Updates and Further Information on the New Search Project
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 6:05 PM by: Jeska LindenAs many of you read in last week’s blog announcement, we’re currently developing a new inworld search mechanism. Based upon your feedback and other discussions happening within the LL Search Team, I had a few updates to pass along.
New Search Design Mockup
We also wanted to share the newest iteration of the new Search UI, seen below.
Updated! New Search UI (click for larger image)
Crashes with the 1.18.4 Release Candidate
We’re aware that some of you have experienced crashes with the current release candidate and we are currently working out what caused this. If you did experience issues with crashing using the 1.18.4 release candidate, please continue to use 1.18.3.
“For-Sale Objects” Default Set Incorrectly
Some of the default settings for the search are not showing up in the correct way due to an issue with the server-side code. Currently, the “Show in search” checkbox is defaulting off for all objects. The patch which corrects this will roll out with our next server update. What will happen once it rolls out:
- If you already set “Show in search” on, it will stay on
- If the object is set “For Sale” then “Show in search” will turn on
- Going forward, you will always be able to set “show in search” whenever you can currently set “for sale”
Permissions and For Sale/Show in Search
Before the blog comments closed, several Residents asked about the inability to change the “show in search” checkbox on non-modifyable objects which were left set “for sale” by their creator. We’ve made a change, which will push in the next release candidate, to allow owners of objects to modify the “show in search” checkbox even if they do not have the ability to modify the object in other ways.
Vendors and the New Search
There were several questions about vendors and if they will be included in search automatically. Vendors will have to be explicitly set to “show in search” like any other object. From the server’s perspective, a vendor is just a scripted object — it doesn’t really know that the object is selling something. Likewise, it will not be possible to search inside of the vendor, although you could use the name or description of the vendor object to list keywords describing what is inside the vendor.
Teleporting Directly to Locations
There was some discussion in the blog about teleporting directly to locations on your parcel where “Show in search” objects are located. To clarify, this will not be possible with the new search; you will still be routed to the parcel’s default landing point. The new search simply lists the items set for sale on the parcel, thereby allowing people to find things easier.
Thank you all for your patience and feedback while we work to make Second Life better!
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:20 PM
I can’t wait for this to be implemented!
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:31 PM
Thanks for paying attention to what the residents of SL had to say and taking that into account. It’s easy to sit off in a corner and think up how things should be, however the people that work and reside on the grid can see things far more practically, and their mesh of different expreiences can make a huge difference in whether a change is implemented horribly or not.
Witness the incredibly stupid UI of the chat/IM/Groups window that was designed by someone who had no in-world experience, nor attempted to gain any input from the residents.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:42 PM
Um.. not the right place to say this, but the um.. upload server is ‘experiancing unexpected difficulties’ which is stopping me from uploading anything..
As for the new search; I look forward to this new improvements. Perhaps it’ll improve my time in Second Life; but perhaps it’d be a good expense to work on repairing the numerous bugs and lag issues that plague Second Life; especially since Second Life is guarenteed to get a mass influx of people Tomorrow Night. (For those who dont know, CSI NY airs their eppisode in SL tomorrow night, 9 Central)
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:45 PM
Search gets more visual. One one hand that’s a good thing because you can see products and places more clearly. But I am concerned that images will load slowly and are blurred for a long time, like the images in the current search window. Why would people take the time then to wait again for the second search page?
Now, with the text list, people can choose and scroll down pretty fast, make choices based on the text description. With the new visual search engine, when it indeed loads slowly, will they ever bother to look beyond the first page? I am very concerned that lower listings won’t have a chance anymore of being seen.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:48 PM
@ Paulo - the search results page is actually not full of images, just the initial “default” page (what you see when you click the “All” tab.) For a working image of what the search results look like, look here:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/jeska-linden/UI-NewSearch-All-Results.jpg
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:53 PM
i think the current search is fine (when it works) why do we need a better one for sometrhing i really rarely use. and wont searching for objects add to the already heavy burden? that adds 1000’s of new things to search though
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:54 PM
(^_^) It was nice to see you in the Linden village Jeska.
Good to have a opportunity to share ideas and hear what’s new and coming. This new search will be helpful in reducing time locating items. I’m looking forward to using the new updates and keeping up with other additions to the client. Great job and keep up the good work! ,,,=^_^=,,,
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:56 PM
Thanks for the update. You answered several questions I was curious about. Hopefully the final search will show more than 10 results per page tho, lol.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:57 PM
Hmm looks good so far..
I wonder when we click on an add… will we see the image page like in the old search (the one with the shops image, title, info, traffic and location)? or will it be different?
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:02 PM
About Teleporting Directly to Locations:
Actually, it woud be very cool if you could go from the search result to the precise object location; also, one could add a SLurl to her objects descriptions by hand; so, could the description field be made so it provides a clickable SLurl, if included by the owner?
@3: i’m experiencing consistent upload issus too.
@2: i find the new Communications UI pretty cool, it is good for me.
Also, let’s try sticking to constructive comments
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:07 PM
Will the description field on objects for sale be indexed?
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:08 PM
lol do I see what appears like the word ‘VISTA’ in the mock up? so LL found it? In their time off tweaking with what we already have will they realise new computers no longer have XP??? can compatability ever make the ‘to do’ list?
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:09 PM
New mockup looks interesting. Just concerned how it would paginate the results say if you had 700+ results.
