Tag: Web User Group 2023

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2023.

WUG meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
• They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.

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 subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Marketplace

• Mentioned towards the end of a blog post made on April 7th relating to (then) recent updates, the change to allow best selling to now index each merchant’s store individually instead of just the top 50k items is now being actively worked on.
  • When complete, it will allow customers to sort the listings within a store by those which have been the top selling over a certain period of time (exact period still TBD at the time of writing).
  • In addition, Sntax Linden is interested in taking feedback from merchants on idea they may have for best selling items indexing / lists.
• Also raised at the April meeting was the subject of a Marketplace “Spring Clean” (last performed in 2019).
  • This will see the unlisting of products and/or disabling of merchant stores if they meet specific criteria (as defined in the blog posted linked-to above).
  • Note that products / stores can be re-activated by the Merchant logging-in and re-activating and re-listed.
• The “Spring Cleaning” discussion included a number of suggestions / comments, including providing  listings with an indicator to show if the merchant had logged in to MP in the last X number of days, so that customers might have some idea as to how active the merchant is, should support be required (privacy concerns were raised over this idea).

In Brief

Please refer to the video for these topics.

• The Spring Cleaning topic led to a broader discussion on preserving content which might be regarded as “historic” (with the creator’s approval) when the creator departs Second Life.
  • This is not necessarily something restricted to saving within the Marketplace.
  • There is already the Second Life Region Preservation Society which can take entire regions into LL’s stewardship when certain criteria can be met).
  • However preserving individual products / product lines raises issues of IP which could be more complicated than with the preservations of a region, and with issues of continued support (or the expectation thereof) should the product(s) also continue to be in use within SL.
• Questions were asked about shopping practices and how often people use the MP shopping cart to store-up items for later purchase, rather than proceeding to the checkout with a cart when they’ve finished their current round of shopping.
  • Responses to this were many and varied (e.g. “because I don’t want to make any MP purchases until I’m in-world to receive / unpack / sort them”), through to comments about lack of wishlist functionality (e.g. they remain cumbersome to use / load slowly / the link to add items to a wishlist is not obvious, etc.).
•  In terms of wishlists, the option for multiple / custom wishlists was again raised, and noted that it is on the MP roadmap, but currently under the heading of “someday”, rather than something that is actively being worked on or considered for implementation at this point in time.
• A general discussion on how merchants promote new products – via Groups, Twitter, Discord, word-of-mouth, etc.
  • One suggestion was to allow customers the ability to “follow” their favourite stores (see feature request
  • BUG-233138 “Social/Creator Focused Marketplace Feed”), allowing them to receive / view information on new releases from those stores when visiting the MP.
  • Whilst reactive rather than proactive, it was also pointed out that the above could be done when a customer goes to their Favourite Stores listing on the MP and then order by Age: Newest First.

• The above led to the suggestion that people could have their own personalised MP home page, listing favourite stores, providing updates on the releases etc.
• Dates for listings – date listed, date last updated, last date the item sold, for example – have been requested in the past and were requested again, together with indications on whether products are using  the latest / more recent SL capabilities, if relevant (e.g. Bento, PBR (once in general use), etc). However, trying to cover everything likely become overly complicated.
• The idea of “verified” creators was also raised: although exactly what the criteria for this should be might be seen as subjective, or the process itself might be seen as a barrier to entry )were it, for example, involve LL requesting personal information beyond that already requested).
• Plrease refer to the second half of the video for these and other general discussions.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, July 5th, 2023 (according to the public calendar – check for changes). Venue and time per top of this summary.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, April 5th, 2023.

WUG meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
• They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.

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 subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Marketplace

Recent Updates and General Notes

• There have been changes made to Marketplace Search. For example:
  • Now, by default (and assuming no search terms have been entered), displaying a merchant’s store page will list their products by newest first).
  • Merchant and Store names are no longer included in the Product search, but are now apply considered when using the dedicated search tab.
• Some of these updates have caused confusion, so an official blog post has been published to explain them and the reasoning behind them.
• These changes, and those noted below, are being actively monitored by LL, and further adjustments may be made based on the metrics they are seeing / feedback from Merchants / consumers.
• In addition:
  • The checkout cart has been updated to allow up to 99 list items to be stored in it (the previous limit was 10).
  • The cap on the total number of search returns, implemented with the last set of Search updates (a total of 50 pages of results) has been rolled back, so that Search will now list all results matching a given search.
• Unless Boolean, etc., operators are used in entering search terms, Search will now attempt to string together words entered into it and search based on the string (e.g. so whereas entering “blue shirt” would previously have listed items matching “blue” or “shirt”, it will now attempt to limit results to results which have “blue” and “shirt” in their descriptions.

