Toysoldier Thor

I am personally nervous today that this event disrupting bug within the sim code or LL DC network infrastructure (that all but cancelled last night's music event last night because the sim would not recover in time for the concert to continue) will rear its ugly head today at 12 noon for the even that I am the feature artist. The Paris Metro Art Gala will have a music artist streaming and is expected to host well over 70 avatars to this major event. A ton of planning and effort has gone into this evnt by several poeple. If what has been happening at several other major inworld events with these NETWORK LAG OUTS happens this afternoon, I am going to be ROYALLY TICKED OFF LL! I am crossing my fingers the sim will hold up under the stress and not trigger this bug in the sim code. I am going to capture the perf stats during the event if I have time.

Yeah Qie.... that is what Simon said at the server meeting on Friday but the impression I got from the way they were discussing this topic was that they only "hoped" that this bug might be addressed.... more as if its with some luck that it will be fixed. I really dont think they are focusing on diagnoising the network stale-out problem. As such, I am writing this post as I am at yet another staled out sim during a major event... Notice the network stats again. 3Meg of unAcked data.... and lots of down and uploads pending... and yet the PPS are rediculously low even with all the data that is pending.

Perrie Juran wrote: Deja Letov wrote: Funny you brought that up. I was going through some of my older listings and some of my LMs in boxes are from 2 or 3 sims ago! I'm ready for that idea mentioned awhile back for universal updating of LM's now please. Until then...I am updating all day today I guess. bleh! There is Toysoldier's Virtual Landmark proposal. This would solve the problem for everyone. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Virtual-LandMarks-My-Proposed-Idea-to-LL/m-p/1611657#M25306 Its more than a proposal. During a September LL Sim Server User Group weekly meeting, the Lindens informed me and the group that the Virtual LMs (VLMs) solution passed through LL's feasibility assessment and was moved to their development scheduling priorities team. In other words.... its no longer "IF" LL will develop the proposed VLM solution but moreso "WHEN". The scary part is that the VLMs solution could sit at the bottom of LL's development priorities until the company goes under.

Qie Niangao wrote: I tried at the Server user group yesterday: [2012/10/23 12:49] Qie Niangao: Do we know any more about Toysoldier Thor's bug... BUG-355 [2012/10/23 12:50] Qie Niangao: (aka MAINT-1682, about sim-crippling network performance, with moderate-to-high avatar counts) [2012/10/23 12:51] Simon Linden: I don't have any news on BUG-355 [2012/10/23 12:51] Qie Niangao: okay. reports are that it's still happening, so... probably will keep getting asked about it. [2012/10/23 12:51] Nal (nalates.urriah): Talk to Nyx, I think we saw that in Barrowdale yesterday. [2012/10/23 12:52] Nal (nalates.urriah): The region had 0.03 TD and 45 FPS... w/free script time and no PF... Any progress is behind the MAINT jira wall, so it's hard to judge whether anybody is actively looking at this or not. There has been no progress on this JIRA and as you can see nothing mentioned in tis thread and nothing talked about in the user groups on any progress to this bug. The JIRA's last activity was that it was ACCEPTED by LL shortly after I created it a few weeks ago. Since the JIRAs are not gagged and hidden from public view, its just that much more easy to let them go stale without any Public Eyes able to watch it. The evidence that there is something going wrong with the "NETWORKING" aspect of the sims or the Debian OS underneath the sims or their connectivity within the LL DCs is mounting. And in fact this week has been a real bad week. Not sure if its because of recent sim code upgrades that aggrivate this problem or unrelated but similar symptom problems, but it has been a real unstable week on the sims this week. Qie, I really wished that you myself and some others with interest and knowledge of I.T. could be allowd under the covers at LL's DC. As a Network Architect, it is fun and challenging to fix network related problems. They may seem tough but compared to many other I.T. problems, network problems are generally easier to isolate and find root causes to. The problem is that LL seems focused on all their recent sim code upgrades and are not really interested in fixing old problems - even though its ironic that the Sim team is focused on an objective to IMPROVING PERFORMANCE & STABILITY... and if they could find the root cause to why the sim's network traffic goes stale / stupid, they could potentially resolve a lot of the most painful and frustrating lag / crash problems on the grid .... which in turn means HAPPIER RESIDENTS! All we can do is keep slapping the evidence of a network problem in the LL DC in LL's face on this forum until they place some focused effort into diagnosing these symptoms.

Was at another event that when it got to about 40 avatars the sim tanked right up - couldnt move. People were not crashing because the host of the sim emergency moved many of his guests to his home sim. When the count got down to about 20, the sim stabilized again. I captured the stats while the sim was staling out and once again..... look at the PENDING DOWNLOADS. I watched the stats as ppl left... the Pending Downloads dropped to under 5. Then at the sim that everyone jumped to... there were about 30 avatars.... and it was laggy but the normal kind of laggy .... and look at the Packets in and out and pending downloads on a sim with about 12 less avatars (Processing a lot more packets - over 4 times more - and only 1 pending download)

