Resident-Reported Inventory Loss Survey Launched
Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 6:17 PM by: Sidewinder LindenThis post announces a survey that is a new part of the Resident Inventory Loss Analysis project. The Inventory Loss Reduction Initiative, that this project is part of, has already eliminated one major cause of inventory loss. We are now working to identify and eliminate all other causes. We have analyzed many potential sources of inventory loss, and we are looking for your feedback in helping us to take the next steps. By answering a few simple questions, you will help us to find scenarios that we might have missed in our analysis, leading to new solutions for reducing inventory loss.
Please fill out this survey to help us better understand the reality of inventory loss scenarios you have experienced. If you have experienced multiple inventory losses, please enter one survey for each type of loss (there is no need to create a survey for every item - what we are looking for is patterns of inventory loss). Also please note that this survey is anonymous and does not replace reporting an inventory loss through normal channels as a way of recovering your inventory. This survey is being done to identify patterns, and will not trigger individual loss investigations.
Click here to participate in the Second Life Resident-Reported Inventory Loss Survey
Thanks in advance for your help!
Sidewinder Linden
Program Manager
October 28th, 2007 at 6:25 PM
yes. great. and I suppose we’re still out of luck on the stuff we’ve already lost. Thanks for trying, hopefully you find a resolution so it doesn’t happen any more.
to me, the three ugliest words in SL are:
FAILURE TO REZ
October 28th, 2007 at 6:26 PM
Finally someone is omiting this is occuring. Thank you LL lets hope this marks the end of inventory loss
U sagi M usashi
October 28th, 2007 at 6:28 PM
some items are still in inventory just getting error messages like not in database, you don’t have options for those.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:31 PM
Just as an FYI….
Your buttons only allow SINGLE selections.
There are many people for whom being able to select MULTIPLE answers is quite necessary.
For example, I’ve lost both copy AND no-copy items.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:32 PM
also I like to see a mult picking for what items where lost. I lost gestures and objects just not on choice.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:38 PM
Please note - there are analytic reasons that we do not have multiple select options for this survey. We are looking for a single loss event or category of events per response, per this comment in the blog post:
“If you have experienced multiple inventory losses, please enter one survey for each type of loss (there is no need to create a survey for every item - what we are looking for is patterns of inventory loss).”
Thanks!
Sidewinder
October 28th, 2007 at 6:41 PM
I have never lost anything from my inventory … am I being discriminated against?
October 28th, 2007 at 6:49 PM
Filled in the survey but I’m puzzled … how can you transfer objects between things and avatars (in my case it was a DarkLife goldbag given by a chest to my Avatar) then have SL say that the item does not exist in the database so it can not be rezzed?
Any suggestions as to explicitly what can not be rezzed? It is a hole though …
October 28th, 2007 at 7:00 PM
It’s always the same with me and questionnaires: the answer I want to give is never one of the options. Ho hum: at least this questionnaire had a notes field where I could write in my situation
October 28th, 2007 at 7:18 PM
[...] no responses Sidewinder Linden (if you’ve seen the Flickr pics from SLCC, his are the bulk of the shots from the Trolley ride out to the Green Mill) is spearheading the effort to curb inventory loss, W00ters!! To that end, he’s asking folks to fill out a survey on the subject of resident inventory loss, you can find the post and link to the survey here. [...]
October 28th, 2007 at 7:24 PM
The questions don’t quite cover the problem. I have lost many, many items, of all kinds…. objects of all kinds - clothing prims, shapes and skins, jewelry…… the list is endless. I don’t even know the scope of it as I haven’t tried to wear everything I own, and I haven’t tried to rezz everythiing in my inventory, either. In each case, the item appears to be in my inventory, but when I attempt to wear or rezz it, I’m told it isn’t in the database.
Very frustrating!
I hope you can solve the problem… it’s a costly one.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:25 PM
Sidewinder, I think I’ve gathered a fair amount of information on the “missing from database” errors (which I believe you mentioned are related to the garbage collection system). A lot of it is in SVC-553, but a lot more is in my head. Your form is fairly narrow in scope, so I can’t really share all of my thoughts and data. I think I might be able to provide you some useful technical data on my inventory losses. If you’re interested, please email me at the email address on file with my account.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:26 PM
Sidewinder Linden why so? if one did loss muti types of items why not have a more then one selection per report? But fine have it your way i fill out 5 or more because thats the types of inventory i have lost during the past 9 months.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:27 PM
@11 Eliza - If the item appeared to be in your inventory and it would not rez in-world (whether you got a database error or not) this would be in the “Item was being taken OUT of inventory (rezzing in-world)” category. In other words you were trying to take it out of inventory and rez it in-world when the problem or error appeared.
Sidewinder
October 28th, 2007 at 7:29 PM
@13 U M: The reason for one scenario per is that if you enter more than one scenario per survey, we cannot tell which combinations of answers (across questions) go together. One suspicion is that by studying the combinations of circumstances that lead to a loss will tell us about some specific problem sources that we might not be considering yet.
Sidewinder
October 28th, 2007 at 7:37 PM
I applaud LL for great service generally (especially concierge) but this survey is an attempt at a simple solution to a complex problem. I would have to do this 1000 times (or more) to catalog my losses.
How about a “I just lost something” button in the viewer? That should give you everything you need.
