The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 21st, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.
There is little to report, given the meeting was also another Solstice party.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had not been published.
All remaining simhosts were updated to simulator release 563375 on Tuesday, September 21st, 2021, the maintenance release containing changes related to llChar(), llUnsit() and extended internal logging.
There are no planned RC deployments during the week.
HTTP-Out Proxy
Monty Linden deployed the new HTTP-out proxies in week #36. It wasn’t entirely glitch-free (but not as bad as the August attempt), with issues occurring in a part of the configuration that didn’t allow for immediate correction. Monty hopes that the lessons learnt with make future deployments smoother.
SL Viewer
The Simplified Cache viewer updated to version 6.4.23.562623 on Friday, September 17th (issued Monday, September 20th).
The rest of the pipelines remain as:
Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
Maintenance RC viewer version 6.4.23.563789, issued on September 16 – combines the Grappa and Happy Hours RCs.
Project viewers:
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
In Brief
Some are reporting issues of not being able to easily teleport back to a location previously visited in a session, a similar problems that manifested for some using Malwarebytes. In this case, the issue seems to be exceptionally slow teleport when trying to go back, with some incidence of the viewer shutting down.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, September 16th 2021 at 13:00 SLT, and the TPV Developer’s meeting of Friday, September 17th.
With the meetings once again falling on the same week, and with the degree of overlap in content between the two, core discussion points from both have been combined into this one summary. The TPV meeting was also recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video is embedded at the end of this article, for those wishing to refer directly to that meeting.
Meeting Details
CCUG meetings are held on alternate Thursdays each month (generally the 1st and 3rd Thursday, subject to the vagaries of month length), with dates available via the SL Public Calendar. The venue for the CCUG is the Hippotropolis camp fire.
TPV Developer meetings are generally held on alternate Fridays each month, although dates are not currently listed in the SL Public Calendar. The venue for meetings is at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
Both meetings are currently chaired by Vir Linden, and are led using Voice, although attendees can use either Voice or text to provide input / feedback (with text generally being the preferred medium).
LL have have hit a bottleneck in current viewer development, Essentially, projects are tending to push multiple viewers internally for testing and QA work, creating a backlog; plus there are currently multiple RC and project viewers in flight. To this end, work has started to try to merge various viewer development tracks together and combine them into more “composite” offerings where this makes sense. This has been done with the two Maintenance RCs (see below), and if successful, will pave the way for other viewer project merges in the future.
Viewer Updates
Maintenance RC viewer 6.4.23.563789 was issued on Thursday, September 16th.
As noted above, this viewer combines the former Grappa and Happy Hour RC viewers into a single viewer.
This RC also now makes Push to Talk with Voice the default behaviour. To change this, open Me → Preferences → Controls, then scroll down to Sound and Media, then click Primary Control for Toggle Voice and finally press Middle Mouse Button (MMB) for legacy behaviour.
However, these is a issue with this (see: BUG-231212 “[Maint G+H] Toggle speak on/off when I press button conflicts with key binding Controls”), which LL plans to address via a hotfix.
The Simplified Cache viewer updated to version 6.4.23.562623 on Friday, September 17th.
Remaining Viewer Pipeline
The rest of the official viewer pipelines remain unchanged from the start of the week:
Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10th.
Release channel cohorts:
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9th.
Project viewers:
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3rd.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2nd.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1st.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26th, 2020.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9th, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
LL are specifically looking for feedback on the 360° Snapshot project viewer and the Performance Floater viewer ahead of these being moved forward.
An overview of the 360° Snapshot viewer can be found here.
Mojo Linden
[TPVD Video: 6:22 onwards, interspersed with other discussions]
Mojo Linden, AKA Andrew Kertesz, the Lab’s new VP of Engineering, attended the TPV Developer meeting. After giving a run-down of his career, he spoke about Second Life and responded to questions and feedback from those at the meeting.
Rather than cover his comments here – where it may only be read by those specifically interested in matters relating to the viewer / the CCUG meeting – I have attempted to offer a summary of his comments, with audio, and written context for his feedback based on the questions from those at the TPVD meeting. See: Mojo Linden, the Lab’s new Engineering VP discusses SL at TPVD meeting.
