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I've learned today that Washtown was destroyed a few weeks back in a massive reactor explosion. While one serious injury occurred, everyone else was loaded into evacuation shuttles and airlifted to safety away from Burnet.

I'm sorry to see Washtown go. It was a lovely little sim.

In other closure news, Tol Narwe Vire is no more. That link won't lead you to the elven land in question--it's back in the Lab's hands, now--but it does lead you to someone who wandered it just before it closed, and tried to snap images to sustain the grieving hearts. It will also be missed.

(from the shopping album)

The EYE! (The Eye retails for L$500 from L+N Signature Designs. Honestly, I don't know what it does other than look impressive, but it looks VERY impressive.)

I've been hanging out on Scriptfrenzy. not because I'm direly yearning to write scripts, but because they have this little gadget called the Plot Machine. And that thing is seriously bent. Let me toss out some of the "plot ideas" I've seen today:

"At the behest of a dying relative / a horde of drunk Musketeers / plans a campout in a haunted bayou"
"While looking for a lost sock / the Emperor's second assistant / discovers a shocking use for spray cheese"
"During a civil war / a hopped-up zebra / finds a toaster that changes the world"
"At a sci-fi convention / an over-caffeinated kangaroo / invents the cure for a broken heart"
"After getting voted off American Idol / a robot with ADD / shuts down power to Disney World"
"After a sex change / a duck with a death wish / decides to rid the world of bad pop music"
"While on a shopping spree / a narcoleptic bear / must avenge the murder of an old flame"
"After a disastrous safari / a team of Olympic cloggers / releases Keith Richards into the water supply"
"After being the sole witness to a murder / a hawk with a broken wing / swims across the Pacific Ocean"

This. Thing. Is. AMAZING.

Okay, one more note before plunging back into the JIRA call-and-response. I can't remember which maker originally posted this, but I had to toss it up for more public view, because that is one impressive rack on the...horse stall, there.

[Insert in passing from the Editrix: That was a picture taken from Dance Clip's store.]

So anyway, back to the JIRA stuph. It seems the merchants found the bad sector (14xxxx on the server), and found both the upper and lower limits of the bad sector. Simpler to fix, yes? Well, maybe. According to the Lindens here:

Update (March 31, 2012): While we work to address current Marketplace issues, we will not require any Merchants to migrate listings away from Magic Boxes to Direct Delivery before June 1, 2012.


[UPDATE: April 5, 2012]
We’ve identified two issues contributing to WEB-4587.


The first issue concerns mismatched data appearing on Marketplace listings. This impacts a very limited number of Merchants and has been occurring since the original migration from Xstreet to the Second Life Marketplace in September 2010. We continue to actively work on a resolution.


The second issue concerns incorrect listings appearing in search results. We have identified the issue and are actively working on a fix.


The information provided by Merchants on the forum and directly to the Marketplace development team helped greatly in identifying the root cause of these issues. Thanks to those who provided information.


We will continue to provide updates as we work through the issues.

Now, I continue to dispute their use of "very limited number of Merchants" (an "upgrade" from "limited number of Merchants" seen earlier), but maybe they're thinking of everyone who's using Marketplace for any reason to sell things. It still seems like a million+ items going astray effects more than a "very limited" number, but hey, that's me. I don't actually know how many items are on the Marketplace (though when I revamped my store and re-uploaded my item--singular, for now, until I get the rest untangled), it uploaded in the 33xxxx cluster. So that's at least three million items.

Still, one-third of all Marketplace items? That's a "very limited" bug?

But to the comments. From ab Vanmoer:

Once again, it appears that the ecommerce team are still continuing the extremely poor practice of foisting untested changes on a live system. I know of no other ecommerce company that treats its customers so cavalierly. This has been an ongoing problem ever since the inception of the Marketplace.


WHAT EXACTLY are the ecommerce team doing to correct this debacle?

I'm still agreeing with this statement, but I have a friend who was watching the Direct Delivery testing on the beta server. He tells me that Direct Delivery was tested, exhaustively, by multiple accounts, for over a year on the beta server. I have no reason to believe he's wrong, but this does leave me with a few things to consider. Namely:

• Mayhap a year wasn't long enough to test it; maybe it needed more time.
• Mayhap they needed to fix the existing Marketplace bugs before trotting out new code.
• Mayhap they needed more community involvement on the project. And
• Maybe, just maybe, they needed to listen to the feedback given by community members in the first place.

From Xoph Adamczyk:

For these mutant listings: which item will be delivered, what price will be charged, and who will be payed?

A very good question indeed, worthy of itemizing on its own:

• Will merchants paid the wrong amount for an item be repaid the item's amount in full?
• Will merchants who received payment for items not theirs have those funds retrieved from their accounts?
• Will merchants who did not receive payments for items which were theirs be refunded for Lindens lost?
• And what's going to happen about no-copy, no-transfer items which were sent out by the Direct Delivery system with full permissions?

From jouet Jestyr:

Are they just in denial? Have their heads buried in the sand? Avoiding the conclusion that everyone (except LL) has come to, that the Marketplace is seriously screwed up and needs to be fixed now.


It was a kind of middle finger (IMO) to tell us to fix them ourselves. Meanwhile the problems spreads, I know a couple who had no issues a couple days ago, and now they too have messed up listings.


Come on LL, dont just sit back and hope this goes away. And please communicate with the merchants as to what is going on and whats being done. This is being handled extremely poorly.

Indeed so.

Argus Collingwood again:

Looks like the problem area has been located however I wonder if doing the DD update introduces new errors in the data range that is affected? Has anyone noticed that their store was fine, updated and then had broken items in it?

That was sent out yesterday. And I wonder the same thing.

Finally, from Jisper Darkfold:

I'm another of the "limited Merchants" with this issue - lots of items from Jisper's Jaunting Whimsy are either showing up in other people's stores or I have their items in mine with my images. Many now are broken links I cannot remove.

And she tagged on a VERY long list with broken links, missing links, changed images, changed descriptions, you name it.

I hit some items at random. This one was listed under "Halloween Decorations", and claimed to be a pumpkin with bats and a carved Mickey Mouse. The image: a set of patterned Middle Eastern (or Gorean) cushions. Price: L$100. Creator name: Timmy Inventor. Listed as: ADULT.

This one was listed as hair, the so-well-named "*barberyumyum*24/brown". Price: L$300 (for hair??) Maker: toraji Voom. Picture: a blonde woman in nadu kneeling on a dark cushion. Listed as: ADULT.

Or how about this one, which claims to be a faithful reproduction of the inner sanctuary of the Tokugawa shrine (done in the Momoyama style). Listing price: L:$15,000. Maker: ryusho Ort. Picture: a set of scattered pink Middle Eastern (or Gorean) cushions. Listed as: ADULT.

Most of the rest of the listings on her full comment now lead to that smirking, malicious bear on the front page, which means people not familiar with the issue are going to roll their eyes, figuring the merchant is a flake with broken items, and go off searching for something equivalently suited to their needs. Which damages that merchant's reputation; damages the Marketplace's reputation; and can also have the side effect of making some people unwilling to shop at all, which damages the entire Second Life economy.

But, you know, the Lindens are on it. So there's no worries...right?