It still happens. I tried to edit a script out of inventory and it came back with “This doesn’t exist in the database” error or something to that effect. I went back to the original script in my inventory and the uuid is all zeros. Fortunately I have archives of the source code on my hard drive, otherwise it would be a disaster.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:44 PM
I am glad to see Linden Labs taking steps to try and find a solution to the rapid inventory loss that we are experiencing. I myself lost over 5000 items (half of my inventory) to inventory loss so I have suffered a hard hit. Fortunately for me most of the lost items are rarely used freebies
I did lose some very personal and sentimental items. I lost the shape that I created when I first came to second life along with some of my very first outfits and gadgets I wore. This was the first time I lost anything from my inventory. Mine has always been reliable.
Good Luck Linden Labs on finding a way to fix this nasty problem.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:56 PM
Personally I’ve never lost anything, touch wood, so I’ll count myself lucky. However a guy on one of my sims has had his L$ balance drop to lower than -200,000, aprox US$800. Is there an investigation going on for L$ losses as well? I’d consider that more of an issue than losing an item, except maybe if it was an item you had created yourself.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:56 PM
Well, there’s the surveys just completed with all the big ticket items plus their RT numbers from dealing with reporting them.
Hmm, maybe I should pack a huge lunch for all of the “notecard missing from database” items (so many, I’d have to check everything IN my inventory for all of them). Oh, and every time I log into secondlife, it tells me this:
“[19:00] Gesture is missing from database.
[19:00] Gesture is missing from database.
[19:00] Gesture is missing from database.”
I dont know what gesture I do when I log into secondlife, usually I’m still on a black screen and this greets me every time. Maybe those doing the digging to fix this should look in my account, as I wouldn’t even know what to report IS missing.
Shrugs
October 28th, 2007 at 7:59 PM
U M Says:
Finally someone is omiting this is occuring. Thank you LL lets hope this marks the end of inventory loss
Don’t remember LL ever denying it occurred, and there is no end to inventory loss, just reducing it to more acceptable levels, it will always happen.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:59 PM
I submitted mine, including “missing gesture” and “failure to rez on bootup”
However, I must say that since finding the wiki page about “Object not in database” where you wait two hours, clear cache and relog they seem to be all coming back.
Once these old items have been reconstructed in this manner they don’t seem to suffer the “Object not in database” errors. I now only get that with things not used in the last 6-7 months.
Only genuine things lost now are those I deleted on “Object not in database” before knowing to wait 2/clear cache/relog and one L$70K custom skin texture, manufacturer left the game, the answer from the labs was “tough titties”
October 28th, 2007 at 8:11 PM
[...] Resident-Reported Inventory Loss Survey Launched This post announces a survey that is a new part of the Resident Inventory Loss Analysis project. The Inventory Loss Reduction Initiative, that this project is part of, has already eliminated one major cause of inventory loss. We are now working to identify and eliminate all other causes. [...]
October 28th, 2007 at 8:13 PM
Thanks SW. I have been fortunate except for a minor incident some months back. It was apparent that some items were missing but happily nothing that I considered of great utility to me.
I do help many new residents however and issues of multiple folders or trash cans have been popping up quite frequently lately. I am a premium member so I am not sure what the Help/Support form for non-premium residents makes available as far as inventory issues. If it is not already addressed on the help form, I feel it would be beneficial to everyone if it were.
October 28th, 2007 at 8:17 PM
As SL ‘develops’ we all seem to loose an important item which should be in everybody’s “inventory” : MORE FREEDOM!
Maybe an idea to implement in upcoming versions:
- a VOTE on TOS - button
- an inworld parliament
- a possibility to propose new TOS rules in-world
Maybe a bit off-topic, but i.m.h.o. more important than loosing an occasional shirt or gesture…
October 28th, 2007 at 8:19 PM
Go away Tjako. SL is not a country.
October 28th, 2007 at 8:20 PM
Tegg said……”Don’t remember LL ever denying it occurred, and there is no end to inventory loss, just reducing it to more acceptable levels, it will always happen.”
I don`t understand what your point is……..never mind
October 28th, 2007 at 8:23 PM
There are many of us that are helping deal with inventory loss, explaining what to do and how to get their objects back. Nobody likes losing things from the inventory, but helping others dealing with those problems. does make those that do feel alittle more safe in what to do in such a event occuring.
October 28th, 2007 at 8:29 PM
Yet another “this survey didn;t cover a tiny fraction of my inv loss issues.
How about Estimated number of items lost:
1-10
10-20
20-50
50-100
Or how about,
Does this influence you on spending money in SL purchasing higher priced items?
Inv loss should be up in the top 10 priorities for LL, because it directly affects the economy, and touches upon almost every single resident.
October 28th, 2007 at 8:39 PM
This is a joke you guys do nothing about our lost items & now want a survey on it I’ve sent multiple support cases on a Linden not returning my items & you can;’t read those & take action. now you want us to fill our surveys. Next do we have to go do your Christmas shopping for ya too!!!!!!
October 28th, 2007 at 8:41 PM
/me cant stay logged in long enough to experience this bug as a result of the memory leak that crashes him every 15-20 mins
October 28th, 2007 at 8:44 PM
I just went back to check things that I _know_ were giving me errors before, some from back in the Spring time, and they now seem to work.
