Dema Fairport

THIS!!! OMG my customers are hilarious!!

I always meet my customers in world at my store. I even walk them around the store to help them design their homes if they are looking for something specific. Customer service is so underestimated in SL these days. What is really cool is meeting them in clubs, out dancing or just walking about. I love hearing "oooh YOU are MYSA" LOL I love the conversations and never grow tired of hearing how my products have changed their lives and have brought couples closer.. I always say, I won't create something I won't put into my own home and use, and to sit and talk with others that are happy lets me know I am on the right path, there is nothing like it ♥

The link is now back... data is visible in Casper, not other systems and other vendors are getting tons of errors.

I was informed that the ANS Automatic Notification System link has been removed from the store setup menu on the MP - there seems to be no announcement about this. does anyone know anything, heard anything?

I am sending this to Execs at Linden Labs, just so you all know I hope this message finds you well. My name is xxxx, known as Dema Fairport in Second Life (SL). In my primary profession, I serve as a Senior Program Manager for a global humanitarian non-profit, holding certifications as a Scrum Master and Product Owner with 25 years of experience in managing projects and products for leading corporations. I am reaching out today, alongside numerous creators and shoppers, to express our deep frustration with the state of the Marketplace following the changes implemented in April 2023. While I recognize the necessity for Marketplace cleanup, the consequences of these modifications, compounded by the introduction of Elastic search, have given rise to a myriad of issues affecting both creators and shoppers. Since April, our community has witnessed entire stores disappearing for users still on the grid, items going missing regularly, and the introduction of an exploit enabling spamming of the features tab on products. Additionally, customers struggle to locate items due to search algorithms disproportionately prioritizing product titles. There are reports of products falsely labeled with icons in the Product Title field, creating misleading impressions, and creators are facing financial challenges as MP sales decline, forcing some to close their regions or in-world stores. Numerous tickets have been submitted, with many still awaiting review, including the following open ticket: https://jira.secondlife.com/projects/BUG/issues/BUG-234913 These issues have persisted for eight months, and despite widespread complaints on forums and Discord from creators and customers alike, there seems to be no resolution in sight. Personally, I have experienced a 50% drop in sales since April, with my products no longer appearing in search results, and new exploits undermining the integrity of the Marketplace. I understand the importance of a well-functioning Marketplace for the benefit of all stakeholders. However, the current state of the Marketplace is far from optimal, impacting the user experience and potentially affecting the overall financial performance for Linden Labs. I urge you to review and address these concerns promptly to restore the Marketplace to a state that aligns with the high standards associated with Linden Labs. Your attention to these matters will not only benefit creators and shoppers but will also contribute to the long-term success of the Second Life platform. Thank you for your time and consideration. NOTE: I also linked to all the Jira tickets and the forum complaints - this has to get fixed and needs highers ups to take this seriously.

Dean, respectfully, I am a Technical program manager who manages a team of 8 devs who work on one of the largest humanitarian nonprofit websites in the world. While I appreciate your explanations, this has been happening since April when they made the changes to the MP and introduced elastic search. These bugs should be the number one priority for Linden Labs, and whoever their product owner is should have prioritized these "bugs" months ago when the tickets were submitted. Instead, we have had tickets open since October and prior, Creator's entire stores are gone, no one can find products anymore, and customers are complaining they can't find things and are instead seeing results of items that were made back when mesh wasn't even a thing. None of my products can even be found in search anymore due to people keyword stuffing the features tab, and exploiting the search - just type in the word bed and you will see what I mean. I have reported this and their answer is to flag the items, hard to do when it is the WHOLE store of hundreds of items and they don't give you a way to explain what is happening. This was never the case and was introduced when they started using elastic search... my MP sales have dropped at least 50% since April and others have dropped up to 80%. As for items missing... this has been happening also since they purged the MP. Someone messed up big time and Linden Labs needs to own it! Their Product Manager needs to own it and do their job. I for one will not excuse Linden Labs anymore, this is on them, this is a failure of prioritizing and not having people on staff skilled enough to fix what they broke. People live off their earnings from their sales, and this affects people in real financial ways. Linden Labs needs to stop treating this with a "gaming" attitude and instead start seriously prioritizing the very things that keep the lights on. I am starting to wonder if the execs even know what is happening at this point... this is a sinking ship if they don't fix this. Also - this is BS from the status update "We are currently investigating a rare issue where unlisted items on the marketplace are getting un-indexed, resulting in the viewer showing active items that are not visible in the Marketplace Store/Manage Listings page." This is NOT a RARE issue, this issue has been happening since April.

