Tag: Web User Group

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday October 4th, 2023. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Meeting Overview

• The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and text.
  • At this location.
• They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Linden Homes Web Store Refresh

[Video: 1:01-2:21]

• In 2022, LL commenced and overhaul of the “land journey” bringing all aspects of land “ownership” and land information – purchasing regions, renting or purchasing Mainland; obtaining a Linden Home and information on how to go about renting land from a private estate, etc., into a more fluid and updates set of web pages.
• The first phase of this work went live in early 2023 with the launch of the Second Life Land Portal, with the promise that the Linden Homes web store would be the next element to be overhauled. This work has actually been underway for some time, and while “not 100% done” it will be released “very soon”.
• Key elements of the new store include:
  • It is mobile device friendly.
  • It is accessible to anyone to view Linden Homes, whether logged-in or not (although, obviously obtaining a home still requires a subscription account).
  • It offers images and information on all the Linden Home styles in a browsable format and other information pertinent to obtaining a Linden Home.

Marketplace Updates

[Video: 2:30-7:02]

Since the September meeting:

• Marketplace reviews have been updated so that aggregates of star ratings will now be rounded up, rather than always rounded down (e.g. where the aggregate of all star ratings on a product review might total 4.8, it would be rounded down to 4.5 – now it will be rounded up to 5. This change is being monitored, and further adjustments might be made.
• Changes have also been made to the “Top Selling” report offered to Merchants to better match the “Top Selling” listing Merchants can generate for their products. In short:
  • The Top Selling listing was based on items sold in the previous 30 days; however, the Top Selling report was based on all products over the lifetime of the store.
  • The latter has now been revised to show both “best selling” over the lifetime of the store and the best selling items during the previous 30 days.
• The work in archiving-off MP items which had not sold in 2 months and the store owner has not actively logged-in to the MP in two years has received a final tidy-up, with all related demos for the archived items also being archived as well.
• Support have been furnished with assorted documentation and support notes for the MP so they can more thoroughly assist with reported MP issues.
• Further bug fixing through September, but no details as several of the bugs were security-related.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for more on these items, and other points raised in the meeting.

• [Video: 13:52-33:14] Marketplace gifting: an extended discussion on Merchants having the option to restrict items in their store which can be gifted to others.
  • The primary reason stated for this was on the matter of fraud wherein someone obtains Linden Dollars fraudulently, uses them to gift items to their main or alt accounts, then when the use of the illicit L$ is uncovered by the Lab, the amount is removed from the merchant’s account, and the merchant has no way to recover the goods.
  • Regardless of the pros can cons of gifting and matters of fraud, etc., there is a case to make that merchant creators should have the option to be able to disable gifting on specific products listed on the MP if they so wish, rather than being forced to opt-in to having all their products listed on the MP available for gifting.
• [Video 38:50-end] A further discussion of the idea first raised at a recent CCUG meeting for LL to create their own version of Flickr-style site specifically for SL users to share their photos. Several reasons were noted for this:
  • It could become a potential revenue source for LL. Flickr is split between limited Free accounts and more flexible (with additional capabilities) subscription-based  Pro accounts, so the idea would be for LL to follow a similar model, a limited service provided to Basic account users, and Premium and Premium Plus having access to more advanced features (e.g. ability to live-link, support for a greater number of images per account, etc). It is believed by proponents of this idea that people using Flickr Free accounts would be more prone to pay for the advanced features were they to be offered by LL, rather than paying Flickr.
  • It is seen as a means for merchants to gain an additional revenue stream (linking images on the service directly to MP listings), and to potential to offer selected bloggers  / photographers featuring their products to revenue share off of any sale.
  • Whilst not an impractical idea (and although not raised at the meeting) there are obviously questions of actual ROI for the Lab in running such a platform / service against the cost of developing, implementing and maintaining such a service.
  • Again, please refer to the video for this discussion.
• Some anger from a new meeting attendee on the fact that the WUG meeting is mixed text / voice and no warning of this is given through official channels (e.g. the User Group meetings page on the wiki, the SL Public Calendar or in any forum / feed / social media reminders for the meeting. It was agreed that pages and notifications will be updated to include the voice aspect of the meeting.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, November 1st, 2023.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday September 6th, 2023. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Meeting Overview

• The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and text.
  • At this location.
• They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Marketplace Updates

Since the August meeting:

