|
|
|
Yes Trader1, it seems to be getting worse. Likely you noticed it since the recent rolling restarts, but in truth this has been going on for months. LL themselves have announced this is affecting "16%" of their users (how they come up with that figure is anyone's guess. Maybe some behind-the-scenes statistic we're unaware of. My question is, if they can't get simple text chat to work, how can we count on any statistic tracking to work? LOL). From what I've seen, this problem hits far more people than LL suspects, and it's major. I know I'm always getting reports from members who had no idea an event was going on, even though we sent out multiple group notices and IMs. And I myself constantly see group IMs doing several things:
1) Extreme lag, where someone's comment does't post for up to 3 minutes later (that's a fairly new bug, just in the last 4 months or so) Bottom line, it is pretty obvious the SL data-handling routines are borked. Equally obvious that since at one time group chat DID work (Group Notices never has worked properly), then something LL has done over the past year trashed the group chat system. The fact that this does not appear to be given top priority is just further reflection of past LL failure to recognize the importance of basic communication, which is the real issue here. LL has always had a reputation for failing to see how important communication is. Ever tried to send an email to Linden Lab support? They don't even have a standard, proper, bot-proof online email suppport system. I've recently heard of people who have been told they are guilty of TOS abuse... with no way to appeal the decision, dispute the decision or present their side of the story. While LL has shown increased openness in some ways (the BLOG), they continue to ignore the value of communications (that same blog having CLOSED COMMENTS so regularly. Yup, they for sure know what their customers are going to say about that one, and they don't want to hear it). SL is a social environment. That LL continues to allow communications bugs to continue means one of two things: either the problem is so serious they CAN'T fix it, or they just don't feel it's all that important. Either way, the outlook isn't good. FLASH OF INSIGHT
I have a hint at one thing that might be wrong with the GROUP NOTICES issue. In every group, lower right hand corner there is a tiny checkbox labeled "Receive Group Notices". Apparently at some time SL had generously UNCHECKED that box for me. I wonder how many other people this has happened to? Why didn't that occur to me? Because as things would have it, I would receive SOME group notices (so apparently that option isnt' all that functional, either). One has to wonder in truth, WHY would someone join a group, then opt out of receiving group notices? Why is that "feature" even there? As my dad used to say, "Just another thing to go wrong." As in this case it did (and no telling how many thousands of others). How many people aren't receiving group notices because somehow, that box got unchecked? Suggestion: remove that box folks. It is too easy for the system to "uncheck" it. Either that, or move it to some obscure, out of the way location and set the default to "receive". That way if the system goes haywire, at least it will default to safety. Key to success: simple application of common sense, applied regularly and consistently. ; ) Just last night 11-11-2007 the leader of a small group, of which I am a member, had difficulty getting SL to open a Group IM – and when she finally did, I got NO indication that a Group IM was in progress. There was no tab, no alert --nothing. (I received notification that this was in progress by another private IM.) I did confirm that I was still a member of the group. There was a lot of traffic on the Group IM, none of which triggered a session on my client, even after a crash and restart of the SL client. If there's an option to turn off Group IMs, I never touched it, I swear! I used to get 'em...
Have to disagree Henri. Goes a LOT further back than that. There have been complaints regarding the group notices thing ever since the feature was established, and complaints regarding group IMs at least since June of this year.
Group IM and Notices are failing completely for me to.
Opening the group already gives a error. The Issue has grown worse, but I still see Group IMs from other groups. It has been suggested that perhaps my group is too big but other large group ims still work.
What is bothering me most, and what I find totally unacceptable is that LL had closed my ticket as resolved.. the resolution was to refer me to this thread! It reminds me of a comment that was posted after a recent grid disruption... It's not about the check-off. This happens in my groups, and it's almost as if the larger the group, the more this breaks down.
The notices don't go out at all as visible notices even to me – but they can be found in the archives. Or they don't go to everyone. Group IMs lag, or don't go out at all, and error messages come. Constantly. Yes Prok. And what is irritating about this particular error (as well as extremely buggy group chat) has been going on for MONTHS now, with no fix. I know LL has a lot on their plate, but as they've been told time and time again, communications is the heart of SL. This isn't a minor priority bug; it should be at the top of the stack.
If a company doesn't have the skill or ability to correct simple chat and group notice bugs, I think there's not much hope. Gives all the appearance of amateurish management and coding. Is this issue related/same as VWR-1298?
Greetings Rob. VWR-1298 is related, but it deals with just one symptom of this matter. VWR-1298 deals with chat delays (posting to a chat and it taking quite some time to appear).
This bug report includes that, but also includes group members receiving no notice that a chat is going on, a chat session appearing which obviously is starting in the middle of the chat (even when the user has been online for many hours), the group chat system completely timing out or knocking a user out of chat. In a nutshell, what this bug report states is this: you name what could possibly go wrong in group chat, and that's going wrong. Group chat is totally borked.
and it's February and groups are still haphazard on which days they will or won't work. Most any day, however, you can open at least one of your groups and have it unable to connect to IM chat. Almost always, when you can get one to connect, it takes forever for your chat line to appear after entered. Many times it appears all out of order of the last 2 lines you entered.
