NeoBokrug Elytis

I guess by your logic is they should leave profiles and stuff up, no matter the cost. Right now the grid is in a sad state, I'll give you that, but LL is cutting down non-essential services for four hours. (Now it's over with). All they did was make the viewer not receive the group, and profile data. You could still use group chat, probably even send notices.

Shame on them for trying to do what you've been asking them to do, make the grid more stable. I suppose LL could just leave everything on, and then we wouldn't be able to have transactions, IMs, or any of the stuff that has been happening in the past two weeks. Personally I'd rather have transactions work because it's been a thorn in my side ever since the problem came along.

If all the free accounts suddenly were not allowed in SL, you'd lose more business than the disabling of groups and profiles, even for four hours. To be honest, I've seen a lot of good and interesting projects with bots, probably just as many as I hear about the bad bots. Bots get bad cred because a few people do bad (scumbag!) things with them. Also, doesn't matter what the MMO is, bots are here to stay, we just need to figure out how to live with them.

I'm going to stand by their choice, as it was the best one for the grid. We either have an mostly operational grid today, or a repeat of the last two weeks where nothing works for hours on end.

I've asked many people inworld already if the grid seems great even though groups and profiles are down, and they all agree it was.

With the way you've positioned yourself, you act like all you do is look at profiles in second life non stop. Is your business really that busy, constantly looking up profiles every hour of being online? Don't blow things out of proportion, which is a habit of yours.

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Ann Launay

Not ALL free accounts, just those without payment information on file. Restricting the access of those would do far less to cripple SL's economy than preventing vendors and customers from being able to contact each other.

And, yes, it's four hours, but it's four peak hours...logically speaking, more business gets done when more people are online.

In your opinion. Obviously, many people disagree.

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Atashi Yue

I might agree with you if it weren't for the fact that LL has known since early 2006 that groups were a critical problem.

NeoBokrug Elytis

I guess the point I am trying to make, and have been really trying:

You can have the grid not work at all groups enabled and everything, and bitch about not being able to log in, or do anything.


You can have groups and profiles disabled, and still be able to use the rest of the grid.

LL made the better choice.

Atashi Yue

*shrug*

I'd prefer to have LL run by people who when they realized two years ago this was a huge problem, would have perhaps come up with a fix. Shutting it off isn't a fix.

Sonja Aeghin

Even so, LL can shrink those numbers by allowing alternative forms of payment. That should, imho, get more people on the payment info rolls. THEN, after enough done so, start weeding out the utter freeloaders and professional campers. Give newbs a deadline, as I mentioned in another post, to get their info on file (a trial period, perhaps). After then, Das Boot. But the Force™ tells me the Lindens are too free-access for this to happen. In other words, this isn't going to happen with the current regime. We can rant all we want, but it's obvious that LL has the same regard for its residents as does Congress toward the American people.

Roxie Marten

The greifers will have a field day with no way of tracking who they are. As a sim admin I read profiles. You can often get a feel for who will be a griefer. I rely on group info daily to help run my business as well. Yes I am selfish bitch who expects the damm thing to actually work.

Rox

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Dnate Mars

But groups and profiles are vital to some. If you run a business, this is not an acceptable solution.

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Sonja Aeghin

I agree completely with Dnate . I have to have my groups operational to keep my customers as well as my staff informed.

NeoBokrug Elytis

Rosie Barthelmess

What I noticed today during the profile downtime was the total inconvenience of not being able to give items to someone who was not directly in front of me. I didn't realize how much I drop notecards, textures, etc., on people, until I couldn't do it today for four hours.

I can see why in a world with a borked grid that causes transaction failures multiple times a day, this would put a big crimp in the style of a vendor who was trying to make things right with someone not on their friends list.

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Brenda Archer

Groups are vital not only to businesses but also to nonprofits and to social communities of all types.

I just can't understand LL's attitude that groups are a trivial sidenote. Many of us cannot manage what we're trying to do in SL without them.

When groups do not work well, communities tend to break up, or at least run into trouble. This has happened to me. The complaints about the malfunctions in the group go to the group owner instead of LL, and failures in group communications keep some of the group members out of the loop. Drama ensues all around.

