Dwell Totals Wiped Yet Again

This hurts. It hurts a lot, and it hurts for a couple of reasons.

I'm a member of the Montmartre and Centre Ville groups, and I have shops on both islands. I'm also a believer in and a supporter of the shared vision of a self-supporting artists'/teaching colony on Montmarte that will enrich SL for everyone. On Montmartre, after a recent meeting, we all had a big push to work harder this weekend. I put in at least 16 hours this weekend, including creating Adventure Scrolls and setting them up in both sims. And, wow, we were just blown away and thrilled when the Isle hit the popular list, with the nice orange thumbs-up on the map and everything! People were dropping in because of it, to check out our builds!

Then, today, what happens? The dwell totals for Montmartre and Centre Ville were wiped -- zeroed out. No more happy shiny orange thumb. No nothin'. After we all worked our butts off.

But hey, I see some malls that compete with CV still have their dwell totals, so they're right up at the top of the Find list. So they're gonna get the traffic from the list and the map, and we're gonna have an unfair, more difficult time attracting people to visit our groups' islands. It's horrible for business, and I and other merchants have rent to pay. The owners of the islands have rent to pay. And, <expletive deleted>, we worked SO hard to get the dwell up and earn that orange thumb.

This is, what, about the THIRD time this has happened? Please, Lindens -- please -- figure out what's causing this and fix it.

That was very well written.. Hopefully the point is taken and something is done about it.. I know how much time and energy is put into these huge malls.. not just by the people selling stuff but the owners of the sims.. and mall Management..
I am a CV mall Vendor, and have noticed an EXTREAME drop in sales in the past week Not fair THanks Kim for helping bring this to the Lindens Attention.


Lady Greenstein
Owner of AFK Designs

This bug has repeated at least half a dozen times that I have noticed. In the past it was universal and completely wiped the popular places list. But lately it has been selective. Centre Ville market (used to be Sage) thrives because of its constant appearance in the top 10 list. Merchants are leaving due to the decline in traffic.
The time and effort that has been wasted because of this bug in the CV market and the Montmartre Group is horrible. But, I feel even worse for the land owners who have also lost real cash. Everyone will recover, but this unnecessary difficulty impedes SL's growth and I feel the land owners deserve reimbursement.

Well, what might have made things even worse was that two competing malls were put in the top picks list. There is like 5 malls listed now. In such competitive field this can make a huge difference, especially after being kicked from popular places list by dwell bugs

Response (Dan) - 10/11/2004 11:27 AM
"Thanks for your report. Dwell calculations did not run on Sunday 10/11/04. Sunday's dwell will be added to today's dwell."

My reply:
"corrections" in the past don't seem to have been done. Dwell was wiped, not just uncalculated.... CV has had 0 dwell several times now all day. Still would like to know why and if it has been fixed.

I received a similar reply to my bug report (also from hard-workin' Dan -- he's got a tough job, on the front line receiving complaints we write when we're upset). So I wrote back and re-explained more clearly. Soon after, I received another response (from Kona), saying they're aware of the issue and it has been passed on to the developers. No time frame for a fix yet, but I guess they have to figure out what the problem is before they can offer that. So I'll just hang in for a while, attempting to remain calm, and continuing to breathe into this paper bag.

Edit: Maybe they have a backup from before the totals were wiped. /me crosses fingers

Its all fine now...and it was not these problems that have dropped it ..people are tired of huge lag at some places..and same old shops and stuff to buy its happining in all places that do not have a club or events everyday.

Welcome to SL

I don't agree Tipsy. It is definitely related to the problems mentioned above. We never had problem for more than 6 months, almost 6 weeks of which was on the island sim until:

- Suddenly all rent-o-matics became bugged with 1.54 update which mean everytime those placed before that patch expire they can not be renewed before I manually replace them.

- Some stupid "feature" was introduced that forces us to add potential event holders to some bureacratic list that regularily gets wiped by some bug

- Our dwell was wiped several times after days with majoy events which all went in vein. Paying dwell money later does not help. It is the showing or not showing in places list that matter for business not some pennies in dwell bonus.

