When you read Vogt's blog post? You're not alone...
by Cummere Mayo
Vogt posted a new post tonight announcing the new forum/blog/knowledge Base/Resident Answers platform. And from just about every corner of Second Life I am in the reaction is pretty much a resigned sigh... It is quite obvious that Amanda's post about Linden Lab wanting to listen was pure bullshit.
Lets skip past the garbage about how LL has apparently cought up with 70% of the support tickets (most of which they closed with some variation of "We're sorry, if we had fixed this when you first filed a ticket we could have fixed it, but the data is long since deleted.) Lets get right to the heart of it when Vogt brags about this new system:
On March 2nd, we will launch a new, and much improved, self-help community platform--comprised of Forums, Blogs, Answers, and our Knowledge Base. This new fully integrated platform helps you to more efficiently leverage the power and knowledge of the community. Among many architectural and usability improvements, the system also includes:
okay so far sounds like the same garbage that is routinely spouted off...
* Robust Self-Help Functionality: It will be easier and faster to find the answer to your question or the information that you’re looking for. For example, in Answers, when you begin to type a keyword, an intuitive category search will return common matching solution results. And, solutions accepted by the question author are automatically nominated for Linden editorial review and possible inclusion in the Knowledge Base.
Hmm an intuitive autocomplete? This as intuitive as the UI design for V2? If so pull the plug now! Solutions to questions asked automatically become nominated for Linden Editorial review and possible inclusion in the Knowledge base? Not only does that sound kinda illegal, you know swiping other peoples work without asking, but hmm do we really need the answer about who has the best prim parts in the knowledge base?
* Unified Search: You can find the information that you’re looking for in one federated search field that returns organized results from relevant content in the Forums, Blogs, Answers, and the Knowledge Base.
Really? we already have an integrated search. It sucks. As one person in the AW groupies noted, try to search for Rob Humble's introduction blog entry and you get dozens of completely unrelated, useless forum posts.
* Single Sign On: Just as you can in the current system today, you will use your current Second Life username and password to log in to the new platform.
If we already have this, this worries me about why they feel the need to announce it here...
* Contribution-Based Roles: Based on your contributions to the platform, you will be able to earn new capabilities and roles in the community--from a brand new Resident to seasoned and experienced Helper.
Okay I can already see the abuse here. People like Daria Afterthought, that make up stupid questions and then answer herself on another alt will get promoted to the role of helper while people that actually know stuff, like say Jonathan Yap, or Moragaine Dinova will be regulated to brand new resident... Yeah that makes sense... NOT!
* Easier for Experienced Residents to Share Their Wisdom: If you’re an avid Second Life Resident who wants to participate in the community, then it will be much easier for you to update existing articles; comment on published articles; and nominate, review, and include subject matter for the Knowledge Base.
Wow, okay I repeat what I said about people like Daria, and people like Jonathan and Morgaine.
* Industry-Standard Social Media Features: As you can in many other community platforms, with the click of the mouse, it will be easy to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc., interesting content that you want to share with your friends in the Social Web.
Industry standard? for what industry? Certainly not games, most of the games I know of and play never needed anything like those widgets and banned the use off their sites or sites they allow to use their names, copywrites, and trademarks. hmm, come to think of it, most real life stores I visit don't need those widgets either... Amazon, Borders, etc... yes they do have facebook pages and even twitter but still no like or share widgets on their websites...
Hmm didn't the community have an uproar about these widgets being put on their profiles without their permission? oh yes they did? hmm. Seems LL still hasn't learned their lesson. Maybe this will help. If there is a widget added to any forum post or blog comment, or knowledge base article I write, I'll happily see the Community group from LL and LL's lawyers in court. That explicit enough for you?
The Resident testers who were given a sneak peek into the system gave us great feedback and insightful reviews. Big thanks to everyone who participated!
Well, lets assume there really is a group. With LL's history, often times that's doubtful. But we will say there is. In that case, I can guarantee it was handpicked from people that think that "Social Web" is an actual technical term (its not, its a slang for the network of facebook, twitter, blogspot, myspace, and a couple others.) and who masturbate to the thought of having thier 15 minutes of fame in something like Penthouse's "Girls of Myspace" or People's "who's who of Facebook"
From the mutterings in all of the groups I am in in world, and the number of notices calling for protest already issued, it seems everyone can see this oncoming train wreck but LL...
Showing posts with label web intigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web intigration. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Why A Purely Web Feature Based Viewer 2 Will Always Fail
Reposted from LindenWatch
by Cummere Mayo, Mythoes Llewellyn, Bitterly Sweet
It would be awesome if this post could start out with "It came upon a dark and dismal night" however the truth is none of us really remember what kind of day/night it was when the first web based features crept into v1. There they were implemented with care, but still had a high fail rate. This would be a powerful potent of things to come...
