Chaddington Boomhauer recently alerted me to this JIRA entry, SVC-1509, "Error message when starting group IM session", a phenomenon depicted at left. To judge by the entry, this probelm seems to occur most during chat in large groups, and it's been a recurring issue since 2007. Right now the JIRA entry has just over 1000 users who've voted on it as a priority; to get involved, go here, and log-in with your SL account name/password. Alexa Linden is currently collecting data on the error (read her post on the JIRA discussion, time-stamped 08/Jun/09 02:36 PM), so it is being addressed. Until it's fully resolved, however, perhaps groups may want to consider using third party group messaging systems as an alternative/backup. Suggestions?
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The big three for rapid discussion/announcement via webpage, cell, or IM: Twitter, Plurk, Facebook.
MySpace is waning.
Ning, Google and Yahoo groups can be followed via email for discussions, and it's archived.
-ls/cm
Posted by: Crap Mariner | Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 10:39 AM
I noticed that Plurk has a "Clique" function for group conversations, I wonder if that's an alternative. Though of course, if a clique got as large as some of these SL groups the same kind of scalability problems may kick in...
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 10:41 AM
The group I'm an admin in gave up SL group chat about a year ago. We use a privately-run IRC server now, and we wouldn't look back.
You can get IRC clients for just about everything (including most smart phones, etc), and it's really nice being able to stay connected even when not in-world.
Even when we're having tech issues with SL (or a griefer attack), we're still able to function as a group. Server lag is not a worry when your group chat is handled outside of SL...
- Bunny
Posted by: Bunny Halberd | Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 11:53 AM
Crap's list is a pretty good run down. One other option people might consider is putting their group on one of the MMO guild sites. Although it won't be a perfect fit, they do offer a lot of useful group tools.
I actually have a feeling that once Wave goes into production release, a lot of groupware functionality will move in that direction.
Posted by: Nexus Burbclave | Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 12:34 PM
This issue is a problem for groups like New Cititzens, Inc., which is a volunteer-run organization that helps newbies. Should newbies be asked to fire up an IRC client or get an account on Plurk in order to ask newbie questions about Second Life?
Posted by: Solo Mornington | Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 12:53 PM
Don't be ridiculous, Hamlet. "alexa linden is collecting data so it is being addressed" - that's laughable. This problem exists for _years_ now. There is no point in now to start collecting data. They never addressed it and it cripples group IMs to be completely useless and at best an annoyance with large groups. The fact that LL is unable to provide one of the basic functionalities of an online virtual world - chat in groups - is embarrassing to the point of comedy. That's just one big fail.
Especially Alexa Linden - who would care if the Linden regularily waving the ban-stick at Jira "collects data"?
Posted by: Barney Boomslang | Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 11:32 PM
When I found out about the JIRA entry, I took all the folks in our fishing group 7Seas Social Chat and told them to go here and vote. 300 votes were added in a single day.
Like many other businesses with a community focus, we live or die by chat. When the chat started clonking out this week, 10 times more than usual and with new and weirder error messages, our profits distinctly started to drop. I hate to think how badly this is affecting SL as a whole, with businesses being unable to communicate properly to their clients.
While the problem has existed since 2007, the ramp up in failures, even getting errors without ever opening a group chat window in the first place, started this week. Hopefully that means they can figure out what changed recently and fix it. If not, we could be looking at a lot of businesses shutting down because, as usual, the SL platform we're trying to build upon is as stable as an emu on acid.
Posted by: Seven Shikami | Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 09:34 AM
Group chat is the first thing affected, for me anyway, during times with a large amount of people logged in, SLundays especially. Oh SLunday, bloody SLunday.
What is LL using to handle their chat backend? I wonder if they might see improved performance by using IRC servers to host the group chat, and building in IRC client code into the SL client.
Posted by: CronoCloud Creeggan | Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 02:47 PM
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1507
Posted by: Stephan | Monday, June 22, 2009 at 10:27 AM