anndddddd..... yet another BUG of xstreet and into MP that the Commerce Team has not addressed and that was formally posted as a JIRA by me on August 6th, 2009 related to how Search by Relevance is all screwed up. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-2060 Thanks to Rodvik's recent "Gagging the JIRA" policy, you may or may not be able to see it unless you voted on it. But it went into great detail how it could be fixed. The Commerce Team tried to fix it based on some of the recommendations in the JIRA but as per usual... they didnt do it right and allowed too many fields to be indexed that should be indexed and did not place priorities.... etc etc. In fact they used my Jira as input into their design for the current search we have now.... Comment from Brodskey Linden at the end of this JIRA... Brodesky Linden (Disabled) added a comment - 26/Aug/10 7:15 PM We have added your comments to the design for relevance search for the new marketplace. Since the Jira's are gagged.... let me paste the JIRA description.... IMPROVEMENT TO XSTREET SEARCH / INDEX SERVICE FIX "KEYWORDS ABUSE" LOOPHOLES IN ITEM DESCRIPTION (this description is pasted from my xstreet "features suggestion" forum posting... Please take time to go to this link and read the thread responses there as well and to vote there as well as here: https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=124071 ) FEATURE IMPROVEMENT REQUEST SUMMARY: Introduction of a new "KEYWORDS" field in the "ITEM LISTING" Record and re-config of the Xstreet Search Engine Indexing of the Listing Items to address ineffective / skewed xstreet searching for customers and fair search results for all merchants. REASON FOR REQUEST / CURRENT PROBLEM: The current search index function within Xstreet is currently deployed in such a manner that provides ineffective / inaccurate search results for xstreet customers that are using the search function to locate products / services in xstreet that they are interested in. A major reason for the Xstreet's ineffective search results centers around the fact that some merchants are aware of the current indexer's method of indexing the ITEM LISTING MAIN BODY DESCRIPTION field for content. This method creates a significant weaknesses / loophole. Many of these Merchants abuse this method by creating very large lists of "keywords" within their item description field of all of their items - often with several words that are very popular but not in any way related to their products. Since there is no real limitation of the size of the item description field, these abusing Merchants will skew the search engine dramatically with very "Oxford Dictionary" keyword lists. (I have attached a file that shows 2 examples of this abuse from a couple merchants that are skewing XSTREET's SEARCH INDEX deployment - Thanks Nefertiti Nefarious for finding these examples and posting them in the XSTREET - FEATURES SUGGESTIONS forum : https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=124071 ) Also, since it has not been made clear by LL/XSTREET on how the xstreet search indexer is configured, some merchants "in the know" of how it operates can and do use these non-advertised "how to leverage the indexer" to unfairly promote their items to the top of the search results. For example, there are rumours that the search indexer only indexes the top of the item description field and not the bottom. Or that the Search Indexer determines search results order by item popularity or by sales popularity as well as by just search results by title & description. To the extent that these rumours are true, those Merchants in the know have an unfair advantage to leverage these indexing method and in many cases skew/abuse the search system over those that are not aware of this information. As a result, it is a COMMON COMPLAINT by both Xstreet Merchants and Consumers alike that the current Xstreet Search tool is far from effective, accurate, and fair. A solution that would address this major weakness in the Index/Searching service would go a very long way to improve the SHOPPING EXPERIENCE for consumers and a fair level playing field for ALL MERCHANTS to offer their goods and services to customers that are trying to find their items To address the current weakness of this critical primary function/service within XSTREET, this FEATURE REQUEST is being proposed as a fair approach to level the playing field and improve the search results. PROPOSED NEW FEATURE - DETAILS: Following are detailed propsoed improvements to the current INDEX SEARCH function in XSTREET: Create a new alpha-numeric "KEYWORDS" field in the ITEM RECORD STRUCTURE Limit the field length to an arbitrary field length - I am initially proposing 256 characters - too long encourages abuse - too short does not allow for effective indexing of the item Re-Configure the Xstreet Search Index service so that it no longer Indexes the ITEM DESCRIPTION field BUT instead it only indexes all items by TITLE & KEYWORDS field Place the new KEYWORDS field into the New / Edit Item page for all merchants to see and fill out when ever creating a new item or updating an existing item for sale merchants could place whatever keywords they feel best identifies their item in a search but since the field length is limited, Merchants will be encouraged to only place words in this field that are most relevent to their item The Advanced Search page would allow customers to sort the results by other fields like price, prims count, etc. but no other fields other than TITLE & KEYWORDS would be indexed If no sort order is selected by the customer/search requester, the search results order would be randomly presented to the requester. Upon completion of the improvements to the INDEX SEARCH service, LL will fully publish exactly how the INDEX function operates for ALL MERCHANTS to locate and read. Additionally, LL would adds these indexing techniques into its tips/tricks/advice for new merchants to read and learn. OPTIONAL FUTURE ENAHANCEMENTS: to add additional specific KEYWORD CATEGORY fields in the future that would be included in the INDEXING service - for example maybe a "PROMOTION CODE" field to be used for special promotions like the recent "BEACHBONANZA" event. These special indexed fields could be controlled by LL on their use or priority or used by Merchants that wish to host their own PROMOTIONS for their items (i.e. special halloween event ... just search for "SCAREME" to...). BENEFITS OF IMPROVED INDEX SEARCH: Following are the primary benefits to this enhancement: Merchants clearly know what fields are used to influence the xstreet search index service (no more black art or hidden secrets that some know and most dont) No merchant can abuse the search index function by placing massive keywords content in the items description to unfairly skew the search results. Since ALL MERCHANTS would be restricted to placing no more than 256 characters of keywords, Merchants would be strongly discouraged from using up valuable keyword space to add words that are not related to their item. They would only be hurting themselves. All merchants would be fairly represented in any search results requested by any xstreet customer - no unknown priority order of search results unless advanced search requrests for a specific order based on another field in the item record. Xstreet Customers would get search results that much more accurately relates to the items they might be looking for - no more search for Halloween items and getting a NEKO TAIL search result. Customers will be much more satisfied and inclined to use the Search service. Improved sales for those Merchants that have been "playing by the rules" and not abusing the current Indexing function. CONCLUSION - FEEDBACK ENCOURAGED: This New Feature request is a proposed set of changes to the Xstreet Index & Search function based on TOYSOLDIER THOR's understanding and knowledge of the situation and problem AND based on discussions/feedback amoung several Xstreet Merchants in the Merchants Forum whom have expressed similar frustration on the issue and wish to see a resolution to this major weakness in XSTREET. As these this request in initially being proposed in my words, I would ask all Merchants and Customers that also see this as an issue but may have additional or differing ideas on how this can be addressed to please speak up. I ALSO ENCOURAGE ALL OF YOU TO VOTE FOR OR AGAINST THIS PROPOSED IMPROVEMENT - BUT PLEASE VOTE! Somehow we need to get the attention of the XSTREET STAFF that has known about this major weakness for a long time but do not feel this is a priority to address. I look forward to all your feedback! Thanks TOYSOLDIER THOR

