Toysoldier Thor

Pamela Galli wrote: Does anyone understand how one would go about updating something that you intend to keep the same name? Will I have to go into some page in my MP store like inventory and delete something before I can add a new one with the same name? Been asked by me a few times in two threads. Been asked by others in this thread. Apparently LL did not see this repeatedly asked question and as they said, we now have to wait another week for a forum posting from them and hope they will see the question and answer it. What is another scary answer fro LL's posting of answers.... Q: What’s the migration process for moving my items from Magic Boxes to Direct Delivery listings? A: The process is not completed yet. Once a process is working in test, we will communicate the details. We are working on a method that will not require each listing to be edited to replace the Magic Box inventory item with a Direct Delivery inventory item. They have been developing this DD all spring. They have been in Closed Beta all summer and into late fall.... and they say today that they have not even figured out yet how this new DD will handle transitioning of content from old to new? Yup... here we go again... migration and transition will be a last minute idea that LL will think of - which will be likely so half baked that it will fail and likely we will all feel the pain. Even those of us that will stay on Magicbox until we are forced off it. (why am I staying on magicbox till LL retires it? Because unlike most of you that seem to have tons of delivery failures, I rarely get them. Maybe a couple a month. Plus I want as many of my fellow Merchants to be the open beta and then the LL Production Beta risk takers. Let you all find the bugs to LL's not yet known transition and what ever other bugs the production deployment will find. Hopefully the DD deployment wont impact those in MP that do not use it. Once all the bugs have been ironed out - I will transition my items to DD.)

Paladin Pinion wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: The new DD could have used these MagicBoxes (or even a new DD version of this Magicbox) that is rezzed inworld and used it as the "OUTBOX" source that would be uploaded into the MP DD system. Couldn't you just think of this folder as a "magic box"? I'm sure you must keep master copies of your items in your inventory and you don't rely on the box to keep them, right? When an external object is an intermediary in the delivery process, you get the problems we have now. "Direct" delivery means just that: from one inventory directly to another. Another advantage of using a folder instead of an external object is that merchants without land can sell without having to find a place to park a box. I admit it will be the end of the rent-a-box-space business, but so it goes. Not discussing this topic changes anything. LL made whatever decisions they made on this solution, as sheltered as they were when they created it with very little input except from a few trusted friends. So the solution we have now - no matter how good or poor or missing of the better solutions - is what it is. One thing we all can agree on - LL has an extremely strong record of going forward with a solution, policy, concept no matter how wrong it might be. So this is what we have. Is the OUTBOX folder like a magicbox? Not really. It could be thought of as a Magicbox if it didnt have to force us merchants to use folders. A folder for every MP boxed item? wtf with that. Need a special LL viewer for special additional features to work on Magicbox? nope. but with this folder, if you use the LL Viewer you will get added features (like automated boxed item folder creation. Again, for boxed items... WHY USE FOLDERS. If I have boxed items, LL should have used their brains and let u sjust place our boxed items from Magic boox to the root of this new flolder. No folders for them - just a flat root folder with all our items. With a Magicbox, when I press the synch button in MP, it does exactly what I would have expected the new DD Outbox should do... MASTER SYNCH to the MP - NOT Synch and then stupidly delete everything in the folder. That was likely a plan from a junior LL Developer that didnt know there is a concept in ETL techologies called One-Way MIRROR or SYNC. The master is the master and the destination is simply kept in synch with the master. But with LL's new Outbox idea, they thought it would be a great idea to remove the invaluable feature of making the outbox an MP MASTER FOLDER. So now whenver we have to update - if this is how it works as it has not been exactly explained - we need to recreate the folder and it better be the same name and then drop the content in. Alternatively, most merchants will have to create their own new MASTER MP folder right beside the LL system OUTBOX folder so that they can more easily drag a copy of the updated folder to this outbox folder. Do I have a master copy now? Yes? My Magicbox! And I have a copy of my Magicbox in my inventory as backup. This is my master copy of what is in my MP. I have a lot of working copy folders in my inventory that keeps all aspect of the product that i sell boxed in MP and in world. But my magicbox is the MASTER COPY for MP. You are not unerstanding my solution on how LL should have developed DD. I am not arguing that a DD solution was needed to replace the current single-threaded process script inside the magicbox and how it relied upon the customer being online or risk delivery failure because of a full receiving inbox. BUT, they did not have to abandon the MAGICBOX itself.all they had to do was use the Magicbox as the source for the new DD instead of coming up with his elaborate rocket science complex new inventory system folder that requires more sub folders for all MP listings and even more optional folders - and all with limits - i.e. cannot upload more than 100 at a time. As I said in a prevous post, LL couldnt keep focused and solve the problem at hand (failing deliveries), nope they had to throw a whole pile of other lower priority LL internal wishlists into this solution that made this way more complex and as I can almost promise you - will be riddled with failures and bugs in the new year when it gets released. Count on it. THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE MAGICBOX. They threw out the baby with the bath water. Your last statement on the benefit - although technically true - its a very very weak benefit. OMG - for the first year of my life on SL while I was selling on Xstreet...not only did I not have my own land... I didnt even have a piece of land that I rented for a store or a home. I lived on public land and wherever i could rez. All I did was ask a friend if I could place my magic box under a tree in her sim. It ran there for almost a year! WEAK BENEFIT.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: Speaking of Tweet buttons..... Did someone tweet this to The Man? Great reading here. Great Insight. Toy - are ya'll still tweet buddies? I've got no pull. But I'll use my once a month tweet anyway. Yes I tweeted it to Da Man and it was retweeted too and I gave to a few other of my blogger friends. I have a feeling the man in the LL Boy Boy chair is ignoring the bad news stories within his kingdom. The Elf Clan story hits home crystal clear the fundamental troubles many have been saying.

