User:Kalpana Linden/Office Hours Notes

2008.11.06

• Topics discussed
  • Search Tabs whats useful, whats not
    • Most used (from residents that were there)
      • Land Sales
      • People
      • Places
      • ALL
    • Least used
      • Groups (mainly because its so hard to find the right groups there, and the sorting/relevance is not great
    • it would also be beneficial if we could open 'search' windows kind of like a 'web browser' and add tabs as we 'see fit' ala 'channels'
    • Showcase, Land and Groups need to have better UI and placement - not sure if the search tab is a useful spot for these
    • More than tabs, need meta information in search results. For instance when a result is a group show me # of people, meeting times etc. If its a person, show me some profile information about the person etc
  • Relevance!
    • Oh fix traffic!
    • Better relevance with multiple keywords
    • Some kind of resident flagging system for bad results
    • Some kind of "digg" style flagging system for good content
    • Way to exclude keywords, regions etc
    • More advanced search options for power users
    • Need to get rid of people jamming keywords into search listings
    • see shops with most sales
    • Old vote box was a good idea, see if that can be resurrected with more safeguards against mis-use
    • Look at X-street, OnRez
    • Amazon model for ranking based on purchases
  • How do you find new places
    • Mostly search and sometimes by talking to people
    • Very rarely find new places by roaming around
    • Sometimes find things by looking at people's profiles
    • Find places through onRez
  • Search summaries
    • Will be good to have "bot free" area flag :)
    • Number of people in a location, if we can get rid of bots from those #s
    • Show location characteristics
    • recommendations from well known people IW
    • Lag!
  • Bot fighting suggestions
    • if an Avatar hasn't SAID anything or MOVED for a certain period its NOT ACTIVE
    • Use purchase information to separate bots from real avatars
    • Use Kaptcha programs to limit bot generation
    • Create a valid "bot" class avatar for valid bot uses
    • How about using some kind of achievement system like WoW uses to separate bots from reals?
    • Use time spent IW - too much time may mean bot
    • Criagslist style bot fighting
    • "Trusted" resident panel to review flagged bot regions
    • Resident volunteer group to investigate bot abuse for traffic numbers
  • Other
    • Quote: "no one with more than 3 month experience in SL rents a shop in a region with more than 10K traffic just because there is 10k traffic"
    • User ratings for showcase (Digg style?)

2008.09.24

• Topics discussed
  • Filtered Search/Search API
    • Search within current SIM
    • Search things in my store
    • Search for SL goods from the web
  • Search UI usability
    • Scrollbar difficult to use
    • Allow residents to pick # of results per page
    • Allow cut and paste in search box
    • Better information in search summaries
      • number of people in the region where the target location is
      • time when event is supposed to happen
      • number of people reg'd for event
      • type of region the target location is in (M, PG etc)
  • Better relevance!
  • Search outside SL
    • http://webi.metaverseink.com/webadapter/results.jsp?query=blue+shoes
    • Ability to get aggregated results by category
    • Look at blogs etc for designer recommendations before searching in SL

2008.08.28

• Topics discussed
  • Groups Search
    • Need easier way to invite people
    • Need the sort by # of people
    • Need faster turnaround time for new groups to show up in search
  • Fix search SPAM!!
  • People Search
    • Need to shoe more summary information about people in search
    • dont show "corrected" spell suggestion for people without any profile!
    • People search from "Friends" list
  • What are the most important aspects of Discovery?
    • For newbies, cool (bot free) places to go to
    • Find/update profiles and avatar customization (perhaps even before login?)