So.. I’ve gone from “I get to fill this out a bunch of times” to not being sure I have something to put in there.
I recently heard that the asset server notices when it gets one of these missing or failure-to-rez errors and tries to recover the object. Apparently, this has happened to me. Several times.
/me wonders how many others are in the same boat (but knows not all are..) and suggests LL make more noise about this recovery process..
October 28th, 2007 at 9:20 PM
I tell you one thing: it is never freebies, always expensive stuff that gets lost. Normally individual items, but I have had whole folders get eaten, and guess what? They were replacements that creators sent me when 1.15 borked items and HUDs I was wearing, leaving them with zero UUIDs, not working, rezzable or wearable.
For those (SVC-171) I was told bby a JIRA person to label what I could (some were no mod) abd out them in a folder at root level with the ticket number, as it was going to triage and a Linden would pop by and look at them. Here I am months latr,, still have the folder but no Linden or word (either way). That was 4k in one go. I’ve had numerous other things diasppear, a custom handbag for instance.
While you’re at it, maybe something can be done about the not eniugh permission to post in Group IMs that was fixed but is resurfacing again. You certainly get the feeling that every time an unwanted shiny is added, it was done in old code that gets put back in…
October 28th, 2007 at 9:45 PM
Omg, I just read this blog entry. A friend of mine just lost a dance hud with dances worth up to 5k. It was rezzed on a 1 minute autoreturn land, was reported to be returned in Lost & Found, but then was ‘returned to the sim’ because of probs with the asset server.
Now it can nowhere be found. Lost, kaputt. Support Ticket is filed… Pending…
October 28th, 2007 at 10:04 PM
this survey is useless, ive lost almost every item on the check list yet i can only select one… this survey is a total waste of time..
October 28th, 2007 at 10:08 PM
I’ve had problems with inventory before, but it was simply the cache-related loss. That actually had a fix (Which I got a fretful two weeks later), but the “Help” sections didn’t say anything about it at the time. It didn’t say anything about problems that existed, or how to adress them.
It seemed like a silly situation though; If the In-World Help knew how to fix/identify it, didn’t they have a cure to a problem that costed the SL community (Staff and players) countless hours of frustration, work and woe? An ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.
I’m thankful for the improvements in the help sections, but I’m still wishing LL would be more active/transparent about known problems. Calling the progress you’ve made “one major cause of inventory loss” still doesn’t help put a name to a face, but at least we’re being informed, and lowering fears of the public. It’s better, but it’s still not enough.
Sure, the silence from LL is likely to avoid possible bad press, but I’d preffer bad press over teaching every player to believe their entertainment in SL has an unbeatable and undefeatable silent killer.
We, the people of SL CAN find our way, but we never will if we’re simply an army of the blind. If you can open our eyes, we can help find what YOU want too: A better, brighter Second Life, and a wider userbase of happy, confident paying customers. Heh.
That’s all I had. TY ^_^
October 28th, 2007 at 10:10 PM
how to get this?
Theres no reason / way to trigger this by having bizarre happenings.
All you have to do is log into SL
eventually you will get;
“item/whatever is missing from database”
October 28th, 2007 at 10:19 PM
@34 Nebadon “this survey is useless, ive lost almost every item on the check list yet i can only select one… ”
Please note the following from the blog post - “If you have experienced multiple inventory losses, please enter one survey for each type of loss (there is no need to create a survey for every item - what we are looking for is patterns of inventory loss).”
Sidewinder
October 28th, 2007 at 10:22 PM
Thanks for making this survey.. lets hope it will fix some loss!
There does seem to be a pattern in inventory loss, at least in my shops/clubs. The places with the most lag have the highest losses, and on days secondlife runs bad, most people complain about items they bought and that never arrived.
I have kept a log of reported lost inventory from my customers with names, dates, locations (all transaction history) included. Would it be of any use for me to sent it somewhere?
October 28th, 2007 at 10:26 PM
@mimi: Absolutely! Please email it to sidewinder (at) lindenlab.com
Thanks!
October 28th, 2007 at 10:42 PM
I’d like to reprot a bolg slot loss. It seems that U sagi M usashi Thinks that this is his private chat area and thinks nothing of using 5 of the first 27 blog slots to pretty much say nothing that makes sense. Is there anyway to get it into his tiny brain that there might be thousands of people that would like to say something before the 100 slots are used up?
For some reason I’ve only lost one item from inventory in 10 months of rather frequent visits to SL, and I have a bit over 20,000 inventory items. In addition I rarely clear my cache. I use a rather new Intel Mac Powerbook Pro and connect to SL via a wireless DSL modem, so I know I’m asking for all kinds of trouble.
I also know that some people have had horrible losses, so any time I’m rezzing things the likelyhood that it could go *poof* is always on the back of my mind. About the only thing that I am cautious of is rezzing things when lag is terrible, or packet loss is off the charts. In those situations I don’t buy or rezz things…heck, it’s often impossible to TP at those times as well.