Pretty painful to flip through the results.
If there will be options to show 2 column, 1 column, show with thumbnails, show without. I think that will be useful.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:17 PM
Windlight! I want my Windlight! PLEASE!!!!!!
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:40 PM
though I like to bremain constructive aas well.. I think @2 has a point.. I dislike the communication window too..
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:44 PM
@6. probably because you’re not the only one here. There will be lots of other people using it. :))
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:01 PM
Will the default for a newly set to sale object be “Don’t show in search?”.
Many people use “Buy for $0″ with their friends to transfer goods in situ. I would hate to think that doing this would automatically list the item.
Better to default to don’t list and make us set the search tag if we want to list it.
@2. I like the communicate window. Tear off a person and tear off history and you can hold two local chats and one IM at the same time. It is far more flexible for RP purposes. If you wish to use the old interface use the Nicholaz editions.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:06 PM
Two more questions, what procedures are in place to stop people setting the name of a default prim to “Sexgen Platinum” with a price of $0 in order to drive up traffic?
Will it be a TOS violation to set the name of a default prim to anything other than object?
What Procedures are in place to stop the filling of search with spam in terms of objects named object?
Currently you need to pay to place a classified, this new system looks like it will return things without having to pay the Lindens anything to list it. That opens it as a channel for abuse.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:18 PM
This look very interesting. Seems very key word based which is cool. I wonder with the roll out of this will the traffic score be gone.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:34 PM
Two more thoughts.
Will setting an object for sale cause it to be listed immediately?
If so and the default is set to show in search could we see bots like landbots start grabbing sell for $0 items from under our noses?
You say that the default sim TP point will be used, if the sim allows TP to anywhere it would be alot of lolz for griefers to place a fake cheap and popular object 768M above ground. Add a script so it randomly moves about, set it’s alpha to 0 and it would be quite hard to find.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:35 PM
it would be nice in the search window to see where the most people are at the moment not where they have been. at the moment sl says there are 40k+ people online where are they? not individuals mind you, but like 300 people at such and such club etc
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:51 PM
Here’s my two cents’ worth.
1) Having any part of my profile going into a search engine outside of Second Life — even just my name — is unacceptable. Period. I don’t, in principle, mind anyone at all perusing my profile. That’s why I created it. However, you can be absolutely certain that avatars will become the next target of unsolicited advertising the moment out-of-SL search engines can get to them. It *will* happen, folks. Linden Lab, please take notice. I can’t believe you people are so clueless as to see just how the bots are going to be flooding us with IMs, notecards, and other garbage that we’ll have to deal with from the first moment of log-in. This is a Bad Idea, guys. Any listing in search, once things are opened up to Google and the like, *must* be opt-in only, and if I say I don’t want my profile able to be searched that means every last little, teeny, itty, byte of it.
2) Maybe I want my land to be searchable, but I do *not* want every object on it that’s for sale to be in the search. Ever think of that? As I understand, if an object is for sale it is, by default, on the search. This was discussed to death in the last blog topic — especially with regards to objects which may be ticked for sale without the owner realizing it. Default *must* be “non-searchable”. I can well imagine a new generation of “buy-bots” swooping down to gobble up every single item that goes on sale for zero L$ the instant it appears on search. It happened with First Land, and as a result we have no more First Land. It will happen with objects, now, and we may not actually *want* to sell an object to just anybody.
These are prime examples of people thinking they know what other people want. We made it abundantly clear in the last blog post that you don’t know what we want. We’re perfectly capable of deciding for ourselves, on a case-by-case basis, precisely what information we want to appear in the new search. That means you need to let us release that information for public consumption ourselves — on that case-by-case basis, and not assume that we want the world knowing who we are, how old we are, whether or not we have lots of money, and whether or not we’re “verified” (as though *that* really works, but that’s a subject for another blog thread) — or that every single item we put up for sale should be searchable. The default for these, as any sane person can see, should be “NOT-searchable”.
If you *really* respect our privacy like you claim you do, then how can you possibly prevent us from blocking that “minimal profile” from going out on the net, and then get up in the morning and look yourself in the face in the mirror?
3) OK, I’ll actually end on a positive note. Those major quibbles aside, I really do like the functionality you’re putting into the new search. This isn’t an all-or-nothing issue for me. As with most of the decisions Linden Lab makes, there are strong points as well as points which prove you guys don’t think things through to their logical conclusions. You’re doing good work, and I appreciate it, and I also appreciate the fact that you’re actually talking to us about these things. Now, if you’d just start addressing the *concerns* we have about some of your decisions, I’d be much happier. I’m seeing progress in that direction, too, but I suspect the issue of privacy with regards to the new search facility is going to be an acid test for that.
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:03 PM
how about you stop adding stupid features and fix some bugs already..
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:14 PM
@23 Forest for the trees.
While things like voice and windlight are shinys this new search has the potential to take the strain off other services.
Doing that will improve the concurrency by lightening the load the servers have to handle.
As was shown with the changes back in December (/me shivers recalling the problems) lightening the load allowed concurrency to soar past 20,000 and improved the whole grid.
Changing search is not a new feature in my eyes, it is working towards fixing bug by lightening the load, offloading it to a google search appliance.
