We're being hit very hard by this bug today after reporting it yesterday - I estimate I've received at least 4 vendors with failed message delivery, most of whom have tried the black magic I mention in my bug report. Other notices are getting through from other vendors, and I can see no pattern. Help would be appreciated ASAP with this. Thanks.

I have a music supporters group of around 500 that has taken me a year to build and now I can't communicate with them. Likewise for Live Music Enthusiasts as mentioned by Kaklick, in addition to other growing niche music supporter groups.

Please FIX THIS ASAP. It is amazing that this has gone unfixed for so long in a virtual environment that is being utilised as a 3D SNS [not to mention the commerce aspects] - and is missing core functionality to build and manage groups.

Thanks,
kt

A personal Blues music supporters group just to clarify, not designed to "fragment" the aforementioned Live Music Enthusiasts which is more a general resource on Live Music inside SL and non-genre specific.

WILL LL PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS ISSUE IMMEDIATELY AND CLARIFY WHAT IS GOING ON WITH IT, PLEASE???
AND FIX IT!!!

ty,
a frustrated group manager

Thanks, Torley and other Lindens. Feel free to ask me to play tester if need be.

I am keeping a watchful eye on this issue and I promise to post again when we consider it resolved, and likely after it's undergone testing.

Glad to know that it's a known problem. The club I work for has two groups... Notices sent to the Management group work fine for me, every time it seems. Notices sent to the VIP group fail more than 9/10 times but show in archives. Yet other managers are able to send to the VIP group most of the time. The VIP group USED to work for me, but stopped working several weeks ago.

CBR

go to the "roles" list for the group which you are sending a notice.

select the everybody role.

scroll down the abilities and switch off the Send and the Receive notices ability.

Click Apply and wait for the update.

Now repeat that to switch the ability back on and apply.

Now send the notice.

This nearly always works for us.
Also, once you click "Send Notice", WAIT until the notice pops up. dont do anything like closing the group windows.

Lord Leablower

Also - fix the groups notices so we dont have to see everyone who leaves a group IM session - this must be a strain on the database and is more than mildy annoying to the entire populace.

We are a group of 900+ and suffer terribly because of this issue.

Fixing this is key to our continued expansion, and our organised events.

Please fix this as a priority; it is upsetting that members have dedicated such hard work and effort to building a successful group, seemingly just to be penalised by fact of loss of communication.abilities.

well, you have every group in this bug report in production here that cannot do it CONSISTENTLY...and probably a lot more.
I fail to see why LL can' repro it...unless you are trying to do it on an unloaded unstressed tiny development environment.

Trace the production code in those production code pathways to narrow down the cause. Put some debug code in the production code if you have to, maybe the error is in some related part due to a loaded system and can only be identified on the production system.

You have the test data groups identified...it's a matter of tracing and deduction.

>> "Several developers are working on this right now" - please update this issue to "Assigned"

>> "trying to find a consistent repro to determine a cause" - *raises eyebrow in surprise

• Remove HUDs/high-prim stuff (even hair)
• Clear cache & relog
• Type "io" (letters "i" & "o") in Map, hit Search, click io and tp there
• Send notice

Torley, I have no clue why io particularly helps here, but consistent feedback shows me it does. Not "mainland" not "low lag place), not anything else. I have no clue why io, and I'm sure there are other places that share it's magical qualities but I don't know what they are. Maybe this helps your developers?

Of course this is no kind of solution: asking all my 200 designers who post to my group to do this understandably grates, and some just won't do it, if they're busy. But I hope it may help with debugging. I wish I could give you an "always fails" case, but I and the groups above can give you a lot of "almost always fails" cases.

Last crazy wildcard: the person on my group with the biggest problem has last name starting "Z" but can more easily post from her alt, and people near the beginning of the alphabet might have less problem. Any possible suggestion of why? But this is getting into the realms of black magic.

This is a continuous problem and continuous feedback (like you've been giving - thanks!) would be really appreciated.

I've bug reported it 20 times and here too now. It's good to see LL are aware of this, I guess? Talk is cheap, bugs are forever.

Please be more open in resolving this issue. It has been open for a long time. There are a lot of experienced SL users who are affected by this issue. Anyone with a group of more than 500 members is, by definition, popular and influential in the community. There is also a large group of experienced computer professionals in your user community who are motivated to solve this process.

What have you tried? What have you eliminated? What is your current definition of the problem?

First, I'd like to assign this, but it isn't assigned to a single developer. We have several devs who've been working on it, who all belong to Studio Blacklight, an engineering group @ Linden Lab focused on critical issues like this. Some other things we're working on right now include content loss issues (always a high priority), memory bloat in simulator performance, and the the recent duplicate inventory folder and invisible avatars.

I wish I could assign issues to groups in JIRA, but since we currently can't, count my comment here as my word that we have good people on it. (Also please keep in mind the Issue Tracker is still in beta and the process of working through actual problems like this will help us to make it better.)

At latest: we know what's causing this now, thanks for the useful info. Loading long lists of group Members imposes a lot of load on the dataservers. Presently, we're trying to request the whole lists at once. The dataserver ends up timing out. So instead, the proposed solution – currently being worked on – is to load the Members list in pieces. The end result should be that while Notices are slower to send out to all the Members of your group, it should be reliable, and complete successfully.

I manage two medium-large size groups (300-800) and have found that the most success in getting group notices out is by the following process:

• TPing to a location OTHER than the main site of the group. (reduced to no lag helps as well)

-Attempting to send the notice 3-4 times, hitting the Refresh and Refresh from Server buttons in between.

Obviously, this is not ideal, as the group notices does not offer the function of "Resend" from the archive. So one will become quite adept at the Copy/Paste quick keying (Ctrl C, Ctrl V). But I would love to recommend the option of resending notices from archives with the ability to change attachments or edit if necessary.

I'm with everyone else in hoping this issue gets some sort of resolution shortly. It becomes difficult to run an SL business without this functionality working and working properly.

Thank you!!!

Also I'm finding that I currently am unable to send ANY notices from my acquired land at Captains Isles 3 (Parcel name Club Fallout) eventhough I AM able to send that notice from another location afterwards... Therefore it seems this problem is location dependant as well..