October 28th, 2007 at 10:56 PM
this past week since the last update rolling restart i have had so many items lost from database more so than ever before items that were already rezzed in world taken into inventory then try to rerez and get lost from database error my BF has a script lost from database i have the script as well i can read it no problem so i give him a copy and he gets lost from database errors this is just getting sick and OLD this needs to be PRIORITY ONE
October 28th, 2007 at 10:58 PM
If it is not intended to address/repair the situation where a sim meets its total prim limit, (e.g. a pair of prim heavy boots hit an almost full sim) and then SL deletes the most recently rezzed assets not belonging to the owner, rather than following the sim rules for return or checking the copy status of the objects, should be much better publicized. As noted by others, this seems to selectively hit high value items, but it is pointless returning it as the only response is an occasional query as to whether the service was satisfactory.
October 28th, 2007 at 11:24 PM
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:19] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:20] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:20] Gesture is missing from database.
[23:20] Gesture is missing from database.
10-20 times each time i log into world, i think its the one gesture, i didnt have in my inventory, that says in “gestures” always= loading.
i can play the gesture, but while it isnt in my inventory, i cant edit or delete it.
trigger is /orgyzoo
October 28th, 2007 at 11:49 PM
This is a very frustrating and sensitive issue. I lost everything in my inventory last week, but recovered them (or at least most of them) after I uninstalled SL and manually deleted the SL folder from my application data folder. This took a while to figure out though, and during the process, I contemplated about leaving the game altogether. I was convinced to stay by all the friends I have.
While I recovered items in my inventory, this Saturday, the inventory loss issue came up yet again. This time items returned to me aren’t in my inventory. My SL bf had his house remodeled and he decided to return the furnitures I set out to my inventory. And naturally, when someone return things, they’re in the lost and found folder. When I logged on, the furnitures weren’t in the lost and found folder. In fact, they were no where to be found! That was Saturday night, and I’ve held faith that it’d eventually return. However, on Sunday, I bought a dance from Sine Wave and when I went looking for it an hour or so later, it wasn’t in my inventory! So I spent some hours doing everything I did to recover the items I lost last week, and it didn’t seem to work. So I don’t know what the problem is.
Let me tell you something though. This is not very encouraging. Losing items in my inventory is frustrating and devastating, and it interfers with my enjoyment of the game. In fact, the night I lost everything in my inventory, I had to cancel a hosting event. I worked hard for everything in my inventory. And I don’t deserve this. No one does, especially people who love this game, especially people who invest money and time into this game. It’s not fair.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:15 AM
PLEAAASE give us a way to back up our own creation on our own computers so your databases are less stressed!! it doesnt take a genius to know this let teh no copy items stay let us save OUR OWN ITEMS PLEAAASE ALREADY
October 29th, 2007 at 12:22 AM
Many persons (myself included) have had dozens of items lost, this survey is set up to report ONE item, so we must report each individual item?? Why not make the report esier to utilize, by making it capable to report multiple items, as well as putting a “cpmments section” on the form??
I dont know about others, but I certainly dont have time to spend hours doing report, after report, after report……
Please Sirs, in the future, think more of making things “user friendly”………
October 29th, 2007 at 12:27 AM
I wonder if the reason only expensive items seem to disappear is if they were copyrighted objects and the real owner asked them to be removed. I wouldn’t expect LL to notify every single owner of such an object.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:37 AM
Erm…I have a little problem with the survey…my inventory losses have been numerous over the last 8 months, i have no idea when i specifically lost them due to not finding them missing untill i needed them, which could of been a long time after. apparently i now have 4 missing gestures, i have various scripted and non-scripted items i havn’t been able to find for some time, clothes i wouldn’t have a clue as i used to be a dancer and bought so many, etc… The only way i can help is by saying this :- various items all whilst doing different things, sometimes rezzing sometimes whilst offline, etc.. and I havn’t seen any sort of pattern or common link. btw, I had only 2 missing gesture messages last time I logged in and now it’s 4 if that’s any help.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:52 AM
HERE HERE!!!!!!!!!!!
[0:30] Gesture is missing from database.
[0:30] Gesture is missing from database.
[0:30] Gesture is missing from database.
[0:30] Gesture is missing from database.
[0:30] Gesture is missing from database.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:55 AM
@Sidewinder Linden: I have not lost anything yet by SL fault (at least I think so), only due to my own actions… like “whoops, clicked delete instead of wear, let’s get it back from trash… *click* … uh oh… purge wasn’t it…”
Maybe you would like to compare general user behaviour or people who have lost lots and people who have lost only a few items or none? Maybe that gives you a hint, too. Might be that there are special things to do that produce inventory losses. I almost never crash, maybe people with item losses lose the items during a crash? I do most stuff on my own land where no auto-return etc. occurs for me, maybe people with item losses do not?
Just an idea.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:35 AM
@sidewinder, I am literally missing 100’s of items its absurd to think i would fill out 100’s of surveys, everything on the survey applies and this has been happening for weeks, to think i could actually pinpoint this to a certain date is absurd. quite literally i have 25,000L worth of stuff in my inventory that wont rez, says its missing from database. but shows up in my inventory.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:42 AM
If I dig back through my chat records I know I can find reference at a previous Town Hall Meeting, that the ability of being able to back up inventory to harddrive was planned for Q3 developement by LL. This utterance came from one of you, development Lindens guys. (I will find it if necessary… It was definitely said, and I do have a record)
Has anything been done about this yet. Is it in the wings ready for implementation. Or was it just another itteration of you guys saying something to soothe the masses without any intention of taking action.
