PostHeaderIcon Second Life Plumbing Clogged

Despondent.jpgI started yesterday's post about the grid maintenance and XStreet SL integration with this:

I usually try to login for an hour at about 4:30 two or three times a week. You know, to clear-out any notices and especially the Instant Message cache, which caps far sooner than it ever used to.


It got me thinking again about something I've been wanting to rant about for some time: IM cap ceilings. Just last week a customer had an issue with a product she bought from me. I responded and wondered why she never bounced the communication back so I could help her.

Then she drops a notecard on my profile - with no IM are anything to explain it. It's frustrating, but I accepted it, had to do the 'properties' research to discover who this person even is (note to all you idiots who drop notecards to people requesting a response and don't put your full name inside the notecard: just go away and die please.)

So then eventually a friend of hers catches me while I am online - at first explaining how frustrated this person was that I am so unresponsive. As it turns out, all three of us had an amicable ending with a solution to the problem and they were most happy with me.

It turns out she was a rather new account and wasn't familiar with IM cap ceilings or the IM to email feature - which Linden Lab should turn on by default for all new accounts, if it were up to me.

In the old days, IMs would cap after about 30 sends or so (presses of the 'enter' key when someone types and sends the typed text.) Possibly much more. One reason I ask people to please, Please PLEASE type out your whole message before pressing the enter key for the first time!

However, just luke the convenience and fast food restaurants have been shrinking their portions in fear of raising their prices (anyone ever remember how large a Big Mac really was?) - Linden Lab either consciously or have it rigged to automatically lower that cap ceiling based on resource usage.

I'n not complaining or whining. It's just the nature of the beast: population is outpacing recourse expansion. So the caps on these things are lowered to maintain stability as the use of those resources increase almost exponentially.

The problem is how the caps seem 'universal'. Perhaps it always was this way since my first days in the Summer of 2006, but it's definitely noticeable now: Once my IM's are capped, so is everything else...

And once I come in-world, I see the notices, IM tabs and anything else that occurred while I was offline - up to a point. And that point is considerably sooner, shorter, smaller — however you want to phrase it — than it ever has been before. Any additional notices don't appear and additional IMs don't even show a tab in your communication window.

Once that magic, significantly lowered threshold is reached:
Group notices don't ever show themselves. Group notices aren't so bad, because they remain in group cache for 15-days (and even that was recently dropped from 30-days.) If you know there was a notice sent, you can go into the group information window and reread them.

Notecards and objects dropped onto profile never display the blue menu notice you would normally get, if they were dropped to you after the cap ceiling has been met. Fortunately the notecards almost always still will be in your inventory waiting quietly for you. You just never know it. Which is why your notecards folder gets so poluted so quickly.

An odd thing is objects... it seems to me that objects will act like notecards: sit in inventory without the blue menu notice - waiting for you.

Ummm. No.

Not for me, anyway. They just poof into the Linden void. Seriously. Which is why I insist that if you are going to drop anything to me via my profile, always, always also IM me.

And then people wonder why I am so 'unresponsive' to their inquiries and other communication. Um, hello? Turn your IM-to-email feature on.

Even after the IM cap ceiling is met, all IMs and notices still come through email. This is why I require all who drop anything to me to also IM me - to tell me what it is they are dropping to me. Or I will likely never see it. besides, if it didn't come through ( 9 of 10 times for me) - I'll need to ask you to give it to me again.

Oh! And this is one of the reason I absolutely hate those damned group notices with a cryptic title that only say "read the attachment". Damned you who send those to hell!

At least have the goddammed curtesy to put a freakin' summary in the notice message. Please!

Now if only everyone else would do the same, because if I reply in IM, and your IMs are capped - the only way you will know I even tried will be through email.

I thought the IM-to-email feature is turned-on by default for all new accounts. The problem is that people are signing-up with throw-away email accounts that they rarely check, if ever, like Hotmail or Yahoo mail.

Oh, well.

So how much frustration have you endured over the lower-than-ever IM cap ceiling?

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