Finally, It's good to see that you're actively working on it... But I have to note that this problem has been existing for too long already.. I hope you'll get the suggest solution processed soon... This bug is really affecting daily operations in my Club..

We have been having the same issue as described above with a group that has just over 300 members (Popeye's Beach Club). The issue first appeared when the group grew larger than 150 - 200 members. When it was smaller all notices went through, but now sending the same note three or four times, with our without attachment, long or short text, either way it doesn't seem to have an influence on whether or not it goes through, most of the time notes do not reach group members.

Sometimes a note is reported to have reached some group members but not all, which is especially worrying because when trying to send a note multiple times it might not reach some members while others receive it every single time.

Thank you again for working on this issue and I hope you will have a solution up soon.

I'm sorry, Torley, but that is a completely unacceptable response to an issue such as this.
This issue has been outstanding for MONTHS, it is CRITICAL for social cohesion within sl - both for consumer and corporate communications use I might add, and NOTHING appears to be happening.

What is the staus with detection of issue and proposed solutions?
Is the team still working on this or have they been retasked?
Is this likely to be resolved within 1week? 2 weeks? x weeks?

This is not a radar issue...it's a production bug that needs to be fixed..NOW!

Kind regards,
kt

Please remember this is one of many critical bugs we have – we know how frustrating this one is and I hate communications breakdowns, but it comes in addition to the recent inventory loss issues, as well as many others. This is not to diminish significance of Group Notices failing, but to place it in context.

I understand the inventory issues and all the other sl scaleabilty issue bugs [living with them every day like everyone else], torley, but if LL think that communications is not of the highest priority in a virtual world ... scratches head not much more I can say on that

Sure, there are all sorts of external tools that can be used, including the latest buzz factor twitter/blog huds for presence and friend awareness - but each time another one is added to the mix it creates yet another workflow pattern that needs to be integrated. For ease of use nothing beats well designed working communications tools integrated into the platform...ones that work that is

We've experimented with using Proposals, a separate website and forum for announcing events, and even a carefully scripted HUD to use for announcing events and locations.

Methods of communication which take the user off world won't be used much, from what I have seen, so that won't work. Trying to distribute the HUD runs into the barrier of the Notices being broken in the first place.

That leaves Proposals. Generally before I send out a Proposal filling in for a Notice, I IM the group with the link to this item, MISC-37. This has helped to reduce the angry tantrums from people who don't know what is happening here. However, because I can't attach a landmark to a Proposal and many people don't know how to look up locations on the map, I have to teleport people in to our meetings, and some never find us.

I can beg and plead with the group members to read the website or the Proposals, but many just don't, and then they come into the group IM asking "Is anything going on?" right during the middle of a large event. It's no good to blame them for being so passive, as they're well trained to react to information, not to dig it up.

We MUST have working Notices, or stop giving people who join a group the expectation they exist. If breaking up the sending of the Notices into pieces fixes the issue, great. A two minute delay is nothing compared to total failure.

As SL grows, general interest groups like mine are going to keep growing, so please make sure group tools will scale.

Thank you for your time on this issue.

– Brenda Archer

I'm not even sure what to do now. Raising a new bug about 1.15 notice errors presuming it's a separate problem seems silly - it'll just fracture discussion as I'm only guessing it's a different cause on top of the one above. Can you assure us all these new group problems are being taken VERY seriously by Linden? I see no mention on the blog. I'm facing imminent group breakup with this new batch and the ew total notice breakdown. People are throwing in the towel on groups. Building up my community has been a massive personal outlay of effort, and many designers tell me it represents the cornerstone in-world of collective fashion commerce now.

Please could you suggest what to do - this new breed of 1.15 group breakdowns is going to kill our communities.

Is that your definition of help - to implement new bugs which destroy what we have spent time building?
Do you understand the concepts of testing and quality control at all?

I'm not usually in the habit of venting on official forums, but as an IT pro with not inconsiderable international experience of production systems development I find it incomprehensible that LL as a company can allow this sort of bug ridden development into production, destroying functionality and hence the social glue that it supports.

Here's some snippets from IM's of my group members after this:
How can anyone get real business done if communications get worse and worse?
SL has become a train wreck, unfortunately
really bad. friends are so important here!
etc etc etc

Are you listening LL?
As Honey says above, are you taking this issue seriously?

Are you people taking this serious? or are you just sitting and laughing at us all? Why are we paying you? I love my music groups, and i want to hear from them.. but NOT that frigging much! I won't leave them.. but come on LL... take care of the bugs that affect us ALL!

Please make the effort to resolve this issue, as well as the other major problems with the new release or at least allow the use of an old client until SL can once again be at the level of stability it was prior to the update.

Thanks for your time.

Can we have some action to resolve this please?

Like Focke said, at lest I would like to be able to use a stable older version, I don't care if it hasnt all the features included in the bleeding edge one, wich imho shouldn't have got outside of beta.

Would be nice to have a stable branch, with less features, less eye candy, but usable for work, and if we want to have fun and all, be able to switch to the latest version, beeing warned it doesn't always work perfectly, that how most major serious opensource projects do

Thank you Honey, thank you Linden people for all the work done !

The group I own with this issue currently has 372 members. Another group I'm in with a mere handful had notices go through recently just fine. (Looks like the "apparent max member notice queue" ceiling dropped.)

Prior to the 1.15 update, I was able to send out notices without a problem, and I sent out several up through late March.

Since 1.15, when I tried sending out notices again, they have been unsuccessful.

The group in question does NOT own land, so the related-vs-unrelated-land issue is moot.

It's worse than ever. I'm riding it out, but thousands of hours of unpaid work from myself and the other volunteers, hundreds of dollars worth of donated land use, and other sacrifices would all go down the drain if I finally closed up shop. I really don't want to do that.

I work in tech support and I understand how complex these things get, but I want to reiterate that Groups are a central part of SL, and need to work. The more technical among us understand the complexity and are patient. Average users are not, and wonder why things are the way they are.

Thanks for listening.