Avatar Discussions
The core of the CCUG meeting focused on mesh avatars and issues of complexity, performance, usability, etc. Taking the discussion in order:
Bakes on Mesh related issues:
The left arm/leg asymmetry (to allow things like independent left arm / right arm tattoos) is seen as incomplete / complex / unworkable (e.g. having to use new channels that are “incompatible” with skin handling compared to the “old” channel, the limited use of the UV map by the left arm / keg (around 10%, etc.). Some have managed their own workarounds to this (e.g. by using the hair channel), but an official fix is seen as preferable. While this is seen as possible, it a) isn’t likely to be seen as a priority item; b) raises concerns over content breakage as a result of further changes.
The fact that the alpha wearable does not recognise the new channels introduced with BOM, and so it is possible to end up with the right arm alpha’d as expected, but the left are still visible, which is unwanted. While a Jira has been received to produce a new alpha wearable, this has yet to be implemented.
There are reports that people arriving in regions are seeing some avatars with “faces [initially] pasted on the back of their heads”. It is thought (by other users, not the Lab) the primary cause of this is the Lelutka Evo X head using a non-standard UV, and the Bake data arriving in the viewer ahead of the mesh head data (which corrects it).
Avatars and performance:
As most are aware, a significant hit on performance comes from the fact that mesh avatars are pretty poorly optimised. Beq Janus and Elizabeth Jarvinen (polysail) have been investigating just how hard segmented avatars impact people’s systems, and the results of their work has been summarised by Beq in a couple of technical, but well worth reading blog posts:
One suggestion is to implement a means to algorithmically generating the collapsed mesh – or to put it another (simplistic) way: “bake” the entire avatar: body, clothing, attachments, into what would effectively be a composite mesh with fewer faces, limited (or no) body segmentation etc. But exactly how this would be achieved, and what would be required (and exactly how it would work in terms of making on-the-fly changes to attachments, etc.), is unclear.
Calls were made to completely replace the SL skeletal rig completely, which lead to a discussion of the flexibility of the rig compared to capabilities found in Unreal Engine and Unity (two engines oft cited as examples of the engine Second Life “should” have). Animator and creator Medhue Simoni questioned the value, pointing out that from a professional standpoint, he finds the SL rig far more capable for avatar creation than the commercial offerings (which is not to say that as capable as it might be, there are not serious issues with the SL rig).
The subject of having a new default avatar in SL was raised, with fingers pointing to Patch Linden’s comments at SL18B, which can be found summarised (with a link to the discussion point in the official video) here.
The issue with any new avatar system is that it encompasses significant areas of work – the rig, the meshes, the animation system, improved IK, etc.
This has been a long-requested capability and something the Lab has been working on for some time.
According to Grumpity Linden we should – with fingers crossed – be seeing some form of announcement on the on Monday, September 20th.
In Brief
[CCUG] The Graphics team currently remain primarily focused on drilling down into the data being gathered by the Tracy debugger / system analyser.
[CCUG] User Joe Magarac (animats) has been experimenting with better asset loading prioritisation based on screen area. This is something the viewer doesn’t usually do. The video below gives an example of his results (although you might want to turn the sound down a little, if you have speakers on!).
This appears to work well with the cases shown in the video, but as was noted by Animats (and othera) in the meeting:
As presented, the code doesn’t currently account for faces using the same texture.
Further work is required to account for off-scale meshes that are corrected using prim scale, and with rigged meshes, which don’t report their on-screen size.
[TPVD] Some considerable time ago, TPV developer NiranV Dean submitted a contribution to LL for a pose system that propagates avatar poses/animations between viewers for multi-avatar posing. This has been “on hold” for a while, with a promise that discussions should be resumed.
Mojo Linden indicated that puppeteering is something the Lab is actually actively discussing / thinking about.
