Are the 'Find' dialogues really that useless?

Maybe it's just me, but I rarely use the 'Find' dialogue for anything more than looking up a particular person because it's still easier than forraging around in my inventory for a calling card.

Some of the reasons why:

Land sales: Useless because it's full of bullshit listings with bullshit prices. And plots that are only for sale to certain people. Even more so now people can list private plots that aren't really for sale.

Places: Bleh! Don't even get me started. Firstly, why the hell doesnt anyone use sensible keywords? And secondly, why are so many of them that even bother having keywords so completely inaccurate? I went to probably a dozen locations yesterday because they were all places that were listed as having the items I was looking for. Over half just didn't have them at all. In some cases the buildings pictured or listed weren't even there. Presumably they sold on the land with the listing still live and ticked, and the new owners havent bothered to update, or stop paying for the listing. Some are just stretching the truth rather a lot. Advertising 'DANCE ANIMATIONS HERE!!!!' when you have one freebie bvh off the net you're charging for is kinda annoying.

Whatever, it's bloody infuriating. It's enough trouble getting around (it doesnt help that tping is borked for me again since 1.6.3... I now have the same problems I endured throughout all of 1.5.x that were very temporarily resolved in 1.6.1 and 1.6.2. yay.), without finding that 90% of your trips are wasted because of bullshit listings.

Can't something be done to tighten the thing up? And to encourage people to make accurate listings? (Actually I'm kind of surprised people don't tidy up their own listings to help their businesses, since it seems to be the cheapest, easiest way to get good exposure). I'm not sure exactly what, so I'm not even going to try and suggest something so everyone can shoot it down in flames, but I just felt the need to vent. It annoys me that there is such a potentially useful directory being so badly misused and abused, and that there is no good alternative to finding out what's around.

It feels like my email inbox. Once I've cut thru the 95% that is total spam and trying to mislead me, sometimes there's one or two things that are actually relavent.

Places that claim to have everything really annoy me. It's a mall - it may have textures etc (but they won't be with usable permissions) but it's much more likely to have lots of clothes...

Places like this won't sort out their listing as they presume that they get extra traffic from it. The problem is that people presume it's rubbish and don't go anyway.

It's been suggested that a more effective way of future categorization would be somethin' akin to a del.icio.us "tagging" approach. This whole thing about "social bookmarking" seems fairly straightforward and effective and allows tastes to be defined better communally, while at the same time allowing for more eclectic/bizarre descriptions as the ones I might be into. I currently navigate SL's Find system in some lateral ways -- I'll occasionally type out weird keywords just to see what comes up and get a laugh out of it all... and then wind up visiting some cool new places!

Oh, I go by word-of-mouth too. I'm hoping Add Landmark buttons come back though, I used to use that frequently. Until it disappeared, so I couldn't use it anymore. *sigh*

whaddayamean about the landmark button? I have one

One thing I WOULD like to have, thinking about it, is a notes field for places just like we have for profiles, so I can write 'this place is crap and lies about what they have. dont return' or 'this place is a little goldmine! check back often!' in it.

What might be pretty cool if that could be extended to a public 'review' system. I forget what the one I used to use on the web was called - maybe Alexa - but it basically allowed you to view other people's comments about any given website in a search engine kinda style in the side pane while you viewed the site.

Yeah, sure, it could be abused like anything else. But like when you read 100 mixed reviews on Amazon for that product you want, you'd have to make up your own mind. But I wouldn't mind doing a few 50 word reviews of places I visit in SL. I have found some great little places that I think really deserve more exposure.

There are three things Linden Lab can do to improve the FIND searches:

Index land for sale by region;

Clear titles, descriptions and pictures of parcels when they are sold;

and Index profile descriptions and interests so we can FIND sculptures, landscapers, storytellers et cetera.

Come to think of it, they may clear the land information when parcels are sold now. I bought a small lot Darkwood a few days ago and notived that it had no title. But I don't know if it did before the sale or not.

Should we waste votes on the new board, post to the feature suggestions forums again, or ask in the hotline? Don't you just love choices.

You know, I always thought it would be cool to have some sort of BBB in Second Life. Now how you'd go about it, I have no idea lol. I just think it would be great if people could look up a particular business and see it's rating and what it (actually) offers. I gather this would probably take a group effort by residents and would be quite the undertaking. I would be glad to be involved in something like that though if it ever did come about .

This will always be an issue. No technology can fix it. You give people a means to advertise and they'll skew it however they want to draw in more customers. Even if you could rate the find links people would abuse that too.

Word of mouth is much more reliable. I'll use that or come on the forums and try to find recommendations.

Aye, aye, aye Kris. I completely agree with your frustration. I used to hate going to a store promising the whole kit and kaboodle and discovering it wasn't even there yet (or anymore).

Torley's social bookmarking idea is a fascinating one to apply to SL. I'd love to see that happen.

I have never understood why land sellers get an unfair advantage over everyone else in Find, in terms of being able to list exactly what they have for sale, and for how much. There's not even a charge for it, and now it is filled with crap listings that are not actually for sale.