Today, you can't get groups to load member lists at all. I've tried all of mine and have had 4 other people try theirs as well. It's not my connection, nor my installation, nor my computer. It's SL wreaking "Havoc" and breaking other pieces along the way. Since the last two upgrades in release candidate I've experienced all out failures of group chat. Specifically it's been affecting TUI builders group. I wondered if some of this has to do with sims that are using HAVOC or are some other type of experimental sim? I'm part of other groups that have no problems at all, cept maybe the lag...with the chat/text coming up about 10-20 seconds after you type it. (I figured this had to do with all the other processors involved in SL and the number of people all texting in that group at the same time).
Soooo interesting to be part of an evolving technology. ;>) This problem seems to be getting worse. I used to be able to respond to group chats started by others. Lately, I have not been able to do that more and more often. This really makes life difficult if you are trying to get important information about the group. Can someone please help?
I experience frequently that whenever a group notice /-IM comes up, especially from larger groups like f.ex SL Mentors, I instantly get the error message window, saying:
"Error starting a new chat session with___ group. Error making request, please try again later" !!! I have to press OK in order to continue any operátions, and as soon as I do that, the group window shuts off. I have, of course, NOT attended to "start a chat session" I haven´t even had the possibility to read the group info. As I am relying on info from several of my groups, this is not only a very annoying problem, but also "damaging" for my activities in SL. The problem started after downloading the 1.19.0(5) release, but by using Windlight Candidate,as I do now, I have exactly the same problem. Hope this bug will be fixed very soon. Just as a note, I reported this bug more than four months ago. The actual problem has existed at least since last June (to the best of my recollection). Yet still this problem is not corrected?
We see fancy new eye-candy toys being worked on and promoted to the gills-- Windlight – Dazzle – yet simple CHAT doesn't work? Again Linden Lab... where are your priorities? Eye candy is fine... but it's not much use when we can't log in, can't teleport without crashing, and can't communicate with members in our groups. We need reliable communications. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting the strong impression this isn't being fixed because you folks CAN'T fix it. Either the system is so borked that it's totally gotten out of your control, or your programmers don't have the documentation / skill to fix this problem. If that's not the case then we get down to simple corporate "we don't care" attitude. Please people, get on the stick. I hate to be blunt like this... but going this many months with Group Chat remaining unfixed is beyond ludicrous. Most companies would have a communications problem corrected within 24 to 72 hours. If your system is so messed up internally that you can't fix a simple group chat problem, you don't stand much of a chance against the upcoming competition. Time to stop playing games (on our dime)-- and get to work. If you were my kid, you'd be in for a good whooping for failing to do your chores. If you were my employee... I'd fire you for continued failure to do your job. Sorry if you don't appreciate the wording in this. We've tried being nice... for several month now. When nice doesn't work, we get down to laying it on the line. This bug did not appear to me before upgrading to 1.19 viewer. But it has been a permanent companion ever since
Sunday March 16,2008 approx. 2:40 pm till 2:20 pm i tried the following:
It seems i see less failed attempts than earlier this week: probably many users have given up and don't try any more .... ;-( Excerpt from blog.secondlife.com: I had hoped the announced group-im cleanup by Kate Linden might somehow resolve this ... but i see not signs of such .. yet ... I am surprised there has been no announcement on this JIRA post that LL was even working on this, much less that they had a fix in release order, as announced on the LL blog. I would think they should have been posting all along on JIRA that they are closely studying and trying to fix this issue rather than just leaving it-- to all knowledge and understanding by their customers-- unresolved.
Only 2 or 3 of my groups are working, which is about 10%. My own group, Brotherhood of Bohemia, hasn't worked since early on Friday. Initially the problem involved typed messages not appearing, then the group became impossible to open. Today we have both problems together, so the situation seems to be worsening. This group is important and being without it is causing inconvenience for a great number of people. I should add that Notices do work, although not everybody is getting them.
As for messages coming out in the wrong order or appearing much later, that has been happening since the group was started - i.e., months ago. This happens on all groups, at least larger ones. This REALLY did not need showstopper status. We don't need to shut the grid down cause a few people aren't getting a group notice.
Corsi, this most certainly IS a "showstopper" issue. They don't "shut the grid down" just because something is marked showstopper.
A "showstopper" event is something that drastically affects members and groups grid-wide and seriously hampers use of Second Life. Cessation of group communications certainly qualifies. This item has been marked "showstopper" for months. Please leave it as such. The Lindens are aware of this issue, are working on a fix. If and when Linden Lab decides it's no longer a showstopper issue, they will change it. At this point, it does not fall to anyone else to police this post. One of the problems with this issue is that it seems to be a combination of issues. On the one hand, people not receiving group messages, and on the other, the issue that I logged to support, but already mentioned here - that there is an error message generated a short time after someone sends an IM to a group in my list. You can imagine this being just an annoyance, but for me it is far more than this. I find that I am typing and looking up (I semi-touch type) I discover that most of my efforts have disappeared into the ether because some %$% dialog box has appeared to tell me that there is an error ("Error starting a new chat session with___ group. Error making request, please try again later" - as reported previously.)
