When is someone in space, yet not in space?

Have you ever had a space installation fail? I reckon I have been party to around 10 in my Groove career. until today I did not think them a problem: today I changed my mind.

Today I witnessed first hand being in a space and yet not being in a space. This started because I sent an invitation to my colleague Steve. He complained about an error "cannot install space" or something. What is wierd is that on my computer he showed as in-space - and I received no error apart from Steve's verbal rendition.

This is bad. It implies that I think he is able to read content in a space that I think is important to him - but as far as he knows the space does not exist! This is a bug.

You might ask how could this occur. let's look at the process. Firstly when someone joins a space Groove re-issues all the security signatures. Not a problem there. But at what actual moment is the signature suite updated? The answer is when the invitation is finally accepted (by both parties). From that moment on the target user is officially a space member.

According to you they are a space member before they have the space. According to them, they are not a member until the space is installed.

After that moment a copy of the space is prepared for shipping as "deltas", These are sent over and assembled. And finally installed. Or not. Currently there is no positive affirmation that space installation succeeded to the sender. To the recipient all they get is a temporary notification. No permenant reminder is left in Message History. Once the temporary notification is gone, that's it.

Both parties are in total ignorance of the other's status. The sender thinks everything is rosy, and the recipient forgets space invite as not a problem "I will get so-and-so to send it another day and get another invite", s/he thinks.

But of course the sender NEVER ever realises the problem exists. So they never resend.

Even worse than that they continue to think the recipient is probably ignoring content or not wishing to contribute.

When and how does the sender or recipeint ever correct the situation? The answer is probably never and if they try then probably with great difficulty.

Dear reader. As a challenge may I ask you how YOU can confirm that anyone showing according to your members list actually is in space - assuming they never post. Assume the recipient is on the other side of the globe so you cannot see their computer. I think the only way is to post something and ask them verbally for confirmation. But remember they may think you are stupid. They are saying "What space? What is s/he ranting about!"

You might ask, "Andy, why don't you submit this as a bug." Well, dear reader, you and I need to know how widespread this problem is. The reason for this is that we are part of a community. If the community is dysfunctional we need to know. So please can you IM me if you think you have suffered and let us gather information - and solutions.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 12:46