I always use Find to pull up people - the Friends and calling cards features are not very useful at this point for that (other than in the IM window). I would love to see much more sophisticated search capabilities. I have heard talk of things coming in the future that would be more Google-esque, but who knows. In the meantime, giving a separate keyword field in the land description would help, as would some sort of paging in the find results, with the ability to sort by various criteria. Find is not totally useless, but not particularly good for finding most things, except people.

I got REALLY annoyed the other day when a land description keyword was skin, and they didn't sell sodding skins!!!!

I searched high and low, even flew up to see if they had hidden a skin skybox somewhere.

"Find" is useless because its all one generic interface.

It bothers me to no end that find land can't be filtered by something so simple as simulator rating. I have zero interest in purchasing more PG land. I'm having a hard enough time getting rid of the amount that I have already.

I'm getting better at finding stuff merely by flying around, simply because find places is a joke, and playing the broken teleporter game gets old.

And that was exactly my problem: You search, you visit the place, wait for everything to rez, spend a long time searching and getting frustrated, and you cant find the thing they advertised at all. So I'm hardly likely to go back there, ever, unless it really was an exceptionally cool place anyway.

So people aren't doing themselves any favours by lying, exaggerating the truth or sloppy maintenance, because you just put visitors right off.

People seem to be buying my land with no problem. And without annoying signage too!

I do notice that the refresh lags sometimes - if some parcel gets bought it doesn't seem to be reflected right away. Not too big of a deal, just puzzling at times.

Willow, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.

Eh, I tend to go by rippleshock. I have these mad dreams that tell me to seek a place out before I even know it exists, and I'll come upon it. Thought it was a fluke but it's happened time and time again. No kidding, it's so hard to explain but it's just... there.

Sometimes I'll close my eyes, hover up in the air, navigate with the arrow keys, and I'll be somewhere new and cool. Which is really strange, because normally I'm a really clumsy flyer. So if you see me going gracefully, you'll know why.

I think it's kinda how like Yoda can walk without his cane (a gimmer stick which he can chew on for nutrients) when the Force flows through him.

LMAO!

I know, I am addicted you have to help me, I have ovr 600 now ITS INSANE...

*rocks back and forth*

Oh and...



I so thought that said nippleshock, I got all excited

I use find for two things...finding people, and finding places using people's names as the keyword (more often than not I'm looking for a product made by a specific person). Really these days it's better to look at your friend's "Picks" in their profiles to find good places to shop and explore.

That's it in a nutshell. The Find interface is fine if you're searching for people, but is woefully underpowered for any other purposes.

I would subscribe to a player-created alternative listing service. (And by subscribe I mean pay L$.)

So, maybe the conscientious shopkeeper or mall maintenance person would add some sort of notecard or sign at the entrance with actual landing coords for each item listed in the description section of their place...

Or maybe this signals the time for mall owners to start grouping similar items together (shoes, mens' clothing, women's clothing, skins, etc.) instead of giving each seller his/her own spot (Stampshady used to do this with the mall he had in Perry)...

Or maybe some industrious shopper could make some money selling a listing of desireable items for sale in-world and their exact locations...

I agree with Kris, though; I've done the exact thing where I went in search of some specific item and wasted a lot of time. SL shopping can be a frustrating experience, and the Find menu isn't always that much help.

DO this! It makes sense. Like department stores. And no, not the ones that have each brand concession individually set out in their own departments

If I want to go shoe shopping in SL, I can think of nothing nicer than finding a SHOE shop or a SHOE department rather than having to fruitlessly travel to 10 places that *say* they have shoes that I can't even find! And even if they do, they're scattered all over the damned mall.

Totally agree. The find shop which sells a specific item system is not at all good. Its even worse when it takes me forever to find a way into the shop, only to find they don't sell what i'm looking for.

I don't bother now - if I can't get in within 10 seconds then I fly away. Who needs the irritation.

Now, if I see something I like, will often look at the creator, then bring up their profile and it will usually tell me where they sell their items under Picks. This has proved very successful.

Alexa

What Alexa said. Picks are far more effective than FIND descriptions for locating specific types of items. Although, picks are sometimes stale too.

this is **exactly** why i organized the men's one stop shop store in riiki -- NOT because i wanted to be a store owner.

of course organizing the contents of a mall does require more work and potential risk compared to just renting an open slot to the first person that comes along ... reorganizing an existing mall would also be a pain ... but i think it is certainly in the interest of the designers to be placed in a coherant category... it means that it is much easier for qualified prospective buyers to find your goods.

I use it alot to find places selling particular items, or the name of a shop I've forgotten, or to IM people who's card I don't have, or to look at land sales (you can sort them by price or size so it's pretty effective).

The only problem I see with Find..is lately it takes a long time to respond, at least on the first query of the session.

I only use Find when I'm looking for something.

Never am I looking for shopping.

People, specific places, groups. Thats about it.

The land sales thing needs work, we need to see who is selling it and other stuff that I can't think of now.

Also I look at the sponsored links when I want some funny stuff to read.

Ive experience the 'bogus' listing effect. It seems some people may have had the item at one point in time and perhaps discontinued the item and didnt bother changing the listing.