Now a survey to reiterate most of which you already have on file….SUPPORT TICKETS….Hey but make it look as though we are interested…lets start a survey!!!!!
October 29th, 2007 at 1:44 AM
Luckily I seem to have lost only very few items and I submitted a ticket to the concierge support portal in June 2007. Until now, the items are still lost, even though I sent in all UUIDs involved. And there’s never any answer on the ticket unless I ask for an update myself. Communication on this could me improved a lot. And if it’s only “you only lost a few items, we’re concentrating on the big ones, thanks”.
October 29th, 2007 at 2:00 AM
Ever since I began following the deruth procedure for every install or reinstall of sl my inventory loss has dropped off to nothing:
1. uninstall SL
2. (optional) make a backup of your chat/IM logs found in
C:\Documents and Settings\(pc username)\Application Data\SecondLife\(sl username)
3. Delete the C:\Documents and Settings\(pc username)\Application Data\SecondLife\ directory
4. (Advanced/Brave Users only - Optional but recommended if you have been in SL for a while)
Clean out the secondlife related registry entries that build up like sludge over time
5. Empty the recycle bin
6. Reboot
7. Empty the temp directory
8. Empty the recycle bin again
9. Install SL
10. Run SL but don’t connect
11. Set prefs to show logon location
12. on the logon screen slelct to specify logon region
13. Enter Io as the region
14. Log on to SL
Seems to be an issue with the local cache a lot of the time.
Then there is the problem of too many items in a folder for the UI to display. If you have over some magic number of items in a folder then you can make another folder and move the visible items to the new folder and sometimes a bunch of missing items magically return to the folder you just emptied.
maybe it will work for you maybe not. when the sim eats something because of the lack of a proper transactional system architecture it is usually gone. rezzing something from inventory is a transaction. if the transaction does not complete or the system, for whatever reason, cannot account for the object involved in the transaction, the system should roll back the transaction and return the missing item. it is all data. it should be impossible to lose anything or replicate something that is no copy.
October 29th, 2007 at 2:26 AM
Well as long as this survey cuts down on this re-occuring Nightmare as it still happens in some Regions in SL and yes i do have ability to rez objects but i get the dreaded words Failure to Rez..
I found an easy way to avoid it dont rez object on the ground as such if small item first place a created object on ground first IE build a block then rez you item onto this cos for some reason the object dont know where the ground is..sounds silly i know but i fathomed it to be true,
for larger purchases like builds the normally come with a rezzer, but even those sometimes fail to rez so try making yourself a disc and place that on the place first before rezzing object onto it ..i have found this to work for me and never had those dreaded words since.
October 29th, 2007 at 3:03 AM
Excuse me Mr Linden.. the purpose of having a cache is to improve program performance, is it not? So why are we constantly being told to clear our cache instead of being presented with a client with a rock-solid cache? It’s not as if you haven’t had several years to address cache corruption, is it?
October 29th, 2007 at 3:15 AM
My most hated: “Object missing from database”.
But i have to admit. It is getting better.
October 29th, 2007 at 3:26 AM
Found it:
Extract from town Hall meeting The last one I believe..!!! (which happened because of the 2000 signature petition).
[12:11] Cory Linden shouts: Agree that backing up items you have full perms on is a good idea. We really feel it is important to build that system in a way…
[12:12] Cory Linden shouts: that scales and is robust enough to use more broadly. SL has suffered from rapidly deployed systems that we then have
Cory Linden shouts: to rely on for years and years –XML-RPC for example — so this isn’t a quick fix. Would like to work on it in Q3, however.
Any News on this ?????
October 29th, 2007 at 3:26 AM
Just wanted to add my name to this list really. I’ve lost countless items in my inventory, most old freebies as some have said so no real loss but I’ve also lost items I’ve bought in world and things like textures, the items may be virtual but the cost to me is in real money!
I couldn’t fill out the survey because more often than not the inventory I have lost clearly went some time ago and i’ve only just discovered it so reporting the circumstances would be pointless. Agree the survey form is not good, I’ve noticed all communications like this are geared to the programming teams requirements and don’t bear in mind that the form needs to be filled out by us the users. I find forms like this impossible to fill out and give up almost immediately rather than waste my time.
Why o Why can’t we have the facility to backup our inventory to our local systems so that when sl screws things up we can restore our hard earned goods!
INVENTORY BACKUP NOW!
October 29th, 2007 at 4:43 AM
There are obvious problems backing up inventory onto one’s local PC… for a start, reconciling what would effectively be 2 databases, the local one and the LL one. Also, transfer of objects from one user’s account to another would not be within LL’s inventory database, but potentially between two user’s PC’s. The idea of local backup would be unmanageable and introduce other security issues, not least copying of non-copy items.
It’s about time LL gave an overview about how Inventory is managed in SL to give users a clearer understanding of what an Inventory is… for example, some users actually believe inventory is transferred to thir PC when they log on, when what is actually happening is transfer of a directory of inventory items held on LL’s Inventory database.
I also suspect that some ‘missing’ inventory is simply masked by inappropriate filter settings.
The only inventory loss I seem to suffer is non-return of stuff I have left in sandboxes- usually because I crash at a critical point in a build.