• Best selling items ordering has been deployed. When used within a specific MP store, this orders items according to how well they have been selling in comparison to the rest of the items in the store over the past 30 days, to better reflect current sales.
  • Within a store on the MP, click on the Sort By drop-down and select Best Selling from near the bottom of the list of items.
• The Wishlist and Favourite Stores options on user’s Marketplace dashboards have been updated:
  • The Favourite Stores listing can now be set to list the displayed items for store in the list by Newest Listings, so the thumbnails displayed alongside each store will always be for the most recent releases by the store.
  • Wishlists have been updated so that items can be listed with the most recent at the top, proceeding down to those which have been on the list the longest (or vice-versa, if you prefer).
• Fixes:
  • The MP pagination function has been revised in an attempt to eliminate a range of bugs (e.g. some sort options refusing to paginate beyond a certain point, merchant’s listing views not paginating correctly, etc.
  • A function scoring bug which impacted relevance searches has been fixed, so non-relevant items should no longer be appearing in searches defined by a specific relevance.
  • A bug which slowed the loading of peoples Favourites lists has been addressed.
  • A hotfix was implemented toto address the issue of some MP pages generating 504 errors as the MP appeared to “go down” for around 60 seconds or so when in use.
• Further updates will be coming out in September, but these were presented as “keep yours eyes out for..”, rather than specifics.

Marketplace Variants / Styles

• Once again the subject of “variants”  (e.g. different colours of an item in a single listing) was raised. This has been a topic across around three meetings, and seems to entirely miss the point that LL had – according to comments made in meetings during 2022 – actually developed a project – called Styles to address this request to a point where by:
  • August 2022: the back-end work for Styles was said to be complete , and it was being lined-up for deployment.
  • November 2022 and December 2022, the project was being earmarked for deployment in “early 2023” as a result of the project to overhaul MP search to match Web search.
  • January 2023, the project was being “re-prioritised” following the project to overhaul MP Search, and has never since been mentioned.
• As circumstances (again) prevented me from raising the status of this project at the meeting, I have dropped a note to meeting chair Sntax Linden to enquire after this work, in the hopes of a possible update at the next meeting.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for more on these items, and other points raised in the meeting.

• There appears to be an issue where items from Marketplace stores which have closed are appearing in Search results (although when clicked on, they result in the Marketplace home page being displayed). This issue was consistent reproduced during the meeting for one brand, and will be investigated.
• A general discussion on the effectiveness of Wishlists compared to simply piling up items in the shopping cart for a sometimes / maybe later purchase.
• Repeated requests for the MP to allow broader search capabilities in terms of content age, e.g.
  • Defining a search in terms of excluding content first listed beyond a certain date, or including only content listed after a certain date, etc.
  • Automatically making older (and potentially more outdated as a result) content less relevant in search results – so they appear at the end of search returns, rather than scattered throughout.
  • Including an automated “Last Updated” field for listing, which displays the last time a creator updated the actual item associated with a listing (rather than just revising the listing itself) even though creators can, if they choose, include version nots in the item’s description.
  • Adding a “Date First Listed” field to item listings – seen within the meeting as the most popular request, followed by / along with the automated “Last Updated” field, and then the potential to make the options search filters (e.g. search by date range, 2023-2016).
• Aligned to, but separate from, the above, were requests for more involved inspection of items on the MP so they can be more completely (and automatically) determined in terms of being full or partial mesh, prim, or sculpty, etc., and then filters added to exclude the unwanted types (e.g. excluding any and all sculpties from a search).
• Requests for improved editing capabilities when creating listings – to change font size / colour / emphasis, hyperlinks, etc., and for an API so that lists could be created / updated via scripted means (with an option to undo changes / bulk updates).
• A request has been made to once again increase the frequency of the WUG meetings – possibly back to fortnightly, as was originally the case.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, October 4th, 2023.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday August 2nd, 2023. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Meeting Overview

• The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and text.
  • At this location.
• They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Marketplace

Re-Indexing for Listings Issue

• An issue was discovered with MP product listings not showing up in search results or for store owners using their Manage Listing pages (although the product listing could be reached directly by entering its name).
• This was traced to the items failing to be indexed correctly by the Marketplace service.
• As a result, LL initiated a complete re-indexing of the MP at the start of week #31, and while it took time to complete, the issue should now be resolved and all product listing should be showing correctly via search, etc.
• Those still encountering issues with their products should raise a Jira.