- Several other malls were added to top picks, but not our place. That is effectively Linden Lab telling people where to go shopping. This is not free market but central planning economy.

There were also other very annoying things that I am not sure if they only effect our sim or other island sims as well:

- When I used the return-objects function in the sim in order to clean up and remove items not set to Centre Ville Merchants group a lot of items that actually were set to group disappeared as well. In some cases I could verify it myself. Retailers love this bug!

- After one patch suddenly we had insane insane insane lag for more than a week with sim performance dropping to 5 frame per second (normal is about 500-2000). First we thought it was a market event we were holding, but when the market was gone after a week it did not get better. Finally Linden did something and fixed problem after 10 days or so.

- After we built sky mall and put the telehub there at 200m altitute we had to find out that because of some stupid bug in teleport routing script most people who clicked on Centre Ville on the map ended up at telehub in Montmartre. This forced us to place telehub on ground level and use teleporters.

- Because of another bug with group elections we had to make the merchants group invite-only adding another inconvenience for people who want join.

- For some time teleporting from mainland to our islands was bugged. This was after one of the updates and I remember how this also badly affected Montmartre, killing event after event after event there. I think some people then moved their events to mainland location and never came back.

So there is quite some problems. Not related to situation in Centre Ville, but also nice example for things going wrong was when I wanted to buy some land and saw it was my billing date. I asked one liason if I would be charged if I raise my land tier at billing date and she told me that this shouldn't be the case. So I raised tier and bought the land, only to get charged 100 US$ for nothing or, more precisely, for 6 hours of tier usage before my account was debited at 10 pm that day. In fact, I think in my time zone it was one day after billing day already when I raised the tier. Needless to say that after two e-mails Linden support decide to ignore any further inquiries from me on that issue.

I also found it thoroughly ridiculous when another liason approach me two days ago, sending me TOS notecard and asking us to place all mature content in Centre Ville inside a building. All the sim is ours and all conected sims too, and they are all rated mature. I wonder if Linden Lab is also going to enforce this rule when people have their sex parties at the beach in Phantasy Isle or Eros. Well, I guess now we are forced to put all porn vendors inside the telehub arrival room at Centre Ville

Mmmm, lots of work for Linden Lab to do I think....

Uh.... WHAT?! I could just about understand if it were in sight of a PG sim, but it's not.

So this is new. I bought my own mature sim so I could do precisely what I pleased in it. If the Lindens are going to start making up new rules to impose on private islands, they better be offering some kinda buy back option for the people that bought them to be free of these kind of rulings.

Thats the only thing that really pisses me off about SL. Total lack of consistency, some people get a better service than others, different rules applied, Lindens making things up as they go along, and continually and arbitrarily changing the goalposts and the product I'm paying all this money for, and just expecting me to keep forking over the cash (cue the 'if you dont like it you can always leave/give up your island' brigade. One thing to say to you, guys... 'a thousand friggin bucks down!')

Even private island owners apparently have different rules from each other. Despite canvassing a number of times I'm not allowed the exact same privileges another island owner already enjoys.

*sigh*

I am waiting for a response on what exactly we need to do since mature content is scattered around the market in about a dozen places. We setup a mature content section with a divider as a courtesy. A policy needs to be written and mature content needs to be defined..... so I expect nothing will happen which is fine with me.

Centre Ville Market has declined in traffic for many reasons including the end of the initial rush after the move to its own sim, lack of events, poor placement of the telehub (it is moved back to the market now), competition, and lag. But, being pulled off the popular places list is what hurts us the most. I received the same response from the Lindens as Kim did earlier. I wonder if it is worth holding events yet....

The Isle de Montmartre was created with the idea that we could glorify the Artiste in SL (and in each of us).

The preliminary idea of creating a Sim where anyone could come and host their events in a variety of settings initially took off like a rocket.

Then the bugs came.

Dwell constantly gets wiped (and sorry Tipsy…not made up or fixed). People are no longer able to post an Event in Montmartre without, as Anshe blatantly put it, ‘being placed on a bureaucratic list’. The list also gets wiped on a regular basis.

Large ugly builds appear on the maps that don’t exist on the Island, but deters people from exploring.

