Category: Web User Group

The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, January 8th, 2020. These meetings are held monthly, with dates and details of the meetings available via the Web User Group wiki page.

When reading these notes, please keep in mind:

• This is not intended as a chronological transcript of the meeting. Items are drawn together by topic, although they may have been discussed at different points in the meeting.
• Similarly, and if included, any audio extracts appearing in these summaries are presented by topic heading, rather than any chronological order in which they may have been raised during the meeting (e.g. if “topic X” is mentioned early in a meeting and then again half-way through a meeting, any audio comments related to that topic that might be included in these reports will be concatenated into a single audio extract).

Recurring Events

Recurring Events launched on Monday, January 8th, allowing Premium members to set a recurring events in the Upcoming Events lists available via users dashboards at secondlife.com.

In brief:

• Premium members will be charged L$10 for listing one-off events, or L$50 for filing an event that can recur up to 12 times (weekly or monthly).
  • Basic members are charged L$50 per event listing.
• Recurring events are events that share the same location, time, duration, and description but occur on a weekly or monthly basis.
• Recurring events are largely set-up exactly the same was as individual events:
  • Go to your dashboard at secondlife.com and select Events from left side menu to open the Events listing page.
  • Click on Create A New Event directly below the top left calendar on the page, then read and accept the Event Posting Rules to display the new Event Creation page.
  • Complete all the fields on the page.

• • When selecting an event to repeat either weekly or monthly, the fee charged to your account (displayed at the bottom of the form) change from L$10 to L$50.

There are currently some minor adjustments required for monthly recurring events, as events recurring right at the end of a month may give some incorrect dates for months of different lengths. Such areas can be corrected manually, but updates to be deployed in the near future should correct the problem. In addition, LL will be monitoring the recurring events capability now it is live in order to identify and address any other issues that may arise now it is live.

Future Events Listings Work

Further improvements to events are planned (e.g. better searching for events), but these are dependent on other work being completed first.

This work may include things like being able to push events to your personal calendar (Google Calendar, Outlook, etc.).

Name Changes

• No final confirmation on release date (although the hope has been for a mid-Q1 2020 release). The exact release time frame is dependent upon final checks on the capability being completed.
• Even if delayed, Last Names will still be deployed before any release of the Premium Plus subscription package.
• Over 2,000 entries have been received as a part of the (now closed) Last Names Contest, totalling some 6,000 last name suggestions in all, and LL have started going through them.
• It is likely that when Name Changes is launched, users will be able to pick last names from a list of around 20-30.
• One of the approaches being considered for changing the available last names is for:
  • Popular selections being removed from the list and replaced on reaching a certain number of people selecting them.
  • Having selections that appear “unpopular” (i.e. they are rarely / never selected) replaced if they fail to achieve a certain threshold of use over an (unspecified) period of time.

Marketplace

• 

  Marketplace search has been updated with options to exclude / include limited quantity items and / or demo items.

  • The check boxes for excluding (ticked) or including (unticked) such items can be found at the bottom of the Search Filters panel displayed on the left of Marketplace pages when either Search is used or See All Categories is clicked.
  • Both options can be found below the search by permissions options.
  • By default, both options are unchecked, so that searches will include either limited quantity or demo items in their results results.
• Work is being put into performance improvements which, as Grumpity noted at the meeting, tend not to be noticed right up to the point where something goes wrong.
  • An example of this is the ability for merchants to search their invoices should be a lot faster following back-end updates.
• There are still “quite a few” things the Lab have queued up to do in relation to Marketplace search, but no specific details are available as yet on what might surface when.

In Brief

• This issue with Destination Guide submissions is believed to be resolved.

The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, December 4th, 2019. These meetings are held monthly, with dates and details of the meetings available via the Web User Group wiki page.

When reading these notes, please keep in mind:

• This is not intended as a chronological transcript of the meeting. Items are drawn together by topic, although they may have been discussed at different points in the meeting.
• Similarly, and when included, any audio extracts appearing in these summaries are presented by topic heading, rather than any chronological order in which they may have been raised during the meeting (e.g. if “topic X” is mentioned early in a meeting and then again half-way through a meeting, the audio comments will be concatenated into a single audio extract for that topic).

Premium

Winter Promotion

• As many have already seen, the winter Premium promotion is currently open through until the end of the month.
• For the first time, the promotion applies to Annual plans (previously, any discount on Premium subscriptions have only applied to Monthly and Quarterly plans), with an offer of 10% off of the cost of the annual subscription (normally US $99) when an account is upgraded to Premium.
• It is likely that, as with the mid-year Premium fee increase, there will be an opportunity for Premium users to pre-pay a further year’s annual premium membership “locked in” at the discounted price.