This is a critical area of business strategy for most businesses and communities in SL - and needs to be very high on LL priorities.

We've built our business communication and other operations with the availablity of Group Notices. For it now to stop working, we'll have to come up with other ways. As we can't do mass mailouts, and Group Chat is disastrous if you have over 50 members - there needs to be another way if Notices aren't going to be repaired.

Please Linden - either fix or replace with a working alternative that fulfills the same function.

Oh, and fix the friends list. Some of us have a lot of friends. It appears that if you have more than a certain number of friends, the friend list does not load.

I know this is a very complex and difficult problem to solve but I have to wonder why we havnt heard a peep from Linden in a week. And I wonder why it got worse instead of better with an update that was supposed to fix things but only made it worse. Please hurry and fix this.

Suzi Phlox
LeeZu Baxter Designs

Fwiw I agree with Laukosargas Svarog, commenting on the recent Project Open Letter at http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/30/project-open-letter/#comment-257694
"To really fix the problems LL need a sea change in their working practice, the "Tao of Linden" isn't doing us the end users any real good. LL need a proper QA dept. One with power to force the programmers to fix bugs before working on new pet ideas."

We know software is complex. We know bugs happen. We know they creep into production despite best intentions sometimes.
But when obvious critical bugs go unacknowledged, unfixed and are compounded by further bug ridden production releases - not once, but continuously...well, you have to wonder wtf is going through some peoples minds.

I truly hope that LL is seriously taking a long hard look at their development and testing processes.

Stop with the gloss paint job and start working on the engine...LL's soon to be competitors are sure to be.

[Disclosure: I had temporary insanity almost two years ago and actually applied for the QA manager role that was then advertised at LL. (un)fortunately I never received a response. I feel for whoever is doing it now, but imo it is an impossible job given LL's current dev methods as Lauk points out. Quality Assurance begins at design stage, not as an afterthought.]

I'm thrilled to hear of the progress, you've made my day! Thank you!

I have to agree with Komuso and the posters of the open letter petition....QA is critical to LL and the future of SL. I have been professionally involved in one way or another with PC gaming since the very early days . I have seen more good programs, and companies for that matter, go under because they treated QA as a nuisance. Instead, the marketing weasels drove the company....pushing to get the next release out to meet their sales targets with no regard as to the quality or sustainability of the product. The last twenty years are littered with the corpses of companies, games, products and programs that failed to understand a basic business truth: If the product is mediocre the customer will leave.

LL has to be careful not to fall into this trap. Get SL into a smoothly running machine that is virtually bug free. Let the residents settle in and devote their energy to building the SL environment and making it a frustration free experience. The growth rate is phenomenal and shows no sign of decreasing so you really dont have to offer buggy new features to attract people. Hold off on all the whiz-bang stuff (voice etc) and concentrate on your customers and the product. It is just good common sense business practice.

Then we all win!

Select ABILITIES for group members in the "everyone" category .
Uncheck "send notices"
Apply
Then check "send notices" again
Apply

Then send your notice. Works 80% of the time.

i own the nude beach/club-4 steps to heaven gurop 251 members we also cant send any notices ive tryed doing it in unpoplulated areas tryed puting a few ppl in a differnt role . ive tryed reloging clearing cache rebooting my pc everything . i cant send any out period =\. .

» http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Group_Notices_Tab_Test

As you can see, it's thorough. Internal testing continues, we found a failure case (ugh) so we're continuing to work on this.

1) The lowest noise workaround for this is to post the notecard, then post an IM to the group asking them to check the archive. If you are not allowed to post to the group, IM a group moderator to relay a new notecard alert. Sucks. Works.

2) @Torley: It might be really helpful if the following were considered:

a) A blog post or a wiki post (if there is one, I can't find it) about these studio groups. I don't need to know who's in them, but an overview that IDs each studio group and their area of responsibilities would be nice.

b) Instead of WorkinOnIt Linden, it would then be more informative to have BlackLight Linden or whatever the studio group name is. It would tell us more about where it's been assigned and be more informative.

May 3rd, 2007=
I tested a Group Notice in Live Music Enthusiasts today, as requested by a Linden following up on a bug report, and NOPE, still broken. I was under the impression that this was being fixed as of Wednesday's update.

Another update: As of this comment, Live Music Enthusiasts now has 2193 members, coincidentally about the same as the amount of signatures on the Open Letter.

» http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Zero_Linden

"WorkingOnIt Linden" is a general catchall; I (Torley) earlier thought of making a different account for each group of Lindens, but that would swell and be clunky and confusing. When further details are in order, they should be provided in the comments (this issue has provided a useful exercise in actuality).

[LATEST STATUS] internal tests went through successfully as of Friday (2007-05-04), but that was not under the kind of load that's typically found on the Main Grid. Last I heard, if there's a good likelihood of more problems, we may want to do some pile-ons on the Beta Test Grid with 100s of real Residents testing group notices. (Just an idea for now.)

A couple more bugs were found:

» SL-42080 - Residents without ability to receive notices receive notice in email when offline (already resolved internally)
» SL-42084 - Notices sent while group info window is loading is not sent to residents (still open)

So if these show up on the Issue Tracker, they can be linked.

In the future, we also hope to provide specific details of version control (dubbed a "decoder ring") so Residents have a better idea what fixes went in what version.

carry on.

I've seen a lot of very encouraging responses that it's nearly there from Torley and other WorkingOnIt's, and now Heretic - thanks. But I'm really unclear on the status of this now, and the likely prognosis for all of us suffering so badly from the loss of communities because of such a staple technical issue - communication - so broken. Could I ask specfically:

• Has the status changed from Torley's report on 7th May, i.e. that internal tests had been performed - have the 2 bugs above been folded in, are they stopping this tested fix, or has the fix been put in place?

• Is the fix server only (I assume from above) or client only?

• Heretic: you say that you notice notices working better today - I'm not sure I do, but time will tell. But why do you say this - was a fix sneaked into the downtime yesterday? The blog implied yesterday was all about electricity, not software?

• If Torley's fix above hasn't been implemented yet - when will it be? When can I tell my 1000 group members to hang on for? Because many are leaving in despair. Even a "best endeavours" and realistic timescale would help.