Deja Letov wrote: I've started working with mesh more and more and one thing I've noticed is that some (not all) merchants are designating that it is mesh in their product listing and on the actual ad poster for the product. I get the need to include the word mesh in the description or keywords because they may want it to come up when someone searches for mesh, but is there really a need to designate it on the ad poster? Or even moreso, in your store...are you guys actually putting a big flashing "mesh" sign over every item you carry to let your customers know it's mesh? I'd personally like to just treat it like anything else I build and not flag it as something, but thought I'd ask if there was a huge reason for it. *I do know some people don't like to buy mesh because they can't see it, so I can understand "some" on your product listing description, but if it's in store, if they can't see it properly in store, wouldn't that clue them in enough? I have released a few 100% mesh products in the MP and as an experiment these mesh products are predominently mentioned on my product logo poster and in the keywords and descriptions and in the features and in the title that they are MESH. And I flag it at 100% MESH on the field that asks if the listing is partial or full mesh. From what I see on the EXTREMELY limited reporting that LL offers us on user traffic stats, I do not see that bragging about the product being MESH is drawing attention to the product nor increasing the sale of the product. In fact, I would believe its a double-edged sword as some customers would AVOID buying mesh products since to-date there is still about 30% of SL residents that do not use mesh enabled viewers and some customers want to buy a product that 100% of their visitors can see. Example: I put my new 100% mesh dragonflies up. I would think my target market for my dragonflies will be sim landscapers and owners of sims with forests and landscapes. Some of these customers dont want to decorate their sim with a Dragonfly that cannot be seen by 30% of visitors. As such, I personally do not see that bragging about MESH is good or bad.

thanks to this thread, it poked at me why over the past several weeks I have not been getting any offline IMs or notices sent to me when I used to. I went to my CONTACT page on the main secondlife.com site to re-confirm my email address. I noticed they changed the page to now ask for your email address AND to confirm you want to receive offline IMs AND now they ask if you want to provide LL your RL contact information. Thankfully they kept the two sections separate so I could re-engage my offline IMs without my rl contact info. Now I am finally getting my IMs offline again.

Regardless of what the listing field is called, I consider it to be LAND IMPACT as Prims have no relevance anymore. As for what value to use for my Mesh listings..... I use the LI of my mesh as it is initially rezzed after purchase. I have also started putting in the description of my mesh... the LI at what dimension (like my Dragonflies). It tells the customer more information of how efficient the mesh is since saying the LI of a mesh without mentioning the size is pretty much a useless value to a customer.

So we have talked about work arounds for Merchants to use in light of the fact that LL Commerce Team (aka LCT ... not CTL) has never even restored the old xstreet sale/traffic stats we used to have and many of us found very useful. Several of you mentioned that ... you can take copies of all the transaction / orders log (download as a CSV) and then use Excel to do your own analysis (since the logs have date/time stamps). Yes this is a valuable option since Excel is the God of data analytics for those of us that know it well. I have done this often since I have almost all my inworld and xstreet/MP sales records since 2009 (excluding when I miss the 30 window on inworld transactions and I lose a few days). BUT.... Some of you might forget that this ONLY solves the SALES ANALYSIS part of the Xstreet reporting that provided us some basic but useful histogram data. It does not do anything for what I found to be even more valuable from the simple Xstreet reports..... MP visitor traffic usage patterns. ANS, sales transaction logs, and the current MP "top search/viewed" statistics without a time window cannot provide us Merchants with a good look / understanding of how customers of MP are actually using MP. We cant see what pages on our stores are being visited, when, how many times, etc. We do not have a good tool to see what the impact of a listing enhancement or change on the listing description or search fields has to the usage. xstreet was not great but at least it had the critical time window! How the LCT Developers in their right minds could replace this basic function of reporting with a new and improved reporting that is nothing more than a Running Total since MP inception just boggles my mind. It tell all of us exactly the level of Developer Competence we are dealing with regarding the MP staff. I proposed a JIRA to LCT and the Merchants way back about 6 months after MP was released regarding this very problem..... it was a suggestion that LCT incorporate the ability of integrating Google Analytics (the java script on the page) onto a Merchant's product listings so that LL didnt have to do anything else and basically outsourced the reporting to the world's most popular website activities analytics solution... Google Analytics. This would have been a Godsend for many merchants (its a Must Have for 5 of my other websites I developed and operate) to better understand how and when customers are using our listings pages. AND the answer is NO to those that do not understand Google Analytics and think it tracks actual Customer IPs and personal info related to a specific visiting customer. Its a Traffic Analysis Tool. Anyway..... regardless if LL were to fix the reporting or outsource it..... this is still one of the oldest broken xstreet feature that LCT still has not addressed and ironically one of the easiest things they could fix.. Yet..... THEY DONT!

