[Archived - MissMaya] Why have our catalog products been culled at 10.000?

Posted by “RigsK” on May 09, 2023.

Thank you all! The engineering team is investigating.

Posted by “MissMaya” on May 09, 2023.

Yes but when you click them, they don't go above the first 10.000 products. Same in classic client.

Posted by “cbmvb” on May 09, 2023.

Hi @Lyciel666​ my hope is that it is a glitch. It is possibly due to an upgrade to their database software or a new database product they installed which has a setting in one or more places that limits search results to 10,000 to reduce system load. This limit is common in database systems. With that said, this change took place at some point in mid April and until then, people were used to being able to see everything available on a given search term. Moreover, creators were used to seeing the actual number of items they have listed and the ability for someone (if they really wanted to) to go back and look at their least popular items.

In addition to all that, while I am not much of a mobile user, I do remember you could do a lot more scrolling in the shop on mobile. Now it appears that after some of the most popular items the scrolling just stops.

My hope is that IMVU will find these settings and fix them to restore the catalog to the way it was up until very recently.

Posted by “Lyciel666” on May 09, 2023.

Seriously? Now thousands of developers have to share 834 shop pages? Then it's like winning the lottery when someone buys a product that happens to be on the 834 pages. If you're one of those unlucky people whose products can only be found by filtering, you're out of luck. Which of the newcomers is filtering for the names of developers who don't even know the newcomers? Another brilliant idea from IMVU... thanks

Posted by “cbmvb” on May 08, 2023.

Hi @RigsK​ here i something I just noticed related to this... On the Classic web shop, where it lists how many clothing items vs rooms / furniture, that number is still capable of going above 10,000. See the section in the red outline below. These numbers are accurate for my shop.

I have also noticed with two other shops (from other creators) that I know to have above 20,000 items, I can see numbers in this section that are above 10,000.

So, somehow that particular count has not changed (as far as being restricted to 10,000). But most other counts are limited to 10,000.

Posted by “cbmvb” on May 04, 2023.

Thanks very much @RigsK​!

Posted by “cbmvb” on May 04, 2023.

Hi @RigsK​ this is the most recent screenshot I have from a search within the Classic web catalog. This is dated February 23, 2023 and is for the keyword pajamas. It shows 35,235 products visible in the catalog with the keyword "pajamas".

Posted by “RigsK” on May 04, 2023.

Thank you @cbmvb​ and @MissMaya​ - super helpful. We're opening a ticket for this.

Posted by “cbmvb” on May 04, 2023.

Hi @RigsK​ thanks very much for looking into this. I have a few screenshots. While my most recent screenshot from the Classic catalog is dated March 25, 2023, I strongly believe I saw numbers above 10,000 as recent as beyond the second half of the month of April 2023.

I've included screenshots from my catalog which were taken on March 25, 2023 and March 3, 2023.

March 25, 2023:

March 3, 2023:

I have a screen shot for Men's Clothing and then on the search term Pajamas (both male and female) from November, 2022. In these it shows over 35,000 items with the keyword Pajamas. It listed over 4 million items for Men's Clothing. But again, numbers above 10,000 were present in these areas as recent as the second half of April. I just haven't taken screenshots of these recently.

November 14, 2022:

November 5, 2022:

This is from February 16, 2022:

I also included the top of my Product List in Creator Reports showing I had 14,926 items (counting hidden items). That was taken just now. I included the last part of my current tier report which showed how many items were publicly available in the catalog as of May 1, 2023.

I believe these are the most recent screenshots I have. But if I find anything more recent I will post it.

Thanks to you and the rest of the IMVU staff who are working on this!

I have noticed some of the searches work a little differently now, or at least return slightly different results from before. If IMVU recently got a new database product or update to its existing database software, it is possible the 10,000 query result limit is a setting in one or more places.

Examples of recent search changes:

On Classic Client if I searched on a username for chat rooms it would return only available (non hidden) chat rooms owned by that exact user in the results. Now it seems more broad and is including rooms by users that have a partial name match.

In the web Classic catalog, it used to be more of an "or" search. Searching for "plaid pajamas" would return almost anything with either word. Now, searching that returns items with the specific phrase "plaid pajamas".

