A question for Dakota

[Phil Deakins]

Dakota. You are active in this forum, so here's a question for you...

Why is it that your people delist items when they are in the wrong categories but fail to tell the sellers where the items belong?

If the person doing the delisting does the job that you say they do (checking before delisting), and knows that an item is in the wrong category, then s/he also knows the correct category for it. But it's clear from a great many posts here that the seller doesn't know that the item is in the wrong place. So why don't your people save your customers from a lot of hassle and confusion by telling them where an item belongs while you are telling them that it's been delisted?

[Suella Ember]

I don't want to speak for Dakota, but I've seen her answer that very question before.

Her answer was that it is about education. Yes, they could simply move the item to the right category, but then people will keep potentially listing in the wrong category knowing that it will just be moved by LL if needs be. It would potentially breed apathy when people are listing rather than them thinking properly about the right category for their listings.

It makes more sense to have the user recognise their mistake so that they can address it and be aware for the future doesn't it?

However, I do think that its a must for an email to be sent to the user when an item is delisted, perhaps with a suggestion for where it should go. This is a fair compromise between making the user take some responsibility but giving them as much information as possible to make the correct category choice (and I believe that Dakota has also stated they they are indeed working on providing such a process, although it has been a long time coming!)

[Darrius Gothly]

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Suella Ember wrote:

I don't want to speak for Dakota, but I've seen her answer that very question before.

Her answer was that it is about education. [..]

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That's exactly Phil's point ... education. You educate someone ONLY when you show them the right answer. Imagine a school test where the teacher marked your answers wrong, but never supplied or taught the right answers. What would you learn? Nothing.

If the goal really is to educate, then they need to actually do that by providing the CORRECT answer after marking it wrong.

[Phil Deakins]

A couple of days ago, I posted in another thread that, imo, LL should not move items to the correct categories or it would encourage some people to list them more or less anywhere, knowing that LL would sort them out. But that's not my question to Dakota. My question is, since the person who delists an item knows where that item should be listed, why don't they tell the seller? They tell the seller (I think) when an item is delisted so why not include its correct category in that communication? Or... don't they even tell people that their items have been delisted? Surely they do. If they don't, how does a person get to know?

[Peewee Musytari]

I don`t think there is a "right" solution to this issue because there are 2 types of merchants affected by it & I can see a valid arguement on both sides.

If you have a merchant with say 30 items listed correctly and one that keeps being delisted for being in the wrong place, then of course it would seem logical for LL to either just move it or at least advise where it should be. It is clear that the merchant is struggling to find a relavant category and just delisting it is not educating them, it is frustrating them.

On the other hand you have merchants that are just plain lazy and will list items anywhere with a matching keyword without really looking at the categories and most likely have nearly all their items delisted. For those types I agree with Dakota that for LL to move the items or to keep explaining where to put them, just encourages the laziness, because the merchant will continue to throw them anywhere & just wait for LL to correct it.

Having myself had an item delisted that I felt was in the correct category, I will say that when I reopened the ticket again to ask for further clarification about why the category was wrong, I was given a full explaination, which. even though I didn`t entirely agree with it, I did appreciate. So I don`t think it is a case of LL refusing to help with correct placement, they are just not going to spoonfeed lazy merchants & as a result, some genuinely confused merchants are getting caught in the crossfire.

[Dakota Linden]

Hi Phil,

At this time, unless the user contacts Customer Support directly, there is no way to advise the seller of the correct category.

If you were with us back when the Xstreet SL web site was up and running and hosted the Marketplace, you may remember that, at that time, there was a way to provide that information to the sellers.

Unfortunately, that feature was not included in the new SLM when it was created.

It is a feature that will be built into, and implemented, in the future.

 

[Darrius Gothly]

Just to satisfy my curiosity (and to answer a question I'm sure many have asked) .. how many Merchants have you found that post their products in the wrong category?

When the "it goes here instead" function was available on XStreet, how many Merchants did it then?

I know you can't give exact numbers, but a general ballpark number will be sufficient. My suspicion is that the numbers were much lower on XStreet than they are now because of the "educational feedback" that was present then.

[Dakota Linden]

Hello Darrius,

The numbers were much lower on Xstreet because there were far fewer merchants and products.

The bulk (90-95%) of the Incorrect Category issues are because the sellers are placing their listings into the top level/root categories instead of placing them into the correct sub-categories.

And just for info, the top 2 issues with product listings are as follows:

Keyword Spam.