Rya, totally agree. The entire Merchant Sales & Traffic Reporting is one of the major items on the WISH LIST we have been asking Commerce Team to fix ever since Xstreet was shut down. Xstreet was not great but at least it has the fundamental basics that Commerce Team took away with MP and never restored - much less improved. Stats by Time Periods is a BASIC for stats. Without it - the stats are utterly useless. It was mentioned in the LETTER TO RODVIK and it was actually one of the few items Commerce Team picked up on and mentioned in the OCT UPDATE. But, the big question we all fear the answers to is...... what and when will Commerce Team make it a priority and actually fix.

I sure hope that Rovik and Brooke will respond directly to the requests that were very clearly posted here by the Merchants as Customers of MP. The Commerce Team OCT UPDATE thread only responsed to a FEW of the items - and almost all of them were the tactical "buring fires" issues happening right now. The Commerce Team completely avoided the items that were talked about the most.... like restoring weekly meetings and engaging in more 2-way diaglog and showing us their longer term plans for MP and making a commitment to some of the features WE the actual users of MP want for MP. The OCT UPDATE also had the Commerce Team throw up items to respond to that were clearly not even mentioned in the thread - which means it was just a few hints of items the Commerce Team must have pulled out from its internal wish list of things they plan to do to MP. Rodvik, also ye to respond to items mention in the thread that ONLY he could provide answers to. So Rodvik, when might we expect a response (in the form of answers & explanations) from you ? Brooke, when will we expect responses from you that the October Update avoided?

Thank you Commerce Team for beginning to list and respond to the issues mentioned by your Merchant community. A few initial points from the October Update : You state: Direct Delivery should email Merchants notification of sale. Linden Lab response: it does for each sale. If you are not receiving emails, please file a JIRA. What Merchants actually have been asking for is email notification of DELIVERY of a DD sale. We know that we get email notification of DD sales. What we want is the ability to audit that when a sale was made - there is an email that confirms that the delivery has completed (after it is actually confirmed that the delivery completed). THIS does not exist - unlike in MagicBoxes where this does exist. Secondly, you listed a lot of detailed specific issues but you did not mention at all the bigger fundamental things Merchants were asking for: We want Commerce Team to establish weekly Merchant User Group meetings inworld with an active two-way communication with Merchants that attend these meetings We want Rodvik to explain why he decided to gag the Resident Jira We want Commerce Team to commit to revealing its current priority list of what is being planned or currently under development for MP. We want Commerce Team to commit to collecting Merchant features and fixes and placing them on the priority list along with the secret list of LL priorities. Please address / respond to these points - both Rodvik and Commerce Team.

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: So now, Rodvik ? I think you can make already a list of what we like you do for the marketplace. So can you tell us, what are your plan ? Or will you leave this thread and our willings going to the forgoten crap ? Thanks Trinity... I was going to send the exact posting into this forum tomorrow to honor Rodvik's statement where he wanted to give the Forum thread a week for Merchants (and customers) to voice any further idea. But the fact that the thread has slowed down tell me that the Merchants are now saying to LL, Rodvik, and the Commerce Team ... "We have given you all the information and requests you need. its clear what our initial primary requests are for Rodvik and company to address. Now Rodvik, the ball is in your court. What are you and your team going to do about this? When will you start answering the questions that we asked you directly in this thread?" As you noticed Rodvik, there were issues and questions directed to Brooke and her team, and there were questions directed to you as you are the only one that could answer them (i.e. the gagging of the Resident JIRA). I really do hope that we will now hear from you and Brooke very shortly. Confidence requires words being backed up with actions.

SO just to mention that there were two more large events from two sims where - as we are calling it - the sim went stale during the event and several avatars were all booted out of SL and the sim did not crash. One event happened badly on Saturday but the sim owner didnt capture the stats during the crash. I informed her what to capture if it happens again. The other event was last night at a busy event at a sim. The sim owner doesnt want me to mention his sim since he feels that mentioning it might scare away his visitors (as if music loving SL residents are not fully aware of laggy crashy sims and would not show up to a live event simply because of what was posted in an obscure SL forum). shrugs... regardless... the events are still happening.