Thanks Lindens.

I also still get error message popups with group IM "not connecting or somesuch" and still notices don't work...my debugging instincts tell me they are still related somehow.

Meanwhile we are still limited to 25 groups, and communities are slowly dying....

I appreciate the difficulty of development, but really....

I sent a test message to my group "Bisexuals in Second Life" which currently has 1108 members on the list, and asked people to IM me if they got it. I was standing in Sunny Dunes (134,35,27). The response in group chat was as follows:

[18:11] Brenda Archer: Hello, the Lindens believe they have fixed group Notices for large groups as per Jira MISC-37, however it has not been tested under load on the main grid. I have just released a Notice to BiSL. Please let me know if you got it or f you did NOT get it. Many thanks!!!!
[18:11] Ayla Gabreski: got it
[18:11] Lucas Underall: got it luv
[18:11] Yuliya Milev: Got it.
[18:11] Leslie Trihey: got it
[18:11] Chris Veloce: Same
[18:11] Manda Debevec: Got it
[18:11] Netra Emms: got it
[18:11] Second Life: Manda Debevec has left this session.
[18:11] Second Life: Manda Debevec has left this session.
[18:11] Nanette Guyot: ditto
[18:11] Maddie Martinek: got it
[18:11] Bobo Podolsky: Hi Brenda...I got the notice.
[18:11] Propaan Beaumont: got it
[18:11] Freya Niven: got it!
[18:11] Second Life: Lucas Underall has left this session.
[18:11] Kei Kojishi: fixed.
[18:11] Second Life: Freya Niven has left this session.
[18:11] Angelbaby Junot: yeahhhh I got it
[18:11] Sumire Michinaga: got it ^^
[18:12] Second Life: Kei Kojishi has left this session.
[18:12] Quiet Gisel: hooray!
[18:12] Alice Mahana: got it
[18:12] Second Life: Alice Mahana has left this session.
[18:12] Second Life: Kei Kojishi has left this session.
[18:12] Second Life: Netra Emms has left this session.
[18:12] Second Life: Sumire Michinaga has left this session.
[18:12] Brenda Archer: WOOOOOT
[18:12] Brenda Archer: THANK YOU!!!!
[18:14] Trinity Dejavu: HURRAH !!

There is still an odd delay of half a second to a second when starting a chat with the group, but it's WONDERFUL to have Notices back on.
Many thanks!!!

I'm really thankful that you bit the bullet on seeing the response to my bug report here - thank you for your efforts, Torley and others. I'm still holding my breath and waiting for more results from other designers on my group. But if this is solved, this could be a great example case if you want to spread the message "JIRA works, use it" - even if it took a few months!

Thanks for your help... so far! Will report back later when we have more statistics.

MISC-64 next? You'll be wildly popular

Honey

I sent a test notice and got a bunch of replies back, so sent a second gig notice for todays events.
Looked ok, then one of my members IM's me - Bibi Book, who is also very involved in live music as an event space operator.

Bibi also has an alt in my group. She was offline at the time, with both accounts set to receive email notices when offline.
She says her alt got both email notices, but her main account only got the first test notice.
You can trace her account or contact her for alt name if you wish to trace it.

Sooo...looking a lot better, but possibly still not 100% reliability I suspect.
The group I tested is ~550 members [down from 620+ as I lost a lot from bugs, group churn, and inability to communicate with group to maintain interest].

Onwards and upwards,
kt

Closing this... at last!

I respectfully suggest you change the status back from resolved as it does not appear to be fully fixed, going from the information I have received.

The whole flaw in SL's QA procedure is inability to reproduce issues due to load, and reproduction of bugs is the only way to test and resolve fixes. You CANNOT change the status of something that is not fixed...that is plain silly and is just manipulating the system.

Where was the test plan you mentioned?
Where was the coordinated load test on the main grid to at least try and determine if the patch was 100%.

I'm not trying to be a PITFA here, but you need to get this process right imo.

Appreciate the effort, but no cigar ... yet.

» http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Group_Notices_Tab_Test

and please clarify whether you've just been missing group notices while offline, or online too. More Residents from your group(s) also seeing this and commenting here would help!

Today till 20:00 CEST all notices in LIve music enthusiasts went to both accounts. then it changed and only one of the accounts got the notice.
Comparing inworld notices to those that went to mail, I saw exactly the same missing inworld as in Mail. Comparing is not easy as the notices have no timestamp inworld and the order day/month/year instead of "YYYYYMMDD time" is a bit confusing. after loggin in

And no, if I stay inworld, I do not get all notices, too. so online status does not make any difference, it seems. But you may better know, what other differences than having no additional mail are in the handling as you can look into the code. The notices are only missing to be sent to all members in the group. you may easily reproduce it subscribing two or more alts to Live Music Enthusiasts.

Your test page is nice, but testing with any group at any time may not help finding something, if one does not know, how group notices ecactly work. I have no access to the source code of sims. you are the programmers, aren't you? On the other hand I cannot ask each group member: "Did you get the notice?". And what additional info would that give? Only that one "okay, it is not 50 % of members missing the notices, but 60 or 35".

This assumption may be silly: But I did expect, the notices have a log as a mailserver has and one can see, how many people got a notice. This is nothing a user has access to.
The tests in the wiki only can show, if I can create a notice and get that one I created. Test result is then "totally broken" or "maybe, it works".

I will also put a couple alts in Live Music Enthusiasts.

Please encourage others also having problems receiving group notices to post here – likely fellow Live Music Enthusiasts members – or point to forum threads, blog comments, etc. Right now it's just been you and Komuso saying you're affected here, and we appreciate the help, but a broader diversity is healthier.

The couple of accounts I put in Live Music Enthusiasts received all notices as expected.

I've actually been trying to vote on this issue and comment since last week. I couldn't figure out (until today) why I didn't have the options available to vote/comment. Well, it seems JIRA does not work in Firefox. So, I'm now responding to this urgent matter in IE7.