For what I used to try to do with SL, shutting down logins for a bit would indeed have been better. I truly hope the profile and group changes will not become a habit.

Cinthya Loveless

Your logic makes no sense.

1 people like me and the others here can't conduct business here when profiles are disabled. We don't set here staring at profiles all day. that comment was just stupid of you to make.

2 just because you don't have a business that requires you to look up profiles of people to IM them about things or for them to send you payments or items, doesn't mean that everyone else can do the same.

LL cutting profiles was one of the most stupid moves I've seen them do in all of my time in sl.

I guess by your logic its okay to disable profiles and everything else as long as you can get on the grid. the rest is fluff right?

That would be like your ISP saying ok your paying for this 10 MB connection but at peak times you can only use 1024 KBs of it.


Bottom line is LL needs to stop being cheap and buy the proper servers and equipment to run SL properly.

Cutting services that people depend on is not the answer and its not good for SL.

Aki Shichiroji

OK - suppose SL is a toilet. and the toilet is broken. Do we

a) Close the lid, let people keep dropping loads and hope the smell's gonna go away?
b) Put up an 'out of order' sign and fix the damned toilet?

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Cinthya Loveless

If your LL the answer would be. a

NeoBokrug Elytis

Actually it wasn't. It was my observation by the way Coco was wording things in the replies in this thread, that she (and other people she's speaking for) ABSOLUTELY CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT GROUPS OR PROFILES.

Trust me, I make many IMs per day, and use groups a lot. But I think I could live without groups and profiles for three hours and fourty seven minutes. Because they made it quite clear on the blog post that this was a temporary solution to prevent the grid from crashing it's ass off like it has been for the past two weeks.

I do have a very busy business, I do all of the activities you mentioned all day. In fact I REQUIRE the grid to be up in order to work (scripter), most texture artists can just go to working on things in photo shop or the gimp (maya for builders) if the grid is down.

One thing that has been a real knee to the groin is failed transactions. I would rather have groups and profiles disabled than deal with failed transactions. I think everyone can at least agree with me on that point.

You haven't been here that long have you.

• It's better than the grid being broken as all hell.
• It's better than the grid being off, because we all know we won't get refunds, unless it's down for 24 more hours. I remember LL skirted that by bringing the grid up for 3 hours right near the peak of 24 hours, only to bring it down again. If you serious business types disagree with that...

Some tempoary slow connectivity is better than none.

I think this is the only thing we agree on.

Cocoanut Koala

(1) Well, having posted about this on the blog (in the wrong entry, since people were muzzled for the correct entry), another poster said I didn't read the original blog entry well enough, and that it was temporary; in other words, something they will no longer be doing after a few weeks; not temporary in the sense of they will be doing it temporarily from now on whenever too many people log in.

If that is true, and reading it again, it seems like it is, I am considerably mollified, and will take off my "irate" mood. haha

(2) It's interesting (reading your post from end to top), I don't blow things out of proportion as a habit. I almost never do, as a matter of fact, in real life or anywhere else. I think I am just so exhausted by constant horrible changes - it is a state of battle fatigue. One thing following another. The ISP thing. The windlight thing. The trademark thing. The lost transactions thing. The changes to search. And the changes to search before that. Things breaking with the last update, new building bugs.

All these blows all the time, for years, with hardly any time to catch one's breath in between one horrible thing and the next horrible thing. You can hardly focus ON your business, much less the creative aspects of it, for having the rug pulled out from under you time and again, and that has no corollary for anything I've ever experienced in real life, and seems analogous only to a constant war zone.

So, no - I'm not an overreacter in general; I have been trained to be always living on the edge of my seat in SL, though, and no, I'm not real crazy about that.

And another thing - a little more COMMUNICATION from the Lindens, particularly in terms of BEING ABLE TO ASK QUESTIONS and point out things on the very BLOG entry concerning these things - would go a long ways toward keeping the natives like me from becoming restless.