So the other thread asking LL to take direct ownership and responsibility to answer the Merchants questions on Direct Delivery has been flooded with tons of questions mixed in with other Merchant's educated guesses as to how DD works. Strangely LL is the only ones that has yet to participate in these Q & A threads. So I am starting a new thread where Merchants can ask questions, and we will all wait for LL to answer these questions. Before I kick off this thread with my set of questions to LL, I will ask that other Merchants should not be trying to answer these questions since you are likely providing your educated guess and us Merchants deserve the 100% confirmed and true answer. If you are a Merchant with an answer then you are likely from the closed beta and you are violating your own GAG order you signed with LL. So... DEAR LL COMMERCE TEAM, please answer:  Please explain - possibly with a diagram or hierarchical chart of some nature how this folder in folder model math works for MP listings? Your FAQ on this limit for unboxed objects within a listing in MP is confusing. If a Merchant (most of us initially) plans to only continue to sell BOXED MP items, do they need to create a FOLDER in the outbox for each boxed item? i.e. 100 boxed MP selling items = 100 MP folders to be created? OR can I place all my magibox items into the root of the Outbox folder and get it uploaded into MP? If LL is forcing MP Merchants to create a folder in the outbox for every Boxed selling item, how many can they create in the Outbox folder before they need to upload to MP? i.e. can I create an oubox with 100 folders with Boxed items or am I limited to 20 at a time? What is the actual trigger that initiates the Outbox "upload to MP & empty outbox" process? Is it a new Synch button on my marketplace management screens? Is it timed? Why did LL decide to delete the master Outbox in the Merchant's inventory? If I have 100 MP selling boxed items and it needs 100 folders in the outbox to get the content up to MP, why not leave the folders in the outbox so we can simply update one of the boxed items and start the synch again in the future? Please provide a step-by-step process of how a Merchant would take a boxed item from my magicbox and get it 100% working on the DD delivery. List each step (dont assume we know some of your terminology). How does a Merchant subsequently update an MP product that has already been initially been uploaded? i.e. if I have SCULPTYPACK1 in MP and a month later I want to replace that pack with a new SCULPTYPACK1, what would me steps be? Is it critical that the folder names used to get content up to MP use exact names as the listing? What happens in the future if I create a new folder in the empty Outbox folder with the same name and the if the folder is empty? Will nothing happen or will the empty folder delete all the content of a folder in MP with the same name? If some of my listings in the new year deliver product via DD and others via Magicbox, will the buyers be notified and tell them the method of delivery that was used? How does a Merchant delete an MP item of content? Will there be any new / improved sales delivery notification / tracking / reporting as the DD performs its delivery? How does a Merchant issue a re-delivery if a Customer still says they didnt receive their product or for whatever reason? Other Merchants that are as dumb as I am and didnt understand the FAQ's or that have other questions related to DD, please pose a question. LL - we wait for you to be the one that posts here to answer these questions... dont shurk your responsibilities to other Merchants that are only guessing.

When will LL make a presence in this thread and start answering the the questions we merchants have on DD instead of getting "educated guesses" from Merchants that think they know the answers from their interpretations of the cryptic / incomplete FAQ. We have to assume that any Merchants on here providing answers are just guessing since a couple ppl in this thread have already stated that Clode Beta Testing Merchants are still permanently legally gagged to speak to the rest of the Merchant community on the knowledge they have gained in the closed beta. Unless of course they are violating their contract with LL. LL - you promised to answer questions in the forums. WHERE ARE YOU?