Category Selection

In that order.

Reports of keyword spam outweigh category issues by nearly 20 to 1.

There is a far greater reported issue with users trying to search for something and being shown non related items than there are reports for category selection issues.

But both issues are outlined, with examples, in the Listing Guidelines.

It really is disheartening at times to get complaints, and sometimes very vicious ones, from users who, based on the type of Marketplace Issue they have with their listings, clearly haven't read the Listing Guidelines, but then blame Linden Lab when their product is unlisted.

 

 

[Ciaran Laval]

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Suella Ember wrote:

I don't want to speak for Dakota, but I've seen her answer that very question before.

Her answer was that it is about education. Yes, they could simply move the item to the right category, but then people will keep potentially listing in the wrong category knowing that it will just be moved by LL if needs be. It would potentially breed apathy when people are listing rather than them thinking properly about the right category for their listings.

It makes more sense to have the user recognise their mistake so that they can address it and be aware for the future doesn't it?

---

The problem being we keep seeing people making the same mistakes, listing at root level, which even though it looks like the right category, isn't the right category, or the case the other day where someone listed an item in a category that was perfectly feasible, only to have it be delisted and had they not came to these forums, they would not know there was an alternative category to list their item in.

The problems aren't really from people listing shoes in the textures category, they're from people listing shoes in the shoes category or decor in the decor category, the flow of information should be improved.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Dakota Linden wrote:

Hello Darrius,

The numbers were much lower on Xstreet because there were far fewer merchants and products.

The bulk (90-95%) of the Incorrect Category issues are because the sellers are placing their listings into the top level/root categories instead of placing them into the correct sub-categories.

And just for info, the top 2 issues with product listings are as follows:

Keyword Spam.

Category Selection

In that order.

Reports of keyword spam outweigh category issues by nearly 20 to 1.

There is a far greater reported issue with users trying to search for something and being shown non related items than there are reports for category selection issues.

But both issues are outlined, with examples, in the Listing Guidelines.

It really is disheartening at times to get complaints, and sometimes very vicious ones, from users who, based on the type of Marketplace Issue they have with their listings, clearly haven't read the Listing Guidelines, but then blame Linden Lab when their product is unlisted. 

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That last paragraph is of paramount importance .. and I'm gonna highlight it because it's a lesson that needs to be learned ... by LL.

Simply put, people do not read. It's an oft-stated fact that nearly 90% of tech support calls are RTFM's. (Read The Ahem Manual) From the dawn of writing, people have been trying to get others to read the important stuff, but it just doesn't happen.

Ask any merchant what are their number one problems? I'd bet serious RL money the majority answer "customers that don't read the signs/instructions/notecards." So how do they handle it? They make products simple enough to not require reading ... or they resign themselves to answering the same question 150,000 times. But above all else, they don't "punish" the customer because they didn't read the stuff they were supposed to read.

People do not read ... period.

Now that we've established there is no way to fix THAT flaw in the human beast, why does LL insist that the only manner to handle problems is to chastise folks for NOT READING?!? We already knew they wouldn't read. So stop punishing people for doing what is human nature, and design a system that takes that behavior into account.

Every time you get a support ticket that says "Why did you delist my item?" ... that's a failure. Failure to explain why BEFORE they filled out a ticket.

Yes, I realize it's not easy to tell them the full reason when their item is delisted. But what we are trying to say is .. that's an absolutely CRITICAL function to provide. Even more to the point, it's inexcusable for the Martketplace to not have that function already.

But it's an absolute travesty to say "It's your fault silly Merchants, you didn't read the Listing Guidelines" ... because we already determined ...

People do not read!

[Dakota Linden]

Hello Ciaran,

The issue comes down to 2 things.

1. The Listing Guidelines say to use the "most appropriate" category for a listing.

2. The categories need work.

Number 1 causes the most problems.

A tree is exterior decor, sure, but there is a Trees & Shrubs category, so the most appropriate category for a tree is the Tree & Shrubs category.

A painting is decoration, yes, but there is an Art - Painting category, so the most appropriate category for a painting is the Painting category.

Will there ever be a sub-category called Paintings under the Home & Garden - Decor category? Probably not, because there already is an appropriate Art - Paintings category.

When a listing is created, you can do a search and type in painting and the Art - Painting category will be shown in the search results, but not the Home & Garden - Decor category.

That is fine, until you get to things like House or home.  When you search for Home you get the Home & Garden category instead of a category for Houses.