What I misread was their apparent plan to use it only for the next few weeks. I certainly hope that is true, and for now, will trust that is true. Because I am an imminently patient person, or I wouldn't still be in SL working so hard for all this time, would I?

That doesn't mean, though, that I'm going to SHUT UP, and be a nice quiet little girl about everything.

(3) Yes, I did understand that at least by doing this, there would likely be fewer failed transactions, which would be one advantage.

(4) From what I understood, without a profile, customers can't get ahold of you. That just plain isn't good for business. Customer confidence is a fragile thing, and NOTHING that has happened lately has done anything but weaken that.

*I* don't need to look up profiles very often, but customers certainly do! And no, I'm not rolling in sales every minute, but then again, you said yourself that the non-deliveries were a headache. (No kidding!) Now put yourself in the place of the customer who is in a panic. And believe me, they get in panics over the simplest of things, like a failed transaction, or accidentally deleting their house, or something.

And I even saw a silver lining in THAT. For all the time that customers can't get ahold of you, they can't get ahold of you! Whee!

Again, it's not like I am inundated with customers trying to get ahold of me, far from it; and I never, but NEVER, mind helping a customer the minute they need it. It is at the total top of my priority list. But it did occur to me that might be an advantage some people might see in it. For me, a big thing for me is to ALWAYS get right back to the customer, and always take care of them right away. So see, there's another silver lining for some people!

And that's only one consideration. People use groups and profiles for all kinds of things important to them and their businesses, like when holding events and things like that. And I don't know, banning trouble-makers, all kinds of things. There's really no sense in trying to say they aren't that important, because they are.

Now compared to everything totally falling apart at the seams, they aren't. But understand, I thought they were going to have this for their entire future plan, with maybe adding other things to cut out, as time goes by. If it's only a sacrifice for a few weeks, I guess I can live with it, and so can everyone else. The damage to commerce will happen, though.

(5) I really don't see how you figure that if all the free accounts suddenly had to wait to get in world I'd lose business. I can see that regarding only the factor of being a free versus a paying account, but not payment-info-on-file residents. Because most people get their money because they have payment-info-on-file.

Presumably, people with payment-info-on-file would be ahead of free accounts without piof in the queue. According to the plan the Lindens thought up, not me. Wasn't my plan. I just liked it.

I'm all for having everybody (every actual human), in SL all the time. But when we can't even function, I just don't see the point of allowing people in who don't pay fees, don't pay tier, and don't even buy money!!, before those who pay fees, pay tier, or have payment info on file.

(6) As for bots, fiddle dee dee. The numbers of bots performing any sort of activity that could be remotely considered a public service or doing anyone else any good have got to be in the extreme minority.

As for the "bots are here to stay" argument, nothing is here to stay, unless the powers that be decide it is. And when it stops working in their favor, that thing will all of a sudden no longer be here.

I am NEVER going to be happy to know my customers can't reach me because land bots have to get on line to swipe land, or traffic bots have to gather to raise somebody's traffic.

(7) I haven't "positioned myself" any such way. I am just another person with a business on the grid, and customers to take care of and answer to, pointing out that if we can't do these simple things there is no more point in having a business.

But if this is really only going to last a couple of weeks, I can live with it. I thought it was their future contingency plan.

coco

P.S. Having read Brenda's post, I would also like to add to the point that it is we who hear about this, not LL. Not saying that the customers are unreasonable, but we are the only link they have to why they didn't receive their item, or whatever, and how to fix that.

If you think I am overreacting, then just consider it this way: I'm advocating not just for myself, but for my customers (and other people's customers, for that matter). I consider that part of my responsibility as a merchant, actually.

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Aki Shichiroji

Then you clearly don't understand why they turned off things temporarily in an effort to mediate growing problems involving groups and IMs.

The question was directed at business owners - IE: YOU. would you rather have to deal with more and more crap? let it culminate in something very messy? or would you rather things get put on pause, fixed to the degree that it *can* be for the moment, so that things can actually function later?

Would you *rather* deal with angry customers who are having failed transactions? Or would you rather not have failed transactions in the first place?