[TPVD] Kitty Barnett (Catznip) has been testing scene optimisation through the viewer and has encountered a problem where if a scene is “over optimised”, viewer frame rates collapse until complexity is added back to the scene (such as by enabling shadow rendering). The precise cause is still TBD, but appears to be related to random OpenGL calls being generated, possibly by the Nvidia GPU, or as a result of a debug setting, or even a flush call being missed, and too much render information being queued at once.
[TPVD] Firestorm has been compiling a list of “most wanted” fixes and improvements based on feedback received from their user base by way of feature requests filed with them, questions put to their various language support teams, direct comments, developer experience in handling the viewer code, etc. This is to be submitted to Linden Lab so that they might seen common trends / requests from users.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 14th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had not been published.
Tuesday, September 14th: no deployment to the Main SLS channel.
Wednesday, September 15th all simhosts should be updated to the same revisions to the new server configuration that was deployed to the Ferrari RC in week #36.
HTTP-Out Proxy
Monty Linden deployed the new HTTP-out proxies in week #36. It wasn’t entirely glitch-free (but not as bad as the August attempt), with issues occurring in a part of the configuration that didn’t allow for immediate correction. Monty hopes that the lessons learnt with make future deployments smoother.
SL Viewer
No updates to the current batch of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:
Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
Release channel cohorts:
Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.23.563012, dated August 24.
Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, issued August 23 (dated August 20).
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9.
Project viewers:
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3.
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
In Brief
The question was asked on why, when set using llCollisionSound, the sound heard on colliding with an object will revert to the default if the script making the change is removed, rather than being retained as a prim property (like other sounds “scripted into” an object). This is because currently, the sound remains a property of the script, but there are plans to make it consistent with other prim properties.
LL are working on “stuff” (Mazidox Linden’s term) to help with more efficient script running within regions. The precise details remained unspecified, although some aspects of the work are already on at least some of the RCs channels, and the hope is to get more grid-wide by the end of the year.
The Percentage Script Run metric within the viewer stats (CTRL-SHIFT-1) is not seen by the Lab as a particularly useful metric when compared to something like total scripts run, as the Percentage Run metric can depend on circumstance, rather than being indicative of actual simulator performance.
Example: a region running 1000 out of 1000 scripts in a frame will report 100%, whilst a region running 1000 out of 10,000 will report 10% – but both are processing the same number of scripts, and so performing equally in this regard.
Monty Linden also pointed out that the Percentage Run metric can easily be warped simply by the behaviour of a single script, and noted he has some new internal metrics he is testing that he hopes might provide a better perspective of script performance within a region.
The above points led to an open discussion on script processing as a whole: the use of “fairness” policies to prevent parcels within a region making too heavy a call on simulator / simhost resources (including being swamped by heady script loads on avatars, etc.); allocating script memory size; general ideas on improving script efficiency through the use of things like regular expressions; etc.
This conversation included a comment from Rider Linden that LL would be interested in the Firestorm script pre-processor were it to be contributed.
The suggestion was made that LL could provide HTTP-out access using the AWS Dynamo DB for those who need bigger KVP databases – and it was pointed out that users can always rent their out Dynamo DB stack.
No specifics on what the Lab might or won’t do vis scripts and script management, although Monty Linden revealed he’s been personally speculating on the advantages (or otherwise) of “higher level functionality” in the LSL libraries so that “more could be done with less code” – although he has only general ideas of possible functions in this regard.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 7th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.
Server Deployments
At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had not been published.
Tuesday, September 7th: no deployment to the Main SLS channel.
Wednesday, September 8th should she all of the the remaining simhost on the SLS RC channels (Magnum, BlueSteel, Le Tigre and Ferrari) moved to the new AWS server configuration as mentioned here, which will cause some incidental changes to how mesh land impact is calculated, but the primary change will be a small but noticeable bump in speed for most regions.
The new configuration can also cause a slight variation on floating point rounding that can show up in Land Impact calculations under rare circumstances. However, LL believes the impact is going to be so limited, it’s unlikely most people will notice.
In addition, RC Ferrari may get an update to the simulator configuration, if cleared by QA.
