It’s been sixteen days, over which there has been (by my count) 53 hours of scheduled and unscheduled maintenance for the Second Life grid. That’s “drop what you’re doing and don’t touch nuthin’” maintenance, and doesn’t include the outages for in-world Search, payments, billing, the JIRA, or a couple abortive rolling restarts.
During this time, the grid hasn’t been performing well. All this, I know. What I don’t know is: Is it fixed yet?
Maybe it has been. Maybe it hasn’t been. Maybe there was one problem. Maybe there were several.
I do not fault Linden Lab’s response times to grid problems. I do not fault its dedication to restoring broken services as soon as possible. I do not fault its staff’s diligence or competence in handling these issues with verve, perspicacity, knowledge, skill, insight and the full awareness of the troubles that these problems cause the users when things go wrong.
I fault none of that. I believe that Linden Lab and its people do a sterling job in that regard. Pat yourselves on the back, ladies and gentlemen. Gold star for that.
What I do fault is Linden Lab’s seeming relentless inability to communicate clearly and thoroughly about it.
It’s like getting downtime reports from Helen Keller… in a sack.
We don’t know what went wrong; if multiple things went wrong; if we can expect it to keep going wrong; if it’s fixed; or if its still broken and only the current phase of the work is complete.
Grid instability is still up on what it was prior to all of this starting, so I’m guessing that it is not completely fixed… whatever it is.
But here’s my thing: I shouldn’t have to be guessing.
I go in-world. I do my in-world things, I log-off. Is there a problem? No.
There has been a problem. I go in-world. I do my in-world things, I log-off. Is there a problem? No.
Happy:)
Who ever stated Second Life is a finished product was wrong. We all know that. We all know we can expect problems. I don’t think that will ever change. But, if there are no problems, there are no problems.
Shoot me if I am wrong.
I’ve been holding off on some projects due to the maintenance. I still work on mesh in blender but there are some public domain scripting projects that I’ve been holding off on updating until llGetRegionAgents was implemented and now I’m waiting for the never ending maintenance to stop so I won’t loose a nights work when I start working on things. Friends keep asking about some of these projects and I just keep telling them the update will get done when LL gets their act together.
Regrettably, I lost work twice. It’s amazingly frustrating, and I’m reluctant to go for three times.
The lack of sufficient communications and respect for the customers factored into yesterday’s decision to let a region go instead of try to find someone new for it.
I’m sure that others will factor the Lab’s persistent disrespect for their customers into their decisions.
-ls/cm
It’s not just downtime – premium gifts, new viewer features (many quite useful), tech changes (i.e. proposals for changes to prim equivalence) all get little or no communication.
Oskar Linden and the grid updates, and pathfinding development are some of the few bright spots in what appears to be a Linden desert of communications.
The Good Old Times are back. The Lab does what the Lab does, but forgets that the customers who pay for all of it would like to hear whats going on. This was true in 2008 / 2009 and it still hold true today. Back then the lack of communication was a problem. And they fixed it (even if the communication was a one way street then), but they did fix it.
New management, new rules… and out with the “mass communication with customers” and thus they broke it again.
So now we are set back to 2008… “Not COOL Linden Lab! Not Cool!”
Hitomi, I agree, Oskar, Maestro, and the rest of the server release team have been consistently good about keeping people informed about changes being tested, where and what you can test, schedules for the release, etc. Sim developers Andrew, Simon and Kelly also have very informative user groups. I wish the rest of Linden Lab would adopt their approach.
One of my pet peeves: Every day I look at http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Blogs/ct-p/Blogs (the Official LL Blog) – - – Nothing except the Pic of the Day. This is where official announcements should be. If they don’t want to deal with the feedback, turn off comments.
Instead I must rely on Tateru to discover something in a tweet, or Hamlet to notice a post in Rod’s web profile, or Nalates to transcribe something said at a meeting, or Inara to find key info in the depths of the jira.
What ever happened to OFFICIAL communication? An explanation shortly after a problem, a discussion of the “why” behind a new policy, an announcement of upcoming features (maybe with links to a tutorial). That is the way grown-up companies do things to show they respect their customers.