Cinthya Loveless

No point in arguing with you. In the land business disabled profiles means lost business and also means can't complete land transactions when you have to set the land to the buyers name.






I've been around SL alot longer then you have. by a whole year longer then you.

Cinthya Loveless

No my point was that LL doesn't fix things. they just patch it and they don't spend the money they should on proper servers and equipment.

You totally missed the point and the humor in my reply to your post.

Cocoanut Koala

That's because we quite literally CANNOT.

We can limp along for a few weeks, yes, with this turned off for a few hours every day. It isn't wonderful, and should never have come to that, and indeed, need not come to that even now, when other solutions are available.

We must have these things, or we will not be able to do business.

I've been thinking about it today, about what to do if this particular functionality were turned off for good (or kept in a lasting state of being turned off whenever).

Because I've learned to think that way, to try to think how LL would think about it, if it came to that.

And what I was thinking was something along the lines of:

"We (LL) believe that these matters are best handled by residents. For example, if you have a business, set up a web site, and ask your customers to communicate with you there. That will be better than inworld, because you will have a written record of things, and everything will be under your control.

"The same thing goes for groups. Wouldn't your group be a lot better off if they had a web site presence they could rally around? And check any time they wanted, without having to be on the grid?"

That sort of thing.

I agree, in general, with your list of priorities, Neobokrug - better than the grid being broken to hell, etc.

But I don't agree that this is the only solution, or the best solution.

And definitely not a solution that we should greet with anything BUT an "it better not last for long" attitude.

coco

Aki Shichiroji

I'm not disputing that, but grid unborkage isn't going to appear at the snap of your fingers, OR LL's. Of course LL could use more servers and equipment. Does that mean they're going to appear on their doorstep just like that? Like magic? What fantasy world are you living in?

While i certainly agree more could have been done before this point, criticizing an effort to temporarily relieve problems that have been caused by those shortcomings is shortsighted.

Cinthya Loveless

I think the question here is what fantasy world are you living in? i've been around SL since 04. and the grid has always had problems of some kind.

so you can stop trying to trun my funny reply of saying "if your LL the answer would be a" into something I totaly didn't say

NeoBokrug Elytis

I guess this is the mindset I am trying prevent people from assuming all the time. They DO fix things, just not as often or noticed as when the grid goes bad. We're programmed genetically to remember bad experiences longer than good ones.

Even though it wasn't the greatest choice for LL to make, it was the best given the circumstances.

I am pretty sure you could search for people for land transactions. They just disabled profile information, not searches. Also, I am in the land business, so I know what it's like when the grid is borked.

If you've been here a year longer than me, I am pretty sure you can think up OTHER things that LL has done that are way worse than this. Like releasing viewers and such that weren't ready for prime time, or exploits that let people view source code of scripted things, random IMs going places they shouldn't, etc. And that's only off the top of my head, and me being here a year less than you.

@Coco SL frustrates the hell out of me too. I am pretty sure there's some threads buried in this forum, and others telling LL to clean their shit up. Sometimes it just gets the best of us, but we gotta hang in there, because our businesses aren't going to go anywhere.

Aki Shichiroji

In what world do things come without cost?

I think i'm being pretty realistic here by saying this is the hand we've been dealt and we've gotta play it. We can complain that things should have been done sooner, but hindsight is 20/20. What can be done NOW?

We can all sit around twiddling our thumbs commiserating about a perfect world, but such things don't exist. SL has grown by leaps and bounds continuously from its conception.

That we have seen continual issues over the course of this time is an indicator of the continual struggle for stability alongside growth. SL will continue to have growing pains for a very long time. This should be a given, unless you don't want it to grow or progress at all.

As a matter of preference, I much prefer that LL be transparent about the problems they are having and what they are doing to mitigate those problems - over and above being opaque and denying that anything is wrong, despite failed transactions happening everywhere.

The fact remains that all things that grow need maintenance. You argue this, and I agree. But sometimes that maintenance requires that things go offline for a while to be worked on or relieved in some manner. Progress takes time and patience. This is true of any realm, whether in SL or RL.