Sassy Romano wrote: Ann Otoole wrote: What if you have to make a change? Oh SNAP the folder has VANISHED!11 That's answered in the FAQ too:- "Once those items have appeared in your Marketplace inventory, for each item you will be able to create a new listing or associate it with an existing listing." WOW Sassy its amazing how you are one of the rare Merchants that seem to be able to decipher what most other Merchants here cannot. I suspect is because you were a Closed Beta Tester and already know the answers and can map the truth to the cryptic FAQ that LL posted. PS... that is NOT answered in the FAQ like you just stated. How in your superior logic over most of us did you read how a Merchant would update an MP listing when the OUTBOX folder is EMPTY? No... the LL gobbly **bleep** FAQ has not clearly answered the folders Math and did not explain how a Merchant executes an upgrade of an existing item. EDIT POST... So Sassy use your knowledge of the closed beta and your ability to understand LL Geek Talk to provide us the exact step by step process that a Merchant like me would update a BOXED item that is already in MP. STEP by STEP.

Much of this day has gone by and even though the LL Commerce Team recent blog mentioned the forum would be a place to ask questions - where are the posted answers from LL? When are they coming. /ME taps on the thread glass to see if anyone at LL Commerce is home and plans to answer our questions or if the link to the forums to get questions answered was just a "joy Buzzer" link to oblivion where LL can "forget" to meet its commitments. Pamela, I completely agree about a picture. As a RL systems architect... I love talking and learning and understanding via a picture.

Darrius Gothly wrote: Don't get me wrong Toy, I don't like the Delete part of their solution either. I'd MUCH rather have the Outbox be the Master copy. But the point is, we asked for a solution that would not touch our Inventories during delivery ... and this is how they chose to solve that. We *should* have stated that we want our Outbox to be the Master Copy so they were clear on the preferred solution. By leaving the form of solution open, we failed to fully communicate the scope of the problem and our goals. Because they don't understand how we feel about our Inventory and Products, they did not conceive of a solution that followed our habits/preferences. LOL Darrius, I dont know about you but no one from LL every ASKED me for any input. When you said "we should have asked", I didnt know there was a time when we were ever listened to where we could have sat down with LL and told them this is what we would like to see IF you really want to tackle the problem of Delivery Failures from the Magicbox. To be clear, I always stated that I did not want MP DD to have ANY interaction with our inventory. If you look back in our thread discussions, I have always said what I just told Sassy earlier. I wanted a model where the MASTER SOURCE stayed as an independent rezzed object apart from our inventory. I dont know when you say "we should have not been more open ended when asking LL" that that meant LL Commerce Staff actually sat down with you and some others on how Merchants would see the solution. If I had that opportunity - which I did ask many times for this to happen and which Brooke completely ignored - I would not have asked for anything close to what was deployed here. But as you already know... LL Commerce and the Development geeks love NOT BEING FOCUSED and always end up trying to throw in all these knee-jerk wish lists into what should have been a simple solution to the magicbox problem. The problem that LL was supposed to solve was: ADDRESS THE CURRENT DELIVERY FAILURE ISSUE THAT XSTREET/MP HAS BECAUSE OF THE CURRENT MAGICBOX/MP SOLUTION. The problem did not include : make it easier for Merchants to manage their MP inventory by integrating it into the Merchant's Personal Inventory make it possible to sell MP content unboxed eliminate the entire concept of the Magicbox Find a solution that will make is so painful for merchants to transition that we will clean up lower valued, older, and free items from the Merchant's current inventory The solution should have included: make sure that the new solution has the least amount of transition disruption to the Merchants make sure the DD solution is not more of a hassle by the Merchant to manage MP content than the current solution make sure the solution has the lowest level of risks to the Merchants because of potential LL system component failures But nope... LL felt they needed to overhaul the entire current solution from the bottom up - this mean in LL Development's mind that MAGICBOX = EVIL ! This was/is a false assumption. The magicbox in and of itself was never the source of the problem - it was the poor delivery mechanism built into the Magicbox and its interface with MP and the sim and the buyer's status etc. The magicbox could have been an integral part of the new DD solution (as I described in my posting in this thread to Sassy). Ohh well - next time the "WE" of us merchants that are allowed to provide advice to LL might be more transparent.