HTTP-Out Proxy
Monty Linden is also going to attempt a fresh deployment of the new HTTP-out proxies. The original deployment in late August went sideways very quickly. The hope is that this deployment will go a lot smoother. HTTP listeners are not changed by this update.
SL Viewer
No updates to the current batch of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:
Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
Release channel cohorts:
Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.23.563012, dated August 24.
Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, issued August 23 (dated August 20).
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9.
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
In Brief
Work is still progressing on the tools update.
The majority of the meeting involved a general discussion (largely among users present) as to the merits of providing support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and animated gifs; the cloning of regions, a concern that the lack of defragmentation in the KVP (experiences) database might lead to issues for those reaching the limits of their allowed space (to be investigated), and a texture issue apparently specific to a single Skill Gaming region (referred to support). As this discussion did not yield definitive news / options for action / response by the Lab, please refer to the video below for further information.
Update, September 4th: not long after this article was published, the 360° Snapshot project viewer was updated, so the viewer list here has been updated, and my first impressions of the update viewer can be found here.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, September 2nd 2021 at 13:00 SLT, and the TPV Developer’s meeting of Friday, September 3rd.
With the meetings once again falling on the same week, and with the degree of overlap in content between the two, core discussion points from both have been combined into this one summary. The TPV meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video is embedded at the end of this article, for those wishing to refer directly to that meeting.
Meeting Details
CCUG meetings are held on alternate Thursdays each month (generally the 1st and 3rd Thursday, vagaries of month start / end dates allowing), with dates available via the SL Public Calendar. The venue for the CCUG is the Hippotropolis camp fire.
TPV Developer meetings are generally held on alternate Fridays each month, although dates are not currently listed in the SL Public Calendar. The venue for meetings is at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
Both meetings are currently chaired by Vir Linden, and are led using Voice, although attendees can use either Voice or text to provide input / feedback (with text generally being the preferred medium).
SL Viewer
MeshOptimiser Project Viewer
The MeshOptimiser project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, was issued on Wednesday, September 1st. This viewer replaces obsolete GLOD mesh simplification in the mesh uploader with a newer Mesh Optimiser library.
About Level of Detail (LOD): as your observation point moves away from mesh objects, so does the need to render them in high / complex detail, as that complexity / detail naturally becomes less visually distinguishable. One of the more effective ways to reduce rendering complexity of a scene is to provide object models with simplified Level of Detail (LOD) that can be displayed at greater distances, reducing the rendering load on the viewer. MeshOptimiser is an improved means of achieving this. It simplifies a mesh to fit specified limits within the mesh uploader, producing models with multiple layers of greater LOD simplicity.
Notes:
This viewer currently includes an option to continue to use GLOD, if preferred, although this may be removed in the future.
Currently, MeshOptimiser is only being used in mesh uploader, it is not being employed within the mesh rendering pipe.
The use of MeshOptimiser does not alter the LOD validation code in the uploader – although this is seen by creators as something that needs addressing (and is something that Beq Janus of the Firestorm Team, who has been submitting code contributions related to the uploader has been looking at).
There is some concern that if MeshOptimiser does not support edge protection, it could have a negative impact on mesh clothing, which has been noted by the lab.
Performance Floater Project Viewer
The Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, was issued on Thursday, September 2nd. This viewer introduces a new floater that pulls together options related to viewer performance under a new toolbar button somewhat confusingly called (in comparison to the viewer’s use of “Performance” in its name) of “Graphics Speed”. See my separate article on this preliminary release of this viewer for more information.
Remaining Viewer Pipeline
Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10 – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Happy Hour Maintenance 2 RC viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, dated August 20.
Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9.
Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.22.561850, dated July 29.
Project viewers:
360° Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
The 360° Snapshot project viewer should see an update in the next few days.
A update for the Copy / Paste viewer has an update currently with the viewer QA team, and which should hopefully be appearing “pretty soon”.
The Muscadine project viewer has been removed from the available project viewers, as there is no simulator side support for it. This does not mean the project has been abandoned – it is just on hold until work can resume and the necessary simulator support implemented.