General

• Best selling items ordering: when used within a specific MP store, this will in the near future order items according to how well they have been selling in comparison to the rest of the items in the store over the past 30 days, to better reflect current sales.
• “Do Not Show Limited Quantities” in Search:
  • There have been requests to either have this option (shown in product search results at the foot of the left-side column along with Demos) enabled by default or limited quantity items should not be shown in Search results.
  • This has been requested primarily due to the issue of (new) users buying ex-gacha items without realising that are not buying from the original creator.
  • Given there are legitimate reasons for Limited Quantity items to be listed on the MP, excluding them from Search would be potentially  discriminatory.
  • Preferable solutions suggested were:
    • Retain the option and either reverse it – so it has to be enabled to include limited quantity items OR have whichever way the toggle is set stored within the user’s MP cookies, rather than the check box having to be be set against every search.
    • Add a further checkbox to specifically eliminate (or include, depending on the default setting) Gacha items from / with Search results.
    • LL implement a new product category – Limited Quantity – specifically for such products / items – although how well this would work is open to question, given there is a Gacha category which does not prevent those types of limited quantity items pitching up in Search results.
• The above spread to a broader discussion on creators using unicode characters and punctuation symbols in their store names which actually makes it harder for them to show up in search results under the Merchants / Stores tab, unless a precise full or partial copy of their brand name is entered.
• Listing Enhancement metrics: a request was made for those paying for Listing Enhancements to receive metrics (e.g. no. of times displayed, number of click-throughs generated, number of sales from click-throughs).
• Product reviews:
  • A suggestion that LL should allow reviewers to just leave star ratings against items listed on the MP, as used to be the case with SL Exchange and is the case with Amazon.
  • A request for the MP to be open to reviews by those who have purchased a product in-world (and who may have used the MP as a form of catalogue to seek out items they then purchase in-world).
  • The ability to view an individual’s review history on the MP – allowing their fairness / bias to be better judged.
  • See also feature requests BUG-233138 “Social/Creator Focused Marketplace Feed” and BUG-233139 “A user-run first-line Moderation Tool”.
• General discussions on:
  • The use of Favourites List and Wishlist options (e.g. Favourites List – as a means of quickly pulling up preferred brands and checking for new releases, requests for multiple Wishlists, etc., making lists more easily shareable other than by direct URL, etc.).
  • Preferred general Search results ordering (e.g. newest first or best selling).

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, September 6th, 2023.

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

This was not the “usual” for of meeting – little was said by way of web updates, etc., which have occurred since the last meeting and no updates on upcoming projects.

In Brief

• A general discussion on how Flickr is used in relation to the Marketplace: creators using it to promote new products and / or encourage interest in their brands / as an alternative to using in-world Groups, etc., through photo competitions, giveaways, etc; fashion bloggers using it as a means to micro-blog about clothing, hair accessories, etc .; users being able to flow merchants and see images / videos of new releases directly on their Flickr feed, etc.
  • Not sure on the purpose of the question (from the Lab), and no-one asked in the meeting.
• A request for people who would like to see ONE thing WRT SL web properties and services (preferably). Responses include:
  • Allowing multiple versions of items (e.g. different colours) within a single listing (as has been LOOONNG promised with the Marketplace Styles function, but has yet to actually surface); or to have different versions of an item to be individually listed, but have buttons  within their listings so that users can easily toggle between the, a-la Amazon (e.g. so if an item is offered in say, single, twin, triple and quadruple sets, the various sets (and their prices) appear as a button on one another’s listing page so that users can swap back and forth between them).
  • The ability to remove certain stores / items from Search results (e.g. search for “cars” and have an option to select “don’t show me products from this creator again”, and having further results from that creator removed / excluded from search results).
  • The ability to click on reviewers’ names and see a full list of all their reviews (allowing for better judgement of their bias, etc.).
  • The ability to contact sellers directly through the MP.
  • Having fields which state when an item was listed / last updated on the MP.
• How does Search order results? It varies, but as a rule of thumb:
  • “First time” searches & general searches from the MP home page, should show results by relevance.
  • “First time” searches of stores should list in terms of newest first.
  • If an option to display search results has been previously selected from the drop-down, that is generally the option use to order the results of further searches (until changed).
• A lot of discussion on the pros and cons of “brand tagging” listings + identifying folders in Inventory.
• Very much a meeting where it is easiest to watch the video (enable closed caption if required).

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, August 2nd, 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.