Questions Inspired by Project Open Letter

I'm going to try my best to put into question form the main topics brought up by Project Open Letter which a lot of people have shown interest in having answered. If I miss anything or you feel a question could be bettered phrased, feel free to suggest such changes.

I'm going to try and avoid too general of questions and ask specific questions that would warrent specific answers rather than general dodgy answers (I've learned my lesson in the past with Town Halls ).

1) Is Linden Lab currently working on a way for users to backup inventory items to their own hard drives? And if so, is there a time table for when this feature will be done? If not, why not?

2) Is LL working on fixing the issues with Friends List and Friends Online (web)? When can we expect these to be working properly? What is the cause of the current issues? Why do these features keep breaking?

3) Are the issues with Search being worked on? When will we see more reliable Searching?

I'm not familiar with the other problems personaly, so I'm not sure exactly how to question those (such as transactions failing, I've not had a lot of experience with this myself). Some seem related to load as well, which I could guess at the answer to those questions ("We're working on making SL work better as the world expands.". But if you want to add something to this, go for it.

Related....

1) Is Linden Lab going to clear the backlog of mentor applications and empower inworld help to its mentor residents since many new residents are truly at the mercy of just happening upon a mentor (or kind soul) as they enter the world. So very many of us want to help...we just need to be empowered.

2) Is Linden Lab going to significantly improve its billing issues response times? I have seen or heard about literally hundreds of resident issues related to incorrect cc#s, unable to enter new payment info on expired cards, unable to receive payouts, paypal incompatabilities, etc. What is a reasonable response time for critical issues such as these?

Thanks in advance and looking forward to Thursday (although it's not terribly US friendly so will be just looking at the transcript after the fact )

Gillian

1) Running the risk of sounding redundant, could you briefly address the issues raised by Cristiano, e.g., why are there so many presence issues in SL, and why do other IM systems orders of magnitude larger seem to work better?

2) A long time ago you mentioned you were moving the IM backend to Jabber.
Have you done so? / Are you still going to do it?
Is this the source of presence issues? / Would it decrease presence issues if implemented?
Any ETA? Ok, stupid question I know. The first rule of Linden Roadmaps is, you do not ask about Linden roadmaps. The second rule of Linden Roadmaps is, you do NOT ask about Linden roadmaps

Could you schedule some time to work on VWR-86 and related vehicle bugs? These are major problems that break existing products and kill other projects.

More generally, I'd like to see a lot more emphasis on getting LSL working correctly so we can develop more interesting content. It is particularly frustrating to work on something for a couple of months only to have an update break it and never get fixed.

The new Sculpted Prims by Qarl Linden look to be a big step forward for creating in Second Life. Can Linden Labs now take the time to consolidate their gains?

Great questions and comments. Thanks.

Would like to discuss the "new" Customer Service in place. We call and get a recording stating there is a 8 to 10 minute hold time. While we wait we hear music and "tips". Then after waiting 10 mins getting another recording that "no one is available to answer the call leave a message are calls will be returned". Which of course we all do but we never get a return call to that message.

Not sure about anyone else but I am speaking for the disabled group when I say for some it is very difficult to hold the phone for the 10 mins. Add to it the expectation of talking to someone that can help us (having been told it will happen) only to be told its not going to. It is extremely frustrateing!!

This has gone on far to long! It can not be that hard to hire a "bank" of customer service operators that can help with the basic problems most people have and if they cant help, can field calls to the apropreate ones who can. At the very least we will feel that we arent getting ignored.

Why is it other companies don't have a problem giving thier customers decent Customer Service but for at least 9 months LL has had a dont care additude with thiers?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know this is long and not sure if you just wanted a question here to ask or examples to build questions on but that is what I would like covered and would appreciate the help scaleing it down so it can be asked tks

As the number of residents inworld expands continually, the lag explosion has gone from annoying to frustrating to its current level of intolerability. Once the 30K residents inworld at one time level has been reached, I crash continually about every 15 minutes or so, and the rest of the time is mostly spent utterly frozen in one spot. Chat lag is just as bad - the screen stays blank so long I often think I've crashed again, only to erupt in a chat tsunami without warning, and pretty much impossible to follow.

What, if anything, is being done to address the presumable inadequacy of the servers and routers, and why is all the attention on trivial tweaks instead of a very serious issue indeed? I should point out that apart from the sheer aggravation of lag, it is costing merchants a lot of money - many a time i have wanted to purchase an item and been unable to because of timeout issues due to lag. The money I save is money that would have supported an SL merchant.

Perhaps it's time to upgrade those Commodore 64's to something a little more capable of handling the traffic!

