At work, there’s always a groan when one of the team reports a problem to me and I tell them “It’s working fine for me“, there’s a groan because for a start they know I’m not dismissing the complaint but more importantly, because it’s not a helpful answer.
There have been a couple of posts over at New World Notes where issues have been identified but people seem to want to blame the user, in some cases it is an issue for the user, but just because something works fine for you or I, doesn’t mean there isn’t an issue with the service.
The first post was from Chestnut Rau regarding a visit to Inworldz, and with the specs Chestnut has, it is odd that she experienced such poor performance. The second post was from Hamlet, regarding visiting a popular sim, again, with the specs Hamlet has you wouldn’t expect such poor performance, even if he is using wireless. I can connect to SL with my Mac downstairs on a wireless connection.
I have however had similar experiences to Hamlet recently and in the blog comments, some people advise changing your group tag as a fix, why if the performance problem is a client side issue, would this fix anything? I’ve also had poor performance with Viewer 2 lately, whilst talking to someone on my land a couple of weeks back I couldn’t move without feeling like I was stuck in treacle, in the end I logged in with Phoenix and was able to actually move.
This doesn’t mean viewer 2 is crap and Phoenix superior, but it does suggest it’s an issue that I may not be alone in experiencing, indeed I’ve seen peple reporting similar issues on the SL forums. I should point out here however that there are issues with my system, my router is odd in that it won’t allow me to download the Second Life client unless I disable the SPI firewall and change the MTU to 1400, I found this fix by searching around google for the issue and others have the same issue as me, whereas plenty of other people with the same router don’t.
I also have a wonky Wacom Tablet driver that sometimes refuses to play nicely, when this happens I get a message telling me the driver hasn’t loaded, however when I’m in SL, the message can sometomes be buried underneath the Second Life screen and one of the symptoms is, search just displays a black screen and won’t serve me any results, if I click ok on the driver error message, search will work for me.
However, if people didn’t share information, such as the router issue, it would be hard to discover exactly where the fault lies and to fix a fault, you need to get as much information about the fault. When I’m trying to fix something at work the easiest fixes are consistent ones, they affect everyone, when a fault is intermittent it’s a pain in the arse to track down, but instead of saying “It works fine for me“, it’s better to try and work out why the fault exists.
There could be a myriad of reasons why someone experiences poor performance in Second Life, but trying to help people fix faults means that in the future, others who experience that problem, can find a fix or workaround, discouraging people from expanding on the reasons for their fault or performance issues, will long term cause more problems, such as LL potentially missing an issue that could get worse over time because people are worried about being shouted down for bringing an issue up.
There are also issues, such as wireless, that LL may need to develop better solutions for, it may not be their fault that someone using wireless is having poor performance, but if LL realise wireless is an appealing choice, they may work towards developing solutions that make wireless solutions better.
We should be encouraging people to discuss faults and performance issues, in a manner that isn’t detrimental to the user or Second Life itself, it can be done.
One issue I’ve found with Second Life is that shoving the viewer to use maximum bandwidth – no matter how good your connection / ISP or how capable your PC can actually be a bad thing. It’s perhaps counter-intuitive, and it seems to work for me.
Phoenix supply a calculation for setting bandwidth – and I’ve found that by keeping to their recommendations, I actually get *better* results than by wapping the bandwidth slider all the way to the upper end “just because my connection can take it”. I get letter client-side lag, better fps and an all-round better experience.
I’ve translated what I’ve learned with Phoenix into Viewer 2 and the Viewers I use on other grids, and while I cannot speak for the latter with confidence, I have found that when using V2, I again tend to have a happier experience that when I shove the sliders up to the high side.
To be sure, SL is a curious beast.
I’m kind of just repeating what you have already said, but I wanted to add that “It’s works fine for me!” *can* be a helpful answer *as long as it is supplemented with more information*.
It helps to identify if it’s a global problem or something more specific and if no-one said ‘it works fine for me!” then the people looking at the problem could wrongly assume its a global problem. The important thing is to be able to look at potential differences between the people it is working fine for and those that it isn’t. So both the people who it is working fine for, and those it isn’t, need to be forthcoming about their setup, what they were doing at the time etc to identify the differences.
Both “It doesn’t work!” and “It works fine for me!” alone are unhelpful comments. Either of those comments with additional information can be very helpful.
I know i’ve said “it works fine for me!” before. One example that springs to mind is with using the cart on the marketplace. I use it all the time, quite often with the full 10 items in my cart. Never once have I had a failed delivery. So when i see forum comments saying the cart doesn’t work and should be stopped because it causes failed deliveries I feel compelled to jump in and say “it works fine for me!”. I feel compelled to point out that it’s not a global problem so we should be working to identify why some people are having problems with it and some are not. Is it to do with sim lag on the receiving end and i’m lucky to be on a sim with low lag when purchasing? Is it that i’m lucky in the merchants I have been buying from and haven’t hit any with lag at their magic box end? Is it the times i’ve been purchasing when, for whatever reason, marketplace delivery has been at its best?
Invariably though I have been met with the ‘cheerleader card’. If i say “it works fine for me!” that must mean I’m a blind cheerleader ignorant to the facts, right? I’m really not and it is never my intention to do anything other than *get* to the facts. Therein lies the problem with so many discussions about SL issues, particularly on the forums, you are either labelled a blind cheerleader or a pointless troll. Everyone needs to meet somewhere in the middle to get meaningful results.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not everyone and there are plenty of people prepared to meet in the middle to get meaningful results. I do feel though that a lot of those people wanting to help share information to get to the facts often become exasperated when either the ‘cheerleader’ or ‘troll’ card is pulled, which often results in the debate descending into chaotic argument rather than meaningful analysis of the differences.
P.S. I know this post is relatively old but I just happened across it while researching your blog for a blog post i’m writing. That’s got you intrigued hasn’t it?! 😀
You closed your old blog you minx! I had a dead link!
You are a cheerleader dear Suella, we wouldn’t want you any other way though.
Yup – I decided I liked the simplicity of Posterous better and, as I don’t get to blog as much as I like, I felt simpler was better 🙂
Yeah ok. I am a cheerleader. Not for LL though. For balance, respect and good humour …. and cheese!
The reason for me researching your blog can now be found right here:
http://suellaember.posterous.com/59590301
I didn’t want to give you too big an ego though so you are number 9. Inara on the other hand makes it in at number 2! 😀