If the dialog didn't steal the focus, it wouldn't be quite such an issue, but to me, getting this message is beginning to make the SL experience enormously annoying indeed, given the fact that indiscriminate IMing to groups is on the increase so this is now a very regular occurance - perhaps 20 times in a few hours. That's why I disagree with Corsi Mousehold completely - this issue (or the part I am reiterating) DESPERATELY needs a fix - like yesterday!!!!! Linking to another big issue about chat...there are many generic bug reports on specific chat bugs which have a lot of votes...you may wish to vote for them.
18/Mar/08 approx. 16:07 the following happened:
in the Xcite! Premier group a message opened the message box, i read it .. and started an answer ... about 10-15 secs after the message had appeared, the error popup appeared, and after confirming that message the Xcite! message box and the newly arrived message were gone. I contacted the sender via private IM: he had NOT received an error after opening the group and sending the message !!! I have IM logging enabled, and the message was caught in the log .. no error shown there (Sorry, local date 19, but SLT date 18 ..., had the group wrong too, and added logging info) i am also getting intermittent group chat crashes: someone else starts a group chat, and sometimes after 2 or 3 entries i get "error starting a new chat session with (group)" and am forced to close the window, and i miss all subsequent group messages, even if i have not tried to say anything!
on one occasion i had several group chats going fine, then a third one started and gave this error. perhaps i should try to keep track of which group chats work and which ones don't. however, group notices are working fine for me, Erica, are you sure group notices are working fine for you? Because after all... if they weren't... you wouldn't get anything to tell you that you missed the notice. (The only way I found out was after a couple of months of suddenly realizing I wasn't hearing about group events that I was posting). Just yesterday I missed 2 group notices that were sent when I was standing right by the people who sent them.
this Started March 22nd
Saturday evening one of my groups started slowing down to a snail's pace (30+ minutes between posting and it showing up) Sunday It kept getting longer but for the most part posts were still going through When i woke up Monday morning it was dead, you could post all you wanted but nothing shows i have not seen anything from it i have tried to chat in it it goes (no chat error) but does not ever show this is detrimental as its the helping group for the Treasure Quest, and the only way we can help the hunters who get stuck, this is totally a show stopping problem I have exactly the same problem as star Chastity. It started 2 days ago.. no more error messages. Either the messages are delayed (1 hour approx) or they are never delivered. The group is now dead. Nothing goes through. It never did that in the past. We had the occasional errors during peak hours, but nothing like that.
A fix or a workaround would be really appreciated. As far as Group IM's are concerned:
It seems to me this bug has shown dramatic improvement the last approx. 2 days ... as i see it group IM's are back to normal (as i remember it, but i wasn't aware of a continuous problem since summer last year either) ... and the problem hasn't even been reported fixed ? Please Comment To the contrary Scarlett. Just yesterday I had three group IM sessions crash and burn before they even got off the ground.
They group IMs appeared with the initial starting message, then an error box popped up and said the Group IM was disconnected. If anything, the problem is even worse than before. I've been experiencing serious and increased problems on SL over the past week (as have many members of the group I'm in, not just on our sims but all over the grid).
All these things point to one problem: my guess is the internal network and data structure of SL is really messed up and overtaxed, to the point that LL is finding it difficult or impossible to fix. Seems to me after all these months they need to call in 3rd party mega network specialists. This seems to have gotten worse for me tonight, I couldn't even start group chats. Anyone else feel the same?
Friends, we're actively working on this internally. I don't know when it'll be fixed, but we are working it. thanks for your patience.
Aric LInden: "Friends, we're actively working on this internally. I don't know when it'll be fixed, but we are working it. thanks for your patience."
Aric, I'm glad to hear LL is working on this... but most companies would have had a serious internal communications problem fixed within 48 hours. Frankly after 5 MONTHS of this being reported as a showstopper issue, and with so many people reporting this problem, I wonder how much more patient we're supposed to be. I can assure you right now many of us aren't feeling very "friendly" toward Linden Lab. Wayfinder,
I appreciate your ability to estimate how long it should take to solve a problem. It's been worked on, though not steadily for a few months. The problem is complicated, several engineers are actively engaged on it and we hope to resolve it shortly. One hopes your patience is not exhausted, though I understand that it's been a long and difficult wait, not solely for this fix, but for many others as well. Thanks for your feedback and response. aric I'm glad you appreciate my ability to make estimates Aric. It comes from working more than 2 decades as a professional business consultant and systems analyst (which is one reason I'm so often able to peg LL on performance issues). I specialize in trouble-shooting, so I tend to be direct and get to the point, and focus on the issues at hand rather than playing brown-nosing games. In the industry, I'm known as a "corporate watchdog". Companies hired me to get to deep-core, elusive issues. I don't blame people: I discover and point out what's messed up. If that problem gets fixed, great. But if people cop an attitude... that's when it gets messy. There's no room in the business field for becoming defensive and copping an attitude; the competition loves such people. The idea is to get the job done, no excuses.