The issues above are still happening, and on top of that whenever you close a group IM window it opens right back up. It's VERY, VERY annoying. If this issue needs to be addressed on another "ticket" please let me know and I'll be more than happy to create one.

Thanks again!

Good to hear from you. When I get in-world tonight I will test another Notice. In the meantime, I've noticed I can send Notices from Sunny Dunes, which is a private island and probably doesn't have many scripts on it, but not from Dimidiata, which is mainland, and is laggy sometimes and may be running quite a burden of scripts. If I try to send from Dimidiata the Notice won't go out at all.

Will keep you posted.

Thanks,

Brenda Archer

I went ahead tonight and did some testing with Bisexuals in Second Life. Most of the group members who were in did get the Notice, but one did not get either and one did not get the second one. It also came out during the group chat that some of the members had trouble joining our IM sessions about it.

The first notice I sent from from Sunny Dunes (133,35,27)
[19:44] Brenda Archer: Hi everyone, I am about to send a Test Message 1 Notice. Please let me know if you get it. I'll be telling the Lindens over on jira.secondlife.com how it worked out. Many thanks and I appreciate your patience.
[19:44] Manda Debevec: Check
[19:44] Shiva999 Zymurgy: i got it
[19:44] Anastasiya Lamourfou: !
[19:44] Fantasia Tripsa: I got it
[19:44] Kae Mantis: got it
[19:44] Grifphon Greatrex: Confirmed.
[19:44] Aaron Cianci: Got it!
[19:44] Bobo Podolsky: Got it.
[19:44] Sumire Michinaga: got it ^^
[19:44] Jadore DeCuir: Oui
[19:44] Carmilla Mirabeau: got it
[19:44] Liberty Tesla: Got it
[19:44] Brenda Archer: thanks!
[19:44] Kaethe Atansoff: got it
[19:44] Aryn Janus: got it
[19:44] senxual Pixie: i got it
[19:44] Shirley Marquez: Loud and clear here
[19:44] Amanda Li: da
[19:44] Kat Dagostino: got it!
[19:44] Pierre Schulze: got it
[19:44] Kaethe Atansoff: got it
[19:44] Noelani Lightfoot: Got it hon
[19:44] Celti Surya: yep
[19:44] Second Life: Fantasia Tripsa has left this session.
[19:44] Carita Marama: Yes got it
[19:44] Spike Hammerer: yes
[19:44] Jhenova Georgette: Wall to wall and ten feet tall
[19:44] Second Life: Celti Surya has left this session.
[19:45] Second Life: Manda Debevec has left this session.
[19:45] Pierre Schulze: got it
[19:45] Second Life: Manda Debevec has left this session.
[19:45] Second Life: Kat Dagostino has left this session.
[19:45] Papagoose Beerbaum: received
[19:45] Ayla Gabreski: got it
[19:45] Second Life: Manda Debevec has left this session.
[19:45] Second Life: Manda Debevec has left this session.
[19:45] Second Life: Liberty Tesla has left this session.
[19:45] Loraan Fierrens: i can see it on the group window, but i didn't get a pop up
[19:45] Radar Regenbogen: ten by ten
[19:45] Jhenova Georgette: Hey Radar ya bum! IM me
[19:46] Second Life: Pierre Schulze has left this session.
[19:46] Shirley Marquez: While you're all listening... you should come to the Fabulous Forties event, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Calico%20Kitty/146/91/37
[19:46] Shiva999 Zymurgy: lol hi radar
[19:46] Brenda Archer: many many thanks! now that one was sent from Sunny Dunes, I will send ONE more from Dimidiata and that's all. thank you all hugs
[19:46] Brenda Archer:
[19:46] Brenda Archer: thanks Sh irley

