[sldev] Re: More plugin / platform harping..

[Nicholaz Beresford]

> Matthew Dowd wrote:
> However, the other issues such as Lindex failing, search failing, asset 
 > server problems, are impacting on people either selling or creating,
 > and even long timers are giving up that the return and frustration
 > isn't worth the effort. not convinced that many of this 90% who leave
 > are because of UI issues - in any case anyone having trouble with the
 > viewer UI would likely give up after a few hours, not months!

Tateru Nino wrote:
> I have to agree. Having ushered in around about 12,000 new residents,
> the UI isn't so much of a problem. For beginners there's just too *much*
> UI and you could hide 60% of it for them - but their problems are more
> about being overwhelmed and without direction or peer support. Any UI
> difficulties are just icing on that making the already difficult, just a
> little more difficult than it needs to be. That needs to be dealt with
> at some point, admittedly - but it's not the scary UI that's frightening
> people away.


I have to agree here too.  I have just introduced a handful of people to
the program but I had my downs as well.

The first hurdle (like the UI, not being able to complete orientation
island, etc.) will make you quit within hours or a few days.

After that, it will be a mixture of things.  Either the whole thing
getting stale (when novelty wears off) or the permanent crashes, outages,
poor performance, etc.  I've been at this place a couple of times myself,
asking myself why the heck I'm enduring this, despite the efforts I put
into the program (the last one was the inability to convert US$ to Linden
for over a week with a perfectly valid credit card).

The people I know who stay, do so because of the friends they met or
things they found but this seems to be constantly counterbalanced by
the problems with the software, service, etc.

I think you see this on the blog.  What people are complaining about are
outages of service and bugs, and it may be just me seeing it that way,
but bug fixes (or even the announcement that Windlight will be taken off
for some time to get things right) are met with outright enthusiasm.


Nick