Sassy Romano wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: It I have 100 sellable items on MP and LL is saying that each sellable item now needs its own FOLDER in MP now. Why would the LL Commerce Team not have allowed the folder structure for all these MP selling items to keep the similar folder structure in place in the OUTBOX and just have a process that on-demand one-way synchs the content of the OUTBOX folders up to the MP? Toy i'm surprised at that. From what I understood, you didn't want LL anywhere near your inventory so the above while sensible and what I originally expected to be the case, seems to have flown in the face of what you wanted. Now that things are sucked up to MP and your inventory is left alone, that doesn't suit and you'd rather have it all in your inventory? You are correct Sassy. What I "WANTED" was for my MP selling content to be completely dis-associated from my personal inventory. The Magicbox currently gives me that capability. Any new DD solution that would have taken the MP content that I made available for MP from a master source that was not from my primary personal Avatar Inventory account would have been - by far - my #1 perfect solution. And in fact, if LL Commerce truly wanted to resolve the Failed /Delay Delivery problem (and not try to solve the world's woes at the same time) and keep things simple for the 10's of thousands of Merchants of MP... this is what they could have done... (PS... if you look at the current DD solution - this could have been just aseasily been accomplished) All us Merchants currently have a Magicbox with all our boxed content available to be service the MP The new DD could have used these MagicBoxes (or even a new DD version of this Magicbox) that is rezzed inworld and used it as the "OUTBOX" source that would be uploaded into the MP DD system. Instead of synching from a new Inventory system folder within our personal inventory, they could have Master-Slave synched all our current MP content to MP without any changes to our magic boxes - or worst case we would copy all our content from one of our existing magicboxes to this new DD magicbox. Since the only function / interface this new magicbox would have had was to be the source for a Merchant-triggered synch of MP content to the MP. All deliveries of the content to the buyers/customers would now be executed from MP to the customer's new PURCHASES system folder as the new DD currently does. THAT was an example of EXACTLY WHAT I WOULD 100% AGREED TO. But nope... that made too much sense and LL developers had to try to solve world hungry on a system that is fundamentally unstable and weak already (xstreet / MP). As a compromise ... since I have no say and LL will develop what they want with no input from their customers/merchants, if LL demanded that the source of the MP synch has to come from the Merchant's actual inventory, then at least let it be a MASTER COPY and not a black hole Dump/Upload/Delete method. Let the new system OUTBOX folder maintain the 100's of folders that each boxed MP item seems to need. Saves a lot of troubles, mis-typing of re-creating the folder when one wants to update, allows for a place similar to the Magicbox to maintain a master copy of the content in MP. Good back too in case MP's entire asset DB gets corrupted (and we all know you cant say NEVER with LL on destroying their DB). In this way, if LL screws up the MP DB and when they bring it back up - all I have to do is press the SYNCH button and resynch my master copy of all the content back into the healed DB THAT is what I said Sassy and nothing I said here flew in the face of what I have always said about how DD should work.

"WE" did not ask for what you deswcribed Darius. We asked into the void in the forums for a method of delivery that would NOT deliver content from our personal inventories to the customer. THAT is what "we" asked for. I have no problem with the SNATCH aspect of the solution. The "Delete" aspect is where I do not agree. Let the OUTBOX be the MASTER copy of the inventory that the MP has a "snatched" mirrored copy of. Let me maintain this private master copy of all my MP content in this OUTBOX and then... let me press the SYNCH button when I believe I have content that needs to be re-synched from my MASTER copy to the MP Slave copy. Why delete it? I can better manage my content in MP from this OUTBOX if it stays in place. I was careful what I asked for. This was not what I asked for.

Chelsea Malibu wrote: A year ago they asked merchant to apply to beta this. I was not accepted nor was anyone I know. They claim that beta as been going on since the end of last year. I don't know anyone who was accepted to the beta but if there are, it would be good to hear their experience. I totally agree. If this CLOSED BETA with the DD Beta Merchants has now officially end and LL is removing the GAG from their mouths, I would so much love to hear my fellow Merchant's opinions on this DD as far as they have experienced. I would also suspect based on Brooke's and LL Commerce's past history on near zero DD information flow to us, that we will gain a ton of invaluable information from these merchant ... UNBIASED.... that we simply have not been able to get from LL. As for participating in the open Beta... I am with Marcus. I will leave the open beta testing of the DD to those Merchants has thave the time, interesting, effort, passion to be part of LL's Q/A testing team and help LL find and fix the bugs. MY participation in the open beta would not change anything about DD. I trust these merchants will find the bugs for LL without me. I will wait til DD comes out of beta in the new year. BUT... the Merchant community should not be held in a blackmail of "we will only tell you all about DD if you participate int the DD beta". As part of any proper mature deployment of a change - big one at that - to a customer base, it is fully the responsibility and obligation for the vendor to provide an effective communication strategy as well as transition plan. We should get our questions anwsered from LL - not from LL's customers that are their beta testers and through the grapevine. This would be yet another sign of an immature company.