The second test notice I sent from the mainland, on Dimidiata (24,241,92)
[19:49] Brenda Archer: ok now I am sending Test Notice 2, again please tell me if you got it or not... this is the last one... and many many thanks.
[19:49] Aaron Cianci: Yepyep
[19:49] Aaron Cianci: Got it!
[19:49] Shiva999 Zymurgy: got it
[19:49] Aaron Cianci: WOO HOO!
[19:49] Spike Hammerer: no
[19:49] Bobo Podolsky: Yes.
[19:49] Noelani Lightfoot: got it
[19:49] Shirley Marquez: yep,
[19:49] Jakkar Carlos: Got it
[19:49] Radar Regenbogen: +++++
[19:49] Ayla Gabreski: got it
[19:49] Anastasiya Lamourfou: what message?
[19:49] senxual Pixie: i got it
[19:49] Natsumi Yue: Got it.
[19:49] Carita Marama: Yep
[19:50] Carmilla Mirabeau: d
[19:50] Carmilla Mirabeau: got it
[19:50] Manda Debevec: Got it
[19:50] Second Life: Manda Debevec has left this session.
[19:50] Carmilla Mirabeau: got an error first
[19:50] Brenda Archer: what kind of error Carmilla
[19:50] Jhenova Georgette: ?
[19:50] Carmilla Mirabeau: wouldnt let me post to the IM at first
[19:51] Carmilla Mirabeau: 3 times then it went thru
[19:51] Brenda Archer: thanks that is very helpful!
[19:51] Jhenova Georgette: said I didnt have permission
[19:51] Aryn Janus: got it hon
[19:51] Kessler Kohime: i have recieved one
[19:51] Second Life: Bobo Podolsky has left this session.
[19:51] Carmilla Mirabeau: ya thats it
[19:51] Brenda Archer: so that one is back too
[19:51] Jhenova Georgette: anyway I saw the notice like 45 seconds ago
[19:51] Carmilla Mirabeau: I got two notices
[19:51] Brenda Archer: there should be two, test 1 and test 2
[19:51] Brenda Archer: the one you are less likely to get is test 2, did you get it
[19:51] Jhenova Georgette: yes Test2
[19:51] Aryn Janus: both
[19:51] Kessler Kohime: both
[19:51] Carmilla Mirabeau: yes with the error on #2
[19:52] Brenda Archer: great
[19:52] Shirley Marquez: No errors here
[19:52] Brenda Archer: thanks Carmilla
[19:52] Carmilla Mirabeau: welcome
[19:52] Jhenova Georgette: I got the 2nd one but I couldnt respnd here till someone else opened the chat first
[19:52] Brenda Archer: thanks Shirley
[19:52] Second Life: Aaron Cianci has left this session.
[19:52] Second Life: Aaron Cianci has left this session.
[19:52] Brenda Archer: Loraan, did you get either one
[19:52] Brenda Archer: thanks Jhenova that's very helpful
[19:52] Jhenova Georgette: yvw
[19:53] Brenda Archer:
[19:53] Brenda Archer: I am noticing my IM is lagged.
[19:53] Jhenova Georgette: ditto
[19:53] Carmilla Mirabeau: everything is lagged tonight
[19:53] Brenda Archer: MANY thanks to all of you! this is a huge help.
[19:53] Brenda Archer: yes
[19:53] Jhenova Georgette: 3 secs from enter to post
[19:53] Brenda Archer: wo
[19:54] Shirley Marquez: a bit lagged for me too, but I'm at a busy event so I expect it
[19:54] Brenda Archer: yes
[19:54] Jhenova Georgette: yeah im at HIP so its fubar anyway
[19:54] Brenda Archer: yup
[19:54] Brenda Archer: there are two relevant bugs open at jira.secondlife.com, if any of you have a moment please vote for them , I'll get the numbers
[19:55] Brenda Archer: Notices are MISC-37
[19:55] Jhenova Georgette: kk im outies, laterz lovelies
[19:56] Brenda Archer: good night Jhenova! have fun
[19:56] Brenda Archer: group IM is VWR-513
[19:56] Pat Hartono: got both messages, Brenda hon
[19:57] Brenda Archer: many thanks Pat hugs
[19:58] Brenda Archer: also you can vote for as many bugs on jira as you like!
[19:58] Brenda Archer: good night all *group hug *
[19:59] Pat Hartono: good night, hon
[19:59] Typhany Octavia: hiya . . got the message
[19:59] Second Life: Shiva999 Zymurgy has left this session.
[19:59] Brenda Archer: thanks Typhany
[19:59] Typhany Octavia:
[19:59] Second Life: Aryn Janus has left this session.
[19:59] Typhany Octavia:
[19:59] Brenda Archer:
[20:00] Second Life: Aryn Janus has left this session.
[20:00] Second Life: Kessler Kohime has left this session.
[20:01] Second Life: Shirley Marquez has left this session.
[20:01] Second Life: Typhany Octavia has left this session.
[20:05] Second Life: Jakkar Carlos has left this session.
[20:08] Second Life: Radar Regenbogen has left this session.
[20:09] Second Life: Pat Hartono has left this session.
[20:10] Second Life: Carita Marama has left this session.

[20:10] Emilie Redgrave: i got both test thingys
[20:10] Brenda Archer: many many thanks!!!!
[20:10] Emilie Redgrave: yvw

(Loraan Fierrens did not get either Notice but sees it in the Group Info. He is using the First Look Windlight client, but this has also happened to him in the regular client too. It is only with BiSL Notices that he is not getting Notices; a smaller group he is in, * Second Pride Security, works fine. That group also works for me when I send Notices and is much smaller. Also, Anastasiya Lamourfou did not get the second Notice.)

Hope this is of help.

Many thanks,

Brenda Archer

ie: tried it and failed to open attached notecard. Not good.

@Komuso: Please make a separate issue for that with a solid repro.

We're aware of several other group issues; Kayte, that "group IM reopening" one is VWR-513. Please also create a new issue for your Firefox-JIRA problems; I use Firefox primarily and am not familiar (yet) with the problems you describe.

@Torley: HI! Komuso is out right now. His monthly quota of role-playing as a professional "BUG" hunter in the mysterious land of JIRA has now expired. Hopefully [if his mum gives him lunch money] he'll be back next month with another thrilling adventure, as he searches the grid for another steadfast hero to go head to head against the killer demon lord LaG, scourge of the grid and terrorizer of immersive experience everywhere. Next months hero: The legendary cyberninjaroninexsamurifukeshe FpS, master of the ancient art of TestedCode. Meanwhi..........click..........beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

> @Komuso: Please make a separate issue for that with a solid repro.

I have an open ticket about the not opening attachments/notecarrds in group notices already: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-741

Going inworld, I find the exacty same situation with main account:
last group message (Push Chandler in 10 minutes) not there (only alt got it)
2nd last (Dexter at 7 PM) is there (both got it)
3rd last (Patrick Lasalle) not there (only alt got it)
4th last (Kirsten Corleone) not there (only alt got it)
5th last (Spaceman Opus) not there (only alt got it)
6th last (Jeff Tully) is there (both got it)
7th last (Funky Rang) there (only main account got that)
8th last (Kim Seifert) there (only main account got it)
9th last (4 PM at the Cherry) there (both got it)

so from 9 group notices
main got 5 only
alt got 7 only

• where i do not know, if there have been 9 group only that time - inworld the notices lack a certain timestemp in list
  But from waht I can see in the listing in group: it has not the same group notices listed as I got on both accounts
  I see 12 there for 28th (which may be UTC date and would cover a bit less of tthe time, I received my 9 group notices over all).

So this means, as in last test results: around half of the group notices for LME get lost!
account 1 reiceived 5 out of 12 (if all are in list there)
account 2 received 7 out of 12

communication is a big part of SL, so this issue should be solved soon.

General state right now seems to be that group notices are "better" than they were before, but some failure cases. Resources willing, we'll consider the possibilities of a larger communication project to overhaul this, group IMs, friends list, and other social/communication features that are having problems.

If it does not, it needs to be fixed.
A system "works" when it performs with 100% of the functionality that was specified.

"Partly broken" systems or systems which are "better" than before but still work inconsistently are STILL BROKEN!!!

ie:
ALL group IM messages are delivered
ALL group notices are delivered
etc etc

ergo...they don't get brushed under the carpet because you have created a reporting system that filters all but the most dedicated from reporting errors, or you think it's ok to move on because the system is "better" than before. shakes head

Personally I have extremely inconsistent group messaging and notice performance, and have not received many LME notices as it happens.