Running a Club with currently 900+ Group members myself, and just recently starting the Angry Owners Group (which grew to 400+ members in under 24 hours) with a goal similar to Project Open Letter, my biggest concerns are the following:

When is LL Finally going to repair Group Notice functionality?
It has been a long time since Notices were functioning normally.. Right now me and my managers have to teleport off of our Island to have any chance at all of getting a group notice out there, and right now they are hardly even working at all, even when we clear cache, relog, teleport to the best possible Mainland location, remove all of our prims (and all the other tricks).
It is ESSENTIAL for many of our business owners that this problem is fixed very soon now.. This has been going on for too long now. We really have to be able to get a hold of our customers by group Notices! Those not working (properly) right now is doing a lot of harm to the ones you should cherish most, for running the SL economy!

Is LL ever going to implement a disable option for Group IMs?
Again, Running a 900+ and a 400+ member group, Group IM spam by new residents are harming businesses... I find that many owners are troubled by this problem, and most of us feel there needs to be an option implemented to turn off the Group IM ability for certain Classes within Groups.. Also any member should be able to uncheck receival of Group IMs in the Group Front page as with Notices...
Seeing someone spam my groups, I can just see the member count dropping afterwards.. Some of my Busy members just cant use annoying IMs popping up when they dont have time to go Clubbing etc...
Please Lindens, consider implementing this feature...

Will you be fixing Crashing problems occuring after the new Viewer update?
Some of my friends have been experiencing severe crashing problems after the new viewer update... Driver Updates, changing settings in Preferences, Reinstalling SL and such have not helped.. Could you please look into this problem? People shouldnt be buying other hardware because a viewer update makes them crash on an ATI Graphics card or such...

Why did you not refund the payments for our Given out Ratings?
I think many of us don't mind you taking away the Rating System.. However we do find it unacceptable that you did not refund the fees paid for giving out ratings! Some of us have spent thousands of Lindens on ratings, now getting nothing in return!
How in gods name could you EVER consider taking away the Rating system and NOT refunding the fees?! This really upsets a lot of experienced Avatars, and mostly just the ones you need to satisfy, being the more experienced ones!

my main concerns has already been stated: Customer service, and lag issues, etc, as well as inventory, crashes, and prescence problems. i would also like to know if LL is goin to have or implement stricter consequences in regards to griefing.


thumbs up to the creator of that letter.

1) Is the continual issue of items lost during transactions being worked on and is there an ETA?

2) Inventory lost after logout/crash. Being worked on? ETA?

3) Will the responses to support emails ever be anything other then blaming user system/connection issues?

4) Is the ineffective group notices being worked on? ETA?

5) Is the issue of failed uploads, even during lower load times, being worked on? ETA?

See the threads on it in the Current Version Feedback and the Feature Suggestion forums.
Point 1: People who got the stipend bonuses from ratings have been paid back 100 times over.
Point 2: If it was worth the cost at the time, then there should be no refund. "Lifetime" means "lifetime of the product" not "lifetime of the user."

1) Do you have any intention of implementing the 'Contingency Plan' posted in a blog announcement for limiting log ins when the grid comes under strain? This was mooted many moons ago and we have seen no sign of it since, either in discussion or implementation, despite the obvious grid strain that happens regularly as concurrence reaches higher and higher levels.

2) Is there any plan to upgrade the Mainland to match the performance of the newer Class 5 Servers, or will it be abandoned to become a ghetto where nobody wishes to own land any more? If the mainland is NOT going to be upgraded and becomes a ghetto will Linden Lab rehouse those who cannot affort to abandon their holdings when the land is unsaleable?

3) Is there any plan to clear the dormant accounts that have not been logged in for more than, say, one year, to relieve strain on the databases?

4) If the exponential curve of new sign-ups continues to grow at the current rate, will you consider limiting new customers. It seems that you would rather have a new million milestone passed than maintain the services that many knew and loved, like ratings and Live Help.

Thank you
Imogen Saltair

Cory, could you please explain why simultaneously my friend list has been broken for more than 6 months, why my offline IMs are blank so I have no idea what people are saying to me, and why I can't even manage the group I created for this open letter because the group tools are so flawed that I can't even see who is in the group? At most companies, the entire development staff would have been fired over this many critical bugs. Why should any of you still be there with these levels of problems on a regular basis? Who is going to stand up and take responsibility these severe ongoing flaws?

Umm, Philip still has the pedal to the metal Cris, and has no intentions of pulling over...

Sam, the whole point of the open letter is to serve notice that Philip's method of management of Second Life is not acceptable to Linden Lab's customers.

And to everyone else - there's little point in asking Linden Lab 'what are you...?', 'when are you going to...?', 'Are you aware that...?', and so forth.

As Cris so rightly says, the sheer number of critical bugs - and not just in presence/IM - would, in a normal firm, be sufficient to result in the dismissal of the entire development team.
It follows that there has to be a sea change in the entire working culture of Linden Labs if this mess is ever going to be sorted out.