Regarding the DD's OUTBOX process of ingesting MP content up into the Merchant's Store folder.... I am as confused as many other Merchants here that either believes they know what the LL Author was trying to say or was simply confused. LL also failed to clearly answer the critical question in the FAQ on how does it work for BOXED items being handled with the new DD OUTBOX to MP (which at this point I can assure you the percentage of MP Merchants using Boxed items is 100%). They didnt explain AT ALL how a Merchant would update an item on MP after it was initially uploaded. i.e. if I want to simply replace the boxed item exact in-place (no change of item name being sold) vs if I want to update the item with a versioning approach to the customers (v1.1 v1.2 v1.3). They didnt explain the triggering process that causes the content placed in the OUTBOX to be sucked up into MP. Is the OUTBOX monitored for new content? Does it happen at on an hourly basis? Is there a UPLOAD button the Merchant presses that sucks the content into MP and deletes the OUTBOX content? But based on what SEEMS to be clear about the process, it seems clear that the LL coding geeks that came up with the solution of this process are not in touch with providing Merchants with an efficient solution. So here is one aspect that doesnt make sense - specially for those Merchants that plan to go through the extra effort an unbox all their content into these new MP DD folders (and maybe even for us boxed merchants that seems we need a folder for every 1 boxed item instead of just placing our boxed items on the root of the outbox)..... It I have 100 sellable items on MP and LL is saying that each sellable item now needs its own FOLDER in MP now. Why would the LL Commerce Team not have allowed the folder structure for all these MP selling items to keep the similar folder structure in place in the OUTBOX and just have a process that on-demand one-way synchs the content of the OUTBOX folders up to the MP? In this scenario, even if LL is going to force us all to create these dozens, 100s, or 1000's of folders for MP selling items, at least all our MP content is already in our OUTBOX folders and its now only a matter of going to the pre-existing folder of the selling item that needs to be updated, replacing the content with the new content and pressing the SYNCH UP TO MP button. We Merchant also now could have had the OUTBOX be our MASTER COPY of all our MP items in place and organized in the exact manner that the MP folder structure is on MP. Again... doesnt seem LL Commerce / Development has any Merchant convenience or operational mindset in place when they came up with this OUTBOX concept ot ingest and delete. Still hoping LL Commerce team will spend today on this forum to FINALLY answer some long awaited answers to their customer's questions, fears, concerms, confusions.

Dora Gustafson wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: Thanks Ann for the link! So reading this blog announcement today... it says... Direct Delivery Beta Testing In December, all merchants will have the opportunity to purchase and list items using Direct Delivery on Aditi. Exactly what are Merchants "purchasing"?? So LL is trying to make money on Merchants that already have the guts to beta test their products on a test grid? Am I missing something here? Now there is a new way for LL to make money. Note it is on the Aditi grid where money are not 'real'. Transactions are not going to influence you inworld account. I misread what they meant by "purchase". I thought Merchants has to buy something to participate in the Beta Grid. Thanks for the clarification. PS... "where money are not real" snikker... are Lindens on the main grid "real"? Jk

I see that the LL Defending White Knight Forum Trolls have come in to save LL's reputation again. Their arrivals are not surprising. Their "Forum Poster" personal attacking bashing posts were fully expected. Their value of post is still at ZERO as is expected. At least these two dont fail to dissapoint. Cheers to you two! Now please go save LL's reputation at another thread and let us on this thread that were talking about the OP topic get back to serious adult Big Girl / Big Boy talk Now I do hope that when LL Commerce Team wakes up this morning on the west coast of USA that they start answering our questions and clarifying the horrendously confusing DD FAQ communications that LL is good for. Clearly there is a ton of confusion on how this DD delivery and OUTBOX folder actually works thanks to poor explanation. We also posted several questions LL Commerce. Do us a favor and actually try to spend a couple hours of your day today to being more clear in this thread and answering our questions.

Yess ... this confusing mess I am reading on this process stinks of a back room Geek LL Developer that has Never used MP and has no concepts of being an MP merchant. They seemed to have turned what seemed to be a relatively simple objective of "Replace the less reliable Magicbox boxed content delivery with a more reliable content delivery" into a pet project of Rubix Cube puzzle for the geeks. I agree Arwen. Why didnt they start by CRAWLING.... just allow our boxed content to be moved from Magicbox to this new DD delivery. But nooooooo, LL had to boil the ocean and come up with a complicated, confusing, form of brain surgury just to get our boxed items into MP? And where are the countless other answers in the FAQ to answer our questions? How do we update? What if we just want to keep using boxed items? What triggers the actual OUTBOX uploading process? Do folders or Boxes need to maintain some naming standard? etc. The good news is that they wont deploy this expected and likely to screw up mess until after new year! At least they listened to that. I want to ask one more question to LL... not that they will answer me. Why cant LL leave the Magicbox model in place permanently instead of retiring it. Since it clearly will be operating in parallel to the new DD.... why not let us Merchants decide if we want to stay on Magicbox?