@Arwen, I fully understand your reasons and also the fears based around too frequent of having SL User Group meetings, but I think a lot of you that have reservations about the overhead and prep of these UG's or the complications of scheduling UGs that allows EVERYONE to attend might not have actually attended the other weekly and even semi-weekly UGs from the other LL teams. If you haven't attend one or took time to see how these other LL teams manage and control their weekly UG meetings, you will realize that we are boiling the ocean on the logistics of what is truly meant to be a perfect opportunity to start breaking down the communications barriers between CTL and the Merchants. First of all I will re-post the current SL UG wiki. Take note that this is the OFFICIAL LL page on User Groups. It is something that LL formally endorses and actively has been operating successfully. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:User_Groups If you notice in the weekly schedule, that one of the groups "Open Development" successfully holds 2 meetings a week and they do not have issues with too much prep time or overhead. I personally started attending the Friday 4pm SLT SIM UG meetings (as its the only one that I can attend since I am not at RL work). I can tell you several things from my attendance of these meetings that convince me that these meetings are CRITICAL for the CTL to engage with the same frequency. Even if were not able to attend ANY these weekly meeting because it conflicts with my RL schedule, I would never say that these meetings should be cancelled since I cant make it. Why? Because those among the SL community that can make it most often share many of the same thoughts, ideas, concerns as I do. And, if any of them dont, I would just contact one of those that do attend and ask them to bring the topic up. AND the transcripts to the meeting ar posted so I can see what was talked about when i didnt show up. If you go to these meetings you see that the weekly agenda is very established and even if the topics going into each meeting are not set for some of the groups. For the SIM UG on Friday, 3 or 4 LL staff show up promptly at 4pm slt (I mean to the minute)... we all have some friendly 2-way greetings for a couple minutes then the Lindens begin by going through a status update on the things they are primarily working on and/or was mentioned last week. This is about 15-20 minutes. THEN they open the floor for any NEW BUSINESS. Since these meeting are very regular... there is rarely any flood of topics to discuss - everyone often gets their topic mentioned and heard. For the first Commerce UGs - this might not be the case, but topics are talked about until the top of the hour and the meeting ends. There is auto-transcripting available so the Commerce UG could simply poste on the wiki the full 1 hour of transcripts in very shor order. The agenda should be structured only in OLD and NEW business. The idea of the weekly meetings is more so to encourage direct face to face interaction between the CTL and Merchants. Get them to know each other again. Start rebuilding a healthy business relationship. And also to provide an avenue to get quick direct immediately dialog on any urgent issues (not wait 1 or 2 or more days for a LL posting on the forums or when their next blog is scheduled). I would strongly suggest that the CTL initially establish two weekly 1 hour meetings. They set the agenda of the first 20 minutes to have Brooke enlighten all attendees (and those that later read the transcripts) one what her team's primary efforts are behind and to provide a status on resolution of the biggest MP problems. THEN - let the remaining topics be a free open discussion for all to speak on what ever topics bubble to the top. See how that goes first. I also completely endorse and repeat what Darrius stated as well that ANY PARTICIPANT at the 1 hour meetings that is there to be rude, or bully, or take over the agenda and is warned by both LL and the other Merchants on their behavior - that a LL land owner ejects them from the land. Plain and simple. If its agreed by both sides that the participant is not positively contributing to the meeting - I have no sympathies with the blunt ejection. Finally, having the weekly meetings is not mutually exclusive to the forum threads that we would like CTL to actively participate on. In fact I belive both should be deployed to enforce each other (i.e. to support those that cannot make the weekly meetings). BUT the critical reason for the weekly meeting is to restore a damaged relationship. Forum communications where the LL staff can hide behind a forum/blog are not as effective as face-to-face frequent communucations. If you havent been to one of these UG meetings.... make time to just attend ONE.

Yes I understand your points on the logistics of the scheduling of the User Group meetings... but... First of all, there are several other User Group meetings successfully held by other LL teams. Although its not attended by 100's of SL Residents each week and not convenient for most residents... the fact that some residents do make time and to communicate with these other LL teams has huge value to ALL SL RESIDENTS. Even if you and I cannot attend these meetings... I have seen the value from these weekly meetings many times over. As such, even if the Marketplace weekly meetings were to be held only at mid-day SLT times (a time I could also not attend since I have a RL job at the same time as LL's business hours), I would still 100% endorse the idea because I know the Merchant community is huge and enough of my fellow merchants would attend to represents most of the critical interests / concerns I would have. Also, you say that "we all dont live in the US" and that would be a problem for you. Well to be honest with you, if I were to live in Europe I would be able to attend more LL user group meetings because it would outside my working hours. What I am saying is that User Group meetings will never ever be able to accomodate everyone. That doesnt make the meetings of no value. Also, the Commerce Team could have variable meeting days/times each week - one earlymorning SLT and one late evening SLT. This would increase the range of merchants that could attend. Finally, having weekly meetings does not mean that the Forum threads lead by LL cant still happen. In fact I would suggest that the meeting minutes be part of these forums so that all are aware of what went on during the weekly meetings and conversations can continue. The critical factor to resolve communications issues between LL and Merchants is to get LL to sit down with ANY MEMBERS of the Merchant community.... whomever they are and no matter how many attend the weekly meetings.