This is where number 2 comes in.

The categories need to be cleaned up and made consistent and easy to understand.

This is being worked on, and hopefully, lots of changes will be done within the next few weeks.

 

[Dakota Linden]

Hello Darrius,

I agree, and so does Brooke.

The Marketplace needs work.

From a Customer Support standpoint, which is who I am, the best I can do it help explain how things are, and can be, done today to help both the buyers and the sellers use the system.

I am also an ear to you, and every other SLM user.

The pain points that you all bring up are given to the Marketplace Team.

The suggestions that you all bring up are also given to the Marketplace Team.

But we have finite resources, so each issue, while it might be important to me, or to you, as an individual point, has to be added to the system and then viewed as part of the whole thing because of those finite resources.

Just as a bug or issue that affects 5 people will most likely not be fixed before a bug that affects 1000+ people will be.

While implementing a way, similar to what was on Xstreet, to notify sellers of the appropriate category is a huge thing to you and me and those who have had their items unlisted, it isn't the top issue that is being addressed at this time.

If the Product Listing Review Team stopped addressing category issues completely, the only thing that will happen is the Marketplace gets cluttered, badly, and it becomes harder to find things.

So before even bringing in the ability to explain to users why their listings were removed goes into place, the bigger issue is cleaning up the categories to make it easier for them to find the correct category in the first place so that their products do not get unlisted at all.

By fixing the issue first and making it easier for sellers to find the correct category from the start, it should reduce the chances of products being placed into an incorrect category.

This will have a greater overall impact, for everyone, than building into the system the ability to include the correct category when a product is unlisted.

Then in the future, when resources can be allocated, the ability to include the correct category can then be built into the system.

 

 

 

[Darrius Gothly]

*sigh*

Dakota .. step to the side please ...

BROOKE! Either put more Jolt Cola in the fridge or hire some coders that actually can create code. The whole point behind the Spree system (written in Ruby On Rails) was to assure Rapid Application Development. That's what ROR is for .. doing basic things fast.

The communication and feedback issues that exist still are CRUCIAL. More to the point, they are trivial to implement and are costing LL (and Merchants) many times more in lost time, direct expenses and lost sales than the pittance it would take to pay someone to put them in place.

Being able to Sort my listings in my store is far lower in priority than being told when an item is delisted, why it was delisted or when a product is sold. Yes, sales emails are STILL broken ... 

Sales Confirmation Emails from Marketplace are either "Laggy" or are not delivered

[Ciaran Laval]

I think you may well end up chasing your own tail here Dakota, categories are always going to be ambiguous to a degree, someone made a good suggestion the other day about people paying a fee to list in two categories, that's an option for sellers on a very large site that allows people to sell RL goods.

I know the idea is to keep categories meaningful, but when there's clear ambiguity it's time to call it quits and work with, not against, the ambiguity.

[Phil Deakins]

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Dakota Linden wrote:

Hi Phil,

At this time, unless the user contacts Customer Support directly, there is no way to advise the seller of the correct category.

---

Don't you even let people know that one of their items have been delisted? If you do, then including the category where an item should be placed is trivial. It's known by the person who delisted the item, and it's trivial to include the category in the communication that tells them that their item has been delisted. If you don't inform people when one of their items is delisted, then I'm utterly gobsmacked, and it would take my opinion of LL as a company down even lower than it is already is - and it's already at rock bottom. So, do you inform people - yes or no?

 

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If you were with us back when the Xstreet SL web site was up and running  

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I've never used the marketplace, or any of its predecessors, either for selling or for buying, and I never will. I have such a low opinion of LL as a company that I won't give them, or cause them to receive, a penny more than is absolutely necessary - which is their own fault.

 

Darrius wrote an excellent post about people reading, so I won't repeat what he said, but the people who are responsible for the marketplace really should take notice of it because the way things are done alienates paying customers, which is a *huge* no-no but, unfortunately, it's typical Linden Lab.

 

Twice in this thread you've said that "the categories need work", and I've seen you say it before. It's no good saying it, Dakota. Words don't change anything. It needs to be done.

 

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Don't need no edukashion here, that's fer shur.

Just want to place stuff in the category that sells.

Learned that some odd years ago.

[Paladin Pinion]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I've never used the marketplace, or any of its predecessors, either for selling or for buying, and I never will.

 

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But you still feel a compulsion to criticize something you've never used? Interesting.