So when I say that most companies would have internal communications problems fixed within 48 hours, that's exactly what I mean. Communications is the heart of any company. Group chat and notes being non-functional for months has caused your company more harm than you likely imagine. It is preventing your customers from communicating with one another, preventing groups from functioning, and that as well as other problems is driving people away from your system literally by the millions (proof: what is the SL current active user base compared with its claimed "residents" figure?). I know there are a LOT of issues with SL at this time. I wouldn't want to be a LL programmer; gotta be one major hair-pulling and Maalox job. Yet to be honest... after 8 years you folks should have a rock-solid stable platform. But what we instead consistently see is LL focusing on new, unnecessary toys before stabilizing the current ones. That's not good operational strategy. it makes for upset customers. I know there are a LOT of things going on right now with SL. But group chat is one of those top-priority, necessary focus items. It's just about equal with database and inventory management... all three of which after eight years of operation should be working flawlessly. I mean, we're talking CHAT and NOTICES, man. It's not rocket science. Chat rooms have had that one down pat for a decade. I realize it is not easy maintaining or upgrading a system like Second Life. I realize you folks have a pretty full plate. I also realize that the immense amount of time and man-power that Linden Lab has devoted to eye-candy projects such as Windlight could have been devoted to far more serious issues. In the minds of a lot of people, while terimites are eating away at the foundation and it's raining through holes in the roof... LL has been focusing on putting in stained glass windows. (BTW... how long have people been crashing on teleport or crossing sim lines? At least 3 1/2 years according to my experience. When is THAT one going to be fixed? And see what I mean? By LL standards, 5 months seems to be a drop in the bucket). I am being neither overly critical, nor am I alone in these statements. I am echoing of the voices of tens of thousands of customers who right now are pretty unhappy with SL performance. All you have to do is visit the forums or read any SL blog to see those feelings of frustration echoed out over and over. As we speak, thousands of people can't log on to Second Life because their graphics cards have been outdated by Windlight-- and since LL deemed it wise to remove the PREFERENCES option from the logon screen... they can't disable Windlight before entering the grid. And LL wonders why customers get frustrated. There is a reason I am so direct wth LL, and it's not because I'm anti-LL. (Although after some major personal unresolved experiences with the company, I'm certainly not pro-LL. A major example of LL putting corporate "policy" ahead of customer welfare). LL tends to be like the stubborn mule: it works ok once you smack it between the eyes to get it's attention. ; ) That said, I do empathise with you folks. I know SL is a big job and I know it's not easy. But LL also must empathise with its customers and realize that we are the ones paying the bills... and we're doing so by paying ludicrous amounts of money. Right now our Porche is running pretty choppy, and we want the mechanic to fix it... no excuses, and not five months from now. @Wayfinder
To be perfectly honest, the preferences have not been removed from the login screen, but the very visible and handy button was replaced with a very discrete (hidden, even) "Preferences" entry in the "Edit" menu (see it, in the menu-bar ?): a demonstration about how badly the Ui gets crippled with each new release of the viewer. But you are also too kind with LL... ;-P it has been a year now (and not only 5 months) that group IMs have been broken: the very origin of the problem can be seen in the blog archives, starting from here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/02/preview-of-second-life-11411-now-up-on-the-beta-test-grid/ As for the rest of your comment I second it wholeheartedly. Hi Henri. What I meant by "preferences bing removed from the login screen" is the "splash" screen that comes up when SL is first loaded, and prior to signing in. There used to be four options on that screen, including PREFERENCES (identical to the one currently in the EDIT menu). The benefit of that was that a person could go in and change preferences prior to logging in to SL. For who-know-what reason, LL removed that preferences button (all that is there now is "Connect" and "Quit". Result: Now people get a message that their previously-working graphics card does not support Second Life... and they can't even log in.
As to their reasons for doing so, I made a couple of guesses on this blog: I'm sure they have an official "technical" reason for removing the startup preferences button... but that doesn't make it a wise or good decision. Thanks for your feedback. Hopefully that will let LL know that I'm just one voice out of thousands who are upset with company policies. ADDENDUM: I just read a blog by Pastrami Linden that the PREFERENCES function has been shifted in location... and suddenly Henri, I realized what you were talking about. They added a dropdown menu to the spash page! Sorry I didn't get it at first. You know what is a shame though, is that they did so without announcing it (no great big notice on the screen that "Hey, we've moved this from HERE to HERE" so that people would be aware of such. I think that most people, like me, never even thought to look at the top of the screen... and like you said, it's obscure and doesn't really stand out. BUT... at least it's there, which is going to be good news to a lot of people who had been unable to log in. Thanks for pointing it out... sorry I misunderstood what you were saying. So I guess I'll just have to agree 110% with everything you posted. This is too long to read all the comments -apologies if I repeat someone else's remarks. Just to say that in the last couple of months, Notices have taken too long to arrive, and also IMs sometimes - it is not unknown to not receive them on the login after they were sent, but on the one after (which is very often the next day). This is never happened before, certainly never last year.