Hmm, A thought. Robin has been so quiet recently (not a bad thing in itself) has she been fired yet? If she has (and we can hope) then that could explain why the Lindens now talk with us. Robin singlehandedly caused SL to loose favour with the media through her kill and run tactics on Ageplay, Gambling, VAT and Identity.
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:39 PM
Amanda and Jayden make very good points about the default settings. I second their thoughts because surely the decision to list in search must be the consciously made one and not the other way around which is intrusive.
I am thankful it won’t look like the picture you put on the blog post.
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:54 PM
Great work as usual Lindens. Improving search in any capacity is a beautiful thing. Can’t please everyone regardless.
Next project…Inventory!!! It would be awesome to have a tool that shows if you have duplicates in your inventory. Like ITunes does.
Thanks for your efforts. Carry on..
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:55 PM
I keep hearing a recurring cry about “bots”, and yet there are whines about IDV. Strange, seems to me that if a user must register then the bots would have owners and be charged for ALT accounts. Same would apply to griefers ALT accounts as well.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:01 PM
Hooked up with IBM so ppl could travel threw different “worlds” within SL and yes I use “worlds” very loosely because as far as I can tell it just looks like a long commercial at this point.
Hooked up with Ebay to take over the auctions.
Hooked up with yet another company to verify age info.
Hooked up with Google to take over search functions.
Hooked up with another company to take over windlight and “shiny”.
Hooked up with another company to introduce voice.
These are not new and attractive features my friend, they are called outsourcing contracts.
Next thing ya know LL will be telling us that they have no intention of selling L$ or reselling released Governor Linden land.
…Oh wait.
From a purely financial standpoint LL stock would be worth jack when everyone but LL is doing the work.
But hey thanks for the now worthless land and the rounded prims to put on it.
Make your product stable that would be a “feature” I could get behind.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:07 PM
Well I agree with Amanda Ascot on the profile issue. There should at the very least be an opt out of the profile search, realistically it should be an opt in.
I really don’t fancy having to wade through piles of spam before I get to an important message and that will happen once profiles can be searched from outside SL.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:18 PM
Seems like intersting concept. But what happen when the game becomes over loaded say 45,000 inworld? Looks like a major stress of of possible issues that might occure.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:28 PM
You absolutely, totally, positively, MUST remove ‘traffic’ from factoring in ‘relevance’.
Do this, you destroy most of the camping.
That can only benefit everyone (except the welfare scroungers who don’t matter).
Broccoli
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:56 PM
[...] Updates and Further Information on the New Search Project An update on the new search, fixing problems like objects not showing up in search, etc, and more info. [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 12:55 AM
@ Broccoli Curry
if you remove traffic there will be no relevance in search whatsoever.
alphabetical wont work, how the keywords relate either.
you think you provide a solution by saying so, but you dont.
if you take the ‘traffic’ away you actually remove chances for good and working businesses and other nice places (they _DO_ have high traffic).
I usually find stuff via search.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:09 AM
Search with muscle will be great.
However, LL really have to put more thought into how people will ‘game’ any system. How to “Head ‘em off at the pass”?
The subversion of search engine ‘relevance’ is as old as search engines.
From the original blog posting:
“In the new All Search, results are returned by “relevance“, based on how well the page matches the query, how close the multiple words are together, and how many inbound links there are to the page. Inbound links are created by references in top picks, classifieds, landmarks, parcels and groups.”
Top Picks? Landmarks?
*In theory* this gives wonderful relevance.
BUT - anyone can create an unlimited number of free accounts. Load up their Picks and Landmarks. Houston we have relevance!!
It is absolutely inescapable that this practice would become widespread. Unlike the bot-farms and camping bots, this does not require any special software.
Bot-runners will automate the Pick and Landmark loading. The existence of an account does not impose any ongoing resource load on them as does the running of a bot. They will create huge numbers of ‘relevance’ accounts.
Mom-and-Pop users will set up the whole thing manually. M&P users may have the creation of at least on ‘relevance’ avatar as part of their daily SL routine. M&P ‘relevance’ avatars will eclipse the bots in sheer numbers due to the huge number of people with small-ish numbers of ‘relevance’ accounts.
The outcome would go beyond the current nonsense ‘relevance’ generated by camping and bot-farms.
LL’s total number of Residents will soar - and the idiocy of that number will be even more accentuated than it is now.
OI and HI will be constantly flooded with these new incoming accounts. This will degrade the new users’ first exposure even more.
Just indexing these ‘relevance’ accounts for Search will be a major load.
How about?
Only use Picks and Landmarks from Premium accounts for Relevance?
Or - give a *considerably* reduced weighting to the Picks and Landmarks of non-Premiums.
The major search engines are in a constant war with those whose mission in life is to subvert search for their own profit. If it’s LL’s intention to use Picks and Landmarks for relevance, then it implies that LL are not even in a mild disagreement with the subversives, never mind a war.
There are a number of non-tech things about SL that degrade the user experience considerably. Low-lifes, pond-scum and the unthinking have it far too easy.
With the New search, LL have an opportunity to take the unwelcome aspects of human nature into account. Do it. It’s a no-brainer.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:10 AM
So this new search will only put out a few on each page so those on pages 2-2000 will get little traffic most people will just go to who is on the first page I hope this wont put alot of people out of business
Anyone not on first page will have a difficult time if i put in the word
SKIN
then only first page will be getting the traffic
so only the stores shown on the first page will have chance to be in business when there is hundreds of skin stores
I hope the first page gives hundreds of locations not just a handful
thanks
Shawn
October 24th, 2007 at 1:14 AM
@21 - the average sim can at best hold 60 people, and that is going to cause it to preform badly, so the short answer is there spread over a ton of different places. It will be an interesting day when 300 people can fit in a single sim.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:20 AM
G’day Jeska
I am with Broccoli - are you taking away traffic?