I suspect there is a pretty simple answer to your question though, because I've worked tech support and I understand how it often needs to be handled. Suppose you have two or three people available to monitor the marketplace complaints (I have no idea, but I bet that's close.) That isn't their only job, but it's part of it, so maybe they devote 2 or 3 hours a day to the task. They have to go through hundreds of listings a day. They don't have much time. They can't spend more than a few minutes on each one, if that.

I've done this. Trust me.

So on most systems, you have a bunch of form letters on the side of your screen, and you send the one that fits. You just have to click on it, and it addresses itself and sends automatically. You have thus informed the person what's wrong, and the form letter explains what they need to do to correct it. You do this in the minute or two you have available to assess the issue and respond, and then you move on to the next one.

Dakota mentions "limited resources". I know what that means, I've been there. It means there are only a few people available and there isn't time to go look up the appropriate category, open the form letter for editing, and type into it. There just isn't. If you spend even a few extra minutes on each one, you're immediately backlogged.

The solution of course is to hire more people for the work. But that would mean you, the customer, would either have to pay higher tier, or the customer base would have to expand. I don't suppose you'd want to pay someone's salary, but you could perhaps encourage others to buy land or expand your own.

Personally, I'd be happy with the form letter and I'd opt for extra programmers instead. But that's just me.

[Ciaran Laval]

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

So on most systems, you have a bunch of form letters on the side of your screen, and you send the one that fits. You just have to click on it, and it addresses itself and sends automatically. You have thus informed the person what's wrong, and the form letter explains what they need to do to correct it. You do this in the minute or two you have available to assess the issue and respond, and then you move on to the next one.

Dakota mentions "limited resources". I know what that means, I've been there. It means there are only a few people available and there isn't time to go look up the appropriate category, open the form letter for editing, and type into it. There just isn't. If you spend even a few extra minutes on each one, you're immediately backlogged.

The solution of course is to hire more people for the work. But that would mean you, the customer, would either have to pay higher tier, or the customer base would have to expand. I don't suppose you'd want to pay someone's salary, but you could perhaps encourage others to buy land or expand your own.

Personally, I'd be happy with the form letter and I'd opt for extra programmers instead. But that's just me.

---

I've worked in support for many years, the answer isn't always more staff, one of the questions that needs to be answered is why are people doing this. in this case, this being putting items in the "wrong" category.

Once you start to answer the question you have the possibility of going to prevention mode, which in turns means less support tickets on the subject, which in turn frees time for your staff to do other things.

Now there was a recent example of the problems of how this wrong category works, someone had listed their item in a perfectly suitable category, but there was another equally suitable category, in circumstances such as that the right thing to do is surely change the category and inform the person, rather than delisting.

In answering the question of why that item was in the "wrong" category, the answer is simple, it appears to be the right category. Dakota has mentioned above that work is needed with regards to the categories, so they understand why it's happening, but the current delisting solution isn't satisfactory when there is more than one logical category, when it's a clear case of being in the wrong category, a house in the clothing category, then sure, delisting is the thing to do.

[Phil Deakins]

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I've never used the marketplace, or any of its predecessors, either for selling or for buying, and I never will.

 

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But you still feel a compulsion to criticize something you've never used? Interesting.

---

Absolutely. I am a paying customer and I have as much right to question things as anybody else does.

When LL ripped off some people with the Homestead fiasco, it didn't affect me financially as I never had a Homestead sim, but that didn't stop me from seeing what they did or from being angry with LL because of what they did to their own paying customers. In this case, I can clearly see that LL is not providing paying customers with the basics, and I'm questioning that failure.

Regarding the rest of your post, the person who delists an item *knows* where the item belongs - otherwise s/he wouldn't know that it's in the wrong category. It's trivial to push an extra button to the correct category, and adding the code to do that is extremely trivial too. All it takes is an attitude on LL's part that customers actually matter, and a few minutes to add the necessary code. Both of those appear to be lacking. Time doesn't come into it. There's no comparison between the time taken to reply to tickets and the time taken to press an extra button or select a ctageory from a drop-down list.

[Paladin Pinion]

One thing I do agree with is that the categories need to be optimized and repaired. One way to avoid having people list items in main, root categories is simply to disable the ability to do that in the marketplace. That would probably go a long way toward eliminating at least some of the problem.

So yes, I do agree with you Cerise. I only wanted to point out that the answer isn't quite as simple as people think. But an ounce of prevention, as always, is worth a pound of cure.