Philip's grand experiment in management methods has had it's chance - we are all living our Second Lives with the result.
WE all know it hasn't worked. HE either can't, or won't, see that.

Credit where credit's due, it seemed to work in the very early stages, fostering a creative approach and quick development.
Crucially it also created a legacy of muddled undisciplined code and long term bugs that has become a huge liability.

It's time for change. Overdue in fact. Now. That's what this is all about.

Asking questions that can, and WILL, be brushed off with generalised or vague answers is not going to do anything except allow Linden Lab to imagine they've wriggled off the hook.

The question that needs asking is:

How quickly is Linden Lab going to effect the change to a normal development management method in order to stabilise and de-bug Second Life?

That's it. The bottom line. What Linden Lab is doing isn't working.

No excuses about 'unforeseen' growth - any fool could have predicted the results of giving Second Life away to all comers, without even elementary verification. Anyone who couldn't see what was going to happen - and prepare for the results - shouldn't be in charge of the investment behind Linden Lab.

There isn't a question that things need to change. The question is, how quickly can the change be accomplished?

EDIT: Sorry, I'm just too angry to post anything constructive. I just deleted my initial post.

FIX IT.

NOW!

This thread seems for questions only but I'ld like to answer this one :

Backing up might be more complicated than it appears.
There are 2 different things to back up :

A - things you didn't create and have partial or no permission for
If you don't have permissions, what is going to be backed up ? a list of the items ?
That's ok if the item is not unique in SL, and if it's not an object.
I'm not sure that SL currently can determine if an object is a copy of another object, making a copy yes, finding out I don't know.
Also, if it's just a list, LL could back it up on their servers, but might not want to, no wonder with over 10000 items per avatar !
If it's not a list but the actual items that are backed up, the materials would become very easy to steal, especially scripts, unless everything is encrypted.

B - things you created or have full permissions for
Scripts and notecards can be copied/pasted easily, you can download textures that you have rights for, sure having this process automated would be great.
However there will be a problem if A and B are mixed in an object, if the whole thing is encrypted to protect A, you won't be able to use the material offline.
Now if you're a builder mostly/only interested in backing-up your objects (without their content) then the solution exists and is very easy, you can even transfer an object that you built on the beta grid, to the main grid - I can show how, in world at my place.

Like many end users I have noticed a significant downturn in stability and performance in Second Life and have felt increasing concern about it. I think that stability and performance are the critical issues because provided a system stays up and responds well, users can often live with assorted bugs and "features". Using a work-around is not a problem if you can get into the system and it responds quickly. Once a system becomes slow and unstable then any work-arounds become impractical, so the bugs then become highly significant.

I should like to ask Cory to provide us with his view on what the issues are in respect of stability and performance of Second Life.

What are the key factors that are affecting this?
Are there technical limitations?
In what ways is the stability and performance of the system being reduced? (What is actually happening in the system.)
What are the possible causes of this?

IMO we need very clear problem definition and analysis here to guide and direct the approach to solving the problems (and then preventing re-occurrence) and Cory's views are key to this.

First off, I hope the understanding overall for this town hall is a simple one: Fixes Before Features. I'm all for a nice bell and whistle, but all the issues of the open letter are of greater impact than voice, sculpted prims, and other content that could add additional difficulties to an already impacted system.

Anyway, a couple questions of my own

1. Linden Lab has indicated a need for additional staff, especially for customer service positions: is the process for hiring staff being looked at as well, to prevent the bottlenecks currently in the system and allow qualified candidates a quicker response time from LL?

2. Can some indications as to Second Life's future be given? Is the desire to court corporations over individuals, or 'push' corporate materials onto the existing userbase at the expense of existing users? Likewise, is it a future goal to integrate both teen and adult grids into a single entity, and alter the TOS and community standards in an adverse fashion in order to do so?

3. Will mechanisms such as the Jira database be made more user friendly? Will other avenues be opened for providing legitimate, necessary feedback to Linden Lab about issues within Second Life, therefore preventing the need for future "Project Open Letters" in order to gain the attention of LL?

4. Can any details be provided for a promised age verification system and/or the opt-in age/location content?

Mari
(Who avoided her real pet peeves - the Mac graphic bug and the ageplay notecard - in a desire to remain at least somewhat focused on issues of POL. And because she knew at least the secone part of the above would never, ever be discussed in a public event)

If I had to choose just one question for Linden Lab, it would be - please enable a means by which I can back up all my inventory content to my local PC.

The best means, I think, would be some kind of automated system. Or at least, a system where you have a choice of setting an auto-backup or doing it manually on demand.

If my blog can do that, why not Second Life?