I'm trying to be rude here, Torley, just stating the facts of software life.

But, yes, what you said. I was trying for a firm but polite tone

Must have been one of them thar freudian mind slips!

hops back on couch

I feel this needs to be treated as a matter of the highest urgency. The only feedback I seem to be getting is that 'we are banging on it'. This makes it impossible to plan for immediate growth as to undertake new sim projects whilst being unable to communicate with our customers would be an entirely ridiculous strategy.

SL Reports have over 5000 members and Krystal Epic 1 has more than 8000 members and no one's getting any notice at all.

SL Reports sends out group notices everyday to our members of the latest news of SL, and Krystal Epic publishes a daily digest and the notices just won't go out to any offline members. SL Reports still occasionally get lucky and a few gets through once every full moon, but Krystal Epic just don't get any through anymore at all. Krystal Epic provide the digest to share stories and as a support for our websites, as well as provide our members with a new cool location to visit in SL everyday. The group is hardly useful without notice working properly.

Without a reliable and effective means of mass communication, what's the point of groups, and what's the point of creating a network of people.

Please, please, please, we love SL and think it's a great place. We want to bring to our group members a very positive experience of SL with cool places and story that are not adult entertainment. But we need this problem fixed, otherwise we can't do anything. Thanks.

Seperate certain functions in SL from the way that you are trying to do them now, by making them external.

Thus, a lot of the problems of "extra load on the servers", concerning this issue, can be easily resolved.

Simply Run SL in a window by clicking the "run in window" checkbox in Preferences/Graphics. This will allow you access to the functions of your PC, whilst not having to log out of SL.

When someone becomes a member of your group, they must simply supply a contact email address, and also run SL in a window, in order to be able to be informed immediately of the receipt of a group email and be able to respond, without logging out of SL.

1) Do a Google for "free automated email programs". Download a bunch of those that suit you and test them out to see which you would prefer to use.

2) Use the automated email program to send bulk notices/messages to the people or companies that you need to.

3) Smile as you watch SL turn from "crash test dummy volunteer course" to the world you wanted and helped create.

To Lightscribe Infinity, you've added this exact same comment to several JIRAs concerning groups so I'll do the same and copy my response here in case others haven't seen it. You seemingly suggest that a temporary solution to inadequacies in group functions is not to use them, and require group members to use email. This isn't a fix for me - I have rolling population of 550 designers on my group in role Officer and I for sure can't guarantee they will all be reading their email, or indeed that my floating population of 2000 members and growing will subscribe to an email list. What JIRAs are about is asking LL to fix inadequate parts of their system, not to suggest that we just stop using them.

LL - any word? Thanks

You seem to be a really nice person, as I'm sure many in SL are.

Read http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/15/copybot/

After reading that, right to the end, consider whether your business should be tied exclusively to SL

Take care girl. I feel deep sympathy for all of you that have put so much trust in LL...

Copied and pasted from Prokofy Neva's blog site.( http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/09/open-sourceclos.html#comments )

"Open Source=Closed Society

Not surpringly, most people don't understand what I mean by the expression "Open Source=Closed Society" – although I've written on this before, and in my travels, even discovered various fathers of the open-source movement itself who basically came to the same conclusion. The problem is that while technically "open," only tekkies can come in. And not even all tekkies. Even Nobody Fugazi was forced to say, "Hey, what's the secret handshake?"

The first thing that people begin to object when I explain that OS=CS is that oh, but the Lindens have a published blog about it from Zero Linden. Oh, but there are groups and meetings and office hours and anyone can come. Oh, but there's a wiki. But...do you REALLY think wikis work to get a lot of participation? I mean, could we get our heads out of our asses here, people? How many people have taken part in any SL Wiki to date? Go ahead, count them. And look how many essays are in them. Well? See my point? Same for the JIRA. How many of the leaders – oh, the 1,000 who make more than $1,000 a month as Philip calls them? – how many of those doers do you see on the wikis, the JIRAs, the blogs? So please, get a grip. That's fake. That's not how you get input. It's only the way for geeks and fanboyz to put in, not even the 10 percent who care and contribute. For that, you need normal, threaded forums. They should be opened back up.

The Sutherland Dam meetings I have are open to the public. But they aren't open to griefers. And that means the frequently flyers who come in each time to grief aren't given a fresh chance, and when they come back on their obvious alts with the same groups like "The Prokofy Fan Club," they don't get to participate. And that's why I moved it, and will likely have to move it again. There is a certain kind of leftist or IRC tekkie who gasps at the idea of banning anyone pre-emptively and imagines this is censorship! But...people who disrupt meetings censor them far more, by not letting people speak, heckling the organizer, putting out particles, pushing objects into the space, etc. If you have any doubts about what this particular set were up to, you had merely to follow us to the next venue, where they crashed again using God-stalking mode or sympathizers like sean Voss (whose SL guide I criticized, and who has therefore made common cause with them); where they tried to push in giant objects, sent particle birds flying in, taunting in chat and IMs, and flew around on Governor Linden land next door after being banned wearing an avatar made from my RL picture to look exactly like me from RL. Now if you think that's ok, let me suggest that if it were done to YOU, I bet you would freak. That it is done to me routinely; that I'm expected to "take it"; that the Lindens do NOTHING about it; that this abusiveness and intolerance and hatred is meant with cries of "but your picture is on the Internet and linked by you in the New York Times" – that's part of the dysfunction of Second Life – it's not normal."

You're joking right Torley??!! July, August, September,October and now into November!! Have u any idea what a hindrance this is to the groups you guys initially encouraged to form communities...

Please also clarify what LL mean by
1: Critical
2:Torley Linden - 23/Mar/07 11:50 AM this continues to be a priority
3: WorkingOnIt Linden - 17/May/07 03:19 PM [STATUS UPDATE] A fix for group notices failing is included in Second Life 1.15.2,
4: WorkingOnIt Linden - 30/Apr/07 01:09 PM [LATEST STATUS] Group notices fix is coded.

... and what does 'working on it' actually mean?!

Truly flabbergasted at the time this has taken... utterly rubbish!!