Upcoming Changes

• “Marketplace spring cleaning” is about to start.
  • This means that if a merchant has not logged-in to the MP for two years, and they have listings which have not seen any sales in the part year, those items will be unlisted.
  • Similarly, if the Merchant has not logged-in in two years and nothing has been sold through their MP store in the past year, the entire store will be unlisted.
  • This work will be blogged about by the Lab as the work starts.
• E-mail verification: thus far, e-mail verification has not been a requirement for Merchants to use the Marketplace. This will be changing so that e-mail verification will be a requirement. Again, this will be subject to a blog announcement as it comes in.
• LL is looking at ways to make keywords more effective and reduce the amount of keyword abuse / spamming; however no decisions on direction with this has yet been reached.

In Brief

• Requests for MP changes:
  • Add a “date listed” field to all MP listings (and possibly a “date updated” field).
  • Put a mechanism in place to prevent people using the Buy Now button when trying to buy an item as a gift for someone else (e.g. a warning that it does not apply to purchasing gifts).
  • Allowing “sub-stores” wherein Merchants who produce products of different types / for different markets can list their products in “sub-stores” under their main brand without the need to create avatar account to run individual stores. This is something that has been requested numerous times, and LL has previously indicated as something that could be considered, although the idea seems to have been lost along the way.
  • As an alternative to this, it was suggested that Merchants should have the means to categories products in their stores (e.g. have a dedicated category for discounts / special offers customers can easily reference without have to search the entire store.
• BUG-233043 “On the Marketplace Opengraph Metadata tags no longer work” – this prevents the sharing of links to products on various social media platforms from including previews on the item, with only the URL being displayed. It has been a problem since the end of 2022, and was raised again in a request for the Lab to look into it.
• Those attending the meeting were asked for thoughts on customers being able to leave product reviews without any verification that had actually purchased the product.
  • This was largely seen as a bad idea, due to the potential for malicious comments / griefing.
  • However, there is a possible use-case here in that it allows users purchasing a product in-world to leave a review where otherwise they have no public voice – although with CasperVend now owned by Linden Lab, and the promise of integration between the two, this might offer a path to allow purchases made via CasperVend vendors to be flagged as “verified” and thus allow their review on the MP.
• The length of MP URLs and difficulty in using them – together with requests for LL to provide a means of shortening them was discussed.
• The question was raised as to the Destination Guide either being properly curated so that non-existent locations could be removed – or a means provided to allow users report  those locations they find no longer exist in SL (or at least as the given region). This is something that will be passed back to the Destination Guide team.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023. Venue and time per top of this summary.

Update, March 8th: as per this official blog post, further fixes and improvements have been applied to the Marketplace search update.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, March 1st, 2023.

WUG meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
• They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.

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 subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Marketplace Search

The updates to the Marketplace implementation of ElasticSearch have been deployed, This means:

• Merchant and store names won’t be included in product-specific searches anymore, increasing the number of relevant results.
• The ability to do exact matches with quotes around a word or phrase.
• Asterisk(*) wildcard searches.
• Fuzzy matching will help with misspelled words and typos.
• Search operators AND, OR, NOT will still work as before. (Note that they must be capitalised. Consult the tooltip next to keyword search for more information.).

Issues were encountered, such as the need to capitalise operators (as noted above), a bug with determining relevance, the result page displaying an inaccurate count of returns, etc. As per the official blog post, some of these have been addressed, and LL are watching the situation to address further issues as they occur.

In Brief

• A general discussion on how the MP & search is used, e.g.:
  • How deep people go in scanning search return lists.
  • Do people use the MP & search to find specific products or general browsing (market research, curiosity, etc.)?
  • Do people use the MP as a means to find items then then purchase in-world or do they prefer to browse in-world and purchase via the MP?
  • The answers were broad-ranging and likely typical of a mix of merchants and consumers.
• The question was asked about improving listing management for merchants, which generated numerous responses including:
  • Tags for listings, which when clicked will generate searches for items using the same tag.
  • An in-listing option for the owner of the listing to click on it to edit the listing directly.
  • Improvements to how discounts can be applied.
• It was suggested that questions such as these should be put to users via the forums in order to generate broader feedback.
• For details of these discussions, please refer to the video.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, April 5th, 2023. Venue and time per top of this summary.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, February 1st, 2023.