[Edited to correct some really bad typos]

Given the growing number of questions and concerns, is a town hall a sufficent means of addressing all the issues? Or will we just be read a prepared statement with some fob-off answers afterwards?

Since I believe the answer to my first question is a resounding "no", what does Linden Lab plan to do to foster and improve customer communications? All of LL's recent actions and approaches seem to have the reverse effect, building and creating walls between Linden Lab and its customers. I believe that such walls are creating further isolation between the customer base and LL's developers and managers.

If we, as customers, no longer matter, at least have the decency to tell us. That growth at any cost, even alienating the existing customer base, is the only goal.

Wow, am I frustrated! *sighs*

Finally, I'd like to reiterate the question above about implementing restricted login. Since we've seen high concurrent numbers resulting in Second Life problems and no login restriction has occurred, could you tell us just what it will take for you to implement login restriction? Based upon current actions (none), it appears to be yet another bone thrown to us, to quiet us, as if you never had any real intent of ever using this tool. It is just this sort of attitude and lack of real and honest communication that is pissing some of us off.

Now, if only I could attend the town hall, but it's during the work day for the entire continental US. This is definitely part of the impetus behind my very first question.

C'mon, LL -- reopen communication with us, not at us.

Because your blog is yours. You are the creator. If I buy a shirt from Ginny Talamasca or a skin from Gala Phoenix, I am not the creator and I shouldn't have access to the TGA files that make those items - which is what a backup would be: a locally stored copy of the mesh layers that make the item.

So, never gonna happen. Efforts would be much better spent trying to lobby for stable inventory rather than local inventory.

I echo the sentiments of everyone concerned by the overwhelming lag and unreliable-at-best "Friends Online" lists (especially the inworld Friends listing). There is another issue briefly mentioned in the "Project Open Letter" letter, however, that is not discussed as often, but, at least for me, is seriously affecting my enjoyment of SecondLife. My issue is with the game of musical chairs that often happens with attachments when you move from one sim to another (be it on foot, in the air, or via TP).

I will be walking along, minding my own business, when (after the 10-15 seconds of uncontrollable walking "lag" that accompanies crossing sims), my tail -- I'm a neko -- will be sticking out in front of me so I look like a male porn star, at least one shoe will be firmly planted up my rear end, my necklace will be floating out in space to my left, my ears will be God(dess)-knows-where, and my hair... well... it looks like I'm in urgent need of a bikini-wax, if you get my drift. ("Hirsute" is NOT the look I'm going for!)

Will this issue be addressed any time soon?

Thanks to the Lindens for responding to these issues... the passion with which your users lash out as these challenges continue is a testiment to how much we care about the world you've given us!

-- Kat

To echo someone else:

1) How quickly is Linden Lab going to effect the change to a normal development management method in order to stabilize and de-bug Second Life?



And some other stuff:

2) Friends list: Why is it STILL unreliable? When will it be fixed?

3) Slow rezzing, moving through molasses, prim relocation or not appearing at all - relogging, flushing cache, etc. can only do so much. It didn't used to be this bad before 1.15 patch, and if it was, we had functional versions to go back to!

4) Rubber-banding on sim crossings - still there, still bad - when will that be fixed? What can users to to report these problems more effectively, in order that it might be fixed faster?

5) LIVE HELP! If something goes wrong, or we get a grid attack, currently we DO NOT HAVE people to contact!

So far I've seen "there's contact people on help islands - if TP's are broke (as they always are under heavy database load) or people keep crashing due to lag and other issues, I'm sorry, how are we supposed to report these again?

"Fill out this form" and we have NO WAY of knowing whether it actually DOES go to someone, or just gets bit-bucketted after generating an auto response. I'm sorry, auto-responses are NOT a guarantee that anyone's going to LOOK at the problem - only that it was received!

6) Abuse reports - Can we get ANY more useful response than the basic "we can't tell you what we did or if we did anything, but we're closing this report"? Like, say, "We took action" or "We decided action was not necessary"?

7) Form reports in general - How about sending back copies of what WE WROTE in the report when sending us an autoresponse? So that if an issue still exists later, or crops up again, we have a reminder what we originally said in the first place and it saves time if we have to report it again?

And yes, I'd like to see occasional bouts of restricted logins myself, even if it means my account is affected. It's getting to the point where I can't log in during heavy load times ANYWAY so it doesn't make any difference!

9) Don't be afraid to read blog comments AND COMMENT ON THEM - yes, there's a lot of general griping, and some useless ranting, but there's ALSO USEFUL ITEMS mentioned by people in the blog comments because, well, t'aint anyplace ELSE to go anymore!

10) Let the next few patches be BUG FIXES rather than upgrades! Listen to your customers, because if the system gets unusable to them, they WILL go elsewhere!

(A lot of these are communications issues - see a common thread here yet?)