Sorry Britpop - but most of the shops with the highest traffic have low quality made items. In fact - when I search for places of interest or for purchasing something, I avoid those places with extreme high traffic - 100% of times it’s high due to campers.
And if you take away traffic - you take away campers! Then when you see lots of green dots on the map - you will actually find people communicating, not bots!
Cheers
Alex
October 24th, 2007 at 1:30 AM
I still can’t get into the candidate viewer and i own quite a bit of land. I have a lot of objects that will need to be set and other stuff to sort out from what i have been reading about on the blog and i can’t do that in the current viewer. Please tell me you hope to have sorted out the instant crashes well before this project goes live! *cry*(crash info posted in the JIRA for it days ago)
October 24th, 2007 at 1:32 AM
I too agree with Broccoli.
REMOVE TRAFFIC!
October 24th, 2007 at 1:32 AM
alexwarrior: usually right for highest traffic, yes, but the best shops aren’t those with lowest traffic either. for a reason.
if you sort relevance just by search terms, oh well, thats even easier to beat. you will just not find any good places anymore since everyone has the same stuff.
and you are saying e.g. ETD has bad products? they have high traffic, too.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:34 AM
addition: just skip the first 20-100k in traffic and you wont run into that many bots anyway -_-;.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:43 AM
I think Picks is great revelence but landmarks is a bad idea because it will cause spamming landmarks to be a horrible headache everywhere you go you will get spammed mulitipal times with landmarks from robots to paid spammers we already have problems with people coming into stores getting paid to spam people with landmarks to competing stores
I agree Traffic should be taken out and revelence should be based on
keywords like google has it and add in Picks because people choose who they put in picks not being spammed with landmarks to generate false revelency
Keywords and Picks not landmarks please
October 24th, 2007 at 1:58 AM
Yes you really need to set a floor on price to be indexed. Set it at minimum L$50 to be included in the search engine. Keep the scum from gaming the system and destroying the economy.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:08 AM
“keywords like google”?
Google doesnt just work with keywords, its way more complicated. Old search engines mainly worked with keywords and google isnt only, that’s why it is so successful. It sorts the relevance e.g. by links from other sites to the site and so on.
Now for all those who want traffic out of the search: dont be just destructive and provide a proper idea of how you can actually give search some relevance then. right now you dont, and I bet you dont even have a clue how to do it.
Now imagine your “relevance of search terms” approach:
Whats the difference between 2 places with exactly the same words in their description? There is NONE. and as you can imagine you will get a lot more than 2, you will get a few thousands with these, and maybe we even end up with !!!!AAAAAA…stuff like bad search engines.
you REALLY want that?
Traffic still gives you some sort of indication of how important something is, of course you can screw that up with campers, but in the end a business that has high traffic usually has something to offer, while low traffic places most times dont. I’m not talking about super-high traffic in the 20-100k, but anything lower usually has a lot of relevance.
now tell me, how are you gonna give the search a proper relevance without traffic?
October 24th, 2007 at 2:09 AM
Due to Sheep Labs efforts, or this search thingy, or just inevitability, I predict spamming will make in-world IMs and inventory transfers useless as everyone will be forced to be always in busy mode. I hope LL is already planning how the game will operate under those circumstances.
I predict a third-party viewer with a whitelist for inventory transfers, and a whole lot of support tickets from people asking why inventory transfers aren’t working when they try to buy things but haven’t set their whitelist correctly.
Does anyone remember a time before spam filters when email worked reliably? Used to be you never had to ask “did you get my email?”, because if you didn’t get a bounce message then they almost certainly got it.
Used to be.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:14 AM
I also predict that sellers will have to use third-party web interfaces for customer support since they won’t be able to accept IMs.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:18 AM
We do people dislike campers? Camping is actually not the worst way to keep new residents staying in Second Life and getting them a bit of play money to test SL before some of them start exploring it further. I found that they are merely distorting a few search results at the very top of the list for the most generic search terms. The more specific your search becomes, the more accurate traffic seems to reflect the true “relevance”.
I also think that objects should be excluded from search by default. I guess it would actually improve the quality of search results if only objects are included that people want to be found or sold. The other way around, search could easily become cluttered with items burying the places you are looking for, thus reducing the usefulness of the tool.
For profiles, I would suggest having default options for “Include in In-world search = Yes”, and “Include in Out-world search = No”. #22 has a point - also, just because you write something in a profile in Second Life does not necessarily mean you want to share it with the whole world.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:24 AM
Sorry but anyone who thinks high traffic equals a quality product offered is very very mistaken. It just indicates campers.
Traffic has to go. We were told it was going to be removed some months ago but so far nothing has happened.
Is it really the end of the world if you have to teleport to 3 or 4 different locations to look at different people selling variants of the same item, before finding the one you want? Shopping in SL is an exciting experience, and you might just find someone selling a better item at a new store than the one you’ve always gone to.
