Avoid Scheduled Region Restarts During Japanese Prime Time (22:00–24:00 JST)
Crea Shepherd
This is not a request concerning one specific region. This is a request for a permanent scheduling policy change affecting the Japanese Second Life community.
Second Life Support (Ticket #2555453) advised me to submit this request through the official Feedback Portal so that it can be considered by the appropriate team.
For many years, Region Restarts have repeatedly occurred shortly after 10:00 PM Japan Standard Time (JST). Recently, this has again become frequent, sometimes occurring on more than half of the days in a week.
10:00 PM JST is one of the most important prime-time periods for the Japanese Second Life community. A large number of clubs, DJ events, live performances, dance events, and community gatherings begin at or around this time.
When a Region Restart occurs immediately after an event begins, the entire event is interrupted. Performers, staff, and visitors are forced out of the region, and organizers may have to restart the event from the beginning.
Even if the interruption lasts only a few minutes, the impact is significant. These are organized events that people have spent considerable time preparing.
We understand that maintenance schedules may be influenced by North American operating hours and staff availability. However, Second Life is a global service, and Japanese and Asian peak-use hours should also be taken into account.
This issue has been raised before. In the past, after complaints were submitted, Restarts during this time period often decreased for several months, but eventually the same problem returned.
For that reason, we are not asking for another temporary adjustment.
We are requesting a permanent operational policy change.
Specifically, we strongly request that Linden Lab:
Avoid scheduled Region Restarts between 10:00 PM and midnight JST whenever reasonably possible.
Formally take Japanese and Asian regional peak-use hours into account when planning maintenance schedules.
Establish a scheduling policy that avoids routine maintenance and Region Restarts during major regional prime-time periods.
We are not asking Linden Lab to delay emergency maintenance, security-related work, or Restarts required to address serious technical problems.
However, routine maintenance and scheduled Region Restarts should not repeatedly occur during one of the busiest periods for the Japanese Second Life community.
The Japanese Second Life community has supported and participated in Second Life for many years. Repeated disruption of its main event hours by routine operational scheduling is extremely frustrating and increasingly difficult to accept.
Please do not treat this as an isolated issue affecting one particular region. This is a scheduling and operational policy issue.
If you are a Second Life resident in Japan or elsewhere in Asia and have experienced event disruption caused by Region Restarts around 10:00 PM JST, please support this request.
We sincerely hope Linden Lab will consider a permanent improvement rather than another temporary reduction in 10:00 PM JST Restarts.
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Crea Shepherd
Thank you again, Rizzy. Your comment made me think about the problem from another angle.
If Second Life technically has to perform a routine Region Restart every day, and if that restart must happen at one fixed global time, then perhaps the fairest principle would be:
Choose the time when global Second Life concurrency is at its daily minimum.
In other words, the restart time should not primarily be chosen for the convenience of one operating region, nor for the convenience of Japan, Europe, or North America individually. It should be chosen based on when the fewest residents worldwide are actually online.
Publicly observed Second Life concurrency patterns have historically shown a daily low during the early-morning hours in Second Life Time / Pacific Time, while the highest activity occurs much later in the day.
That suggests there may be a global “least-impact” window in which the number of residents affected by a routine five-minute restart would be significantly smaller.
For example, a window around 11:00 UTC would correspond approximately to:
20:00 in Japan
early morning on the U.S. West Coast
early morning on the U.S. East Coast
late morning or noon in Europe
This would still inconvenience some residents, of course — as you correctly said, it is always prime time somewhere.
But if one fixed time is technically unavoidable, minimizing the total number of affected residents seems more objective and fair than repeatedly placing routine restarts inside the same regional evening prime-time period.
So perhaps the broader principle could be:
Use actual global concurrency data to determine the routine restart window, and periodically review that window as usage patterns change.
I think this would turn the discussion from “Which region should be inconvenienced?” into “How can we minimize the total impact on the entire Second Life community?”
I would be very interested to hear what others think about this approach.
Crea Shepherd
Thank you, Rizzy. I think that is exactly the key point.
It is always prime time somewhere, which means that simply moving scheduled Region Restarts to another fixed hour would only shift the inconvenience from one community to another.
That is why I believe the real issue is not “which single hour should Linden Lab choose?” but rather “how can scheduled restarts be managed more fairly across a global platform?”
Possible approaches might include:
offering several predefined restart windows for Private Regions,
treating Mainland separately, since there is no individual Region owner choosing the schedule,
avoiding repeated concentration of routine restarts on the same regional prime-time period,
publishing planned restart windows more clearly in advance,
and distinguishing emergency restarts from routine scheduled maintenance.
In other words, my original request began with the repeated disruption around 22:00 JST, but I would be very happy if this discussion led to a broader and fairer restart policy for residents worldwide.
Thank you again for putting the core issue so clearly.
Rizzy Khaos
it's always primetime somewhere.
MASAMASA Ort
I agree with Crea Shepherd, thank you.
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Merged in a post:
Avoid Scheduled Region Restarts During Japanese Prime Time
Sequanna Kidd
Avoid Scheduled Region Restarts During Japanese Prime Time
Crea Shepherd
Thank you for your thoughtful suggestion.
I agree that simply moving scheduled Region Restarts to another fixed time could create the same problem for residents in another part of the world.
Allowing Private Region owners or Estate Managers to choose from several predefined restart windows could certainly be one possible solution for private estates.
However, I think there are two additional issues that would need to be considered.
First, Mainland regions are managed by Linden Lab, so there is no individual Region owner who could choose a restart window there.
Second, residents from many different time zones may use the same region, so the preferred restart time of the Region owner may not necessarily reflect the actual usage pattern of everyone in that region.
For that reason, I think the broader goal should be to avoid repeatedly concentrating routine Region Restarts on the same regional prime-time period, rather than simply assigning one fixed preferred time to each region.
For Private Regions, selectable restart windows could be useful. For Mainland and the grid as a whole, Linden Lab may also need to consider actual regional usage patterns and distribute restart times more fairly across time zones.
Thank you again for adding an important perspective to this discussion.
Bavid Dailey
Restarts will always affect some subset of users negatively. Moving the impact to a different time zone doesn't address the basic problem. Some new thinking is needed.
As a strawman to start a discussion I propose the following.
1) Restarts should be staged as a small number of timezone restarts
2) the outage time windows should be published
3) region owners should be able to select which of the windows their region will be restarted in.
4) the chosen restart window should be visible to all users, part of the about land response perhaps.