My theory is that missing items are accumulating in a secret Sim called ‘Magpie’ run by kleptomaniac hackers.
October 29th, 2007 at 5:06 AM
Sidewinder - I’m hoping you can answer a question for me here that no one else wants to address. Good or bad, SL has a procedure of sorts to follow when a customer loses an item from their inv (although they end up telling them to get the merchant to replace it which is no help at all), but can you please tell me what we are expected to do when a customer complains that they have bought something but never received it? It’s along the same lines of inv loss but no one has ever (to my knowledge) openly addressed this issue - what are the guidelines for this - do we, as merchants, just have to blindly ‘replace’ everything or is there a way we can verify non delivery?
October 29th, 2007 at 5:27 AM
Yes Dark I do understand…that is why when the directory is transfered to your PC and later you decide to use one of those items…you get the message “not in database”. Some local backup would be able to refurnish the necessary info back to the SL database.
Obviously checks would have to be made for authenticity, but because of local manipulation of files, that would be why initially only full perm items would be backuped up I assume.
October 29th, 2007 at 5:34 AM
Misfit.. the prim to rez on has been working for me for months too.. I don’t know why but it does. I think I started using that last February when I noticed that things would rez on another object but wouldnt rez on the ground. Now I create a prim and go for it. Watch out though.. if the little no rez box doesnt pop up and you keep trying it is probably because of lag and you can have multiple objects sitting there in short order.
re: Inventory loss. My biggest problem in helping you guys find the problem is that I dont know what I have lost until i try to find it and it could conceivably be months later.
But, maybe other peoples info will help you establish a pattern.
October 29th, 2007 at 5:42 AM
I have had the same kind of experience as Sal Salubrius. Sometimes things go missing from inventory and I can’t say when they disappeared, other than “some time prior to today, when I’d like to use it”. Every now and then I just can’t find something, and I can never say for certain that I didn’t accidentally delete it or misplace it, so I don’t report it.
There are also times when I’m working on a prim item or a script, and saving every major revision, and then I go looking for an old version and find fewer saved versions that I’d expect. Again, can’t say for certain it isn’t my fault, but darn, where the heck could they have gone?
Also a few times now I’ve had selected items go *poof* while my hands aren’t on the keyboard. Makes me nervous every time I select a large build to save a copy.
October 29th, 2007 at 5:47 AM
To individually list items totalling over $15,000L would take more than $15,000US worth of my time. Besides, since you’ve always ignored our losses in the past, what makes you think many of us have kept detailed data about something you won’t do anything about anyway? Your entire problem-reporting system, be it bug reporting, abuse reporting, inventory loss reporting or anything else, seems to have been specifically designed to discourage your long-suffering PAYING customers from submitting any complaints at all. Why not just fix the problems, instead of making excuses. Sadly, the SL client is a lot like Windows: a collection of kludges produced by people who have very little long-term design plans from which to work.
Hmm…just how many of your software engineers DID come from Microsoft, anyway?
October 29th, 2007 at 6:02 AM
If you don’t get anything, you don’t lose anything. No items in your inventory is boring, but you never have to worry about losing anything. Ignore the fact that I have over 32,000 items, that’s uhm, well, never you mind that.
What I mean is…well, uhm *blush*
October 29th, 2007 at 6:04 AM
I do have to thank you all, somehow I got inventory items back recently. They were lost over 2 MONTHS ago! YaY Lindens!
October 29th, 2007 at 6:18 AM
It is not just customers that are losing items in the asset database, creators are too. It is a bit hard to say to go back to the creator, when you ARE the creator, and even worse when you are selling that item.
And of course I know now that I am going to have a long list of people coming to me soon.
I was checking my products just yesterday (and checked again today), and almost half of the sets have something missing. (That is, it is listed in inventory, vendor and selling boxes, but when you try to rez it, the dreaded “Object is missing from the database”).
And of course to compound it, they have null UUID keys too… grrr…
October 29th, 2007 at 7:18 AM
‘Gesture missing from database’ is my daily welcome message upon log in. I still haven’t figured out exactly which of my 100’s of gestures is missing, but i think i have narrowed down to a few dozen. As for the constant ‘object missing from database’ messages, well i gave up on that one months ago. ‘Failure to place object’ is another daily occurance which always turns in to ‘failure to rezz object’ and then ‘object missing from database’, making building, changing clothes and opening new purchases a major operation. and i wont even mention the items & L$’s that have vanished during transfer
As for having to fill in a survey for each individual item because LL want to see the pattern, well to that i say ‘what a load of rubbish’ and completely unnecessary if the survey had been set up properly in the first place. Simply a case of routing the answers correctly from Q1 so each ticked box leads to the remaining questions for each response along with a ‘how many times did this happen’ option. Yes it would make it much longer, but would link responses for LL and give them a better pattern over view as each respondents answers may well produce a pattern that is not going to be shown with the current survey, and mean only one survey per respondent would be required. In market research in RL if a company produced a survey like this they would be out of business fast. Imagine in RL a customer being asked to complete something repeatedly because of poor design, wouldn’t leave one with much faith in the results!
Anyways, that is my mini rant, but still well done to LL for finally getting off their arses and taking inventory loss seriously, here’s to something eventually being done about it… gotta go now as i have a surevy to complete well over 100 times, lol.