Second Life has a wonderful opportunity to get rid of some of the problems of reality, like big names getting exposure simply because they are big, rather than because they are good. There’s a huge army of ‘little people’ working in SL not getting the exposure they deserve - do your bit to help them!
October 24th, 2007 at 2:25 AM
Broccoli, again, please read my last post, it doesnt make sense at all just to say “traffic has to go” while not having any idea of how to give the search proper relevance, for the rest see above.
and again NO, high traffic doesnt always mean only campers, thats nonsense, its like you say good places dont get visits.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:37 AM
“For-Sale Objects” Default Set Incorrectly
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2811
Sorry, you are not listening - the Show in Search should default to off in all cases when introduced. This will not please everyone, but will cause less headaches than the approach you are proposing!
Permissions and For Sale/Show in Search
Good - but what about the related issue, that if you buy an object set as Show in Search (which had been set for sale as original or as a copy), the object you receive has the Show in Search flag still set! It should default to off in such circumstances
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2823
October 24th, 2007 at 2:39 AM
Unless people stop spamming the search with keywords that bear absolutely no relevance whatsoever to what they offer - there will never be ‘proper relevance’ in search.
It’s re-educating people that we need to do, more than anything else. By force, if necessary, by abuse reporting them, until they learn. But that’ll only work if Linden Lab get out of ‘hippy mode’ and start running like a real business. It’s clear that ‘trust’ doesn’t work.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:43 AM
Erm, broccoli, people dont work that way.
are you saying people will learn how to deal with keywords better than with the current keywords + traffic combination? like, they will start being “intelligent” from now on if you force traffic out? At the same time you say they are stupid for abusing the traffic aspect?
People will abuse any systems weaknesses, that’s the way it is, and yet, you didnt provide any constructive idea on that issue. do you just post for the sake of posting?
October 24th, 2007 at 2:50 AM
I post like you do - to have your say on a subject that concerns us. We’re obviously looking at it from different angles.
If people can no longer search by using traffic, they’ll have to learn new ways to find things - and new ways to list things. Adapt, or die. Hopefully camping will do the latter.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:52 AM
your angle is quite simple: destructive, and all I ask you for is to provide a constructive comment about what else you want to sort search hits by relevance. We already have keywords, and keywords alone wont help. See above.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:54 AM
You say that like the destruction of camping is a bad thing.
Why does camping exist? To create artificially high traffic numbers, and that alone. Don’t for one minute think that the landowners are doing it for the benefit of newbies. I’ve never camped, and never intend to. Camping is cheating, and I will not support people who cheat.
I’m gonna go do something else for an hour so we don’t end up filling up all the comments.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:57 AM
“For-Sale Objects” Default Set Incorrectly
I’ve created a poll for this to see what the “general” opinion is
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=218823
October 24th, 2007 at 2:58 AM
About this search thing. I do not begin to understand all the details or the pros and cons. I do have an idea though. Lets do away with camping. I understand that this is something Linden Labs does not want to do. Why? Because if there is no camping the number of people online will take a big nose dive. Maybe a huge nose dive.
There are bots out that that allow people to have several accounts and end up paying themselves to camp on their own land. The camping thing is probably precious to Linden Labs. Maybe Phil and each Linden have a whole bunch of bots camping to pump up the online numbers. Anyways, get rid of camping. We know it is an under handed technique used by people to pump up the traffic numbers. No doubt the Lindens love camping as it pumps up their numbers.
50,000 currently online.. of those 20 thousand are people actively enjoying second life. The remaing 30,000 is made up of bots or people that have been AFK for a month.
Just make camping a violation. Get some volunteers to report camping scripts to LL and then LL can remove them and add a service charge for the removal.
October 24th, 2007 at 3:11 AM
Broccoli, I don’t say that. Please pay attention. And still, you fail to give me a proper answer to my question. Ok, keep on posting your stuff, I get the feeling you have no clue about what to do else. x_x
October 24th, 2007 at 3:16 AM
Britpop, you appear to be a lone voice supporting camping. Try reading the things others are saying if you won’t listen to me saying that camping is a bad thing.
October 24th, 2007 at 3:22 AM
Please remove traffic entirely from the equation!!
@Britpop: I see you first defend a particular hair shop then remove it yourself in the 20-100k theory. Your method clearly doesn’t work either or you’d be excluding that hair shop as in your own words, “just skip the first 20-100k in traffic and you wont run into that many bots anyway”.
Google isn’t perfect either, look at all of the blogspam of links to get the flavour of the the month linkback. All engines are easy to ‘game’ but removing traffic removes something that has plagued SL since the first camp chair was invented. The ‘relevence’ of traffic is long gone. Dwell was better for relevence back in the day, but just as easily gamed: “L$3000 giveaway for Best in White slacks and non-prim hair contest!” fine print: “for those who spend 2 hours on premises”. But at least most of those avatar’s spoke, interacted. I say Broccoli is spot on correct in saying remove traffic without giving a new method for relevence. It’s not Broccoli’s job to fix relevence in it’s absence. Google works without adding load to the system. Why can’t we hope for an equally intelligent solution? There’s merely a prolific amount of bots camping and that makes it’s relevence dubious to begin with, not to mention reducing proveable server load. I’m for removing anything that gets rid of campers. I will point at the many many alternative search tools out there that have nothing to do with ‘unique page visitors count’, being the only thing close to camping in real terms as my seemingly required alternative fix or someone comes back immediately with a sarcy reply.