[...] Tateru has, with her usual incisiveness asked the question I was planning to ask, but far more succinctly and directly. It’s a good read, and I suggest that if you haven’t you go read it – if only to [...]
We rail on Linden Lab for failing to communicate with customers. But, that is pretty much the norm for most companies. GM, Ford, Sony, Microsoft, and similar companies are examples. Governments are even worse and they have a much greater duty to be open. Obama ran on that idea, among others.
So, it is not surprising the Lab does not communicate much.
A significant difference with SL and other companies is the easy communication possible between the Lab and users/residents. In many ways the abuse and chaos coming from the community blocks any real communication. We have a load of frustrated SL users that cannot cope. The result is they vent online and to the Lindens. They create what many would easily call hate posts based on imagined failures. They often project their mental issues on Lindens and paint the Lab with broad brush.
Gianna in a recent podcast on Metareality gives some insight from an X-Linden on how some of the Lindens see the community. One can quickly realize the Lindens are humans guilty of all the same failures we in the community suffer from. There are no easy fixes for these human sort comings.
I see repeated calls for the Lab to do better. But, that is only a part of the issue. Until we can wrap our minds around the larger Lab and Community problems, nothing much is going to change.
Nal; I would not blame LL if they blocked response to announcements made at the official blog. I agree that some of us can get out of hand. That does not excuse the careless way they are communicating now.
What they post officially would be quickly picked up by this and many other blogs (including yours and mine) where we know how to deal with troublemakers and are not obligated to be “fair” to them.
@Nalates I get better communications from my bank, my mechanic, my insurance company, my ISP, my hosting service, the operators and developers of the free-to-play MMOGs that I play … even my grocery store. They communicate regularly, and extensively. When something goes actually wrong their communications are swift and thorough.
And why not? After all, they’re variously competing for my trust.
That’s the sort of standard I’m used to from service providers of all sorts. I’m not sure why it makes sense that I should lower the bar for Linden Lab. Farther than I already have.
Simply put, if you have upcoming planned maintenance then announce it beforehand.
Don’t insult our intelligence by explaining unplanned outages after the event as “planned maintenance” because, if it really was planned, then why did you not announce it beforehand?
@Nalates besides… it’s not communications we mis, it’s information.
Communication would be two or more people debating stuff. Lets start simple, and ask the Lab (politely) to start informing their community about i.e. things they work on, think about, plan to do.
“I am not asking for the whole manual!… Just give me a few pages…”
And if you ask me (and no body did) they did pretty well in 2010 and the beginning of 2011. If we could get them to go back to that, then a lot more people would be happy about it again.
BTW, you can often find planned maintenance announcements here:
http://status.secondlifegrid.net/
If you’re losing stuff you shouldn’t be waiting for a blog post, you should be contacting support. Communication goes two ways when there’s a problem; reporting the problem and then receiving word on whether your problem is fixed.
I’ve been scripting and building with many others the last week as usual and haven’t lost a thing, so whatever issue you’re having isn’t typical or I imagine the entire grid would be in an uproar if everyone was losing things.
Contact support.
I have had a similar experience as Ezra. We have build a race game these last two weeks, with lots of scripted pieces for game play elements, and none of it disappeared.
While there where days we couldn’t log in though.
“The Good Old Times are back. The Lab does what the Lab does, but forgets that the customers who pay for all of it would like to hear whats going on.”
@Stryker, when exactly was this NOT the case? I recall a town-hall meeting in 2007(?) as the last event where the Lindens made even a show of listening to those who pay their bills.
For SL’s remaining educators, at least these outages fall during summer break for he US cohort. But our international members are trying–trying–to finish work with professional students in nursing, science, and other fields.
I hope they are looking to OpenSim grids after this continuing fiasco. With both Tateru and Hamlet decrying different problems with SL today, you’d think the Lindens might make some public statements beyond Rod Humble’s funny Tweets.
But even British humor gets old when others are paying the bills.
I have experienced long loading times and lots of failing teleports. But I never lost anything and I built a lot in a past week. Maybe Premium Members get to use better SL hardware? (That would be a nice reason to go Premium, btw. Unlike receiving railcar gifts)