is down, let them go to some other hub created for that purpose so that they stop cluttering up infohubs where newbies especially are trying to orient themselves. It's a very unnerving experience to land there in Iris (as I do nearly every day) and find all those bots. I ask the Lindens to reset the server to shake them loose. Some of them are regulars as they have very poor handlers. But the real issue is -- bots should not come to these infohubs that are supposed to be for orientation. Create some Lindens sims where they can all be sent, the end. Or make it impossible for them to log on if their home sim is down. Do what you have to do -- but get rid of these crowds of dummies at hang-outs where people are. I'll leave aside the issue of how this fellow is "the wrong sort" because he's trying to find a weapon and horse and fight in what is essentially not a war game, except on certain sims. All the points he raises are valid -- starting with the lack of people to talk to as they are bots. So two, it's really crazy having avatars that are mesh and become removed the first time you try to put something else on or accept something being given to you The Lindens are chasing fashion here and think they need to have fancy-looking and complex avatars "like the other games," but I imagine other games are not so modifiable and removeable with the avatars are SL. So newbies should not have that experience of losing parts of yourself and having your torso be invisible or whatever, and seeing all the other people around you not rendering properly (when they land their arms are flung out somewhere -- often, hideously, their mouth is floating by itself in mid-air like the cheshire cat, etc. So don't have those avatars as automatics. Have people dressed in some kind of all-in-one at first until they learn about how mesh avatars get messed up if they try to put on something else or accept something to attach. I even have two kinds of boats at one location with warnings that one of the points will mess up mesh avatars or clothing so take the other boat that doesn't do that if that's an issue. Three, end the fear and shunning of commerce and have teleport boards to where people can instantly shop. Enable merchants to put up ad boards for money on Linden sims to accomplish this purpose. BTW, there used to be such ad boards in the early days of SL at the now-replaced telehubs! So even the commerce-allergenic early Lindens allowed this because some people put up "things to do" as well as shopping. It's easy to make those boards again, the rule can be no X-rated items, and thus someone landing and wishing to buy a gun, or go to a war RP sim, would immediately be able to do that. The ads used to rotate every two weeks. You could have a big bulletin board with multiple ads, as bars in SL do. Just do it, get over the fear of commerce by customers, and enable more retention. Four, do not return helpers, guides, special residents in with the Lindens, etc. That's the temptation, but it never really helps, creates favoured ranks of people that build resentment, aids in corruption, and so on (I remember such helpers used to sling newbies folders full of their friends' store landmarks). Put in boards with ads, let people click and teleport to them, the end. This shouldn't be so hard; it's purely ideological on the part of the Lindens and the hard-core user base. Five, you could say "fix lag" or "fix grey squares" or whatever -- and we know how that ends when someone even as old as me in SL tries to raise this with the forums "regulars". But people will endure a lot of lag if they find something else first: something to do, a friend, a place to shop, or get freebies. Lindens will say, oh, but we A/B tested teleport boards and they didn't aid retention. I marvel how certain one-time or even six-time experiences in corporate history and culture lead to learned helplessness. I could mention that when you filled the boards with your own favourites that you felt were educational, or when you experimented with only two-week intervals, of course it didn't work. You need to LET THE MARKET in ads decide. The people who can absorb influxes of newbies, whether RP sims, clubs, malls, whatever, will put up the ads. And that's ok. People don't have your highbrow tastes but what are we here for, encouraging a niche boutique space or having more widespread use and appeal?