Wow! This problem has been going on - and unresolved - and getting worse - since before I knew Second Live existed! I teach at TUi, and this problem is crippling us. I am aware from talking with other people that this communication problem is having an adverse effect on businesses in SL. I am not a systems engineer, consultant, or any other kind of expert. I just want SL to work, and am getting increasingly frustrated with the excuses. I see two basic problems. First, as has been pointed out by others, SL seems too intent on putting features which have been quite correctly labeled "eye candy" in place, when they should be concentrating on developing a stable platform. In this respect, they have much in common with Microsoft (you know, the huge, very successful company that is largely responsible for the growth of the open source movement?). Second, there are way too many alt accounts in SL. This proliferation has taken place in large part because of the elimination of the credit card requirement for establishing an account. Many of the large groups, which are having the greatest problems, include numerous alts of the same person. LL tells us that the larger the group, the more difficulty it is experiencing. So? Reduce the number of ghosts in the machine! Reinstate the credit card requirement, to limit the number of alts. As long as it is free, people will continue to create more and more alts, bogging down the system (and artificially inflating LL's numbers).
Hi, thought it is working again, but still having trouble in many big groups. And many times the group is just dead, no group IM, no notices (only the sender gets them) and no error messages, just nothing. Very annoying. Please get it fixed soon
 Thanks! I know you try at least your best. I own 3 groups and rely on group notices to get the word out, sometimes about really important things (like recently asking 50 people who have permission on my sims to remove things due to an error message I kept receiving about a script malfunction. One of my groups has over 500 members. I hardly ever get my own notices. I have to check with others to see if they got it. If I use group chat, that doesnt always work. I also have 4 of my own Alts in all of the groups and I would say that only about 50% of the time do any of them randomly receive the notices that I send out. When I have something urgent I am forced to "hand deliver" notecards to at least 50 people. I didnt know so many other people had this problem. Very disheartening.
Yes Wabisabi, I really hate it when Linden Lab forces us to be blunt and nail them to the wall... but I posted this JIRA in November of 2007. Here it is June 2008 and we're still having these issues (and these issues existed long before I posted them).
I can't say much for the competence or professionalism of any computer company that can't manage to deliver a simple notecard to a list of members in a group. I can't say much for programmers who can't write a simple chat system. I was writing network communications programs before there was an internet... and they worked flawlessly, regularly, without error. Chat companies handle millions of concurrent chat postings every hour of every day without losing a single post. Email companies like Google, Juno and Yahoo delivier email pretty much flawlessly, with only rare breaks in service... and they have millions of customers. Yet Linden Lab, with what, about 60k maximum concurrent users, after months of notification, still can't manage to deliver a simple notecard to group members? Linden Lab, the solution is simple: simply tell your CTO that he has 2 weeks to fix this program or he'll be receiving his final paycheck. You'll be amazed at how quickly this problem will be fixed. I think what your company needs more than anything is a watchdog with some teeth to get people to do the jobs they're supposed to be doing. Of course, that requires people with common sense and work ethic. Those kind of folks seem hard to find these days. But unless the company gets a watchdog to oversee things and make sure they get done in a prioritized manner, we're going to continue to see major bugs like this go on for months and even years. Linden Lab, it's notecards and chat. Simple database and network communications structure. What is the problem here? Both these issues have been a problem for at least 2 years, and probably more (I've been playing since October 2006). Why Aric, or any Linden, has said this has been fixed is beyond me. It hasn't, and "a few months" of working on it makes me gawk at the lack of work put upon what SL is mostly based around, chatting.
Maybe its a coincidence but for a few days after I complained here, I got all of my notices. Ever since then I have gotten 2 out of probably 20 that I have sent out. I read other people's comments and I just cannot believe this! I rely on my group notices for so many important things.
This has been going on entirely too long. Please fix group chat.
This affects EVERY PERSON in SL, every group regardless of ISP, sim location, or OS. As a lot of "old timers" on SL, "We're working on it" or "we're aware there is a problem" is really getting old. Its time to stop "Working on it" and please fix it! The wondrous possibilities of SL have become overshadowed by continuing nuisances like Group Chat and related group problems. The past few days it has been impossible to invite anyone to our group of 6,000. As was stated before, when you operate a club, getting word out to your VIP base is essential to having a club open. No VIPs=no club. No club = sell the land and I dont want to have to be forced to do that. Thank you for SL but PLEASE FIX IT! Well-said, Caemlyn.
