How to make preview better?

I posted this to the answers forum but don't really expect answers there being buried in so many complaints. This is kind of a follow up to an earlier posting of mine but this last update should show by now on top of last few updates that preview does not work in it's present form:

I spent a lot of time in preview in last three weeks and have some comments and questions:

1) Land is nearly always static, same old builds, no land to buy. Because of this we can not test terraforming, buying, selling, joining, dividing, audio and video. THis past beta there were just a handful of days with open land and it was a blast. I had 4096 sqM to play with and did a lot and found bugs to report. I can not afford tier, others are like me and would welcome the opportnuity to become mini land barons even if for short while. FOr the vast majority of time in this last preview there were several regions open, out of all the area there were just two sandboxs that someone could actually build anything in. All that space and there was nothing we could do but look at it or maybe test a vehicle. Out of the two sandboxes only one allowed scripting.

A)Why not wipe 25% of preview every single new version and put it up for sale? WHy not have all sandboxes open when preview is open?

2) I am not paid to be in preview but felt an obligation to give back to community for what I have recieved by finding and reporting bugs. But you do have Bug Hunters that I would imagine are paid. They were only in preview 2 days before release of the update. Before that the most people I saw in preview at any one time was FOUR the majority of time i was either alone or one other person.

B) Why wait two days before release before getting bug hunters in? How can I and others become bug hunters? Can we get paid for hunting bugs? Could there be a bounty for the first person to report a bug?

3) Nowhere in SL is there listed the status of the preview grid. It makes it very frustrating trying to help. Is it going to be down or unavailable for an hour, a day or days?

C) You already have the perfect spot to put the status of the preview grid. In the Preview Forum. Can someone when they take it offline or put it online please post a comment stating that in the forum?

4)These few things if addressed should make a big difference in people actually going onto preview. It is a great, safe place to script with no interruptions, People with a 512 lot like me or landless could build thier dream homes and so many other reasons to go there.

D) But why in the heck go if you can not do anything????? How is this any kind of a real test with so few people reporting bugs and with so many limits on what we can actually do? Let us say there were 100 people there everyday instead of a handful, all reporting bugs. THis would gcreate a bigger workload for whoever logged the bugs. But wouldn't getting 100 bug reports on same bug shave hours off the hunting?? You would have so much information on each individual bug.

5) I came across a page somewhere listing standard QA tests. But I don't know which ones to do etc.

E)Could someone put a sticky ontop of the Preievew forum containing a list of tests they would like everyone to perform ontop of our doing our own "thing"? Wouldn't this be a viable way to gather much more reliable information?

I seem to remember somthing like this in the Preview grid when they had ...what was it called Audit? A bunch of blocks that had example scripts in them that tested varous things. of course scrips cannot test everything. They also had instructions in some to test various thing. like take a snap shot, give it to a friend confirm they got it and it is the same thing. But not everything can be tested.

The only thing I could do was, go down my list of objects rezzing one at a time. Running thru every aspect of them making sure they worked. and when they didn't try to figure what part or fuction did not work correctly.

Somthing I did notice is when the Main Grid goes down all the sudden you get a fload of people in the preview grid. That was about the only time Preview seem to to get a good test. People have to get their SL fix one way or another. But then again don't know if those people bother to pay attention and report bugs.

The preview grid needs content in order to test things like downloading textures and frame rate, but it CAN NOT be the same content from the main grid since someone could use an exploit to steel scripts or texture GUIDS.

I propose setting up preview like the teen grid and make it persistent.

I would like to own some land in the preview grid and I think everyone should get 512SQ tier + what ever tier they have on the main grid.

I also recommend making a main grid sandbox island where grey-goo attacks and other bad stuff can be used without fear of getting in trouble. To prevent abuse, I would cut the land up into 1024sq sections and have “No script” dividers.

Yeh, there should always be a preview grid up.

Maybe this should be sandboxed. Have a bunch of sims in the preview grid set up as "land sandboxes" with 512 meter parcels scripted (in the Perl scripts previously mentioned in other threads that drive the auctions and stuff) to revert to Linden land for sale at L$1/m every 6 hours.

