can't seem to make any sense of anything

Picking up where I left off last post, more tiptoeing through the JIRA ranting.

Between 1:36 pm and 1:58 pm on the 28th, CommerceTeam Linden changed the priority of the JIRA in question. (When you hit Watch you also get all edits and updates to status as well as comments.) At 1:58 pm, Sassy Romano changed it back, and left this comment:

No really, this IS a showstopper.
There is no workaround, it misrepresents products (go shopping in the supermarket, pick up a tin with a picture of baked beans on it, get home and open it to find inside is catfood. Happy?).
It has financial consequences because it's selling misleading items and damaging reputations.
It moves ADULT listings to GENERAL and the word filter doesn't have any effect.
TOTAL SCREW UP.

(An issue that could (or did) cause disastrous consequences. For example critical loss of data, critical loss of system availability, critical loss of security). I feel that this falls into the "disastrous consequences", "loss of data" if merchants start to fiddle since we don't know what the problem actually is. We can't sell stuff effectively and customers can't buy effectively so that's loss of availability.

She's not wrong, on any count. The tragedy is the Lindens don't agree.

Sera Lok, ten minutes later:

Agreed... unknowable amount of listings affected, listings that become messed up upon editing to create new problems (how many new borked listings have been created today?)... no way to fix or to unlist items because you CANNOT edit them... customers do not know if it is a merchant messup or system messup...

Customers will simply lose confidence in the system altogether and not come back and then merchant no money, LL no commission.

People are already losing due to Unicode and hanging deliveries...

Money lost over a few days is much less than money lost over a long period because merchants/shoppers have no confidence in this system left running as it is.

Selina Antra agreed:

This is absolutely bad. The marketplace needs to be closed down until this is fixed...I have looked in several stores and am leary of buying anything because it may not be what I am buying. Plus I do not know if I am getting any sales that are actually going to me.

Fix this ASAP, Please LL....Shut the site down until it is fixed so we can limit the amount of damage.

Unfortunately, the Lindens--by willful ignorance or direct intent--don't care about preserving their reputation, their customers' business sales, or patching the bad code they launched because there was zero quality control on the Direct Delivery project. (I'd also suspect zero testing ON the Direct Delivery project. I have no proof, but if anyone wants to confirm, my Gmail address is listed at the end of the left-hand sidebar.)

Shadowblade Prathivi:

Many of my products also have the mix up issue and I agree that Marketplace should absolutely be shut down until this is resolved. There is no point in leaving it up for our customers to get the wrong item that we have to fix when the customer complains to us about the issue that LL caused in the first place.

Unfortunately, LL isn't listening.

Sugar Bumblefoot:

I agree, they really just need to close it for the moment. I'm not touching my store or doing anything with it for fear it will mess things up further.
Xstreet worked pretty perfectly, once LL took over its been one problem after another. I get they want to improve things but why fix something that wasnt broken.
They seriously need to test things better before putting them out there.
The mix up with adult and general listings should be enough alone to shut it down for the time being.

Let me repeat that, because it sounds vaguely important:

The mix up with adult and general listings should be enough alone to shut it down for the time being.

Now, let me quote from something else:

Zindra arises, everyone gets booted to the Adult continent: six months later there are STILL massive problems in search with PG-only searches finding tons of Adult content; there are STILL massive issues on the mainland, both with merchants who never left (because the Lindens didn't think they were Adult enough, apparently) and with merchants who came back.

I wrote that back in 2009, and it still holds true today.

From the same entry:

No Adult content on non-Adult land (but just travel the mainland, anywhere, you'll find something that doesn't belong there within the first half hour, depending on where you go). No Mature content on PG land (but you see that everywhere too).

Remember when the Adult content restrictions came out on the official Linden wiki, LL set out very specific passages that confirmed maturity ratings and what they meant:

General

A region designated General is not allowed to advertise or make available content or activity that is sexually explicit, violent, or depicts nudity. Sexually-oriented objects such as "sex beds" or poseballs may not be located or sold in General regions.

General regions are areas where you should feel free to say and do things that you would be comfortable saying and doing in front of your grandmother or a grade school class. Institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses may wish to designate their regions as General. Likewise their users (and others) may wish to employ Second Life's General search setting to focus and filter search results appropriately.

Some landowners and Residents desire a Second Life experience distinct from the activity that occurs in Moderate and Adult regions. Region owners who wish to host this sort of Second Life experience can (but need not) designate their regions as General.