Pre-warning: if you always post contrary to whatever I'm posting just out of spleen, save it for another post, there will be other more important ones where you can exercise your talents. And if you don't experience any issues with packaging for whatever reasons, move along to a more interesting post. This post is about seeing how many others experience this annoyance and how they address it. I know it's a lot, because not only do I hear it from my tenants, I hear it from merchants themselves, because they themselves are shoppers, too. The packaging in general in SL has become absolutely insane, wasteful, and possibly even a load on the servers. Because of the inordinate fear that newbies would end up with boxes on their head by dragging not contents within a box but the box itself (and experiencing mortal embarrassment), this packaging insanity has grown worse. I think in fact it's worse for newbies, too. When you purchase a product now, it often has WEAR ME as the hovering text or printed instructions right on it -- it wants you to drag the box on yourself contrary to the old days. That's because it has animations that will make you either carry a bag or hold a bunch of stacked boxes (I find this particularly stupid but someone may feel it is clever). Worse, the box then starts automatically unpacking. Since it won't come into inventory without your consent, you have to click "yes" to accept it. But you don't have to click to start the unpacking process. Things may go wrong if you are on a laggy sim or TP away too early (often the vendor will even tell you to do that). But worse, if you bat the incoming unpacking away, because you want to drag the contents into your inventory *into a folder, to sort it right away*, you may lose the product completely, even if it is copyable. THAT is what I find super annoying. Here's the problem: if it is a gatcha, you expect that it is a single copy, and that you better get that unpacking and click "yes" and not "no" or you will lose it -- it's not in trash, because you never received it, it's "nowhere." You have an expectation, and you meet it. But if you expect that a purchased item that is copyable and not on transfer will "still be in the box," you MIGHT be wrong but MIGHT NOT. THAT is the problem. There is no consistency. Some items say "All my contents are in your inventory" as the forcibly unpack. But many of them really still retain a copy in that box as you have proven many times. So you THINK you can safely say "no" to the forced unpacking, and still drag into a folder WHICH IS PREFERABLE. The only way to deal with monster inventories is to try to always diligently sort immediately after unpacking. Packing annoyances defeat that purpose. But some of them -- even if copyable! -- are NOT really in the box any more. Or the box is on "no modify" so you can' open it. Then you've just lost that content, and you are forced back to the merchant -- who may or may not have an automatic redelivery terminal. Recently when I posted about this annoyance on Twitter, after sending a request to get a copy issued because of loss of a single-copy item over this issue (it wasn't a gatcha so I didn't realize it was single-copy), the CSR complained that I publicized it before waiting for their response. But it's not about their company. They all do this. Because we now have virtually a monopoly vendor situation, and a terrible chokepoint of failure -- as we saw when indeed it did fail on the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, and fail for a day. Yet there are still enough other variations to keep giving you nasty surprises where even a copyable item. What is the solution? Cease automatic unpacking upon rezzing. It's not a convenience. It can lead to loss. It defeats efforts to organize inventory. It does not really help newbies. You can still even have the silly anims of carrying bags or boxes, but make unpack happen ONLY when the avatar clicks on it. Further, if it is a copyable item, do not remove that final copy from the original packaging, there is no need to do this.

Since they talked about this not only for Sansar but SL *a year ago* it is *reasonable* to assume that from this and other conversations they did this already: If they didn't understood, but obviously they have to do many things to prepare to move to the cloud. If they didn't physically do this yet, *those things* may account for worse performance. Maybe it will improve when they finally achieve this result. I doubt it, however.

Do you realize that you are harping on this issue needlessly because it's not the problem. If it were, there would be many people whose SL turned into grey squares merely because they cleared cache "too much." Once again, clearing cache -- too much or too little -- is not the issue -- for me, and many others. Once again, I don't clear the cache "too much" -- perhaps once a week. Once again, even if someone "clears too much," what you're talking about is what happens *initially* when you log on and you've made it worse by giving it a loading task. But that won't account for whey when you log on the next time, and the time after that, and the next 10 times, *not* clearing cache again. @Arudenn Schwartzman @rasterscan I agree that it's not about the quality of content creators. That might account for some things on one sim; it can't account for all things on all sims.

Yes, I feel that way about sim re-starts. Many people who own islands or homesteads restart them once a day, inconveniencing their tenants. It really, truly is not necessary. Seriously, nothing bad happens if you do not re-start them every day. If anything, it might be less wear and tear on them. The Lindens are going to do rolling restarts anyway once a week. I can go weeks without myself personally restarting a sim and the FPS is good, the performance overall is good, the tenants are happy. Why wake a sleeping baby?