OK a couple of thoughts. First in regards to "persistent" I may not be understanding the use of this term. If it means like static which the preview grid is now then no it is worthless. THat IS the problem with preview, so much area is unchanging. We do need some area that is unchanged to make sure an upgrade doesn't change anything by itself. But we also need to be able to go in and do builds to check out the tools including land tools. People do own land in preview on a persistent basis. Unfortunately if they do not come into preview then various tools do not get a trial run. So I came up with a completely arbitrary number of wiping 25% of grid every new preview edition and putting it up for sale.

512sqM is completely inadequate. For 4 days this last preview there were four full regions for sale. During that 4 days only 5 or 6 people actually bought land. Then the grid was rolled back. The same for having land for only 6 hours. Why 6 hours? For 6 hours you can build in a sandbox.

But no matter what, we need people in preview, they are not there now. Give an incentive to go. One BIG incentive is having a fair amount of land to play with for a few days. We have that now with an allowance of $5,000 and land for $1 per sqM. BUT for the majority of time there is no land for sale. We need a reason to go to preview besides just walking around and looking ("ooooh isn't that pretty", just doesn't cut it) or playing in only one sandbox that allows scripting.

It is an interesting idea on having a "controlled" uncontrolled enviroment. Just to see what kind of maliscious stuff people can come up with and to learn how it can be controlled. Guess kinda like a company hiring a hacker to point out the security vulnerabilities. Probably have to setup seperate rules for such an area, like maybe only open during certain times of the day. The area would have to be monitored on a closer basis then the rest of preview in case things do get out of hand and probably on its on seperate simulator? Don't know. But I do know that this would definitely get some of the best and brightest back into preview on a regular basis.

Here's a way to make the preview grid better:

LL could listen to the bug reports submitted on the preview grid and wait to release the update once those bugs have been fixed and the fixes tested for new bugs.
*Gasp!* What a concept, LL!

It would have been adequate for me to test any of the land changes in the last few previews. This isn't "land for building" this is "land for testing land code". And there's no reason you can't buy multiple parcels and join them... in fact that's one of the things that need to be tested.
So you don't get all the land locked up by the same people throughout the preview, as happens now.
Letting people own and play with land whether they're premium or basic would get a lot of people into the preview grid.
Which is exactly why I proposed a 6 hour limit in the first place.

But 6 hours is worthless for many tests. I only have a hour every few days to play SL and one experiment could take weeks. Worse, yet my theory about one bug means that I must own objects older than the other builds.

I propose that "Persistent" means that it is like a separate grid that is not deleted.

In other words, you create a new life in the preview grid and it stays there.

In terms of land ownership
1) I propose that ALL accounts can own 512SQ of land.
2) You can buy more land in preview by adding real land Tier from the main grid.
3) A limit of 8192Sq would prevent anyone from getting all the land.
4) You have to log in once a month to keep the land.

Since the preview grid is not "Trusted" I suggest that only could transfer full perm objects back and forth between the preview grid and the main grid by using a drop box.

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The other option is to have "Preview" sims in the main grid where people could buy land and have it replicated into the preview grid.

What is the purpose of Preview?

To me it is to catch the Major bugs that would otherwise make SL completely unusable. Which then gives them a few days to iron out the big bugs. Then once they get somthing that works they release it. Now I may not agree with this, but this is what they are doing. Once it is on the main grid that is where the nitty gritty testing is done.

Imagine if they where to release 1.12.1.(0) on the mian grid. They would get such a fload of reports it would be impossible for them to catagorize the bugs. They would have so many different version of the same bug report that they would miss the small things.

I may not like it, but Preview does serve it purpose quite well. SL is going to be changing. It is not just for us to play around and doing fun things. They are going for a much larger picture. It may be to make a development platform they can sell out to busnesses. So campanies have a quick down an dirty method of testing things out. SL is such and easy platform to develop in you don't have to worry about much.

So really Preview in LL eyes is serving its purpose. If it wasn't they would be changing it, like they are doing now with SL.

Before LL added the purchase land Wizard system in that directly links to Linex, it used to be possible for anyone (even basic accounts) to buy land in preview. Now it isn't.