Teleporting issues make it impossible for people to attend events.

The return object function deletes group set objects including my own (causing rebuilds of large landscaping projects a constant).

The 1.5 was so bad personally (inability to log in for days at a time), and for Montmartre plans, I was and am very close to saying the heck with it and leaving the game.

We initially invested a lot of ‘Real’ dollars into Montmartre hoping to create ‘real’ content for other players. Bugs like dwell wipes, and ‘lists’ that go missing minutes after one spends an hour creating, makes one wonder why we bothered?

Real life is depressing and stressful enough without adding this to my second life. What can be done to fix these problems?

Don’t even get me started on WHY is a commercial retail area in top picks in the first place…and that doesn’t show favoritism even a little bit :/ as that is not a technical issue (although disturbing). OR Being told by liaisons to keep a hat on adult themed objects on a mature privately owned Sim? When same liaisons are seen in public meetings sporting the group tags of factions known for ‘sexually charged’ events? Knot so disturbing but funny as hell!

I've been watching the dwell in Centre Ville more closely. Yesterday until the afternoon it was 0, then it slowly built up to almost 3000. This morning both Centre Ville and Montmartre are at 0 dwell again. Very harsh, I hope everyone has a good sense of humour.

I saw the number for Montmartre dwell last night up over 4000 and it was near the top of the list again. I figured the Lindens had restored it from backup or something . . . or is the Isle so cool we made all that back in a day? Centre Ville's dwell total was up again, too.

As of this moment, Montmartre's and Centre Ville's totals are zero once more. I sent in a bug report and received a response in less than ten minutes, from Kona. Kona says the developers think they're "on the right path" for finding the cause, which they think might be related to more than one bug. They're trying to sort out "if this a local area bug (sim related) or this is an SL wide issue." Kona also said, "We appreciate your patience and rest assured this is a high priority issue we plan on solving asap," and asked that I report again if the problem reoccurs.

The most disturbing thing in this thread, to me, is Mae mentioning she's so fed up she's thinking about leaving. You're my good friend, Maesie, and I'd have a big hole in my Second Life if you left (if such a horrible thing happened as you leaving, you damn well better keep in touch!). Your Knot Another Quiz events are a highlight of the day for a lot of people, five days a week. In fact, it's usually the best part of my day in Second AND First Life, and I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. All these bugs and problems suck, for sure, but please try to wait it out a little longer. Don't foresake Mr. Tinkles because of bugs without wings.

P.S. Bug said, "give mae cookie then she stay"

Well... thats because they dont want anyone to become offended by mature content.. Imagine someone came to shop and they fly by some avatar porn store.. they *might* become offended and complain...

I know it is hard to understand why they would complain.. but thats how many people are...

The TOS has always been perfectly clear: Mature content must not be visible by people just flying by.

That said, I think private islands shouldn't necessarily always have this restriction.

There is nothing in the TOS that is clear on mature content. Actually the word "mature" is not even in the TOS. It is in the community standards though:

"Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense strong language or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex or strong violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained within private land in areas rated Mature (M)."

Am I missing something else?

Once upon a time when the world was young and so was I.

A Spider sat in her dark tower. The tower once housed Repunzel who unleashed her long golden hair. Sleeping Beauty once slept here for 100 years. Romeo and Juliet killed themselves in this tower.

This tower can only be called loneliness.

Her isle was once the home of a thriving Artiste community; people came, lived, and played here.

Dreams were created here. Goals were attained. AND THEN…the bugs came…

They came and gobbled up the gold prize of popularplazes…they stole the telehub destinations…Made waterfalls and homes disappear… and then the land became barren…art was lost, creativity frozen.

And Spider wept.

Tears of blood flowed down her porcelain cheeks as she watched her children writhe and squirm in terror as the Plague Dwelvipe covered the land wiping it of populace… a smirch from which there is no protection

Once upon a time when the world was young and so was I.

A Spider sat in her dark tower. The tower once housed Repunzel who unleashed her long golden hair. Sleeping Beauty once slept here for 100 years. Romeo and Juliet killed themselves in this tower.

This tower can only be called loneliness.