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: Innula Zenovka wrote: Leaving aside the vexed question of whether the L$ is convertable currency or not, I cannot believe that the 5% transaction charges on MP sales amounts to much. How much is a cup of coffee in SF -- US$2 or thereabouts? So every L$10,000 spent in the MP amounts to enough commission to buy someone at LL a coffee at lunchtime . Lord only knows how much people have to spend there in order to pay the salaries of people who're tasked with maintaining and improving the MP. Originally just went to look up that actual number for marketplace gross sales that was in the last quarterly report to be published: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/The-Second-Life-Economy-in-Q3-2011/ba-p/1166705 Of course the charts showing those Marketplace numbers are now gone, but after some digging I was able to get it from a comment I'd made on Darrius blog where I referenced the actual amount. The $1,183,000,000 for that quarter is from their stats: "Quarterly gross Marketplace sales: $1,183,000,000 5% quarterly commission in L$: L$59,150,000 Converted to real dollars at a rate of 260 (just because), it’s roughly $227,500 USD for the quarter. Roughly $76,000/month USD gross earnings from the Marketplace commission. This isn’t complete because it doesn’t include advertising sales or purchases in real dollars (PayPal purchases on thr marketplace, which are inflated substantially from items purchased with L$)." Agree the point has been made about sinks, value, currency and the important bits now lie in where do we go from here, but knowing the volume of sales the Marketplace is helpful in this context. Thanks Dart for quantifying the estimated quaterly revenue that LL is making from Marketplace - even if you have only calculated the revenue made from the 5% commission on MP sales. I would adjust the caluculation to be closer to the long standing currency exchange seen in Lindex of 248 - not 260. as such, this would adjust the revenue to : $238.5K US per quarter or $955K US per year. And yes - this revenue does not include the US$ sales, Listing Enhancements and Currency Excange revenue. So its very safe to say that LL makes well over $1 million US a year from MP and commerce activities. And for those that think that this revenue is fake revenue because they are charging %5 commissions charged to us in $L... you need to remember that this revenue is a direct sink and it means LL can remove the respective currency out of the currency account that they cannot touch unless they generated the $L revenue. As such, it should be reminded to all that LL is not running the MP as a convenience to is SL Resdients at a cost to LL. They make a nice profit from the sales of our creations on their MP. PS... if LL decided to shut down the MP and if all the sales went back inworld where LL cannot collect any commissions nor where they could not sell any advertising.... it would directly negatively impact LL's bottomline. Just to point out that its in LL's best interest to fix MP and restore trust in the MP.

There have been a few that do not see a need for restoration / establishment of weekly Marketplace User Group meetings - generally for their beliefs that according to them its a waste of time, or they do not personally believe there is value, or it couldnt be structured to allow all to attend. Those opinion are acceptable and if these individuals do not see value nor wish to participate in these weekly meetings - no one would be forcing these people to participate. As long as the Commerce Team does not take these opinions to mean they should not restore them. Although there is no perceived value to them, there is clearly a "bigger picture" value that these meetings would have to repairing the seriously flawed relationship that currently exists betwen the Commerce Team and the Merchant community. Among the long list of things that are wrong with MP and the LL Commerce Team... the huge communication wall that the Commerce team has built is one of the top factors. Solving this problem by NOT deploying increased frequency of meetings and forcing the two sides to 2-way engage interactively is NOT a solution. The solution to walls that were created from a lack of communications is.... MORE COMMUNICATIONS. for the small amount of time it takes up of the commerce team's time, the value of having these 1 or 2 hours of your week invested in these meetings would be huge. So, Commerce Team, please establish the semi-weekly or weekly Commerce User Group meetings. For those that do see value in these meetings - we will make sure to attend. For those that see its a waste.... they simply do not have to attend. I suspect many will attend as many do believe there is a need for this frequently cycling 2-way interaction.

So in hopes that Rodvik and the Commerce Team are all taking notes and will response with answers and/or actions in the next few days.... Rodvik, this is a question directed right at you as it has become clear to many in the community that you were the one spawned this policy and mandated it to be executed. Also, no other Linden is willing to explain the reason behind your decision. they have no legit reason to offer nor will they try to provide one. Only you have the authority to answer this question that everyone wants to know WHY So my QUESTIONS to you Rodvik are: Why did you force the Resident Jira to be Gagged / Closed so that SL Residents and even LL Staff could no longer collaborate on problems experienced on the grid / marketplace? Even have the huge outcry from the SL Community as to the logic behind this decision and demands to reverse the decision - you and the LL executive stayed utterly quiet to explain the reasons. So Rodvik... WHY ? and would you consider reversing this decision? I am sure you had good reasons as to why you would instruct your staff to gag such a critical SL diagnostic tool that did NOTHING POSITIVE to the SL community nor to your own LL development / support staff. But although your decision impacted several communities in SL, it directly further hurt and impacted the Merchants & Customers of MP even more. That is why this question is completely relevent for this thread. Since the Commerce Team has all but hidden in its shell from the Merchant community since spring 2011, the merchants and even customers of MP have had to support each other more than ever. Severe problems that crop up in MP not only impact SL experience (i.e. cant log in or the sim crashed lagged), but a serious problem with MP impacts actual RL $ incomes and accounts of the Merchants and Customers of SL. One of the most effective tools in support is for a problem to be openly communicated and discussed and shared among the respective community. And with almost no open participation from the actual team that runs the MP and in most cases - caused the problem with surprise changes that were not properly tested - the Residents JIRA was an invaluable tool. When it beomes clear in the Merchant forums that a problem is bubbling up, a JIRA was often created and even the LL staff engaged in it to help them resolve the problem. You might not like hearing this but in many cases it was the SL Merchants that isolated the source of the problem and pretty much handed the LL staf the problem to resolve by pin-pointing the issue - via the JIRA. Your LL development & Support staff in all areas (not just MP) during usergroup meetings and forum disucssions used the Resident JIRA as the most effective communications tool to reference active problems with residents. This was ripped out of their hands too. Your decision to gag the JIRA not only was questionable but also ineffective since the function was/is so valuable that the function simply was forced to move into the SL Forums! If your objective in gagging the JIRA was to hide problems happening on the SL grid (i.e. to hide your dirty laundry from new steam customers), it has not been accomplished as not these problems are more visible by forcing us to create problem threads in the forums that is far more easy for the larger community to find and read. So, if your decision reduced your staff's ability to resolve problems faster by actively including us in the problem solving, and if your decision worsened the overall SL experience by letting serious problems stay hidden to fester much longer, and if your decision does not accomplish its goal of hiding SL problems...... WHY Rodvik? Only you have the authority to tell us all why you did it.