So, in my view, some things have evidently changed with the database beyond just the number of items (records) returned.

Posted by “MissMaya” on May 04, 2023.

@RigsK​ I attached a screenshot of the number that should show up. Where else would they show up if not under a browse of our unique ID's? I don't remember every name of every product I made so I need to be able to search for them somewhere, where else would I browse for the other 7000 items? Apparently the creator program list is also limited so we can't use that either.

I also want to point out that I have furniture and rooms and that those categories aren't even showing.

That is really weird. Like, I know I have furniture, I know I have rooms... maybe not as much as clothing but I do have them.

But my catalog link is ONLY giving me a clothing category.

https://www.imvu.com/shop/web_search.php?manufacturers_id=45431667

Thank you for looking into this and all of our concerns, it is appreciated ♥ Also. here is a tiers screenshot that shows my real product count, I think this is only "visible" products though because the number is much less that the real number I actually have.

Posted by “RigsK” on May 03, 2023.

Hi Folks,

We're trying to dig into this. Could you please send us screenshots of your catalog numbers that show the number over 10,000? Thank you!

Posted by “cbmvb” on May 02, 2023.

Thanks @RigsK​ for sharing these concerns with other staff. One thing I would like to add (which I think is very important) is this: IMVU often states in marketing that its catalog is larger than other metaverses. In the very recent days (like maybe as recent as 10 ago) all categories and search terms would deliver a count that was higher than 10,000 if there happened to be above 10,000 for that category or term. Clothing in general (with nothing narrowing it down) was either in the millions or at least high hundreds of thousands as far as the count (no, I didn't go page by page to see how far back I could go --- I'm just referencing the total number listed when searching). But when it says 10,000 results for everything now, that doesn't really fit in with the marketing statements about a bigger catalog than most if not all other metaverses.

I personally do "get it" in terms of database load as I have prior experience with programming database driven apps. But most people using IMVU don't have that prior experience. And, higher numbers beyond 10,000 were displayed in the very recent past.

Suggestions: If nothing else, it would be good to at least have the count returned as it was a few days ago and maybe if someone actually goes close to page 371 in Classic web, give a message saying they need to narrow down their search with more specific criteria. Or when the results are initially returned (if they are above 10,000) just add a message above like "Your search returned #,###,### results. Displaying the first 10,000. Please use specific keywords to narrow your search."

Posted by “4u” on May 02, 2023.

Its looking like all search results are limited to 10,000. Search for common terms in the main catty eg: "magic" , "blue", all show 10,000 results.

Posted by “RigsK” on May 02, 2023.

Thank you for your feedback everyone. Sharing with the team.

Posted by “cbmvb” on May 02, 2023.

Hi @RigsK​ as one who has done database programming in the past i can understand the idea of the limit ​on query results to avoid overloading the database. Thus the need to narrow searches down with specifics (keywords, choose a category, etc.).

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With that said, counts on the total number of items creators were only recently (as in a matter of a week or so ago) displaying the actual number and not 10,000. This was a point of achievement I used to look at and it used to drive me to create many more hoping to one day see 20,000 there (and I sure have seen above that number on a couple of creators' shops less than a month ago) or even 25,000. I'm sure other creators did for their shops too. I have saved plenty of screen captures as I hit certain numbers and I'm happy to share and list dates when these were taken.

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Indeed our Creator Reports / Product List still have accurate totals. But that is not the same as a public count and it doesn't show the count of what is actually visible in the shop. It just counts everything submitted.

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Could the public count at least be restored even if people can't go page by page beyond 10,000?

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Beyond that there is a serious problem narrowing things down when Studio does not have subcategories like Classic. Personally I am very specific about the subcategory I choose. I have nearly 15​,000 items on this account and lots of subcategories so nothing comes close to 10,000 in any given category. This is one of the major reasons why I don't use Studio and continue to do everything in Classic Create. When there is this 10k limit (again I can understand having the perspective of formerly programming database driven apps) and everything that is a shirt goes into a single "tops" category, unless it gets a lot of sales it will not be seen without users applying lots of specific keywords in their search. Without better categories in Studio many things will get created and almost never be sold.

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Thanks very much for reading this long piece and considering.​