As a part of reducing the volume of viewer updates that are being queued either as Alternate Viewers or awaiting entering project or RC status, LL is looking to start combining updates into single releases. As a part of / start to this process the two Maintenance RCs that are currently available (Grappa and Happy Hour) are likely to be merged.
Graphics News
The work to Integrate the Tracy debugger / system analyser to allow for better cross-platform profiling of client hardware to help with cross-platform graphics development is now drawing to a close, with an internal test viewer producing worthwhile client analysis data.
Work is progressing with the next batch of graphics updates that will see light of day in the Love Me Render 6 RC viewer at some point.
Aditi Log-ins
As a result of the move to AWS, logging-in to Aditi, the Beta grid, for testing purposes, etc., has been a issue for some tome, both in terms of being able to log-in and in getting inventory correctly synced with Main grid (Agni) inventory.
The inventory syncing issues now appear to be resolved, although anyone still encountering problems is asked to file a support ticket.
There has been some improvement on the ability to log-in to Aditi, although issues with time-outs due to back-end handshaking failures are still apparent. Some have lengthened the timeout set via the LoginSRVTimeout Debug setting to try to overcome this
Further log-in fixes for Aditi are in progress (including for the time-out issue), but no time frame at present on when they will be deployed.
In Brief
An invite-only “creators channel” has been started on Discord by a group of users. While not an official LL communications channel, some Lindens have been invited to join it, and have been taking questions.
This move is not seen as particularly helpful to content creators in general or those interested in content creation due to its “invite only” status.
Some at the CCUG meeting voice the opinion that a better channel for passing question to the Lab ahead of meetings would be via the official forums.
BUG-227543 “Set ‘Press to talk’ as default mode in Official Viewer” has been on the accepted list for two years, but is coming to the fore again due to new users entering SL being unaware their microphone is live for the moment they enter SL on the official viewer and then accidentally activate Voice. The change is now apparently being tested, and so will hopefully be appearing in a Maintenance RC at some point Soon™.
Feature request BUG-215951 “Option to allow nearest neighbour on textured faces” currently has a status of Closed, although it is seen as a potentially useful feature. The major issue in trying to implement it is that it would require a new field in the asset database for each face on an object, and there is no easy way for LL to further extend the allowable per object data fields.
This formed part of a wider conversation around texture rendering, including the use of texture atlases, changes that might be possible with the eventual shift to a new rendering engine and the potential for procedural based rendering to be implemented for SL.
Concern continues over the issues many are experiencing with group chat and the manner in which it is giving rise to an “exodus” of people from SL to Discord (at least for group chat purposes).
The fear is that as people become more accustomed to Discord and its features and the ease with which they can communicate / share, etc., they’ll have increasingly less reason to log-into Second Life. Given that Discord tends to be used alongside of SL rather than in lieu of it, it’s hard to judge if such fears are valid.
One potential source of frustration that does tend to be felt is that when this issue is raised, it can often – if unintentionally – appear to be dismissed with comments akin to “we’re aware of the problems”.
That said, feature request BUG-230899 “Split Group Chat from Groups and Extend its Functionality” has been accepted for future consideration.
Catznip is testing an option to reduce the resolution of the screen buffer(s) in the viewer via slider (e.g. so a 1080p screen can be set to a buffer of 720p or even 540p). This has the benefit of speeding up performance (do to lower-resolution rendering, but it can made the world look blurry as a result. However, LL has expressed an interesting in taking a look at the code if contributed.
Source Filmmaker is a tool that has been developed for making mini movies using video games, and being able to edit scenes, set poses, etc., in real-time “within the game” (so to speak), essentially by caching assets, etc., locally and then manipulating them. The question was asked whether a similar tool – IF it could be made to work in SL – would violate things like DMCA. Such a tool would require a detailed proposal for LL to pass to their legal team before a considered response could be given.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, September 1st, 2021.
These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and the following is a summary of key topics / discussions.
Web Properties Updates
Back-end work is still on-going and has taken up a lot of time through August.
The updated SL logo has been added to further web pages.
New User sign-ups:
The e-mail validation check on the new user sign-up pages has been improved.