WUG meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
• They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.

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 subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Updates for January 2023

Land Portal Release

• [Video: 06:00-08:00] The new Land Portal has been launched. This is intended to be a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership” – purchasing regions, renting land from a private estate, renting or purchasing Mainland; obtaining a Linden Home.
• [Video: 10:33-10:49] There are currently no actual functionality changes to the pages behind the portal – these will come in time.
  • [Video: 8:51-9:22] The first of the Land pages to undergo update and improvement will be the Linden Homes page. This will make it easier to see and select available Linden Home styles – but this update “will be a while” before it is surfaced.
• Translations for the Portal and the Land pages will come in due course.
• The Portal has been used as something of a prototype, bringing together tools and technologies the Lab intend to use to build-out updated versions of their websites and portals, and ensure they are mobile-friendly.

• A technical blog post on what the web tools and ongoing website redesign means will be published be the Lab in the near future.

Marketplace Updates

• [[Video: 08:04-8:43] Search:
  • The deployment of the Marketplace Search updates has been further delayed, as indexing all searched to date is taking longer than anticipated to complete.
  • All other work is completed – the code is in place and ready to go – but LL want to ensure that search and order histories all remain in place when the switch is thrown.
  • once fully deployed, the new MP Search will have a close parity with the updated web search deployed in 2023, including its own relevance engine.
• [Video: 17:29-20:26] “Marketplace 2.0” – the Refresh / Rebuild:
  • Still being discussed / developed.
  • Will likely included further Search capabilities: fuzzy searching; negative tags / Boolean search options; the potential for improved filtering.

Marketplace Discussion Summary

Marketplace “Gold Star” Mechanism

[Video: 31:49-35:30]

One idea being floated internally at LL is the idea of awarding worn / attached items a “gold star” to items with a “low Land Impact”.

• The suggested approach would be to have some form of automated “side bake” mechanism which takes avatar attachments and assesses their LI, and then awards them a “gold star” on the basis of whether or not they remain within some defined “LI threshold”.  “Gold star wearables” would then be searchable as a category / categories within the MP.
• The core aims of this would be to:
  • Encourage wearable items creators to ensure their clothing and avatar attachment are more render performant/efficient (avatars currently have perhaps the highest performance impact, as no real constraints are currently placed on the complexity of worn items, so there is no incentive to model them as efficiently as possible).
  • Encourage consumers to consider what they are purchasing and its impact (“the gold star means it is better for you and SL”).
• This does raise concerns of further gaming of LOD (level of detail) in order to bring items in under the threshold, with the result that while they gain the “gold star” they nevertheless immediate collapse into one (or a small group) or triangles when seen from even a minimal distance – with creators who do so then “recommending” users set their viewer’s LOD rendering unnaturally high – and in the process further negatively impacting viewer performance.
• Alternatives offered at the meeting:
  • Utilise the revised avatar complexity calculations which form a part of the ARCTan project by which to measure the complexity of worn items (the problem here being the ARCTan project stalled some 2+ years ago and has yet to be re-started).
  • Utilise the “good LOD” calculations used for Animesh to encourage creators to model their clothing / attachments responsibly.

General Marketplace Discussion / Exchange of Ideas

[Video 20:42-31:45 + local chat]