If you are a region owner and you feel there is some ambiguity as to whether your content and activities are allowed in General regions, it's probably best to designate your region as Moderate.

Adult

The Adult designation applies to Second Life regions that host, conduct, or display content that is sexually explicit, intensely violent, or depicts illicit drug use. A region must be designated Adult if it hosts, advertises, or publicly promotes:

• Representations of intensely violent acts, for example depicting death, torture, dismemberment or other severe bodily harm, whether or not photo-realistic (meaning that images either are or cannot be distinguished from a photograph).

• Photo-realistic nudity.

• Expressly sexually themed content, spaces or activities, whether or not photo-realistic. We broadly define what is "sexually themed" to include any sexually oriented activities and conduct.

Groups, event listings and classified ads that reference these themes or content must also be designated Adult. Linden Lab will enforce these rules but cannot monitor all ephemeral content and conduct within Second Life. Therefore:

• Regions, groups, and event or classified ad listings that employ search tags plainly suggestive of adult behavior or content require the Adult designation, and will viewable only by Residents who have verified that they are at least 18 years old.

• Linden Lab will conduct proactive monitoring and rely on abuse reports that identify adult content or conduct that is promoted or advertised publicly. Where adult content or conduct on a region is publicly advertised or promoted, that region must be designated as Adult (or such content must be removed). We will re-designate such regions if adult content is not removed.

• Linden Lab may take into account whether apparent or reported adult content or conduct in a particular region serves only an extremely limited or passive function, or an important educational or cultural function, and therefore would be appropriate for all Second Life audiences.

• As with all reported activity in violation of our policies, we will actively review all reports of adult conduct and provide Residents with a channel for rebuttal.

Parcels that host adult activities or contain adult content must be on:

• The adult mainland continent, Zindra.

• A private region that has been designated by its owner as Adult.

Region owners are responsible for designating a region's maturity level. Occupants of regions will be expected to locate in a region suitable to each occupant's content and conduct.

Yet now, today, this hour, this moment, the Marketplace--still a wholly-owned subsidiary of Linden Labs--is violating every single one of these provisions where Adult and General content is concerned. Were the Lindens residents, they could be banned for this. Hells, the Lindens have sent letters to residents for less that did ban them--at least temporarily, if not permanently. And this is a much larger violation.

So what's their end explanation going to be? "Oops" really isn't going to cut it. (Though they could be honest and just send out a blog entry saying "Of course our rules don't apply to us, chuckleheads, we make the damn rules, and screw you anyway"...but that might be viewed as a tad bit hostile.

At this point, CommerceTeam Linden chimed in again:

We have identified that this issue was occurring before the Direct Delivery launch and continue work to address the issue. In the meantime, Merchants may address the problem in the following ways:

1. Delete any images that do not belong to the listing.

2. Upload any image(s) you’d like to associate with the listing.

3. Remove any Related Items that should not be associated with the listing.

Thanks for your patience.

Argus Collingwood in response:

The listings are in the wrong stores and may not be edited.

Yep.So I ask you--and more importantly, I ask the Lindens: how is a maker of X item supposed to edit the listing for Y item if it's not even showing up in their store? And how is the maker of Z item supposed to edit the other maker's items of X and Y if they're not listed under the right name? Can't you only edit things you're directly responsible for making?

Sassy Romano added:

@CTL, how does that stop someone else's listings appear on the merchants "shop" when someone does a search by merchant?
How does it prevent it happening again? What's the timeframe for the fix? Should merchants just wait? What's the cause of it? Will it happen again if someone goes through 100 pages of listings and corrects them all?

Still don't think there's been an answer from the Lindens to any of these questions.

And then FreeSpirit Simemring added a whole new glitch to the existing problem:

To further add to the MP mess - if you buy something from MP that is DD - you get the item delivered numerous times. I have one item I bought yesterday I am up to 24 of the same item. Lucky for the vendor it is copy - but it is happening with no copy items too. Bought yesterday and still getting the same thing delivered today. LL sort this shit out.. for vendors selling no copy/limited number items this is a disaster

Oh, dear gods, SERIOUSLY?!? So there you go--now the Lindens have implemented code that makes every single post they've ever made on why copyright infringement is such a terrible thing absolutely invalid, because hey, guess what? The largest copyright infringer on the grid is now Linden Labs! Because of this catastrophe, they're now stealing from EVERYONE!

Way to go, idiots.

More later.