When Viewer 2 was introduced to the community it certainly felt like a dark day had come upon us. The viewer 2 was built with the look and feel of a third rate web-site. (Some people argue a web browser, but browsers have far more customization, and tend to follow basic industry standards like having file and edit menus.) Integrated (unknown to most) were the first generation web profiles. These were clearly usable and editable from within the viewer with little or no wait, and no real loss of function if the website hosting the profiles went down other then display of the information that the user put in, and the user pictures.
Most people never knew that these profiles were web based because Linden Lab never advertised that fact and because they were extremely well integrated into the system with the ability to edit the information without the use of a browser (whether built in or external.) Furthermore, this system didn't seem to rely on cookie caching, nor were critical functions like pay, teleport, online status, etc. mapped through the web page but instead were directly embedded in the viewer and worked regardless of the profile.
Other web technologies that were put in either from the start or very early on were a "enhanced" web mapping and teleport system (it should be noted the 1.x viewers also had a web based system for mapping and teleport), a web based search system, web based classified system, and a few other "behind the hood" odds and ends.
Of these, the only one that reliably worked was the mapping/teleport system.
Search routinely fails to load for many users, and then--because of the Search team's opinion they obviously pulled out of their asses that most people that use search don't need it to visit more then one place--would close AND reset annoying the vast majority of users. It should be noted that the jira on that was closed out despite unanimous request for that behavior to change, based on the on an opinion that the Search team was never able to back up, and in fact that public stats another department published decently contradicted. This along with bugs in the coding of the search itself has left this a permanently broken feature and a massive failure on LL's part.
The web based classified also simply don't work, as anyone that has ever bought one can tell you. This is true for both the ones in search and the ones in marketplace. In both cases even if they do actually show up (most times they don't) its usually not in any context relevant enough to actually do the person buying the classified any good. And good luck getting a refund...
Now, the web profiles have been changed again, and group and object profiles are due to follow. In the new profiles, not only are there privacy concerns that have been addressed on this and other blogs that still aren't resolved, but the system is bulky and slow when it does load, and fails to load at all for many users.
If it does load, the layout is filled with useless white space that social team insists is critical, has share and like buttons that you cannot get rid of whether they are on your profile or someone else's, and may have ads displayed that are to a direct competitor of the profile you are looking at (which seems to violate a lot of unfair business practice laws). Another Fail.
If they don't load and you don't have that person on your list, in a group you're in, or otherwise near you, attempting to pay them, teleport them, add them as a friend, or send them an IM is all but impossible and can only be done if they are in search (Assuming search loads). These options are no longer in the UI otherwise, not even as a backup. Again another fail.
If you dare turn off cookies to protect your privacy, then you are shit out of luck. There is no option in the V2 browser to only allow cookies from LL owned sites or even from trusted sites and turning off cookies causes profiles, and often search to fail badly.
By this time frustration for new users is through the roof and many simply quit by this point. For older residents this becomes yet another massive source of seething anger, frustration, and resentment directed at Linden Lab as a whole and at various Lindens specifically, even when often those lindens had no say. And both Search and Social the teams in charge of search and web profiles collectively continue to mostly ignore the users with the attitude they know our needs better then we do! Epic Fail!
Even the Linden housing has had issues with its web based controls not properly triggering the in world houses, further furstrating users both new and old!
And LL has plans to make this situation worse!
Group profiles which have also been web based are about to be revamped with all of their tools also going into a web site. Most of these tools don't even have redundancy within the viewer; things like Notices, group invites, roles, permissions, ejection tools and just about everything else that you currently do in the floater do not have redundancy anywhere.
Can you imagine the mess that will make when you cannot create, join, manage, or possibly even leave a group if you cannot get to the group page? What new user is going to stick around in this case? And what are the existing users supposed to do? Especially the business owners for which groups are a huge part of their ability to connect with their customers?
Furthermore, the more of these features pushed through websites, even if LL owned, the less secure the system is. Each is one more connection that can be spoofed, hacked, monitored, or hijacked. In case you have missed the message, across SL users are lashing back at things they feel invade their privacy, whether things like web profiles that LL is directly responsible for, things like Redzone that are run by other users.
Because someone will invariably ask what about features like social network integration, web inventory management (a much requested feature), the desire for web profiles by many people etc. The thing is that none of those features needs or should be implemented in a way that precludes easy access from the ui with the sole exception of the web management which is simply meant to be an additional tool to manage inventory and NOT a replacement for any of the inworld tools.
LL cannot afford to keep investing in moving the viewer to purely web feature based. It is too unreliable, too insecure, and relies on too many factors to work to ever be tenable.
by Cummere Mayo, Mythoes Llewellyn, Bitterly Sweet
It would be awesome if this post could start out with "It came upon a dark and dismal night" however the truth is none of us really remember what kind of day/night it was when the first web based features crept into v1. There they were implemented with care, but still had a high fail rate. This would be a powerful potent of things to come...