Froukjie, I am showing up to the Web meeting next week... I am so done with this as well. My sales have dropped at least 50% since April and no one can find my products anymore. Also, they need to start having web meetings more than once a month.. this is all ridiculous. I am sorry you are having to go through all of this, I feel your pain ♥

YES! I will say this - my whole store looks amazing, every normal is crisper and cleaner, my cloth furniture, wow, wood like wood, the way it was supposed to look with the grains in the wood visible, I was blown away the first time I walked around sl in the new viewer. I will be honest it has given sl a much-needed facelift without anything being created with the new materials.

Jumping in here as we were just having this discussion - So I just went and did a search for hair - remember when that search term would bring up truth, magika, and other top creators... not anymore - this is the first page. This stuff is so old, but it lists higher because well the title says "hair" This is a direct change to the algorithm made back in April, 2023 where titles now are weighted higher than anything else. Hence, why you are seeing old items from 2011 for sale. Excess hair doesn't even show up till the bottom of a 96 item page, the rest is old and outdated. There is even a great blog post about it. Marketplace Algorithm Changes in Second Life: Dissatisfaction Among Designers and Customers https://www.virtuality.blog/marketplace-algorithm-changes-in-second-life-dissatisfaction-among-designers-and-customers/ Also the details on how they messed up the search Algorithm Here is also a great video on the changes - Love how she explains it! If you are a creator and you think it is a bad season for sales, think again, Linden Labs broke the MP - my sales are down 50% since April.. I can view my statistics in graph form on Caspervend as all my items get listed there first then the MP for those who are curious. So no, you are not IMAGINING ANYTHING.

This has not been fixed, I can see transactions but all other reports just hang.

I disagree that most people use this feature. I am a store owner and avid shopper on the MP (well not recently because I can't fine anything anymore) but I never knew those buttons were there. The MP was never broken and LL should know better than to try and fix something that is not broken, This is costing people real money, house payments, bills not being paid, tiers on their stores, and more! This is not about a button, this is about people's lives.

Agree 100% with everything you have said, however, when you are losing money and they are not willing to own up to the fact they messed up in the first place, then as a creator you become desperate seeing your sales drop, especially with it being a livelihood for most. I hope LL pays attention, for all of this is 100% unacceptable.

I agree 100% Creators should not have to file tickets, in fact, LL should have never messed with the MP in the first place, some of those old items are things I look for even today. They could have simply put a filter. Also, LL doesn't realize, that some of those items that were old and still selling were legacies to some people that have passed away, LL is so out of touch with the community, and what SL is truly about. such a shame.. in fact, they took down my free book tree that was a tribute to Graham Dartmouth, the most wonderful man in SL that taught so many people how to mesh, properly for free. He was my mentor, thankfully it is back up now, but damn, they really need to start listening to the people that allow so many others to have freedom of self-expression!

You are so very welcome!!! I am so glad you were able to recover you items ♥

I posted this above, try it for your items you can get to by Flckr RELATED ITEMS If you have an item with related items but those related items are not showing up in your store...or in your listings, front and back end, then simply do this: Go to the page that has the item with the related content. Open the related item in a new window Revise the item (but don't change anything) Save it and it will show back up. Do this for all of your items that have related content Also if you can get to your item from Flickr do the same thing as above - click Revise in the top right and then scroll down and click save - it should show back up.