#SL Market Place Woes

Darrius Gothy writes about the Second Life Market Place problem of delayed delivery. It seems starting at midnight Pacific Time deliveries take 30 minutes to 5 or 6 hours to deliver. You can imagine how happy that makes everyone.

30 Day Summary of the Web Project

Darrius explains that slow delivery leads to other problems. Not the least of which is user frustration and overall poor impression of SL. You can read his post here: Slow Spiral Into Demise.

The delivery problems are reported in JIRA item: WEB-4260 – SLM deliveries consistently delayed in early morning hours. The JIRA was filed November 11, 2011. It has only 72 watches, so the Lindens are not going to get too excited about it. (Still more votes than watches. It is amazing how hard it to get the word around about WATCH being the important click.)

The Commerce Team is known for its poor communication and strange reaction to users. So, there doesn’t seem to be anyway to work with them or support their efforts. We can’t tell if they are close to a solution or how close they are to rolling out Direct Delivery (DD). Two weeks ago the Commerce Team started the open beta for DD, announced in the forum Jan 10, 2012. (See: Direct Delivery Beta Post) Couldbe Yue made a tutorial on Direct Delivery for the Beta testing project: Second Life Marketplace Direct Delivery Testing Part 1. Creating A New Listing. The instructions in the SL Wiki have been updated: Direct Delivery Beta Instructions. A poll was started: Direct Delivery survey. Instructions for filing JIRA reports is here:  SLM BETA-All Open Issues. The overall progress is shown in the graph. What they call release notes is here: Marketplace Beta Current.

From the graph one would think the team was doing a pretty good job. I think merchants are so frustrated they have for the most part stopped filing JIRA reports. Also, there is no way to break out the subcategory that is related to just the Market Place, at least that I know of. The frustration levels in the commerce community are certainly NOT indicative of a well performing system. The graph is what management sees. We don’t have a tracking system for frustration.

It makes one wonder what is going on when Open Beta arrives and the Lab keeps the Closed Beta testers under their NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). The Mesh Team did things a bit differently and everyone was way excited about mesh and looking forward to it. DD is something some are dreading and more than a few are concerned about.

Also, we are not hearing much from the Open Beta testers. Getting into ADITI is awkward. But, I would think most merchants are already using ADITI for testing their products. So, I don’t see accessing ADITI as the problem.

Things are not well with the Market Place. Trying to get WEB-4260 fixed may be pointless. The Lindens spending time on it may delay Direct Delivery. A change over to DD may solve all the problems. Past experience with the Lab making big changes is not especially reassuring.  Without any rational communication from the Commerce Team frustration continues to build. I am hoping supporting Web-4260 will convey the level of frustration in the community.

My hope is we will see DD arrive in the next 10 weeks and that it will work.

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