Error messages for selected names that are unavailable have been made clearer
Land updates:
The bug that required Show in Search to be enabled when selling land has now been fixed.
There have been some repairs to broken links in the e-mail sent to those obtaining a new Private Island.
The land auction page has been fixed to correctly show the highest bidder on a parcel, and further translations of the page have been added for localisation.
Marketplace improvements:
The ability to single-click empty a shopping cart has been implemented.
The meaning of a number of Marketplace error messages have been made clearer.
Mobile Update
There are some bugs with the iOS update LL had hoped to roll-out to the test group in August. These are being ironed out, so it is still internal to the Lab.
The Android version is still awaiting the iOS version progressing.
Marketplace Related
For some reason, some Marketplace merchants are using the Bulk Redelivery option introduced in August to re-send copies of demo versions of goods to people. At least one Jira has been filed on this, and LL will be fine-tuning the capability.
While it has been this way for years, the question was asked as to why payment details must be provided when opening an MP store. The response was that primarily, it is to prevent bots taking out MP stores.
It was suggested that flags should be added to allow users to report items that are not as advertised (e.g. “Item Not As Advertised → Misleading Listing Terms” or “MP listing flag Item Not As Advertised → Item(s) Not As Described”. These were seen by LL as potentially useful flags.
Item variations (e.g. multiple colour options for clothing items) is still a feature LL plan to add to the MP, but the work on providing / implementing it has not yet started, so no time frame as yet on when it might surface.
There are no plans to allow multiple MP stores under a single account – apparently the MP just isn’t set-up to support this.
As an alternative to multiple stores under an account, a request was made to allow goods in stores to be categorised by the store owner. A feature request Jira on the idea was requested.
The request was made to allow users to prioritise / rank the items they add to their wishlists so others can see the items they are really interested in. Again seen as a Jira request.
A “recommended for you” / “you might also like” feature based on a user’s purchase habits on the MP is something that is unlikely to be implemented, as the MP infrastructure is not geared for this.
The ability for creators selling limited quantity items to publicly show the number left has been previously asked for in meetings – a feature request Jira has been requested.
BUG-231142 “Questions and Answers’ tab for marketplace product pages” is a feature request received and accepted by the Lab. Reed Linden requested MP store owners consider it and perhaps offer feedback on the idea at the next WUG meeting.
MP Reviews and Flagging
A request was made to allow creators to disallow reviews on things like demo versions of products to prevent bad reviews on the strength of people not understanding a demo may have limited functionality, etc.
While it is acknowledged that some bad reviews can be left that may be unwarranted (and can be flagged as such), disabling reviews for items really isn’t an option, as this could be equally abused by creators (by blocking reviews on the basis that they do not like what has been written, however valid. There is also the fact that reviews are at best subjective: just because a creator may not like / agree with critical views, does not necessarily mean they are “bad”.
A separate suggestion was made to allow the possible automatic removal of 1 and 2 star reviews. Essentially, it one receipt of such a review, the creator could respond via their own comment and the user leaving the original comment would then have 7 days to respond. If they do, the review remains, if they don’t the review is removed.
This was also seen as a potential means for unscrupulous creators to game their reviews, and thus not something LL would consider.
When dealing with reviews, it was suggested by LL that if there are better / alternative flags creators could use to highlight abusive / off-topic / unfair reviews, this would be a better option. Request for possible additional flags should be made via Jira.
A suggestion was made to better denote creator responses to review comments, such as through a border around them or having them appear in a different colour, so as to make them easier to spot. This was seen as a useful suggestion, and a Jira on it has been requested.
In Brief
Premium Plus remains on hold.
Two-factor Authentication (2FA) is still being worked on.
BUG-216465 “Viewer web widgets not HTTPS ready” was apparently fixed in an August update, although the bug report was still open at the time of the meeting.
Congratulations to Keira, Welcome Back to Reed
This was the last Web User Group meeting to be led by Keira Linden, as she is transitioning to take over management of the Support Operations team – congratulations to her.
As a result, Reed Linden has returned to the Web User Group and will again be leading in from the October meeting – so welcome back Reed.