October 29th, 2007 at 7:30 AM
THIS IS VERY UPSETTING !! I LOST ALL MY CLOTHINGS !!
why missing in my inventory !!
October 29th, 2007 at 7:42 AM
I think one of the viewer’s biggest problems is that it DOES NOT FETCH new/recently added inventory items UNTIL such time that you open the Inventory window, go to the Recent Items tab and wait for the “Fetching…(xyz items)” message in the menu bar to disappear. I find that then, and only then, can I rely on the fact that my entire inventory is there. I perform this little procedure upon EVERY login as a habit now, and have never once - NEVER - lost anything.
Well, there’s one exception but that was 1. months ago, 2. a no-copy items I tried to rez in a parcel that was already full and 3. not a big loss as I could simply buy me another L$100 toilet. (rotfl)
BUT!!! If the viewer could be improved such that fetching inventory items becomes an AUTOMATIC process, not one that has to be triggered manually by going to Recent Items, that would probably eliminate a LOT of “perceived inventory loss” in one fell swoop.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:02 AM
Sidewinder - thanks for posting..
Something this big of an issue really should be addressed by
the CTO. Why does Cory not communicate with the residents
on a proactive basis? You would think that ‘inventory loss’
would merit his comment (in October 2007, as opposed
to several months ago).
October 29th, 2007 at 8:02 AM
@Harrie: “As for having to fill in a survey for each individual item because LL want to see the pattern, well to that i say ‘what a load of rubbish’ and completely unnecessary if the survey had been set up properly in the first place.”
Sidewinder: Please see this quote from the original post “If you have experienced multiple inventory losses, please enter one survey for each type of loss (there is no need to create a survey for every item - what we are looking for is patterns of inventory loss).” This very clearly states that you should not be expecting to create one survey response per item.
Harrie: “Simply a case of routing the answers correctly from Q1 so each ticked box leads to the remaining questions for each response along with a ‘how many times did this happen’ option. Yes it would make it much longer, but would link responses for LL and give them a better pattern over view as each respondents answers may well produce a pattern that is not going to be shown with the current survey, and mean only one survey per respondent would be required. In market research in RL if a company produced a survey like this they would be out of business fast. ”
Harrie, I do understand survey design, and it was explicitly posted that this is not an individual item-level survey. I am well aware of the limitations statistically of the results, and have no intent to use the data in ways that are not statistically supported. At the same time, it will provide some insight into patterns that we may have missed, and will not cause aggravation for people to fill in a very long item-by-item response (which as above was not requested). There were explicit reasons to not ask for that sort of detail on this survey. For starters:
* I am looking for new combinations of issues, or to see if there are any very high level patterns that we have missed
* I am not trying to figure out percentage significance of each issue, since it would be invalid in any survey such as this - self-reports going back months tend to be wildly inaccurate for this sort of analysis
* People who have lost thousands of items would not fill in thousands of anything, no matter what the structure
* I did not want people to think that this was, in any fashion, a replacement for a normal trouble ticket report (it is not).
If you do have survey design background, you will recognize that this is not a survey that will hold strong statistical significance to rank numeric results. It is not being used for that purpose. In addition, even if it was an individual item survey I would probably discount the statistical significance of the results since it is self-reported often months after the original event, which means that the numerics and specifics are unlikely to be accurate at any significant level. Please understand that the goal here is to collect some better insight into the scenarios that are common, and not to rank them or apply other numeric analysis to the issues.
In particular, mixing the results onto one survey would disable being able to see these patterns, and this is why I asked for one scenario per survey, and specifically did not ask for one survey per loss incident.
I hope this helps to clarify,
Sidewinder
October 29th, 2007 at 8:09 AM
@72 Bucky: This is one of the top priorities of the company. It is, however a complex issue in a system of this scope and reach. Hamilton posted here http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/10/12/inventory-loss-reduction-initiaitive/ describing the larger scale initiative that this project falls into, with considerable detail as to the project process and components. If you have not seen that post, it might be worth a read, as it describes the larger picture of what we have been doing and are doing to attempt to eliminate inventory loss, both actual and perceieved, in our asset store that now contains over 1 billion assets.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:34 AM
Okay, one more and I do wish I’d have remembered this last night so I wouldn’t need to take up another comment space, or that I could have edited one of my priors (oh, there’s a suggestion that would rock here).
I’ve not seen this mentioned, nor ever heard of it happening to anyone else, but it happened at our place which I’ve secretly dubbed the “SL Bermuda triangle” after all the losses.
Due to the diving board loss, I bought the diving ledge and set that up instead. One day after an update a few months ago, I dove off the ledge, and the poseball for the diving disappeared. I had to reset the diving ledge for each dive I did so it would rez a new poseball.
Fast forward a month or so, I was scanning around our land on view transparent. I saw something really odd in one of our second story windows of our house…
OMG… it was the poseball from the diving ledge.
Furthermore, at the very corner of our plot, just after the skin store next door got partially destroyed when the sim behind us disappeared and a chunk of their wall was spotted 50m away…. (last I checked, it’s still up there in the sky too)
again, scanning on view transparent, I found 2 more of the dive poseballs buried in the ground, barely peeking up from the ground.
Maybe this is a clue?