Here is what it all comes down to: When a company has a top-prioroty, show-stopper, affects-every-single-customer problem like this that doesn't get fixed for month after month, ongoing two years now, there are only two possibilities: 1. The company doesn't care enough to fix it. Either option reflects poorly on Linden Lab. If this was some minor bug, I could understand it sitting on a back burner. But as I and others have told LL time and again... communications is everything. I am very concerned that LL is currently focusing on other agendas and as long as customers keep shelling out ludicrous amounts of money for virtual land, that is likely to continue to happen. It's the "sucker born every minute" philosophy. So long as the suckers are willing to keep shelling out the money for poor service, the payee is going to take it and keep offering the same service. Myself, while I understand that can temporarily be a profitable way to do business (until someone with a lick of sense comes along and takes over the market), in the long run it's a suicidal philosophy. It's a "take the money and run" gambit that pretty much blows the future down the drain. Like you said Caemlyn, a club can't operate properly when communications aren't working. The logical, obvious option is to shut down the club and pursue one's livlihood/ entertainment elsewhere. That so obvious I'm surprised LL isn't more concerned about it. How long do they think they can keep this up before the industry catches up with them? From what I've seen, in our group of almost 1300 members, roughly half of them do not receive the notices we send out (at varying intervals). 80% of the time when I send out a notice, I don't receive my own notice. MOST of the chats I enter, both in local and IM, my own entries wind up getting turned around, later entries posted earlier in the conversation, out of order. Any major company that has poor communications is a doomed company. I fail to see why LL appears to believe that Second Life will be any different. I also fail to see why this matter hasn't been placed as a top-priority, heads-will-roll issue. I can't really venture, not knowing the internal workings, but one of the poxes of today's businesses is being more concerned with the stockholders than the customers who are paying the bills and allowing for dividends. It's a strange way of thinking. Bottom line: worry about the customers FIRST... then the money will follow. DON'T worry about the customers, and someone else will wind up taking the money. With as many votes as this issue has received and as obviously irate as people are about this, if it hasn't been fixed by now, well, the two reasons are already stated. It's not a matter of "too many other irons in the fire". This is a showstopper issue that has been on the board since last November and has been noted long before that. I would think it would be a little more important than voice, sculptys, Windlight and Dazzle. At this point, I frankly will be surprised if this matter gets fixed before the VR wars start. THEN it might get fixed. LOL. Internally we have been tracking this issue as the same issue SVC-1507 - Notices failing for larger groups. Indeed we have been WorkingOnIt....! The other issue SVC-1507 has been receiving more frequent updates by Lindens as to its status, such as this comment:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1507?focusedCommentId=52951#action_52951 
I am going to mark this issue as a duplicate of the SVC bug. This is likely fixed in the 1.23 Server, which has not yet been fully deployed. When this server version is in effect, can you verify that this issue ( VWR-2950 ) has been addressed? Or... modify it to reflect what outstanding bug has not been resolved by the new server version? Will do Ramzi. Thanks for the update. : )
Ramzi, if it's not a problem, I'm reopening this issue for a few reasons:
1) It has 114 votes, so a large number of people have been following this particular post You can always close it again if you believe that's proper and with no hard feelings, but I believe athough there is some duplication between the two posts, this specific post has received significant enough attention to remain open as well. Although I'll refer to the other post for LL update information, might be good to leave both posts unresolved. I'll defer to your decision of course, but would like to keep this one unresolved until the matter is fixed. : ) Ethari, when you impose your opinion upon a JIRA in a manner such as changing a Showstopper issue to Critical, you are expected to at least give a reason why.
Group communications failing (both group IMs and group notices) is a SHOWSTOPPER issue. It affects the entire grid, all users on the grid, hampers group operation and performance of business, damages event performance, and causes many other problems. This meets all the definitions of Showstopper... and is a Showstopper issue if ever there was one. This has been going on for over a year now.
It affects EVERY USER regardless what O/S, regardless what sim they are on, regardless of group size - it affects not 13% but 100% of users. I have tried sending bug reports each time it happens but am always told I am duplicating a known bug report and there is the fact that were I to bug report each incidence, all I would get done the entire day is sending bug reports. I have not had one single day in the past year or more where groups worked as they should. Instead of giving us more shiny thngs to play with, please fix things that need fixed. Thank you! And here it is Sept 29, 2008... and this problem STILL isn't fixed.
Man, if I were LL CEO I'd be bringing out the head-chopping axe. A group of engineers and coders that can't figure out a CHAT problem in over a year's period of time, I would consider to be a company liability rather than an asset. And yeah, that's pretty blunt. I think we customers have been more than patient, more than long enough... especially at the prices we're paying. I've seen the following major, show-stopper issues continue, unfixed, for well over a year (some of them 3 or 4 years)...
How long exactly does Linden Lab consider acceptable resolution on major bug issues? These aren't minor... they're MAJOR. They cost the company customers every single day. I'm not saying LL should start firing coders. But I do think they should be looking very heavily at their debugging process and systems and start by fixing THAT. KK done venting... for now. Expect such again in 60 days if this issue and the others still aren't resolved. Because as a customer to a supplier: this performance is unacceptable... and I don't mean just SL perforamance. I thought it was better. The last 2 VERY IMPORTANT NOTICES, thanking people for donations and letting them know how desperately we need donations to keep the Star Trek Museum running, did not go to ANY OF MY 6 ALTS . I assume it went to VERY few of the 600+ members in my group. Its bad enough we cannot compete with all the cheap islands, and the economic problems affecting SL, but when we cannot even rely on this important tool to talk to our group members THIS IS SHAMEFUL.
this has gotten MUCH worse lately. i simply cannot communicate in my group IMs anymore. second life mentors and mentor Q and A are constanly affected. perhaps because they are such large groups? whats the point, every other IM is borked or lagged. easy for people to misunderstand also.
wayfinder says"I have a hint at one thing that might be wrong with the GROUP NOTICES issue. In every group, lower right hand corner there is a tiny checkbox labeled "Receive Group Notices". Apparently at some time SL had generously UNCHECKED that box for me. I wonder how many other people this has happened to?"
yes ive seen that too, extremely annoying. where is the bug number for that one so i can vote on it, or is this issue # an overall communications problem bug for groups? vote vote vote vote I just looked at the original date of this post. Nov 2 2007.