Other Premium Notes

• There is no further news on Premium Plus or its benefits.
• There are no plans at this point to add other levels of Premium either “above” or “below” the current Premium + benefits. This might change at some point in the more distant future.

Legacy Profiles Viewer

• The Legacy profiles viewer has cleared the last issue blocking it from update, so a new version of the viewer should be appearing soon. This update will include the profile feed embedded in the viewer.
• Once this viewer reaches release status, the web profiles are to be retired.
• The removal of the web-based profiles means that things like the privacy settings (which only worked for the web anyway), will no longer be available. However (and if I was understanding Grumpity correctly), at some point the profile viewer will include the ability for a user to determine what information within their viewer profile is visible to others who view it.

Marketplace

• Store De-listings:
  • The Lab is work to fix the issue of Marketplace stores being de-listed as a result of using banned keywords.
  • It was re-iterated that, for a number of reasons – including people attempting to game it – the banned keyword list will not be made public.
  • Instead, the Lab has been working to make the algorithm used to scan for keywords is being made “smarter”, so it more correctly identifies banned words, which will hopefully reduce the number of unlistings occurring. There is still more work to be done on on this.
• Improvements to the Marketplace search (demo items, gachas, etc), is now “very, very close” to being ready for release.
• BUG-9984 “blank folder names” (in inventory) is another issue that has been looked into a number of times, but again, the Lab has been unable to determine the cause. However, they will give it a further pass in an attempt to find a cause or provide a workaround.
• Feature requests BUG-227919 “Marketplace Sales Function” and BUG-227072 “Ability to give specific marketplace customers discounts” are both being considered by the Lab (but no commitment at this point in time that they will be implemented or when).
• Overall, the Lab feel that the last 12-18 months have seen significant improvements to the Marketplace when compared to prior years.

In Brief

• The last blocker for an update to the legacy profile project viewer has been cleared, and an update to the viewer, which will include support for the profile feed within it, should be surfaced for users to test Soon™.
• As noted in my November summary, user-to-user land auctions will remain on hold for the time being, as the Lab is focused on other web-based work.
• BUG-11555 “Setting certain characters in Display Name results in DN changing twice within minutes and resulting DN changes to Korean.” is a long-standing issue, and while it has been looked at, the Lab has yet to work out how to fix it.

The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019. These meetings are held monthly. Dates and details of the meetings can be obtained through the Web User Group wiki page.

When reading these notes, please keep in mind:

• The topics below are ordered in their likely interest to users / depth of discussion at the meeting, with some comments drawn together from different points in the meeting. This is not intended as a chronological set of meeting notes.
• Audio extracts are taken from my recording of the meeting, but have again been grouped by topic. In addition, the audio relating to Premium and “Elite” subscriptions may sound fractured tin tone, as it is a grouping of verbal replies to questions asked in local chat at the meeting.

Summary

The TL;DR summary (items expanded upon in the sections below):

• On Monday, September 30th, the Lab issued a blog post update on the web team’s work, and this was referenced during the meeting (see also my coverage of the blog post – Lab blogs on the SL Web Team’s work, including “last names”). Similar blog posts will likely be released ahead of each monthly WUG meeting, to both remind users of the meeting and to act as an informal agenda.
• Web services have been a major focus of transitioning Second Life services to the cloud.
• Name Changes: are getting closer to release but are not imminent. The feature will be Premium only, fees have not been finalised.
• Premium options: work is progressing with the new “super Premium” option, but this will not be ready until after Name Changes have been deployed. The new level is – at present – likely to be called “Elite”. It will cost more than the current Premium subscriptions.
• Search is being worked on across all of the SL web properties, including the Marketplace – but no time frames as to when improvements might be deployed.

Cloud Transition

• As noted in the Monday Sept. 30th blog post, many of the Lab’s web services have been transitioned to running on Amazon AWS cloud services.
• Other services previously operated on a third-party basis have (and are) being moved in-house or decoupled to standalone status, in readiness to be transitioned to the cloud where possible.
• All of this work has been achieved without any significant disruption to services or – more particularly – without users actually being aware the services had been moved.
• Specific benefits of the moves made to date are:
  • Future changes, updates and responses to issues can be handled a lot faster.
  • Due to the nature of AWS services, LL have been able to achieve almost 100% up time in running those services that have been transitioned.

