Due mainly to this comment, I decided to put myself in harms way - braving the SecondLife website armed only with a keyboard and mouse. So, let's step through it. I know the magic url at the end of the tunnel, but that's because I'm used to doing stuff like that. Let's see how the breadcrumbs roll.
- Go to SecondLife.com. A woman with blue hair and some contraptions on her body stares at me, perhaps knowing that I am trying to get past her. I inch my way around the odd troll, looking for a way in to put in a feature request. She snarls at me.
- Seeing no place for anything resembling a place to report bugs, I click the Support link. Surely there will be some information here! I look. There is no troll, which is nice.
There are links to the Knowledge Base, System Requirements, Known Issues, the LSL Portal and some other stuff which doesn't seem to apply to this scenario (emails, etc). Style: The email help section has some links in it which one has to read through to get to. Frustrated people don't read very well. Bullets are awesome for frustrated and/or busy people.
- Since there are no trolls here, I have some time to collect my wits. I choose 'Known Issues' because that might take me one step closer to a hint of where to make a feature request. I look around carefully, switch the torch to my right hand and press the link and quickly step back.
- It looks safe. Known Issues has a lot of words at the top. I focus. This must be part of the puzzle to get to the feature request/bug report area. It says that the SecondLife Public Issue tracker is in beta. I know what 'beta' means. It means wear a hard hat, a parachute and a condom while keeping a condom for anyone else who might bump into you. I did not bring my hard hat (I always have condoms). I click to the Public Issue Tracker because the rest of the page looks rather distressing. It's like sharp orange spikes down there. I just want to ask for a feature to be added. I must be brave. I suck up my courage, check the expiration date on my condoms, and proceed.
- Aha! The Public Issue Tracker link brings me to a familiar place on a wiki. Yes, I remember this from my last sojourn which I did from the SecondLife blog. So now we're on a page entitled Issue tracker. This is a good name for it because it obviously has issues. It greets me by yelling:
The JIRA Issue Tracker is not for technical support-type requests
OK! OK! I note that while yelling at me, it doesn't tell me where I should go... but wait. People should go to where I just came from and read the non-bulleted stuff on email and phone support hidden at the bottom of the page. And this is a Wiki Page. Daringly, I edit the Wiki page. I give directions to support (why am *I* doing this?). In editing, I leave this as the summary: "Yelling at users without giving them a clear direction to go to is something nuns with wooden rulers will become angry about."
Surprisingly, my edit works. I look around carefully. Where is the link to actually put a feature request? I patiently tap the walls waiting for a hollow sound. Lower into the page, below the standard wiki page, I find a link. In the 'What is Jira? section.
...Located at jira.secondlife.com, this issue tracker offers a searchable database of issues submitted by the Second Life community....
.
Why not 'issues.secondlife.com'? Well, that would just be too clear, apparently. JIRA sounds about as friendly as CIA, if you ask me. Are there rubber hoses and bright lights behind this door? Clutching my spare condom carefully, I proceed...
- Now we're getting somewhere. There's less writing here with more links that seem to mean things. Glancing around, I consider where to put my feature request in. Is my request 'Misc', svc, vwr or web? Well, a 5 minute delay for land being listed doesn't seem to have anything to do with the website - so we can toss out 'web'. It probably has little to do with the viewer - the name of the SecondLife client - so it probably isn't 'vwr'. I'm stuck between 'Misc' and 'svc'. I hear a crunch as I step to inspect these two... holding my torch lower, I see the skeletons of people who have died of Poor Options. I apologize to one about that femur. They stare at me, lost in oblivion. I pick 'Misc'. One can never go wrong with Misc.
- I open the door to Misc, and immediately read:
Miscellaneous issues not covered by other projects. Example: "Your Terms of Service don't allow me to modify the viewer"
Wrong door, maybe. I back up carefully, inching my way past skeletons and a few fresh corpses. Wait. I know that one. She was dancing at a club a few months ago. Witty chat too. Too bad. She was nice.
I head to svc.
- I immediately read:
"Issues pertaining to the Second Life service. Example: "Crossing region boundary causes LSL script failure"
.
I note that there are less bodies in various states of decay here. Maybe this is a good thing, or a bad thing. No time to be timid. I must attempt to put in a feature request. After all, I'm part of the community. At least, a part of the community that isn't decomposing on the floor in here...
There are various components here. My request doesn't seem to fit HTTPRequest (a few dead people here), Component Performance (Less dust near this door), Component Physics (a picture of Isaac Newton hangs askew), Component Scripts (strange lights flash under the door), Component Simulation (crazy murmurs heard in there), Component Teleport (they teleport components? Who wants to go anywhere in pieces?), Component XML-RPC (Replacing EIEIO), and 'No Component'. I eye 'No Component'. That might be the place.
- I enter No Component carefully. There are notes scribbled on the walls! I can scribble here and get the heck out of this creepy place!
But how do I do that? I see a 'New' link to the left. I click it. I want to add a new issue. It ends up being a search button of some sort (named 'new'?! This dungeon is very tricky!). I do a search to see what others have said with respect to 'land search'. I see Tristan Eliot has scribbled on the wall '2 additions to the process of selling land to reduce accidental loss of land."' Well, this is what I'm trying to help with. After all, people are continuing to lose money. I click it.
Cool! Tristan suggested what I wanted to suggest in the first place. Good man, Tristan. I want to comment but... I can't! I see at the top right, very small, 'Log in'. How many bloody times do I have to log in to do stuff around here? So I log in.
Then I see the same 'log in' button. No way to comment or vote. This is dumb, but being familiar with page caching I decide to empty my web browser's cache and reload the page. It Doesn't Help.
- I leave, somewhat irked that I couldn't voice my support for VWR 431 about the 5 minute delay in land listings. Well, no, not irked. Angry. I braved ALL of this stuff just so that I couldn't vote or comment?
What's the point of this thing anyway?!
Well, that was a waste of time. At least I managed to get out before I died. What is the lesson here?
Well, there isn't much of one. Maybe there's a secret door I missed or something - which should have been leaping out to me if people actually wanted my input! Now, I could shout at the walls of this Jira setup until I become one of the people decomposing on the ground in there, or I can come out into the light and express my ideas where they can be seen openly on my website.
So - that's what I'll stick with. When someone Unscrews that whole mess, have one of the corpses fling a femur at me.
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Perhaps...
they have been reading some Douglas Adams.
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