This issue is over a year old and still hasn't been fixed. We keep seeing notices of "Workflow... workflow...workflow". But we see no fix. Lot of other really bad problems on SL that we see no fix. Shouldn't fixing really bad, years-old bugs be a top priority? It is with most other companies. I have to agree with some of the posts here. How hard can it be to read through a list of group members and send a simple notecard to each one? If you can't get something that simple to work, there ain't much hope for the company. Have to be careful about pushing them on this. Under current management, one can imagine their solution being a policy that restricts group chat usage while instituting monthly group membership fees. Why fix the problem when you can turn it into a revenue stream.
I kinda wish you hadn't mentioned such an idea Matt. That's shooting yourself in the foot, you know? You may mean it as sarcastic, but feeding LL any kind of idea for additional revenue gouging is just asking for trouble. This isn't about corporate profit methods. This is about an SL function that doesn't work and needs to work. If you want to comment on corporate attitude, it might be quesitoned since this is such a simple thing, WHY it hasn't been fixed yet. Then we might say it's because LL doesn't think it's important. Which means they really need to get in better touch with their customers and find out what's important to US. Group notices and group IMs is definitely important. But even hinting that they find more ways to charge us more money is playing Russian Roulette at this point . No telling which chamber will be loaded. LL might take the idea seriously and do it. Don't give 'em any ideas. ; )
Please do not give up on this issue as it is very important to a LOT of people.
Post the link to your groups and have everyone comment or vote. I called Support and was told they were unaware there was a problem with Group Chats. Perhaps the person answering was, but this is an OLD OLD issue and really needs fixed! I have seen sporadic improvement at random times, but it is far from being fixed. It affects EVERY USER regardless what O/S, regardless what sim they are on, regardless of group size - it affects not 13% but 100% of users. Thank you for SL but PLEASE FIX IT! This has been an issue since before Philip fired Cory Linden.
Hmm.
It's not entirely true that this issue exists only for larger groups. I recall a group I created which had this issue when there were only 20 members. For several weeks I was unable to IM to my own group....did not even get a timeout....nothing happened at all. And then it started to work properly.......and with 340 members I've not noticed the issue lately. A possibly related issue ( no idea if there's a bug report for it ) is that of people still receiving group IMs after they have left a group. this issue has been a part of life on SL for the entire two years i've played at the least, any time i try to respond to anything in group chat i know it will tell me something went wrong before i am done using the chat.
it's really hard to understand how this is such a difficult problem to solve, i can guess as by my count LL maintains at least more than 1000 servers for sims that are currently in use, but even at that large a number, which i think is a bit on the low side honestly, it shouldn't take two years to fix. If I'm right it isn't mentioned yet but also the friends conferences are very laggy and giving lots of errors. I think this problem is related to the problem of the group IM. And as far as I know this problems exists for the past two years, like Cheetah mentioned also.
What I can't understand is that Linden responded for the last time in Juli 2008. Now we're in January 2009 on server 1.25 and still the problem is there. You can't tell me that you're working on it. Be honest and tell us that groups/friends conferences are low priority for Linden Lab. Perhaps it's good to try it your self people of Linden. It's very easy just open a conference and go talk with each other. Within a couple of minutes it will become laggy and later on you will get errors too. Yesterday tried it again on the new 1.25.4 server release. Still the same problem. Intermittent group chat, intermittent friends conference. Usually its very hard to chat with 3 or more people in friends conference. I'm getting messaging errors while sending lines to my friends. This seems really simple issue to fix. Friends conference especially because its only 3-5 people at once but it works terribly. This should be simplified. Sending few bytes of text isnt such a big deal.
From Nov-07
>>>Our question of course is simple: how hard can it be to get TEXT right. Every chat system on the net has been doing so for years. Makes SL look bad, y'know? Even Microsoft can get group chat to work. Yes, I can think of some reasons why it's very much more difficult to get it working in the SL environment. But the average user can't. Perceptions, people, perceptions. Not much use M. throwing money at the 'first-hour experience' if the outcome is going to be "oh, and they have a sort of group chat but it doesn't work." My perception is that 15-month old critical bugs fail to impress me. The issue should be extended to include being unable to even start a group chat....with one's own group that one created. The usual ' Unable to start chat with group XXXX ' appears...before I even get a chance to type anything.
Now I don't see how being unable to even start a group IM in the first place can be down to number of members, lag, or whatever.....when I am at the same time in IM with larger groups and its OK. I see that nobody's commented on this problem for a while. I just wanted to chime in and confirm that it still exists. Members of the Science Center group aren't always getting group notices, even though they show up in the group notices archives list. Group IMs are failing sometimes as well.
Please repair this problem. I suspect that apart from the lack of glamor associated with fixing how SL handles text, it may simply be extremely difficult to nail down the root of the problem.