Sassy Romano wrote: Sassy Romano wrote: Ann Otoole wrote: Does this help? You can make 20 folders. In each folder you can have a max of 200 items. This means a merchant will be able to list only 4000 items. I read the FAQ as "a product can have a folder hierarchy of 20 folders each of which can contain 200 items". NOT 4000 products total. Slight correction to my post: FAQ says "The total number of folders is currently set at 20, and the number of total objects for each folder hierarchy (each set of items to list) cannot exceed 200. " So that's an item can contain a 20 folders. Maximum number of objects in total in that hierarchy is 200. I don't see why that's not clear but I appreciate others read it differently. Yup Sassy... you are smarter then us because it sure make absolutely no sense to me and Arwen

Yeah Arwen - reading it sounds like a gaggle of Developers came up with this massively confusing method of getting MP items up to MP for sale and updating it. "As a Merchant, you will send folders to your Marketplace inventory that you plan to list for sale. You will do this by placing items in a system folder called the Merchant Outbox and sending the contents to your Marketplace inventory. Each top level folder in the Merchant Outbox represents one sellable item in the Marketplace. Once all folders are successfully sent to the Marketplace, they will disappear from the Merchant Outbox. " So i guess for us DUMB Merchants that dont find this simple I am reading this (as a merchant that exclusively will continue to use BOXED items in MP: I have 50 Boxed items in MP for sale. For each of my Boxed items - instead of just dropping all 50 boxed items onto the OUTBOX folder to be sucked up to MP, I need to first create 50 unique folders on the OUTBOX and like: /SculptyPack1 /SculptyPack2 / SculptyPack3 ... Then I need to place my item SCULPTYPACK1 into / /SculptyPack1 etc... (x 50) as soon as I drop my item in to this folder.... some automated process will detect this and suck all the contents and the respective folders into the MP folders for my store. Then all these 50 folders will be deleted from my OUTBOX .... fast forward a month .... I want to update my SCULPTYPACK1 .... I have to create a folder /SculptyPack1 Drop my SCULPTYPACK1 into this folder and poof - it automatically get sucked up to MP again? So... if I decide to just drop my 50 SCULPTYPACK1 thru 50 boxed items into the root of OUTBOX.... what will happen? So... if I incorrectly type this /SculptyPack1 folder wrong - how will it update my pack in MP? Or do I now have another accidental rogue item? What a mess from what I see!

Arwen Serpente wrote: Ok, I'm totally confused on the "folder" subject. ~ I understand that goods can be delivered in either boxes (as now) or unboxed in folders ~ I understand that folders will have limits on how many items they can handle Since I'm one of those Merchants who has boxed products and do not intend to unbox them, here's where my confusion lies: Do we create folders and put one box per folder? My plan had always been to just simply move the contents of my Magic Boxes into the "Out" Folder ~ easy, done. Do we now have to create folders for each product in the "Out" Folder? Meaning, we have to create and properly name as many folders as we have items to sell? If that's the case, that's going to lead to a TON of work for Merchants AND (of course) possible "folder naming" mistakes. Sorry if I've got a brain-block on this thing...I don't get it. Can someone explain? You and me both! I have read this 4 times and I have read the Sassy Commerce Ann and Darius posts and they are all saying different things. WTF! > So we need to creat a SINGLE Folder for each product we SELL in MP? And if I sell an item on MP and have a folder for that item then why would I need anymore than one folder for a single selling MP listed item? > So am I also understanding that I cannot just place my 40 or 50 BOXED items in my magicbox on the root of the OUTBOX folder like they are all right now in the Magic Box? > Also, if I dont have a supporting 3PV as Merchant then I will have this OUTBOX folder but it will not push the content up to MP? > And these items or folder that I create in the OUTBOX folder will disappear after the item is moved into MP? So generally if i want to update a selling boxed item in MP, I need to create a similar folder as what I created last time then dump my boxed item into it then it will move to MP and the folder will poof again from my OUTBOX? What happens if the folder name is different from the last one?

Thanks Ann for the link! So reading this blog announcement today... it says... Direct Delivery Beta Testing In December, all merchants will have the opportunity to purchase and list items using Direct Delivery on Aditi. Exactly what are Merchants "purchasing"?? So LL is trying to make money on Merchants that already have the guts to beta test their products on a test grid? Am I missing something here? Now there is a new way for LL to make money.