Name Changes

• As previously noted, Name Changes involve users being able to select any first name, and a last name via a list.
• The capability will be Premium only.
• Name changes will be subject to fee (still TBA) per change.
  • The fee charged will be less for “Elite” accounts than for Premium (see below for more on “Elite” and Premium).
• The rough window for deployment is between 1 and 3 months, with a margin of error of around two months.
  • There is still more work to be done on the back-end systems.
  • The actual viewer UI in which name changes are made has yet to be implemented.
• As an aside (not mentioned in the meeting, but indicated elsewhere): new users signing-up to Second Life will still be given the default name of “Resident” – they will be able to change names should they upgrade to Premium, as with all Basic account users.

New Premium Subscription

• The idea of having additional levels of Premium subscription was first publicly mentioned in detail in 2018. See:
  • April 20th 2018 Town Hall with Ebbe Altberg: transcript with audio – April 20th, 2018.
  • Premium subscription changes: a little more news from Grumpity – April 26th, 2018, also with audio.
• Since that time, it has been decided to just have a single additional Premium level, sitting “above” the current Premium level.
  • However, the new system is being structured such that if there is a need / opportunity for further subscription levels, they can be added in the future.
• Currently the proposed name for the new subscription level is “Elite” – but this may still change.
  • There will be clear differentiators between Premium and “Elite”, including, as noted above, a lower fee applied to “Elite” users when changing their name.
  • There will be no requirement for merchants to have to upgrade to “Elite”, although some of the benefits of “Elite” might apply to Merchants.
• Subscription rates:
  • Premium subscription rates will not change.
  • “Elite” upgrades will be offered on a monthly / annual basis.
  • As per my article Lab opts to temporarily continue Quarterly Premium plan for new sign-ups, relating to the Premium subscription fee changes announced earlier in 2019:
    • Quarterly subscriptions will be discontinued for those upgrading to Premium / Elite when the latter is launched.
    • However, quarterly payments will continue to be honoured for users already on the Premium quarterly payment plan.
  • Fees for “Elite” to be revealed when launched, but obviously, they will be higher than the current Premium rates.
  • Premium members upgrading to “Elite” will pay the difference between their current Premium fee and the “Elite” fee to which they decide to upgrade, and there may be a prorate option for qualifying users when upgrading.
• “Elite” subscriptions will not be ready for introduction until at least a month after the deployment of Name Changes.

Profile Changes

• The discontinuing of web profiles was first publicly raised in February 2019 (see: 2019 SL User Groups 7/3: TPV Developer Meeting), when it was indicated profile information would be moving back into the viewer.
• One of the reasons for this change appears to be related to the transitioning services to the cloud as much as with the pain of provisioning the web-based profiles.
• An initial Legacy Profile project viewer appeared in June (see: SL Legacy Profiles project viewer).
  • Note that project viewers are regarded as unsupported, but can be obtained via the Alternate Viewers web page.
• The Legacy Profile viewer will be updated over time, with one of the updates to come being a new tab to profile feeds, allowing users to see people’s feed updates through the viewer.
  • TPVs will still be able to use the option to point to profile feeds on the web, if they prefer.
• It is hoped that the Legacy Profiles viewer will move to release candidate status Soon™ and promoted to release status “really soon after that”.

In Brief

Web Services Release Notes

• The web team is working “really hard” to implement formal release notes for updates to the various SL web services.
• These will likely be in a similar format to the revamped server and viewer release notes, which can be reached via the recently implemented web-based Release Notes home page.
• There is currently no date as to when this will be surfaced, but there are “a couple” web engineers working on this (when not working on more user-facing projects).

Marketplace, Search, Events

• In-world purchase notifications for store owners:
  • As per my article on this, this system will be opt-in, initially on an entire store basis. It might be extended to individual items in the future, if feasible / if there is a demand for this.
  • The notification will provide details on item purchased, amount received and who made the purchase.

• Work is proceeding on Marketplace improvements beyond those mentioned, but LL is not yet in a position to state what the next updates for deployment might be.
• Search is being worked on right across the SL web properties. This is liable to see improved filtering of searches and (particularly useful for Marketplace searches) the use of exclusions.
• Work is proceeding with the overhaul of the events system. This comprises short-term updates that are being carried out alongside a much larger, long-term project to completely overhaul the events system.

Related Links

• SL16B Meet April and Oz Linden: summary with audio and video – June 2019 (names changes and cloud migration)
• The return of Last Names – a further update with audio – June 2019 (an extract from the above)
• The return of Second Life Last Names – update with audio – March 2018, with audio comments