This entire topic on LL's Commerce Team and Marketplace issues & Rodvik actually taking initial notice of how serious the customer concerns are in this area of this company has received some growing SecondLife community publicity. A popular SL blogger Nalates Urriah posted a full blog on this thread and the growing issues that have been brought up in this thread. http://blog.nalates.net/2012/10/13/second-life-market-place/ You all might find it interesting reading.

Hey Simon.... i will ask you at the meeting in about 3ish hours but has there been and digging into this issue with the network anomaly?

I agree with Marcus that your input Darrius was awesome as to some key items and factors to address that would heal / restore the current relationship between the LL Commerce Team and its Merchants of MP. There is going to be a boatload of specific things all us Merchants want to see - and I am sure we all know that in many cases the priorities of what needs to be addressed, fixed, introduced, in MP will be completely wide spread / differing. As such, as much as many of us could predict (and someone has already stated in this forum) that the first few weekly meetings could be like drinking out of a firehose with all the Merchant's pent up demands that have been ignored for - well - forever, I would hope a consensus in this thread among merchants could be generally reached on what are fundamental first steps to restoring the relationship between the two groups and setting the foundation to effectively all the "boatload" of more specfic request/demand get heard and priorized as we move forward. Some of the fundamental points I see in the postings of this thread are : Rodvik's formal appearance in this thread and his first Commerce Forums appearance cannot simply be - as many Merchants are fearing - "Lip Service". Rodvik needs to follow up his statements with actions that the Merchants can see. He doesnt have to be the visible face to the changes, but the merchants need to see a visible change in the Commerce Team's business approach and relationship with us and how MP is being managed. As Darrius and others have stated - if in the next few weeks / months we never hear from Rodvik again and we do not see any visible changes from Brooke and her team, the anger/frustration that LL has been getting from this community to-date will be nothing compared to what they will experience if its proven that it was only LIP SERVICE. Brooke working with her team to establish a similar LL User Group structure, schedule, format to many of the others that have already been set up by other LL teams. A LL "Merchants" User Group. Weekly or even semi-weekly would be something that will encourage a bonding between teams and start breaking the walls down. The Commerce Team needs to select and fast track the development & deployment of some long standing yet realtively simple fixes or missing features into the MP. An example that I can recall that is often mentioned by many of us is the MP Sales/Traffic reporting that xstreet has some basic forms of but MP lost. Just an example. Just pick a couple Brooke and deploy them. Show the merchants that the team will provide visible MP service improving functions that we all can be happy about seeing it show up. We have seen almost none of these types of changes. Vastly improved Commerce Team change / problem reporting. Darrius mentioned these ideas clearly and this would be a fundamental and yet easy quick hit improvement that the Commerce Team can tackle. Common Standard location reporting of all up-coming changes even a week in advance. And problem/incident reporting and status that is frequently updated. A visible and far more frequent appearance of the Commerce Team members in the Merchant Forum threads. I would also add to this request that the Commerce Team members should return to using their own names and not hide behind the "commerce team" user id. It might sound petty but by hiding your postings behind a generic name sends a strong message that you are afraid of us and want to maintain this anonymity wall - powerful negative message. In return, use your moderators to remove postings from anyone that responds to your team with personal attacking non-constructive postings (I dont care who it is - even if its me). But your interactive engagement with those merchants that take time in these forums to communicate about MP activities would go a long way to mend relations. Merchants want to see / be briefed on LL's roadmap, plans, scheduled development of MP. If this has previously not been allowed because of internal LL policy reasons, we want to see a commitment from Rodvik that his Commerce Team staff have the freedom to be more open with the Merchants and the authority to more openly engage with us to improve MP together. Brooke and team should not be timid minions of LL Policy whenever the community engages with them. They should be free to engage frankly with us. If they cant then this will harm the process of mending the relationship. I am sure there are others but I think these are some of the fundamental changes the Merchants need to see. With these changes in place, the drinking from the firehose of Merchant concerns, requirements, demands could then begin. Thoughts??