October 24th, 2007 at 3:25 AM
Hello Jeska,
I think an updated search function is fine. Just not sure the currently suggested way is really that good. If i, right now, either have to subdivide & list a parcel or to list a classified to be seen in search, then from the update on i can save that cost.
I just hang up a series of prims on my parcel give them all sorts of keywords and put them on sale. So then they can be found under search. I will use 100 simple pics or something to make sure, it´s only me appearing of the first 3 search pages!?
Is that really how it works?
Please comment on this because if yes, then this will end up in an even bigger mess than what the current search function is like. Start with removing the ability to have spaces infront of a parcel name. Make sure classifieds as well as parcelnames don´t have more than 2 or 3 spaces inside them and also don´t start with a 0 or with !. That will give us all a fairer competition.
People will start putting up simple prims for sale (0L$ or 1L$) just to have some keywords on display in the search. Especially if you´re actually a mall owner where 80% of products are displayed in vendors. I think you put mall owners on a clear competition disadvantage the way you want to introduce it. So they will find their way to make an info dumpster out of the search.
Please consider this
October 24th, 2007 at 3:30 AM
If it’s the hair shop I’m thinking of … it’s stuffed full of campers and bots.
That waste load actually makes that region almost unusable because it takes so long for everything to rez, many people (myself included) would have given up and found somewhere else to go. Camping can actually be a huge negative on the shopping experience that far outweighs the “benefits” perceived by the higher traffic by the clueless.
October 24th, 2007 at 3:43 AM
Two things I noticed in the example search picture:
1) Where des the first item (the land) have the string ‘frog’ in it? Since there is a different icon, I wonder if there will be pay-for-placement …. which would make a search useless.
2) I did not see an ‘onjects’ tab. Does this mean to search for objects we need to search for everything? (if I am looking for, say, a new neko skin, I could care less about clubs that welcome nekos).
October 24th, 2007 at 3:59 AM
@chris… still, tell me how you can get some sort of relevance that isnt alphabetical or random. it has to be via traffic. that’s the only kind of ‘quality’ indication a computer can get. And still, you want to use your brains for search -_-.
it would be a lot easier if you could actually use stuff like +, -, OR, and “term with more than one word” (that last one is working right now).
with thousands of entries you need some sort of relevance. there is no way a machine can judge this. want a voting system? it will be abused aswell.
but by removing traffic you basicly kill the only indication we can have.
Will I get another “but traffic is bad” answer now, or will someone finally come up with something better than just saying “traffic has to go”?
if not - then you should just keep silent as you have no clue.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:06 AM
A lot of good points have been raised in theses two blogs and it is great to see that they are being taken into consideration. I for one like the new search, having tried the beta I kitted out an alt with the look I have been after for over a year, in less than an hour, and at less than I expected it to cost, as I could compare prices before even going in world. That said I also have my fears about certain aspects, most have which have been raised already.
@22 I have already started to rewrite my in world profile as a result of this, as I too would rather not have it made public, however LL do make showing other than your name and DOB opt in, by way of the publish on web tag. I have more concern with my group memberships being visible in world that I do my profile description being off world. And as an aside try Google your name; you will be amazed how much info on your avatar is already in the Public domain
@31 and all others concerned with traffic, I see both sides of the story as both a club owner and a club visitor. I place little relevance on traffic in the current search as, in my experience, it is not really functioning. I have often held events and had both my clubs full of visitors for hours (no camping involved – I too hate it) and the next day my traffic rating has plummeted rather than increased J on the other hand I see the relevance to the new search. Perhaps combining traffic with parcel size would help, and I think that listings in picks is probably far more relevant, and is visible in the Beta Search, indirectly.
@34 Bots will always be a problem as long as free accounts are allowed and some bots are useful, the majority are not. But everything will be gamed no matter what we do and as long as the L$ has value and the Lindex exists it will be farmed.
As for load, I think this will drastically reduce load as searches will no longer be against the Asset Server and certainly in my case a lot of searches will be performed before going online, that why my expensive and limited bandwidth is used to enjoy second life and time with my friends, not hiding in a corner trying to search or shore hipping looking for relevant items
Wow that was long ….
Ill go back to lurking
October 24th, 2007 at 4:15 AM
@Britpop - you lost all credibility with “then you should just keep silent as you have no clue” it is my job to know how these things work and I could write you a thesis on why traffic kills SL. But it’s not my job to do it for LL, or for you , for free - so soothe your ego a bit.
“it has to be via traffic.” absolute rubbish, as I already disproved.
10% of the responses here are YOURS. Get over yourself and let someone else have a chance to reply.