• Variants (officially “Styles” – e.g. having multiple colour options for an item in a single listing) was again raised. No further direct feedback on this was given; however, at the January meeting it was indicated the work (which has apparently largely been done) is being “re-prioritised” in the face of the delays in deploying the updated MP Search.
• “One click demos” were suggested for the MP – being able to click on an attachment offing in the Marketplace and the item is temporarily worn in-world. This is something Garfield Linden indicated was of interest to him, and requested a Feature Request Jira on the idea.
• Search:
  • Phonetic searching was requested (particularly handy for those not well-versed in the currently-supported languages / dyslexia, where fuzzy search might over-compensate with results).  Sntax [sic] Linden acknowledged the “appeal” of phonetic searching.
  • Filtering clothing / attachments by body type: this is something the Marketplace Team are already looking at in terms of the “most popular” bodies – although how representative this might be of SL’s diversity is hard to determine.
• Pay what you want – suggested as a possible option to allow merchants to offer items for free, but with the option for buyers to offer a “tip” in payment.
  • The functionality for this may be overly complicated to implement.
  • However, in considering Marketplace updates / a rebuild, LL have looked at options for offering coupons, sales, and “price changey” options, so this idea will be added to the list for further internal discussion.
• It was acknowledged that Marketplace load times in the viewer’s browser (and the load times of other SL web properties a user may already be logged-in to) are “to darn high”, and that there are “performance skirmishes” to be had in this area.
• A suggestion was made for the Marketplace to support “related items” between stores. This would require engagement by Merchants, but the idea would be if Merchant A produced items intended for use with something Merchant B produces, they could mutually list one another’s products as being related. It could also be technically complex to implement.
• Marketplace and CasperVend integration: this is something LL would like to do following the purchase of CasperTech, and have had discussions about, but there are no firm plans as to have it might be tackled as yet.

Misc Items

Smart Landmarks

[Video 47:30-48:10]

• Mention was made of “Smart Landmarks” – LM’s that update when you move store / house.
• This is not something that is anywhere near being ready to ship (or perhaps evening being worked on), but it is on the Lab’s “wanna do” list.
• The late Darrius Gothly developed a scripted system called Virtual Landmarks, based on an original idea by Toysoldier Thor, almost a decade ago, although sadly, the system no longer functions. See: Virtual Landmarks: Solving an age-old problem?, closed Jira SVC-8082, and Virtual Landmarks: offering a solution to an age-old problem, plus, more recently BUG-232416.

World API Update

[Video 48:40-49:25]

• It has been notes that following a recent update, the World API reports banned agents as a part of the Group member count.
• It is not clear if the update caused this, but if so, it was not the intent. The matter has been noted for investigation.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, March 1st, 2023. Venue and time per top of this summary.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, January 4th, 2023.

WUG meetings:

• Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
• Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
• They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.

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 subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Updates for December 2022

Marketplace Elastic Search Overhaul

[Video: 3:41-5:27]

• Following recent delays, it had been hoped the MP search updates would be deployed before the end of 2022. Unfortunately, issues with the updates continued to prevent this.
• The hope is now to have thing deployed as the “first thing” for web-related deployments, hopefully by the end of January 2023.
• As a reminder: this work is essentially the same kind of back-end update as carried out with Web search a few months ago, with the emphasis on faster, more robust performance, together with new search options, including:
  • Merchant and store names will no long be searched in product searches.
  • Wildcard (e.g. using *) will be possible.
  • Better exact matching against search terms
  • The back-end supports fuzzy matching to better handle typos when inputting searches.
  • There should be a noticeable increase in speed of search results being returned.
• Once running, these updates will allow LL to add-in the relevance engine AI to the Marketplace search (as a separate API entity to the relevance engine already running on the web search).

“Land Ownership Journey”

[Video: 5:31-7:30]

Summary: A complete re-write of every route by which users can obtain and hold land, from Premium (+Plus) Linden Homes, obtaining Mainland (incl. Abandoned Land), and private island regions, and renting from private estates.

• The first user-facing element of this work – the new Land Portal, a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership” – will likely be deployed by the end of January 2023.
• The Portal layout is liable to be a template / proof of concept for overhauling the rest of the Second Life web properties to give them a coherent appearance, make them easier to maintain and add new pages, make SL’s web presence more performant overall and ensure it works on mobile devices as well as desktops / laptops.
• Once the Portal has been deployed, the focus will shift to the Linden Homes selection pages.

Marketplace Styles

[Video: 56:08-56:55]

• Work had been expected to resume on Styles (allowing multiple colours, etc., for an item to appear within a single listing rather than each requiring its own listing) following the deployment of the MP Search updates, with the plan for a deployment early-ish in 2023.
• As the Search updates deployment has been delayed, the work on Styles is currently being “re-prioritised”.