Consider: this is likely one of the first sections of code that was ever implemented. Topographically, the task of tracing the code responsible could very well be similar to trying to trace the branches of a single plant in a hedge that has grown through a chain-link fence. Keep in mind that the chat system also handles communication between residents and objects, as well as object-to-object communications. Furthermore, the unrelenting randomness of delayed and dropped chat and IM posts is pretty much a recipe for near-impossibility. How do you trace one possibly bad wire in a complex circuit, if it only partly fails, part of the time? I am truly insulted now. After submitting a ticket querying issues with my main group I get referred to a jira that's 2 years in the making and now is a show stopper - and LL has closed the ticket as Resolved....like hell it is.
What is Jira anyways??? (Just Ignore, Run Away) ??? I would like to go back to April 2008 and to aric linden's comment and ask for an update on it (Wayfinder, This is 1 years old next month aric do you have any comments to add ? - or should I file a ticket or add another Jira?? May I suggest that before the labs embark on any larger project e.g the Adult Land tagging, maybe they would like to correct this incy wincy issue, especially as communication is the fundamental key to second life. It is WORSE THAN EVER. I just checked with 10 of my group members (out of about 700) and only 3 got my last few notices. That is a pretty horrible percentage. Of my own Alts, 2 have never gotten a single group notice, have been in the group a year. I rely on my group to keep my sims running, and they expect to hear from me. This is unbelievable.
And yes, I should mention, the appropriate boxes are checked or unchecked for these people to receive notices. The fact that people get them inconsistently is even more frustrating than them not getting any notices at all!
Yesterday, 6th May 2009, this issue was finally escalated to Philip Linden. Despite the IM problem dating back to 2007, affecting everybody who uses group IM, and drawing the attention of numerous Linden devs over this time, apparently it had not appeared on the radar of board members yet.
Philip asked for a concise description of the IM problem and/or links about it, and received both, with all the known IM fault types covered. Unfortunately he was provided with a link to http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8263 There's hope yet. I called about the issue of IMs not working over a year ago and was stunned when the person on the phone was totally unaware there was even an issue with group IMs.
In the 3 years I have been watching this, numerous times it has been closed as "resolved" which it obviously isnt. Please continue to post here in the hopes that maybe someday they will fix group chat! It affects EVERY USER regardless what O/S, regardless what sim they are on, regardless of group size - it affects not 13% but 100% of users. Thank you for SL but PLEASE FIX IT! It affects EVERY USER regardless what O/S, regardless what sim they are on, regardless of group size - it affects not 13% but 100% of users. Thank you for SL but PLEASE FIX IT! Agreed Camlyn.
Live chat were unaware of the issue, despite some high profile groups being affected. and this issue is still going on. We're into June '09 now and this issue was raised in November 07 Group chat failures are a complex problem. There are many possible
ways chat can fail. Here's how you can help fix the problem. As a first step, please collect a list of all error messages you see
Once we're sure we have a list, we can create a survey to collect more This error is becoming intolerable, 70% of our group IM's are now failing to get through. It's far far worse now than before. It's a showstopper alright as it wrecks communications between large groups of people.
I am now constantly getting the msg " This group chat no longer exists " for my group chat. Is this msg consistant with the errors being reported?
Hi all,
i dont know what LL is doing up there, C'mon guys, this aint funny anymore, hasnt 2 years of time been enough ? My groups as well has had some of the issues reported above happing to it.
The group officers first thought it was an access issue for diffrent roles so we checked all thoes and it appears to all be correctly set. Most recently: -a Group IM is started, 1 Line of text is sent to everyone, then everyone but the person who started the chat gets an Error Message along with a Prompt that closes the chat. -Notices are only being recived by 1\3 of the groups members -Land descriptions for parcels set to group, are comming up blank Having major issues with most Large Groups 1000+ members including Friends Of The Pond... Australians... BAD GIRLS VIP.... PLATINUM ESCORT VIP.... etc.. Hope it all gets fixed in time has been an issue for a couple weeks now started off a small bug now is getting worse..
I too am having many issues starting group chats for two groups I own. The Realm of Tol Daeannon and the Order of Clerics. I get "message sent to RECIPIENT failed" for group chat. For a time it was consistent with the Order of Clerics group...now it is mostly okay with that group and is consistently borked for the Realm of Tol Daeannon group chat. At times I even get the failed message when I am a receiver of the group chat (i.e., Elf Clan).
Tested with a small group (35 members) and using my own alts (good job I got 'em) I found that 1 in 4 (approx) notices were not being delivered. Since one of the most important features for a particular group of mine is the delivering of free goods developed by me to ALL members. ALL members, Yes that's ALL members it's kinda vital that ALL members are getting the notices.
I can confirm this only for 1.23.4 (123523) RC but judging by the list at the top this is a long running and widespread issue. I sent a notice explaining to my members that they may not be getting the notices I send but ..well.. yeah slight problem. There is an economy in SL for a reason and I am keeping my side of my promise to my consumers. It is kinda crappy that the notice system is swallowing my good efforts on the way. Like a grumpy postal worker throwing the mail down a drain because he's too tired or lazy to bother. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
Bug
Reopened
Showstopper
Group Notices and Group IMs Constantly Malfunctioning
Any attempt to send a Group Message fails.. the Message returned says to "Try again Later"
This has only begun since the rolling restarts on 11-8-07