Want another indicator that is easily gamed but FAR LESS destructive on the environment? ok, use Picks. Yep, free accounts mean surges of one day old with a certain shop in their Pick. But millions of never played bot-fed accounts is far less destructive than camping. It’s just as relevant since I can pay 100 zombies to make my shop look cool same as I can pay some script kiddy to create me a million accounts with only my shop in their Pick. Please explain how relevent traffic is if I have to prove how irrelevant it is, no wait… you’ve already replied here more than the average for UM, and that’s saying a LOT without once saying anything but ‘keep it or give an alternative’. well, I gave you a less destructive alternative, I agree it’s just as poor. but it doesn’t hurt my (or your) experience in any way as camping does.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:17 AM
The above comments on profile search, please note everyone. At the moment IT IS OPT IN, and my understanding on that is that it will remain as OPT IN, so stop griping about it.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:22 AM
Me again, just realised I can’t edit posts
It occurs to me that if groups could be tied to a parcel that too is a measure of relevance, as I only stay in groups that I want to receive event and other information from.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:39 AM
@28: Martin, just to clarify (as mentioned in Jeska’s original post), the new search project does not involve us outsourcing in-world search to Google, but us integrating Google Search Appliance hardware into our system. Hope that clears that up.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:40 AM
@chris, look, people keep posting stuff like “traffic has to be gone, I hate campers”. That’s basicly mixing two things. traffic itself isn’t a bad indicator, it’s actually a pretty good one. the more people go to a place, the better it usually suits their needs in certain aspects. it’s first of all most likely a result of mouth to mouth propaganda.
camping is ‘bought’ traffic, and it’s of course the most stupid way of getting ‘traffic’. no one really misses that fact.
but what you “traffic has to go” people dont get is, that there is _no other way_ of getting relevance into search. Look, you keep saying “traffic has to go, as it will keep away campers”. It’s a loop. you mainly dont like campers as they hyperinflate traffic, so you want traffic gone so campers are gone.
That’s just not logical.
There is no working solution without traffic, other than these we already use (3rd party market index like slex), and “mouth to mouth propaganda” and similar (as in picks e.g.).
imagine you type in “IBM” into google, and the first pages just show you forums which use “IBM” a lot, but not the actual IBM page.
Google uses different ways to determine a site’s importance, but we cannot use them fully in SL.
however, most places who have campers usually have “camping” in their search terms. now if we could exclude “camp” in search (like -camp), you would probably find a lot more suitable hits.
So you tell me I lost all my credibility because I prefer constructive comments? hmmm… that’s kinda bad for your credibility here.
are you saying it’s fine to make a lot of destructive comments but expect others to solve the issue? -_-
that’s what I call lack of credibility.
October 24th, 2007 at 4:52 AM
Lets just make having camping scripts a violation of TOS. I think it has becoming common knowledge outside of Second Life that Linden Labs has done everything it can to artificially inflate numbers. I think they should accept that if the cat is not entirely out of the bag it soon will be and people outside of SL will be saying “oh yeah that is the virtual world where they inflate the number of users any way they can”.
Do away with camping. Take the hit of the online count taking a huge nose dive and start building something stable and legitimate.
October 24th, 2007 at 5:04 AM
Its an utopia to things removing traffic would make the search better. Au contrary.. if you remove ‘traffic’ most places in the search the new ones will just be those that spam best in another way.
Now spam is limited at least by the amount of money people can pay, so there is some kind of limit on it.
Free spam would be endless, just like email spam.
Removing traffic will remove the good places as well. If you look at a ‘places search’ and ignore the places saying ‘camping’ or ‘free money’, the search will actually gives a good indication of places people like. If the traffic would be removed, the good places will be removed as well.
Considering that most of the low traffic places are places noone wants to be in (theres an overdose of empty clubs and resell shops on the mainland which people hardly put any effort in making) what good would it add? Would the few good shops that don’t get traffic actually get listed higher, or would it just mean even more ‘less relevant’ results and tons of extra shops which have bad products which will probably still out compete the few small good ones just by their numbers in the search? (plus remove the bigger good ones as well)
Traffic in the good cases indicates a place has something that people like because they want to be there (a nice hang out, good shop, great looking sim). There are a lot of places like this. Places like Naughty Designs, FNKY/CAKE, RAC, GuRL6 make great products, its pretty arrogant to assume they ‘just’ sell better because they are big.
In the bad cases high traffic does indicates the place has campers. In most cases though if a place makes enough money to pay for campers, at least it’s a profitable place…(making money). If people wouldn’t find anything there they would like to spend money on, the place wouldn’t exist for long. Its always better to find a some places that use camping (and at least have products people like to have and buy) and be also able to find the good places, than to find mostly places that noone likes or wants.
Also, consider when traffic is of no relevance anymore, people will have trouble finding other people, since most places they will teleport to are empty. Traffic at least give an indication where to find other people. This usability of the traffic is highly underestimated. Who needs hundreds of newbies flying lonely over Secondlife because they cannot find anyone to talk with?
Yep, its easy to say “hey remove all traffic because of the campers” without giving any arguments (besides the ‘remove all the campers’ argument itself), but before you post think about the consequenses for the search as well. If spamming can be done for free, will it really get better or less? Or will it just open ways for new, unlimited spam? Will the small shops actually be listed now when there will be even more spam?
PS: if you have already made a post, and would like to make another, at least try and add some *new* in it. We don’t need to hear the same opinion from one person over and over again (broccoli 7 times!), without any new arguments. Please try and not take up so many posts if you have nothing new to add. Other people need space too.
October 24th, 2007 at 5:21 AM
Jeska, thank you for listening and for responding rapidly to at least some of our key concerns. I especially appreciate the idea that the ’show in search’ checkbox should be independant of other settings.
On the “for sale” checkbox issue: I ran a test, and checked some previously problematic objects, and it seems that whatever bug had made it impossible to un-check the “For Sale” status on a no-mod object has been fixed. My Partner was able to un-check it, finally, on a couple of objects that had prevously been perma-checked.