When Viewer 2 was introduced to the community it certainly felt like a dark day had come upon us. The viewer 2 was built with the look and feel of a third rate web-site. (Some people argue a web browser, but browsers have far more customization, and tend to follow basic industry standards like having file and edit menus.) Integrated (unknown to most) were the first generation web profiles. These were clearly usable and editable from within the viewer with little or no wait, and no real loss of function if the website hosting the profiles went down other then display of the information that the user put in, and the user pictures.
Most people never knew that these profiles were web based because Linden Lab never advertised that fact and because they were extremely well integrated into the system with the ability to edit the information without the use of a browser (whether built in or external.) Furthermore, this system didn't seem to rely on cookie caching, nor were critical functions like pay, teleport, online status, etc. mapped through the web page but instead were directly embedded in the viewer and worked regardless of the profile.
Other web technologies that were put in either from the start or very early on were a "enhanced" web mapping and teleport system (it should be noted the 1.x viewers also had a web based system for mapping and teleport), a web based search system, web based classified system, and a few other "behind the hood" odds and ends.
Of these, the only one that reliably worked was the mapping/teleport system.
Search routinely fails to load for many users, and then--because of the Search team's opinion they obviously pulled out of their asses that most people that use search don't need it to visit more then one place--would close AND reset annoying the vast majority of users. It should be noted that the jira on that was closed out despite unanimous request for that behavior to change, based on the on an opinion that the Search team was never able to back up, and in fact that public stats another department published decently contradicted. This along with bugs in the coding of the search itself has left this a permanently broken feature and a massive failure on LL's part.
The web based classified also simply don't work, as anyone that has ever bought one can tell you. This is true for both the ones in search and the ones in marketplace. In both cases even if they do actually show up (most times they don't) its usually not in any context relevant enough to actually do the person buying the classified any good. And good luck getting a refund...
Now, the web profiles have been changed again, and group and object profiles are due to follow. In the new profiles, not only are there privacy concerns that have been addressed on this and other blogs that still aren't resolved, but the system is bulky and slow when it does load, and fails to load at all for many users.
If it does load, the layout is filled with useless white space that social team insists is critical, has share and like buttons that you cannot get rid of whether they are on your profile or someone else's, and may have ads displayed that are to a direct competitor of the profile you are looking at (which seems to violate a lot of unfair business practice laws). Another Fail.
If they don't load and you don't have that person on your list, in a group you're in, or otherwise near you, attempting to pay them, teleport them, add them as a friend, or send them an IM is all but impossible and can only be done if they are in search (Assuming search loads). These options are no longer in the UI otherwise, not even as a backup. Again another fail.
If you dare turn off cookies to protect your privacy, then you are shit out of luck. There is no option in the V2 browser to only allow cookies from LL owned sites or even from trusted sites and turning off cookies causes profiles, and often search to fail badly.
By this time frustration for new users is through the roof and many simply quit by this point. For older residents this becomes yet another massive source of seething anger, frustration, and resentment directed at Linden Lab as a whole and at various Lindens specifically, even when often those lindens had no say. And both Search and Social the teams in charge of search and web profiles collectively continue to mostly ignore the users with the attitude they know our needs better then we do! Epic Fail!
Even the Linden housing has had issues with its web based controls not properly triggering the in world houses, further furstrating users both new and old!
And LL has plans to make this situation worse!
Group profiles which have also been web based are about to be revamped with all of their tools also going into a web site. Most of these tools don't even have redundancy within the viewer; things like Notices, group invites, roles, permissions, ejection tools and just about everything else that you currently do in the floater do not have redundancy anywhere.
Can you imagine the mess that will make when you cannot create, join, manage, or possibly even leave a group if you cannot get to the group page? What new user is going to stick around in this case? And what are the existing users supposed to do? Especially the business owners for which groups are a huge part of their ability to connect with their customers?
Furthermore, the more of these features pushed through websites, even if LL owned, the less secure the system is. Each is one more connection that can be spoofed, hacked, monitored, or hijacked. In case you have missed the message, across SL users are lashing back at things they feel invade their privacy, whether things like web profiles that LL is directly responsible for, things like Redzone that are run by other users.
Because someone will invariably ask what about features like social network integration, web inventory management (a much requested feature), the desire for web profiles by many people etc. The thing is that none of those features needs or should be implemented in a way that precludes easy access from the ui with the sole exception of the web management which is simply meant to be an additional tool to manage inventory and NOT a replacement for any of the inworld tools.
LL cannot afford to keep investing in moving the viewer to purely web feature based. It is too unreliable, too insecure, and relies on too many factors to work to ever be tenable.
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