Innula Zenovka wrote: So do I hope that we get some communication going, but I can't help but recall what happened about a year ago, or more, when Viale Linden asked us at the Adult Content User Group what issues LL could help us with, and several of us (me included) said that the Marketplace's opaque policy on what makes listings Adult rather than Moderate were a major cause for concern. Viale took this on board and said he'd try to get someone from the Marketplace along in the following weeks to discuss this, but was eventually forced to say, in effect, that the Marketplace team were refusing to appear in public because they were worried about lynch mobs of irate merchants turning up if they did. I can understand their concerns, but I really think that a bit of glasnost is called for. Oskar and Maestro have the right idea, I am sure -- people get mad when stuff goes wrong with the servers, but we all know that Oskar and his team are on top of things, and trying their hardest to rectify stuff, because they tell us what the problems are and what they're doing to fix them. Ahh yes but the "mobs" as the meeting attendees were referred to had appeared for two primary reasons (as I recall them) of which these scenes could be controlled and defused.... Brooke and team were new to the Merchant team then and had VERY little understanding of the SL Merchants dynamics - i.e. whet factors could turn the merchants into an angry mob vs. what could defuse them. What I am sure her and the team would now be fully aware of that they werent at the time was that many of us Merchants are extremely technically and SL merchant selling savvy. In fact, I would strongly argue in many aspects we understand the MP and the dynamics and impacts of the MP better than the commerce team. As such, the atitude and conduct by her and the commerce team at these meetings sadly was a a carry over from how previous generations of the commerce team culture had been on how to deal with us at meetings.... i.e. one-sided conversation.... her team simply telling us what was gonna happen and how things were gonna play out and then not recongizing most of our serious legit concerns on their plans. Additionally, and this blame gets fully placed on Sr. LL management over Brooke, one of the first orders her team were forced to deploy was an exetremely unliked and disruptive new Adult Content Filter that was poorly thought out and caused a ton of REAL $ sales impact on a lot of merchants. I am sure Brooke didnt want this to be her first big change either.... but as being new and being given direct orders at any cost.... she deployed it. And it did cause a ton of grief. And sadly, it was her team - not the sr. LL management above her that had to face the ANGRY MOB which LL caused a lot of REAL $ loss on. Of course the would be anger. especially when Brooke's meetings were one-way meetings that we could have just as easily read from blogs. If Brooke is reading and she does agree to restart these meetings weekly. She need to get the blessing from Rodvik that her team is empowered to actually engaged in open frank honest two-way dialog. Brooke and team should not be afraid to hear our concerns and feedback and consider them as a possible priority. Rodvik must allow Brooke to listen to serious Merchant concerns when her team brings forward any plans for MP changes and these concerns should be able to change the plans when its something LL can compromise on. The Merchants are not stupid and they dont want to be treated like mushrooms. If they get a wiff that they are not treated with the intellectual respect on how the MP works and is used by the Commerce Team at these meetings, then sadly Brooke and her team might end up with that same angry mob again. The control of these meetings are in her team's hands... but the control is not by rules - its by the level of respect and true commitment they have in engaging in a healthy two-way diaglog. We CANNOT* see "we are aware of the situation and we will get back to you" statements. We want to know exactly whats gone wrong when it has and we want to know exactly how its getting fixed and reasonable timely updates if the issue is serious. And we want to hear plans for MP early and we want to be able to have SOME influence on the commerce teams priority of what should be worked on (i.e. having our list of MP fixes and missing features addressed along with LL's). This is what the other LL teams provide their respective residents. This is the level of open dialog they give and the level of countering respect the meeting attendees respond with. But ... if there are some special LL policy shackles / gag orders that Rodvik or Brooke's Sr. management had previously placed on Brooke, we need a commitment from Rodvik that these will be removed and Brooke is allowed the authority within her scope of management to do her job and work more openly with the merchants. If this happens.... Chances of Angry Mobs at these meetings is VERY LOW.

Innula Zenovka wrote: Pamela Galli wrote: We used to have those, Asha. I am not sure why they stopped. Brooke had a couple of them but then said she would use the forum to post information, and I assume take questions -- it was so long ago I can't remember exactly. In my opinion poor communication is the problem in this relationship between CT and merchants. Certainly poor communication is a great part of the problem, to my mind. Inara Pey had an excellent piece on this, I thought, the other week: Marketplace Issues: Not so much eroding trust and completely undermining it. There's clearly problems, and these occasional gnomic utterances by CommerceTeam Linden (who I visualise as some sort of Dalek, for some reason) really don't help. I really can't but contrast, unfavourably, the frank and helpful discussons we have with Oskar, Maestro, Kelly and all the other technical Lindens with this wall of silence that surrounds the MP. I completely agree Innula!! Since July I have been attending the Friday 4pm SLT Server Sim user group meetings. These weekly meetings have Andrew, Simon, Baker, and Cheesey Linden show up almost every week. I was pleasently surprised how progressive and informational these meetings have been! I was very shocked to witness that when I proposed my VLM idea to this team... they openly discussed the idea during the meeting with the attending interested residents. It was so constructive. And more shockingly.... the Lindens from the team ACTUALLY took the idea serious and brought it into the internal Linden staff for review... and they actually decided to move it for development scheduling. I have had more open and frank discussions face to face with LL during these meetings in a few weeks than my entire 3+ years with the LL Commerce Team. I look at the amazing positives that these weekly and semi-weekly meeting have generated and then compare it to the state we are in with the Commerce Team and MP. So I completely agree.... the #1 issue to address between merchants and the Commerce Team is to address communications. I really do hope Brooke take my offer and her team starts these meetings.