Q&A Summary

• [Video: 9:41-11:09] Marketplace Refresh / Rebuild:
  • This is still being looked at as a project for development and possible initial deployment in 2023.
  • There are still no firm plans in place as to what will be changed and why, how things will look, etc.
  • Feature requests and suggestions from users and merchants are welcome via the Second Life Jira.
• [Video: 45:20-End] Marketplace suggestions:
  • LL provide an individual RSS feed to all Marketplace stores for announcing new releases, etc.
    • Whilst not refused as a suggestion, the point was made that implementing and maintaining such a service would not necessarily be easy or direct – as every MP store would require a feed, regardless of whether or not the store owner uses it / people actually subscribe to it via their RSS readers.
    • There is already functionality available for this within the MP via Favourite Stores > Age: Newest First. This gives a thumbnail view of the most recent 4 releases for every store a user has selected as a Favourite, providing something of an at-a-glance view. It is not as proactive as an RSS feed but has the benefit of already being available.
  • A request to include a Date Uploaded field in Marketplace descriptions. This would:
    • Help determine the overall age of a product, allowing it to be better (but not perfectly) assessed against more recent improvements to the platform.
    • If also included in the Favourite Stores summary list, would further help users determine new releases.
    • This is seen as being a part of LL’s wish list for MP improvements.
  • With the move towards supporting the glTF 2.0 specification (initially for PBR materials, but potentially to be expanded to mesh content in general (and eventually possibly animations), these request was made to enable a glTF specific description / search indicator to be added to MP listings.
    • This is something LL has not considered – but given the shift in emphasis involved in glTF adoption, it is something that should be considered over and above the simple “Mesh” definitions in listings.
    • For those unaware, details of the glTF / PBR project work can be found in by CCUG meeting summaries.
  • Requests were also made for:
    • The ability to preview the contents items sold on the MP as boxes – the problem here being the box is seen as just that; a single object, so a means to “access” its contents and then generate a listing them would need to be built.
    • The inclusions of triangle counts / VRAM usage / complexity values for objects and attachments – the problems here are numerous, from how would lists be generated  / populated (e.g. some form of automated analysis of folder / box contents would be required for accuracy),through how should it be presented without “overloading” listings with information, to the question of whether the results would be properly understood by potential purchasers).
  • The ability to add multiple items to a shopping basket, but then select which are to be purchased immediately, and which can be “shelved” for a later purchase (if required), rather than having to purchase everything in the basket.
    • This was also indicated as being on LL’s own wish list of future options for the MP.
• [Video: 16:28-25:50] Place Pages:
  • Launched in 2017 (see: Linden Lab announces Second Life Place Pages available and Tutorial: creating Second Life Place Pages) Place Pages have never really been utilised or enhanced, which is acknowledged by LL.
  • Currently, there is no clearly-defined use case for Place Pages, although they do have a number of interesting features and capabilities.
  • The think at the Lab at the moment is whether Place Pages:
    • Should be given a degree of work to overhaul them in order to make them more broadly usable, or
    • Scrap them entirely and replace them with something more attractive to users overall – whatever that might be.
  • A perceived attraction with Place Pages is the ability for people to show off / promote their Second Life without necessarily having to have others log-in to the platform – or as a means to encourage them to do so – using tools that might be better attuned to presenting SL through the web compared to “ordinary” website building tools
  • The major reason for not overhauling Place Pages thus far is the fact that they underpin the land auction system.
  • It is acknowledged that given the plans for overhauling the SL web properties in general, there is potential the produce a version of Place Pages with better integration into SL’s web presence, etc.
  • User suggestions for Place Pages are welcome, again via the Second Life Jira.
• [Video: 27:29-28:02] Communities: a request has been made to expand the range of Second Life communities represented through the Communities landing page (such as the furry community, the sci-fi community, etc). Feature Requests are suggested on these, although it was hinted the number of communities to be rotated on the landing page may be increased.
• [Video: 34:24-39:00] “Premium a-la Carte”: whilst indicated as something LL would like to do, the idea of an “a-la carte” set of Premium benefits users can choose from and they pay a fee based on their selection, there are significant issues around general maintenance and billing and tracking which options each user has subscribed to.
  • What happens if a user selects option A as a part of their package, but then decides they don’t need it, and  they want to remove it (and its cost) or swap it for one or more other options + their costs? How frequently should this be allowed? How are the changes to track and recognised by the viewer and relevant back-end services? How is billing to be managed?
  • How much work is involved in managing an options list (adding new options to it or remove unpopular items from it, in order to maintain its appeal with users, etc.?
  • How complex any a-la carte system might be was demonstrated by the number of different views expressed in the meeting as to what options might be attractive to different people.
  • There is also the question as to whether an “a-la carte” option is required, or whether the existing Premium  / Premium Plus subscription levels need to be adjusted.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, February 1st, 2023. Venue and time per top of this summary.