14 July, 2010

oh, she's gonna shimmy 'til her garters break

Second Life,Peer,gay fashion

Um, Peer? Trust me. That ass? NOT virgin.

Second Life,Peer,gay fashion

Though this one? I do believe.

Second Life,Peer,gay fashion

Their 'Angelic Shapes' line. The gang's all here.

Essentially, if you like (what look like) well-made casual modern clothes, effectively shaded, worn by incredibly hot incredibly GAY guys with muscle-bulking issues...boy, is this your store.

(Just a note: I mean no disrespect at all when I say that. Some of us are gay, some of us are straight, some of us are bi, some of us still can't figure out the question...and that's fine. I'm not bashing anyone. I'm just saying that their models? Are either really, REALLY gay...or do a good job of faking the look.)

This article is from 2009; but bet me, mistakes like this are not only still made, but in the wake of the layoffs, likely growing more common.

There's a lot of really, really harsh comments on the last Linden blog entry where they presumably "fixed" search.

Smattering of clips to show you what I mean:

"When will the result set be complete because I have multiple parcels not showing at all now, which is worse than the situation was before you fixed it..." (Ciaran Laval)

"You knocked me out [of] search...You will explain exactly when my parcels will return to search as they were before." (Ann Otoole)

"[S]o, you've decided to penalise people who sell a wide variety of things? [...] my cup runneth over." (Couldbe Yue)

"You write in yesterdays blog [announcement] that you became aware of Jira issues during June, but hundreds of support tickets must have been filed, (and countless hours of Live Chat) on those issues during April and May while you were busy denying that the search was borked. (I was told once by support and once by Live Chat that there were no known issues with the search)" (Starship Jefferson)

"My business has decreased by more than 80% suddenly when you "improved" search some months ago. I don't and never have gamed search, but simply listed what I have for sale. How is this right?" (Mimika Oh)

"Hi, PLEASE look at the search results for "land for sale" and "rent land". Previously I was in the top 3 for these. Now I am nowhere to be found - but neither are any other land companies." (Ayesha Lytton)

"Your new search does not work all the shops that have pushed me and other 'good quality' shops down are using massive keyword spam in the objects shown in search!" (Phoebe Avro)

"This is the worst 'relevance' update in the history of the SL search. We are down to 'black magic for how the search results are sorted." (Latif Khalifa)

"I don't want to jump the gun, but search has gone haywire. It worked fine last night. Today it's out to lunch. Top result in All for historic mainland is Doctor Who online." (Deltango Vale)

"At least now I'm in search if I write my store's name. But that's not enough." (Catwise Yoshikawa)

"[...] lots of SL businesses have shut up shop! If you begin to see a reduction in future land tier incomes....you know why! Shops are not going to stay open with little visibility, little traffic and little sales...and be expected to swallow Land tiers indefinitely. (Rene Erlanger)

"With the V2 going over to opening a search box instead of having to do a search for it to open, any 'new user' reason is well and truly buried." (Phil Deakins)

"Now will Linden Labs refund our Classified ads and our Parcel directory fees for the past 3 months of us not being found in Search?? [...] it is the least you can do for almost killing off our businesses." (Sweet Valentine)

"We are all dying a slow and painful death caused by the cancer that is the 'new and improved Linden Lab.'" (Isabella Boehm)

"I was overjoyed to be back in Search again yesterday... but my gut instinct told me it was too good to be true. WOW, I was there for less than 24 hours after OVER 2 months of not being there and now I am out again!!! Short lived victory." (Vryl Valkyrie)

"The UI redesign for search was horrible, and it baffles me that the powers that be still cannot see just how useless it is for end users, until I remember that the system is obviously designed by people that don't actually use Second Life in any meaningful fashion." (Cristalle Karami)

"Many of the issues raised above (e.g. by Ann about single words) come down to one simple fact: GSA just isn't the right technology for SL." (Matthew Dowd)

"So from my point of view, 48 hours on, this new, amazing search Linden keeps peddling is just as useless as it always was. This is the [Jar Jar] Binks of search tools." (Alexith Destiny)

"do you mean its ok if somebody enters 'mens fashion' as search term and a JAZZ Club appears first??" (Lucky Raymaker)

"This is an unacceptable reality that not only negatively impacts commercial ventures like mine, it does immeasurable damage to Linden Lab, a company that has a long-standing established track record of negligent incompetence." (Able Forder)

"This is a complete mess. How can LL make claims that it has no fricken clue about? Do you base all your claims on theory? When you say the search does this and that better, people assume you have some kind of evidence, or you did some testing. None of that happened here." (Medhue Simoni)

"In order to run a lag-free operation, my friend and I bought a full region, which costs us each 150 USD per month. I have 2 paid classifieds and have the 30L search option checked for my parcel 'about land.' I have paid ads and satellite stores throughout the simulator. I do absolutely everything I can to keep my business successful in SL but my worst enemy seems to be these 'fixes' performed by LL." (Liliyan McCarey)

There were more comments, many many more, but I wanted only one comment per avatar.

Even with that restriction, do I really need to add anything? Their words stand on their own. These are frustrated, worried, scared, angry people--and they're angry at the Labs for screwing up.

Again.

Over and over.

It's like detonating features of SL is the Labs' favorite hobby in San Fran. What do they do for an encore, punch baby seals?

4 comments:

Aunt Foggy said...

I have about torn all my hair out this RFL season. As a shopper, trying to find things for specific events has been a nightmare. So many people left SLX/XSt/WTF that finding anything of quality there is hit and miss. So you go into search.....that is pointless. Searching for keywords brings up bizarre and unrelated results,so you wind up going into chat and asking your groups of anyone knows of ANYTHING......and get "we are unable to post your message to [group unknown]"....
I was searching for things like carnival rides, raffle systems, etc.
This is as frustrating for those of us wanting to buy as it is for those wanting to sell.

Emilly Orr said...

Oh, absolutely. And I'll even take that step farther and say, with the breaking of group chat and search for the past three months (and group chat/group notices have been impaired, honestly, for at least a year and a half), the Labs, themselves, have made raising money for RFL (something that nets them good press, every single year) infinitely more difficult.

It's a decided ripple effect: I know they didn't kill search because they wanted to, but by the same token, they didn't seem impelled to fix it with three months of complaining--via blogs, via reports, via Live Chat sessions for those major merchants and landholders. Then, when they finally do fix it--or say they have--they do so by breaking other existing systems, which seems to have had the effect of breaking search again anyway.

It made this RFL season far harder than it needed to be.

Sphynx Soleil said...

Too many coders....spoil the stew. :(

Emilly Orr said...

Well, always. And systems grow in complexity; rather than start fresh, it's easier to pick up sections you know work, and code around those. Everyone does that.

The problem here is, the Lindens seem to retain the broken sections along with the working sections, and seem obscurely convinced both work fine...

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...