Yes, I did claw and paw my camera all through the ground looking for ALL my other missing items which were NOT magically returned by clearing my cache.
So glad some other people found their items by clearing their caches, but this solution isnt ONE SIZE FITS ALL.
Also, I just dont understand. Linden Labs does have transaction histories, so they would have copies of our transaction buying something and the UUID of that item, and why when we report it, cant they look it up and find it.. considering the above event that happened with my diving poseballs.
I do see someone with their own survey in here, and to #28:
“Does this influence you on spending money in SL purchasing higher priced items?”
yep, and I usually wont any more, and with some items… I wont even rez them. Nice museum pieces they make now, but that wasn’t why they were purchased in the first place.
Rez prim on a prim? Okay, anything’s worth a try and thank you to the person who posted about that. A few things do need updating and I’m terrified to rez them on the ground.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:36 AM
i would like to know how people know they are missing something….longterm….i wish i COULD lose all the duplicate notecards and freebies…just too busy to really sort out my inventory.
On the odd occassion i cant find something is because the search is flaky and i know it should be there because i made it…
Yesterday the ‘asset was missing’ when building/scripting but relogging returned it.
I love ‘failure to rez’ ….its when that doesn’t appear and nothing seems to happen that its a problem especially 5 minutes later when you happen to look up into a sky filled with duplicate items that finally decide to appear!!! good job my sims quiet!!! lolllll
I did lose that payment for pain and suffering caused by SL over the last ferw months lollllll plus a memory loss as i can’t remember the last time SL was bug free for a day
keep up the good work and great communication Sidewinder, nice to see in a blog.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:38 AM
I have complained about “missing from database” for the last two months. Sent in tickets on teh subject and none of the suggestions to fix it worked. I have outfits taht i bought when i first started playing that i can no longer wear because of this. I cant afford to run out and buy clothes all the time when what i have wont work. And some items cant be replaced as the designers either no longer make them or arent around anymore. So replacing isnt an option. Its just frustrating taht you see items in your inventory and cant use them. Also items that never returned to me months ago when a friend sent them back from his land. Since January 07 I have lost well over 500,000lindens worth of items due to “hiccups” in the game. Most have been replaced but this missing database thing is the most annoying.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:58 AM
Good to hear they are trying to find how widespread this issue is. I’ve lost some costly items from a long time back. But nowadays seems to be mostly items I have imported from my computer that disappear. My missing items have nothing to do with rezzing them. It has to do with mysterious disappearance from inventory. One of the items i lost ages back had the same name as another (though was slightly different in its function, but was in a different folder). I guess the question also arises why do sometimes we have inventory loading issues on some log ins & others not; ie: inventory taking ages to load. BTW I am almost always getting gestures loading issues. I suspect it’s the same ones but SL doesn’t tell you so … but at least some gestures load sometimes & some not. Also some are activated & some not despite them being previously set to being on.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:12 AM
I’ve lost things in the past, reported it, and either been ignored or told that there is nothing LL intends to do about it. Your database and/or applications lose things, customers, for instance. I just try not buy things anymore. I maintain a minimal presence and chat with friends from time to time in SL. When you have a world that works using an enterprise RDBMS (i.e. not one from a cereal box that will have enterprise features ‘real soon now’), drop me a line.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:37 AM
As a quick note for some of you.. Use search on any missing item in your inventory.
LL frequently relocates folders within other folders.
For example, you have a folder called Buildings. One day, your folder is missing. Searching on it may show that it has been relocated to the Animals folder or Textures, or who knows what.
Simply pull it back into place.
This scared me several times, altho recently a major folder has gone missing and that did not apply.
Just thought this might help.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:32 PM
…another problem is that when you use the RETURN OBJECTS in the Land/Objects tab to return things left on your land to their owners, it often returns your own rezzed items to people they don’t belong to.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:39 PM
You should have every user’s database stored in a couple of places. Primary should be that users HOME sim server. Then the database should be the next Westward server, and finally, a central repository.
At every write, the date and time is stored at the header of the inventory. Any opening or use of inventory compares their timestamps. If there is a descrepancy, the latest inventory is used and copied to the other servers. Note this spreads the load out so you don’t have a single point of failure anymore (the asset server) and any change to the inventory occurs quickly as each server has a much smaller number of users to handle.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:42 PM
And while I answered the survey now, I have not bothered to report missing items before. You did not recover my friends’ lost inventory. You did not even bother with an email equivalent of a shrug to their reports. So I didn’t bother wasting my time reporting a problem you’ve known about for years now and have done little to correct until just recently.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:36 PM
It is not good news, yet..
October 29th, 2007 at 6:22 PM
@ Sidewinder:
Are we ever going to see missing items returned that were reported months ago through appropriate channels with nary a reply? Do we know those reports were even actually received?
I’m still looking for my set of dance balls that disappeared in Sinaburoe. I rezzed part of our old dance club, with a lot of things all bundled together into one package, and it was too close to the edge of our property. Consequently a set of dance balls I owned got rezzed on a neighboring parcel instead of our own. One with ban lines up, and build/object entry turned off, so those dance balls couldn’t be on that land. SL reported they were being returned to my lost and found. Which would have been fine, if they’d gone there. But guess what? Poof. Gone forever.
Where are my dance balls?????????
I am putting this in the survey too, for what little good it will do.