Sassy Romano wrote: per one item. If you sell bundles of 1000 textures for example, just box them up, that's all there is to it and no it's not a limit of 200 products total. That's 200 items in that individual item. WOW Sassy... you saying that Merchants should BOX their textures goes agaisnt your past beliefs of "why the hell would anyone box their items? So they now have to find a laggy place to rez a box and copy all the content from the box". Now I hear that BOXING content is ok afterall. And we also hear that Direct Delivery's folders actually has limits. Thankfully this would not be a problem for me since all my products sold are and will stay boxed. For the best interest of my customers. So I want to ask another question... Where did these Direct Delivery qquestions come from? Are you telling me that Brook FINALLY started to deliver on her September commitment on leaking a few more bits of information? Or is this an old FAQ on DD that I somehow missed? Please provide the link in this thread.

I guess it also explains why LL hired an expert in GAMING to be the CEO of LL. If Rodvik puts on his skills and talents as an awesome GAME CREATOR... this only further sinks SL since he will only further try to make a football player into a ballet dancer. (That Dog Dont Hunt)... As such it seems that Rodvik is the next generation of a Failed Experiment of management at LL.

Gavin, I agree with your response to Ela. Her disbelief that there actually are serious fundamental flaws to LL's primary product in the market due in most part to a continuous stream of poor business decisions and shotgun business strategies is based on her belief that SecondLife is either some Utility Gaming Platform. SecondLife is not a GAMING PLATFORM. There are critical aspects to SL that make it completely unique to a typical Gaming platform. But if one truly believes the SL Grid and its related products/services are nothing more than a GAME Platform, of course the logic in posts like Ela's is understandable. If SL is nothing more than a Gaming platform and LL's only job is to be a utility provider of this gaming platform, then the concept of the virtual economy being completely tied to a REAL LIFE currency via an exchange makes no sense. If its a game than LL should sell LINDEN Credits and keep the cash from this sale (i.e. like Habbo Hotel credits for customers to buy company created accessories). If LL is - as Ela stated "The Lab provides a platform and general infrastructure for the game but it has neither means nor desire to provide individual accessories and applications for players", then LL should not care if there even is a virtual economy in SL. They should shut down the MP since their job is not to promote or get involved in the virtual economy - afterall they are just there to provide a place for all us customers to rez our avatars. It should not care about virtual created content being stolen since whatever happens on the grid is an issue between customers. Its like a power company worrying how I use the power in my home. Unfortunately what confuses ppl like Ela is that LL created (and they know this) a Virtual World which is primarily successful because it spawned a virtual economy the allowed its own customers to use this virtually generated REAL VALUE currency to sustain and increase the customer's own activity on the grid that LL makes money from. As the posting from the ELF CLAN clearly demonstrates and what we have been witnessing over and over on the SL grid by many other similar examples, its because of the LL failings that have caused the collapse of the SL virtual economy that is cause LL to lose their customers in droves to competing grids with more economically viable economies than SL. LL lost Elf Clan because the Elf Clan could not generate enough sustained inworld revenue to allow it to grow the SL grid and its use. So Ela, your view of the LL Model of business you think they are offering is fundamentally flaw. LL is a critical vested interest to support and promote a healthy growing inworld virtual economy. IF they dont (and their repeated bad business decisions prove they havent) then LL will lose the customers they require to keep SL a stable (much less growing) product that LL needs to be a viable business. But maybe that is the problem. LL Sr. Management thinks and acts upon what they think and what Ela thinks... that SL is only a gaming platform and what goes on in the grid is not their problem. BUT THEN..... Why did LL invest and take over and monopolize the Web Shopping market for SL (i.e. MP)? This goes to was Sassy said and many of us have been posting for years.... LL's Sr. Management has never and still does not have a solid understanding of what they want to be when they grow up and therefor they have no Winnable Focused Business Strategy to work from.