PLEASE do not make items pop up in search the instant you enable the ‘for sale’ flag on them, if they are on searchable land. I agree with many other comments here that the bot makers will use this to automate theft of items set to a low price for transfer in situ. We DESPERATELY need the ability to set an in-world object so we can ’sell original’ to a designated buyer ONLY. There is no safe way at this point to transfer placed in-world content, and there are a LOT of professionals like me popping up who build for others, and who must have a way to transfer ownership of what they have created.
Listing keywords in the name of a vendor is NOT an acceptable solution. The names of vendors often are the only way we merchants can identify what store the sale is coming from. My own vendors are all named based on the type of merchandise they sell and the store and sim they are in. Spamming that with a list of 30+ item names and prices just won’t work.
There is still going to be a HUGE disparity between those who sell in individual boxes and those who sell via vendors. Merchant A sells dresses in individual boxes. All 100 versions of her dresses get individually listed, FOR FREE, because the mall her store is in is searchable. Merchant B, right next door, sells 100 dreses too, but sells them in vendors, organized by type. She gets only one listing in search per vendor, even if she does add a slew of keywords to her vendor name. So who gets the benefit from Search? Merchant A, of course, whose dresses spam the whole search page with 100 listings. While Merchant B is forced to abandon her vending system in order to remain competitive, because the new Search only lists her merchandise as 4 hits, as oposed to 100 for the ’sells from boxes’ merchant.
There is only one way to level the playing field. Charge a fee for listing an object for sale, and do not auto-populate the search. Make it so you must set the item for sale, AND manually check the “Show in search” box, before it is listed, and charge a fee per weel for listing that object, just like you do for classified ads.
October 24th, 2007 at 5:24 AM
I want to see some support for languages other than English in titles, description, etc. At the same time, it should provide some filtering mechanisms to avoid flood of languages that the user can’t read. Yes, we need some research how we can achieve this. It’s better your “Search Team” to have at least one non-European language peaker to lower the language bias. (On your mock screen shot, all items are explained in upper-case only text. I’m afraid you are planning to make them upcase on the server side… You need someone who can point out such a scheme doesn’t work in general, for example.)
October 24th, 2007 at 5:28 AM
I think the ‘hit’ to concurrency is really nothing when you consider the benefits through reduced server load/wasted bandwidth costs of camping.
October 24th, 2007 at 5:32 AM
Sorry bit off topic, but its´Wednesday, and no stipends have been paid. Any chance you will do that soon? I mean parcel directory fees & classifieds always work. Why is stipends a different routine?
October 24th, 2007 at 5:42 AM
Britpop, you’re a broken record and now you’ve turned directly abusive. Please let others have an opinion without getting personal. mimi chose Broccoli who was only replying to your directly insulting posts (I’m with mimi on the overall issue by the way). Do you have some vested interest in keeping camping? The school bully had no credibility either.
I can see both sides to it. Traffic created camping. Dwell was never hurt by camping as there was no free accounts nor camp chairs created at that time. The popular places were those with high dwell. The popular places are not those with high traffic, in most cases. Traffic was a good indicator but it really isn’t anymore. Since traffic seems to inevitibly be here to stay in some form (though I actually like the pick idea and group idea just as much) how about we lower it’s relevance to par with lots of other indicators, like those already described above? I agree with mimi for the most part except I’d add that newbies are already finding it difficult since those ‘people’ are just bots when they visit the traffic-led places. Perhaps a mixture of landmarks held, picks and groups can coincide with traffic to give some indicator, but I hope that traffic as-is is not as important on the new scale.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:00 AM
@melody martin, where am I getting personal? and further, what is abusive? if you refer to “credibility”, I didnt bring that one up, it’s in reply to chris, who ‘attacked’ me with that.
however, I have the feeling you didnt properly read my posts (how can I tell? simply, you didnt get my position but assume it). where do you get the idea that I support camping?
again, please dont mix those two issues. camping and traffic are two different things. you can be against camping and for traffic.
mimi even had some sort of argument for camping.
so I wonder why you dont respect my oppinion aswell? thanks for keeping double standards here.
It is important for people to understand that traffic itself isn’t a bad thing, but however has created bad aspects (camping). However, it is part of the way our world works, nothing is perfect. democrazy is a bad system, but the best one we have, right? -_-
October 24th, 2007 at 6:14 AM
*points above* personal attack. least I had the guts to say my name in world. I never said anything about not respecting your opinion. I merely pointed out you were getting personal, and using bully tactics for those you view are somehow against you, as you then did with me. Despite me saying I agree with some traffic being involved - so who didn’t read whom’s post?
Not going to reply to you again, you know how to find me in world if you really have some issue to raise.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:40 AM
Repeat of # 11
Will the description field on objects for sale be indexed?
I do think that ’show in search’ is something that should be enabled manually just like the ‘for sale’ option - it shouldn’t be automatic.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:58 AM
“Crashes with the 1.18.4 Release Candidate
We’re aware that some of you have experienced crashes with the current release candidate and we are currently working out what caused this. If you did experience issues with crashing using the 1.18.4 release candidate, please continue to use 1.18.3.”
It’s not crashes that stopped me from using 1.18.4 - it’s the fact that texture repeats can’t be changed, even on prims you created and own. It’s no good at all for people who make things. Before that fault occured, I was using the Candidate viewers since they came out.