Nyuuuu. =^_^=
Long day at work. Longer than usual, which is long to begin with… often very rewarding hearing the snippets of people's Second Lives when helping them with problems. It really helps to place issues in context. Like, if group notices are failing — which they are (MISC-37) and I hope they'll be fixed publicly really soon — what happens because of it? How does this affect you? I'm instantly reminded of in horror movies, how the killers cut the phone lines, or when one country wages war on another, they destroy the communication networks first to incite panic, then bomb 'em. While this isn't war in the same sense, one can't help but feel unnerved when there's silence at the other end. It's awful, especially because Second Life is a social world thriving with people talking to each other. Even people who'd be too shy to chat offline, can get very wordy in here. So taking away that outlet, and having broken group IMs, or another "message didn't get through" prob, totally bugs me too.
Reminds me of the many times I've seen people who insist on calling SL a "game", the same people who later come to me, very understandably panicked, because their avatar is horribly deformed (and they don't yet know about rebaking textures). They care so much about their inworld appearance, so that teaches a good lesson: regardless of the terms you use to describe this online world (I like "gametaverse", hee, take that you portmanteau poobahs!), actual priorities are apparent beyond words. And that's a supra-level of communication which isn't easy to interpret, but for the experienced, becomes increasingly easier to infer.
Already, I've heard of some new bugs we'll want to give a serious smackdown to once we've got solid repros, including spontaneously going AFK (MISC-143) and camera zooming not working reliably (VWR-512). Sounds like ambient suffering to me. If you can help (gosh this reminds me of Unsolved Mysteries), please call our tipline errrr post a comment on the Issue Tracker. I check a number of issues I'm keeping tabs on regularly, and I'm encouraging more Lindens to join in too.
Over time, I'm hoping getting in the good habit of using the Issue Tracker to report and resolve bugs, new features, and more! will be more effective than older mediums we've had, like the forums. But hey, some people will post anywhere, including the wrong places (e.g., blog comments — Dreamhost's right about this!), for their problems. That's just how it is, so the least I can do is set a good example of how I believe things should be, continue to guide ("Have ya looked here…") so they can help us help them better, and adapt my methods as I learn too.
During today's crazy post-1.15 problem-solving, I got some time in to start a new Wiki page called "Help:Snapshots". Guess what it's about? 
This compiled list of snapshot-related resources was a very long time in the making, culminating a number of loose ends which had been dangling. But now, I wanna help give you easy access to making your snapshots + postcards better! So check it out, and hey, it's a wiki, so feel free to edit it and put in stuff you've found handy. Together, our collective knowledge fueled by sheer, exhuberant passion for sharing the beauty of Second Life will rock the ubersphere!
Two more things:
- If you've noticed sending postcards is slow today — not being received for several hours — I've had the same probs. When some of these hotter fires (cool down, I'll inquire the wisdom of the right Lindens.
- Bonus points for anyone who can figure out why I named this post as such.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Dunno, but I've spent a fascinating couple of moments learning about a french composer of piano music… You trigger nifty explorations
I do have a couple of inworld bugs that I need to isolate enough to write up on jira some day. I miss the old days where I could just throw an object with the problem and a note into the queue.
Thank you for pointing out that group notices don't work. For some reason I don't see anything about this in the blog, the only means of communication not shut down at this point.
The Prelate of The Avatars of Change, Taras Balderdash, is in retreat. He has handed over the reins to me for the moment to harden our lands against griefers and form a new organization to make sure land owners are able to defend themselves and their friends on their own parcels on the mainland (similar to the rights of the gentry on the islands). This comes after he was attacked recently and was not able to file an abuse report or use land tools because MySQL was not able to keep up with the database load.
However without basic functionality, this why build and expand? The Lab has already announced its next priority, and it's not improving the day to day lives of those who pay their money every month. Nope, it's…Voice!
How exciting! The database is a worthless array of unreliable trash, support on a 24X7 system is provided on California banking hours, but what we really need is something that will add to the network load massively and annoy the heck out of most paying residents, while giving griefers a whole new venue.
The Order may change direction soon, back to its roots as mendicant monks without land. It simply isn't worthwhile to create and maintain objects in an environment where there is no due diligence on the part of the support and development organizations.
May Supreme Avatar Smile Upon You!
Han Fei
Chief Ritualist
The Avatars of Change
Cagliostro Hall, SL
Group IMs
Personally, I love group messages – they wait for you to come online and dispatch them appropriately without much trouble. What I would loveto see is the extinction of Group IMs. I hate those! Some groups have responsible owners and members and do not allow massive IMs, but then there are those that drive me craaaazzzy!
Those people whine incessantly asking for stuff that they can find easily enough at a freebie location or may even have in inventory – they just don't know how to find it.
"Does anyone have a script that lets your texture rotate all over a prim?" OK, here's what I think . . . I can give you the script OR I can teach you the basics of scripting & let you figure it out on your own with a little help – which is more likely going to help you in the future?
Think about it!
~~Tootles~~
Taffy Out!
I'm reasonably geeky, but Jira is totally out of my league. There is no way on earth that the average user is ever going to turn to it for communication in either direction. I mean, when I follow your link to it, I get a mostly blank page that asks for my Second Life name and password, which are connected to live financial data, with no description of what I'm signing in to or why I should need to supply this information. (Especially puzzling as I'm already signed into my account on this computer!)
So, while it's laudable that you're trying to set a good example and are getting in the habit of using it, such efforts are far less useful to most of us than a good, short, simple-English explanation of what it is, how to use it, and why.
This post has resulted in very thoughtful comments!
@Storm: Hrm, that's a suggestion — a better way to have objects exhibiting buggy behavior sent into JIRA easier.
@Han: Group notices failing is mentioned on the blog's left-hand side, linked to the Issue Tracker of course, where it's gotten well over 100+ votes. This is eventual; Issue Tracker will get greater prominence as more Residents use and help us to improve it… as it's currently being beta'ed.
@Taffy: Better control over group IMs (like muting them) has been a popularly-suggested feature for a long time. We need better inworld search too, the Wiki does have a script library, as does the forums.
@Otenth: Great styling on your comment BTW… I do relate to the current Issue Tracker (JIRA) problems. As it's in beta, there are a number of bugs which we now glaringly know about thanks to Residents reporting them. We've been looking towards things like OpenID for better cross-site identity verification, and less redundant logins too, I hope.
What do you think can be improved on the current instructions?