[Paladin Pinion]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Regarding the rest of your post, the person who delists an item *knows* where the item belongs - otherwise s/he wouldn't know that it's in the wrong category. It's trivial to push an extra button to the correct category, and adding the code to do that is extremely trivial too. All it takes is an attitude on LL's part that customers actually matter, and a few minutes to add the necessary code. Both of those appear to be lacking. Time doesn't come into it. There's no comparison between the time taken to reply to tickets and the time taken to press an extra button or select a ctageory from a drop-down list.

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I agree with your wishes, actually, but the correct way to address this would be to submit a feature request to JIRA. Of course, then you are asking for programming time, which will need to be prioritized.

But the reality right now is that the feature isn't there, and manually editing the replies does indeed take more time. If there are 200 listings that need notification, and each takes 30 seconds to edit, then we're talking about more than an hour and a half a day.

It sounds like LL is aware of the category issues and is addressing those, so maybe the problem will fix itself soon.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Regarding the rest of your post, the person who delists an item *knows* where the item belongs - otherwise s/he wouldn't know that it's in the wrong category. It's trivial to push an extra button to the correct category, and adding the code to do that is extremely trivial too. All it takes is an attitude on LL's part that customers actually matter, and a few minutes to add the necessary code. Both of those appear to be lacking. Time doesn't come into it. There's no comparison between the time taken to reply to tickets and the time taken to press an extra button or select a ctageory from a drop-down list.

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I agree with your wishes, actually, but the correct way to address this would be to submit a feature request to JIRA. Of course, then you are asking for programming time, which will need to be prioritized.

But the reality right now is that the feature isn't there, and manually editing the replies does indeed take more time. If there are 200 listings that need notification, and each takes 30 seconds to edit, then we're talking about more than an hour and a half a day.

It sounds like LL is aware of the category issues and is addressing those, so maybe the problem will fix itself soon.

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Hmm .. okay .. math time! It takes one Linden (zomg!) two hours per day to properly notify Merchants of the proper category. Two Linden Hours is a lot apparently, because it's more valuable than:

200 Merchants that lost an average 24 hours of sales because their products were delisted, plus ...

20 hours because each of the 200 Merchants had to spend 6 minutes each relisting their product, plus ...

200 Merchant Hours plus another 20 Linden Hours wasted because the Merchants weren't told the "Right" category so they repeated the mistake another 10 times each.

Yeah ... NOT!! The math just don't work out Paladin, Sorry.

Now .. the Math for the Fix:

It takes one programmer 20 hours to code up a fix. It takes SQA another 20 hours to validate that fix and approve it. It takes 4 hours to roll out the fix. Total of 44 hours and the problem is gone for good.

For my money? I'd spend the 44 hours and stop wasting everyone else's time.

 

[JodiLyn Jewell]

I have to agree. This is simple. A merchant makes an error , causing their item to be delisted... Certainly, and logically, they should expect a notice that it has been delisted, as well as educated as to where said item should be listed, to avoid the problem going forward. Otherwise, the mistake will be repeated. And repeated..

It's not rocket science.

[Cudaboy Lockjaw]

I agree there should be more of a reason on why an item was de-listed other then just a general notice. I had quite a  few items de-listed went back checked the item, where it belonged checked the category , sub category, Keywords etc and found nothing. SO I re-listed the  item and no problems from that given item again.

What frustrates me is you never get an e-mail notice that an item has been unlisted. SO unless you log into the market place every day how do you know if something has been taken down.

On a side note from what I have heard from other merchants if someone flags an item for any reason it gets  de-listed almost immediately. As a curiosity test had a friend goto one of my items and flag it and sure enough it got de-listed. SO you make your own call on what is really happening

[Phil Deakins]

Thank you for your post, Cudaboy. It answers a question that I've asked twice in this thread but nobody, especially Dakota, chose to answer - and one of the instances was asked of Dakota specifically. So they don't inform the seller that an item has been delisted. I'm not surprised that Dakota chose not to answer the question because the answer is not only embarassing for them but, quite frankly, it's an abominable practise on their part.

The other very interesting part of your post was the experiment you did. Dakota has stated in this forum that flagged items are checked before delisting them. The truth of that has been seriously doubted because it's Linden Lab at the other end. Your test shows clearly that it is right to doubt what she stated, and to actually disbelieve it. Perhaps she isn't aware of the bad practises of the people concerned, or perhaps she merely stated the theory rather than the practise.

Is it any wonder that Linden Lab has the extremely bad reputation amongst their customers that they have.