OK Sassy... dont read this post... it could be a bit longer. <sniker> So lets paraphrase what Ela is trying to convince most others that read her post. "LL is under no obligation to cater to a specific business model"... aka LL can do whatever they want and they dont have to listen to and service the needs of their customers. In Ela's concepts of how to run a successful business, the Customer is a burden and pain in the butt and so servicing these annoyances when running a successful business should be the lowest priorities. LL should not cater to its customers, they should cater to their own self interests! "Others however have nothing to do with the Lab"... aka LL is never at any time at fault for all the declining business / market indicators that even LL's own politically spun quartarly stats cant hide. "The Lab did nothing to promote the use of the Marketplace"... aka please disregard that LL's own TOS does not allow Merchants to let inworld pricing be lower than MP pricing, disregard that any LL marketing you see promotes the MP but never the shopping at inworld stores, disregard that inworld search has only gotten worse not better, disregard that LL's commerce team is pretty much 100% dedicate to working on MP initiatives and not to improve the ecommerce of the inworld merchant / economy. ( I will agree that with Ela on one thing, because of LL's conditioning of the customer buying options - the vast majority of SL residents have voted with their feet and are turning inworld marketplaces into abandoned ghettos - see Ela we can agree on somethings) "Landlords create no value"... aka Ela hase never heard of the concept of how Landlords provide a service of taking on the risk of investing in LL's volatile real estate market values but purchasing and paying teirs for sims that most SL residents cant afford on their own and carve it up in smaller parcels that we can afford. That Landlords can provide better sim management and services that LL provides ZERO value-add service on mainland. Sadly I have my store on a mainland and I challenge Ela to live on a mainland parcel and deal with Mainland'ss horrid lag and try to get the mainland sim rebooted with its needed. Funny - with private sims this is possible. Finally as a renter of a parcel of mainland, try to get ant form of sim/land support from LL when you have land issues? Unlike LL, a Landlord is someone you can successfully approach and get resolution to resolve. Big landlords can even be big enough to get LL's attention when a land issue needs attention - no hope for a mainland renter. BUT... of course Ela sees no value in Landlords in SL. They are just gouging all those 100's of thousands of renters and tenants - their customers - and all those SL residents are so stupid as to not known any better so they stay. Isnt it funny how in paragraph 1 Ela says Customers will vote with their feet yet in this paragraph she basically is willing to say that Customers DONT vote with their feet? Bit of a hypocrit from what I see. "I'm not going to cry about decreasing land market"... SL land market values are collapsing (just as housing and real estate market values have collapsed in the USA in real life) but unlike what almost all economic analysts would tell you that this is a BAD SIGN - Ela thinks this is just a shift in the SL world and it only means some magical future opportunity ("perhaps") will fill this void. Hmmm considering that sim teirs is where LL makes most of their revenue and sim usage is declining -800+ sims abandoned in the last year, Ela had better hope this yet unknown new ERA show up quick before LL ceases to exist. HEY Ela... here is a new era and business model to consider... that SL's customers VOTE WITH THEIR FEET and set up new business models in growing cost effective open sims and walk away from SL. Ooops - seems I hear footsteps voting on that now. Final comment Ela.... a question.... do you honestly believe that SL is in great shape now... that LL's is a well run smart operating company.... that there are no risks to SL or LL as a company... and that LL is not at the primary factor for all that is currently wrong with SL now? Careful how you answer this - there are a lot of smart people reading these posts and your answer will position where you stand and the credibility of your future posts.

Great posting Dart. A lot of good and valid points. The writing was already on the wall two years ago - just the messages of SL's risk of healthy existence has just got louder over th epast year. Ela's posting and comments are so far from surprising that I could have written her response. At least if nothing else her blind loyalty to defend LL and blame all others for LL's screwups on running SL into the ground are consistent. And in the interests of not ticking Sassy off, I will end this post right now.

Rolig Loon wrote: Not that it helps now, but to remember for the future: ... (2) Don't buy things from Marketplace (especially LOTS of things) unless you are in world to receive them at the time. We each have an "in box" that holds IMs, notecards, group notices, group invitations, and anything that is delivered to us if we aren't in world at the time. That "in box" can only hold 25 things, total. If anything else comes in, it isn't saved. It is gone ... poof .... forever. If you have a mess of things delivered from Marketplace and half your friends send you notecards, that in box will be capped and you will never know what happened. So if this MAX 25 item itembox limit that an SL account can receive without being processed (i.e. items, IMs, notecards, etc. coming to your account while you are offline) before it drops any further items is true, then here is a simple component of Magicbox script logic logic that could have possibly been added to the delivery function by LL to reduce the % of delivery failures related to this issue... The logic could have queried the receiver's inbox buffer to determine how full it is. If 25 is the limit then maybe magic box could put the delevery on a delay / repeat attempt delivery every hour to check if the receiver's inbox has emptied / reduced enough to safely deliver the MP item. If after 48 hours the item is unable to deliver due to this issue, a message could be sent to the Merchant indicating that the delivery failed after 48 hours of attempts and due to the receiver's accound being unable to recieve the item. LL must have access to this inbox status. Personally I get very very few delivery failires in MP most times... My biggest problem is when LL screws up MP's search / indexing so that my products are not as findable or whatever else MP is doing to cut my sales by 50% + since early August.