I really don't think clearing cache often or seldom is the issue. That's because, you know, I've been in SL *for 14 years* and I've done this a million times. Yes, initially when you have to reload everything after a clearance you can expect grey squares. That's a given, and you wait for that to go away and it clears up. It's not that after a clear cache you have to repeatedly face that re-loading for dozens of more log-ons -- that's simply not the case. It loads once, you can search by alphabet letters if something is lost and you're trying to force it back, or you can do nothing, but it loads and the world is not grey. The next TP you take is not grey squares for 10 minutes. But that is NOT the case now, for whatever reason likely having to do with the Lindens' move "to the cloud." I can go for a week not clearing cache and it doesn't make any difference. I realize that people want to find fault everywhere but with the Lindens. But the Lindens are the biggest variable factor here. Unlike me changing a computer or a Windows update, the Lindens are always changing their software and putting out new versions and at least rolling out updates *every week*. Every week there is a rolling re-start as you know. Some common sense dictates that they, as the largest and most influential and most changing variable, are the problem.

Um, no, but A for effort. On Amtrak, I'm using a laptop for work and I am NOT playing SL and don't even have SL loaded -- SL doesn't play well on many laptops although sometimes you can do a little with it.

All the time. It doesn't make any difference. That's one of those urban myths. Too bad that like your computer, unplugging SL and replugging it doesn't make it work better.

I don't ever get Error 21 on Amtrak. Must be something wrong with your laptop. SL works on wi-fi. It has for years. But now it doesn't, and it's not just my issue. Read this thread LOL BTW I've had wire connections and yeah, I know the difference, and sometimes over the years SL stops working right even on wired connections.

Let's say you go to the store and buy six bottles of yogurt protein drink from six different companies with all more or less the same expiration date. The next day, you pour some of each bottle into a separate cup and taste it. And you discover that one of the yogurt drinks has turned and is sour. Do you say, "Oh, it must be my refrigerator" (computer). But it can't be, because the five other drinks are ok. Do you say, "Oh, it must be the store" (your browser). But it can't be, because only one of the six drinks from this store went bad. Do you say, "Oh, it must be the expiration date" (your connection). But that can't be, because another bottle has an even earlier expiration date and it tastes fine. Do you say, "Just because another bottle has an earlier expiration date doesn't mean that there isn't something wrong with your refrigerator. You have no idea if that earlier expiration date for that brand in fact means that the store is to blame. Because yes, the store is to blame if it doesn't check the expiration date for that particular brand." No, you realize that the brand doesn't have very good pasteurization or storage or transport. You stop buying that brand. But not if you are some Lindens and fanboyz. Then you say, "Your refrigerator is to blame." If you are finally persuaded that isn't the case, you say, "The store is to blame" or maybe "it must be the store's failure to watch that particular brand's expiration date which is different than others."

Seeing "Error 21" in relationships to Second Life isn't "something wrong with my computer". My computer works find and everything else works fine on it. I've seen Error 21 in the past, *when SL was playing far better than it is now*. *I don't see Error 21 now as it happens*. Error 21 has various easy fixes you can find in Google, I've done them, it has no effect on how SL plays. No one has established this is the reason for SL not playing well, which is not only my problem.

There is nothing wrong with my computer. It runs fine. It runs all kinds of other programs/apps. It's SL's software that isn't working well. The end. I don't need to be turned into an Amnesty case (BTW, I've lost all respect for that organizations since the days of Gita-Gate). Re: "Like you said..it works fine for most others. So look at the variables that are different between your machine and all the others it's working fine for. " There's actually another thing to do, consistent with the Socratic Method. Look at all the people *in this thread* who have the SAME experience as I have. See what they have in common. Oh, I know, the Lindens' softmare.

It's not the drivers. It's their softmare. I'm not the only one experiencing this. The forums represents 5 percent of the user population in readership, and 2 percent of the user population in posters. Look at this thread, and count how many people say they are experiencing the same thing. The end.

No, I didn't say that. I said *it worked fine for me* until just recently. So it's not my computer, my ISP, my settings, Windows 10, etc. They haven't changed. And I also said Windows 10 works fine, and SL works fine on it, for many people, so the problem is NOT LIKELY Windows 10. Different. What has changed? LL's softmare. Most people don't complain because they think it's just their problem. So they just quit. And that's because they're in a dreadful climate of stark, severe geek conformity and incitement of hatred of anyone who questions whether it could be something more than just their machine. It's a rigid, totalitarian cult where you have to make enormous sacrifices like a Russian or Chinese dissident to try to get the truth admitted. Perhaps the worst aspect is the disinformation, misquotations, deliberate fake understandings, etc.