Her isle was once the home of a thriving Artiste community; people came, lived, and played here.

Dreams were created here. Goals were attained. AND THEN…the bugs came…

They came and gobbled up the gold prize of popularplazes…they stole the telehub destinations…Made waterfalls and homes disappear… and then the land became barren…art was lost, creativity frozen.

And Spider wept.

Tears of blood flowed down her porcelain cheeks as she watched her children writhe and squirm in terror as the Plague Dwelvipe covered the land wiping it of populace… a smirch from which there is no protection[/QUOTE]

Maybe I am too much of an optomist. Some good has already come out of this disaster. Earlier today I logged into SL to an invite from Kim Anubis to join a "pack of lindens." I arrived in Centre Ville to a gathering of half a dozen red pitchfork wielding CV members discussing our problems with Hamlet, Haney, and Bub linden. I arrived late to the discussion and I'm afraid the real bug issues may have been over shadowed by other complaints and the threats of a peasant uprising. But, I was very impressed by the support we received from others who appreciate what our sims provide. Thank you to everyone who has offered their support. Lets hope things get better soon.

It sounds like Mae could use some of that support now.

"Out came the sunshine,
And dried up all the rain,
And eency weency spider,
Went up the spout again."

Dear Spider,

Today Bub, Ryan, Dan, Haney, and Hamlet Linden came to visit, prepared to sacrifice themselves to poking pitchforks and bearing the news that they have figured out the cause of the dwell wiping bug. Now they just have to figure out how to push the fix in a patch. So I refrained from summoning a flock of Snow Bugs to peck them, or turning them into pillars of ice, or cursing them with cold feet that annoy their bed partners.

The Lindens were very polite, patient, funny, apologetic, and they made it clear that they are concerned. Plus, Bub is ornamental. All of the questions asked were not answered, but there was a dancing tuna fish and people flying around erupting soap bubbles and . . . well, you know how it is, things devolved into typical surreal SL chaos and it got hard to have much of a conversation. However, it sounds like one major issue is being taken care of as fast as can be managed, and that makes me hopeful. I think it'll be okay if we keep discussing stuff with the Lindens and clarifying descriptions of the problems so they can hunt them down and find fixes -- it'll take a bit of time and patience. But that's nothing compared to watching shining icicles reaching for the ground, and the majestic travels of glaciers.

Let's have another teaparty at the Cafe -- I'll make cookies.

Love and chilly hugs,

The Snow Queen

COOKIES!

Spider winks and says... right after I cook the little spiders their breakfast and send them off to learn stuff like web spinning and tail yarning... will join you for Tea and cookies

Don't be naughtie and bring that HOOCH your so fond of

Anxious to hear how to get the bugs all webbed up.

Yes, tea party is a good idea Let's meet in Montmartre cafe today and discuss political strategy. Don't let the ruling class off the hook yet! While some of lower aristocracy showed some good signs last night, words is one thing action another. As it stands now, we poor residents are taxed to death having to pay taxes not once a year like poor peasants of medieval time, no!, even every month! 12 times a year! We also work day and night ploughing the sims and growing content. So for this we expect something in return, such as be protected against the bugs as well as fair and equal treatment. Lets compile a petition tonight and make a list with our rightful demands!

After reading another thread with many questions on 'how does dwell work?' (and very few answers). I went to the thread posted by Haney, which explains how the bonuses are decided.

Is Dwell wipe just on Montmartre and Centreville and our group leaders associated lands? Or are there others experiencing this?

We have set up visitor counters at the telehub, the stage area, and the start of the ongoing adventure quest site in Montmartre. If our averages are 50 people a day and 20 of them spend an hour or more on our site then why do our dwells reflect 0-2257?


Dwell is not being restored so how will this affect us when it comes to bonuses?

Centre Ville and Montmartre are at 0 dwell again after a week of what I think was normal dwell. I had stopped checking dwell at every login, thanks for noticing Anshe. I hope it is fixed in the next update. Would like to get some feedback. Anyone else effected? Lindens give a time line yet?

Dwell ran incorrectly today so we plan to rerun it later today.

Sorry for the continuing hiccups in the dwell system. We hope to nail it down securely.