Correctly functioning groups are so important to the future of Second Life. We shouldn't have to resort to off-world means to keep the communication going in our groups. Don't we want people to think of SL as the go-to place to create vibrant communities?

Hard to replicate issues are no less important than those that are easily duplicated.

And on the other end of the problem, I'm a member of a very large group associated with a store I like. I have to make a point of checking the group message archive every week or so, because I only seem to receive maybe 1 in 3 of the messages that are sent out on this group.

Is someone still working on this? Is there any progress being made?

My alt, nearly never loggged in, gets a lot (not sure if all) notices offline from Live Music Enthusiasts (about 3000 members). When I am offline, my main avatar gets nearly none of the group notices from this group to mail.
In other groups, I get more notices to both.

It looks like the amount of lost notices for a member depends on:

• is the member logged in more often?
• How large is the group?

Group notices are the only way to inform people even if they are offline. If they do not work at all and it is luck, if you receive them, this really sucks!

We are waiting nearly on year now for this to get fixed and ist seems to be worse than ever as much of the inworld communication gets worse, too.

Could one of the Linden's please give some information about a time line and plans how to fix this before communication goes down to zero?

As original reporter, I'd like to add my comment to the preceding ones that offline notices have been all but broken for (guessing a little) a month or more. I don't specifically remember if a viewer or server update triggered it unfortunately, as I first put this down to bad luck on my part. I know some smaller groups I am in seem to faultlessly deliver offline IMs, but with my group, now with 5000 members and approximately 50-100 notices a day, I'm seeing usually 0-2 offline messages delivered to email. It's really killing a lot of the functionality my group members expect (and yes, they truly join to see these, believe it or not - with the option to turn them off then they need a break, which, like other group stuff, kinda works).

If Lindens could take a good look at this please do - could we have some feedback here? It's really broken, Thanks!

Group chat errors seem to be even worse with latest update!
Multiple chat errors, lag, popups for no reason mid convo, etc etc..

For example, last week I fixed the opposite bug, VWR-3729 (Notices still received when "Receive Notices" unchecked), which would start happening after the group member walked/teleported to a different sim from where he logged in.

• We do not get feedback how many notices have been delivered
• We do not see that we miss a notice, if we do not look up the lisiting all the time (where I am not sure, if all are there)
• Those going to mail are delivered to me with different message IDs, so I only can guess, this would be always the case. But is it that way? I do not have the code and it is not documented So I can only do guess

After Logging out yesterday, there have been several group Notices to LME (Live Music Enthusiasts). One was delivered for my man avatar, multiple to my alt. From larger groups like LME I receive nearly no Notices when I am offline for my main avatar.

So some guesses here:
If my main avatar gets more Notices during my offline times, that could mean something with the onlin status and what LL does with it when sending groups does not work.
But It also looks like I do not get all Group Notices from LME, when I am online. So where do those go? Does delivery stop at a certain point? Does it depend on if group info and members are delivered to the sim the sender is in? (Looking up group members/notices from group tab does take ages sometimes)

For a user it is impossible to say "I am missing this under this and that conditions" if the user does not even know, there has been something he/she misses.

If the software does some logging on the servers, you might get an idea on how many of a certain notice did go out to users online and users offline. If there are logs, you may also try to look up what to those Notices happened users know (like me for my main avatar) they did not get, because an alt did get them.

Okay, I am repeating myself here. It is all already in the comment history....

I am not sure yet if this affects offline notices as reported by Bibi Book, but I'll look at this now.

Around the same time I got 25 offline notices for my alt and one for my main avatar
one of the 25 was a duplicate.
I got the same single notice for my alt as I see for 20080305 in the list in group.

My alt was not logged in in between
My main avatar was logged in today and got very few group notices. But I did not change region while being logged in.

As the sorting in the listing is bad (not by creation time) I cannot really see, if that list may be complete. But at least I did not find one notice my alt got offline there.

so from what I see:

• Not all Notices are to be seen by users in the listing, if there are many
• Comparing is nearly impossible, if there are many notices for one day
• Some avatars receive nearly no notices (in my case the active avatar)
• All or most avatars receive only a part of the notices.

The result of that is: people try to post more and more notices and IMs in more and more groups to reach some people at least, which may cause additional problems.

PS: Haven't there been suggestions to include something like jabber instead of the LL communication much more than a year ago? That would make it possible to read offline, too.

Listed in group window: 18
Alt got by mail: 9
Main avatargot: 3 (one only online, when online, 2 in mail and after relog)

It looks like the after relog shown Notices are those, I got by mail only.

For me it seems the complete queue for sending the Notices breaks up or isn't even complete when the notices get sent.

• Are the notices sent always in same order (order of members)?
• If yes: what is the order?
• do only th first ones in that order get the Notices?
• Is the list of avatars, who should receive a notice always completely available, if a notice is sent?

As users we cannot do much more research as we do not know how the process is working.

So far, I believe I've traced down 4 things that are all contributing to this problem

1. Online group notices are sometimes not delivered because individual group preferences data gets corrupted upon sim crossings.
This is FIXED pending next release; sim crossings will no longer corrupt group preferences.

2. When group notices are throttled due to notices coming in too frequently, there is no indication that the notice was rejected due to throttling (unless it's the first time).
This is FIXED pending next release; you'll always get a notice saying the message was throttled.

3. Group notices may encounter a global error when being sent, the symptom is that the notice appears in the group notices log but does not get sent to anyone.
This is IN PROGRESS, I think I can create an error message for the sender so he/she knows that his notice failed to send.

4. Group notices seem to be failing for offline members.
This is the most puzzling issue, I cannot yet figure out why there should be a difference between online status and why certain members would receive notices but not others.

Also - when logging in and finding many notes with attachments - notes or LMs does not make a difference, once I have opened the first attachment I find that I cannot open attachments on subsequent notes. I just have to make a note of them and go back into groups and check them off "manually". As you cannot sort by date other other than day, and other issues listes about archived notes this makes it somewhat tedious. More often than not I end up not checking these which must be impacting the sales of some of these vendors. (I will take a look to see if this is reported separately and either add a comment there of create a new issue)