I have virus programs, clean-ups, optimizers, and I run them regularly. That's not the issue. Something changed in the Lindens' softmare. There's an awful lot of denial about this, and that leads me to suspect the denial spreads into the Linden camp. Or rather, originates there, and spreads out to the fanboyz base. Pity.

They can analyze their own crash reports and fix their softmare.

Windows 10 is on most normal people's machines. And tens of thousands if not more of SL residents have Windows 10. You can choose to accept the updates or not. Yes, even if you choose to opt in, they sometimes update against your will. I personally held off from installing Windows 10 itself forever, and when it tried to sneak it, batted it away. It finally barged through and installed anyway. And low and behold, nothing bad happened. SL worked. Slack worked. Etc. BTW I don't like Slack and it's gone now so that's not relevant. But since I don't go around saying Windoz and Windblowz and all that stupid stuff and realize Microsoft is the most normal of all those Big IT companies for many reasons, I don't care if it updates or installs against my will. The whole concept of having to update softmare all the time is a built-in horror and perhaps some day geeks will learn how to make softmare right the first time without having to correct it all the time. The Lindens, whatever you want to say about them, aren't stupid. And while they still include Unix nerds and they tend on the whole toward the Mac cult, being geeks, they are still sensible enough to test their software with Windows 10 because many customers use it and probably some of them even do. If there was something about the latest Windows 10 installment that disrupted their software in some way -- unlikely -- they'd address it. I think they'd even put a message on the forums if they couldn't fix it, asking people to roll back to Windows 7 or the previous Windows 10 installment or whatever. Therefore, since there's nothing like that, It's extremely unlikely. That is, I don't think the Lindens would conceal a thing like that. They might, but it's not likely. So it's something else.

No. If the asset servers on Amazon AWS for years etc etc and it's crashing now, it's not about my viewer or my machine, which has been the same for the last 18 months when it worked. It's about the Lindens' softmare. For the millionth time, I don't and will never use Firestorm. I'm not interested in analyzing Linden's crash reports. They can do that. That's their job. There is absolutely no need for me to be downloading some test that is 1,276 MB because there's something wrong with the Linden's software. Stockholm Syndrome.

Two months ago isn't "years," though. And it worked two months ago. THAT is the problem. There aren't significantly more textures now than there were two months ago. I don't need lectures about 1024 textures. I myself require 512 textures in malls. People think, oh, it's this deck on this one sim that is poorly textured. No. It's everywhere. On all sims. Even in an empty Linden ocean. It's not about caching. Every time I return to the same sim I go every day, it's grey squares all over again and loading from scratch.

No, I understand it all too well. It is you who are deceived. It's other people's computers -- therefore, you really can't control it as fully as you would like. But it saves you money so you pretend not to care.

WiFi has generally always worked with SL. For years. So I can't take what you say seriously. It's a religious belief that I realize you have, but the parishioners have practical experience that overturns it. The Windows updates are installed, as they always are. I realize the Unix geeks have a fit over Windoz and think it's responsible for global warming and so on, but most normal people use it. And SL works on it, most of the time. I have no reason to believe it is suddenly WiFi, and no reason to believe it is suddenly Windows. Because the obvious question then is this: if LL made their softmare work with Windows and WiFi before, what are THEY doing different NOW? Not what I'm doing different, as I am only one person, not a softmare company. Geeks always do all sorts of things like fixing macros or bios or reticulating splines or whatever they do. But this is masochistic. This is Stockholm Syndrome. The question to ask is what is LL doing DIFFERENT? And the ready answer is: THE CLOUD. But that's a very broad subject and since generally SL played even after they moved to the cloud, I'd have to ask: what are they doing different now with the Cloud? Or does this happen after time? You would think computer scientists, being scientists, would be curious, and apply the scientific method. But instead, they apply religious beliefs at times like this. It's not about hard-headedness. It's about pointing out the stubborn religious beliefs of others that get in the way of science.

Those who don't know the history of Firestorm continue to use it. I don't.

This is the remedy merchants give, however. I think it would be nearly impossible to disseminate through the ranks the view/information you're trying to articulate here, because it won't be absorbed or believed.