When did we get so mean?

QFT (I'm just sure this is the quote for which Oryx most wants to be immortalized. )

I still haven't looked at the apartment and store threads; I'm not sure why exactly, but I think my reaction is that speeding someone's passage from n00b to titan of industry is Not My Problem. I'm eager to answer questions along the way, but the forum equivalent of Business In A Box is, uh, somebody else's department.

But I don't object to being reminded occasionally that we have some responsibility for keeping RA discussion civil and productive. If one doesn't have a constructive response to a question, it's worth remembering that not responding at all is a valid option.

I do object, however, to a hint in this thread that RA should be "just the facts, ma'am"--that it's out-of-bounds to explore a topic any deeper than the question-as-asked. If I wanted to work in a call center, I'd move to Bangalore.

i thought the whole point of Resident Answers was to get just that, answers. as its been pointed out several times, if the question is "beneath" you, don't answer. if you feel its been done to death, move on. if you cannot offer anything helpful and or useful to a question skip it.

yes, i too have been guilty of snarkyism, and realised im impressing no one, nor am i being helpful. i agree also with the poster who stated that many here don't realised how lucky they are RA is still here, i agree, considering the same attitude, or shades of it, got the general forums shut down.

Once again, I'm the one who was snarky in the store thread. Too many people are assuming the expectation is that newbies will find what they are looking for using search. It is not.

Try searching for something like "store". If you don't know to limit the search to specific forums (and a newbie wouldn't be familiar with the organization) and to keywords in only the subject, the braindead search will return a lot of noise. Try typing in something like "open a store" and you get not a more focused search result but a less focused search: anything containing store *or* open.

Braindead, stupid, useless search. I do *not* expect a newbie to have mastered it before asking a question.

What I do expect is that someone asking a question will state what they *do* know, or specifically what they are looking for. Most answers will otherwise be unhelpful. Someone, or a couple someones, posted a detailed all-encompasing response. Seems like a nice gesture, but do you really think it'll be helpful? More likely the OP will skim it and not find what she's really looking for, or will decide the task is hopelessly difficult.

The OP can not help but learn a lot about stores is she'd just visit a few. Having seen vendors vs no vendors, spaces for rent (with helpful notecards), stand-alone stores, modeled objects and pictured objects, a variety of different products and display techniques, etc etc etc, and having bought a few items to see how the process works, she'd then be able to narrow the question to something that could be answered satisfactorily.

I admire the people with the patience to answer an unfocused question, but I really don't think you're being as helpful as you think you are. Frankly, I think any answer that quickly gets to the meat, "if you're thinking this will be as easy as being told how to do it you will fail" is more helpful.

And yes, as a matter of fairness, someone asking for others' time should show they've expended *some* effort themselves.

/me still lurking

The paying customers want a place to debate, and not one of the 3rd party forums. That is why this one is used. LL needs to start responding to their paying customers and open a general discussion board.

They use to have one and it got shut down for the reasons in this thread.

It is called using common sense and judgment. We all make judgments everyday, based on our experiences, our knowledge and just plain gut feelings. Otherwise not one damn thing would ever get done in RL or SL.

They shut it down because it hurt the feelings of the Lindens to have to read negative complaints about themselves. The truth hurts sometimes. But the past still doesn't change that the paying customers want a general discussion forum, as a service provider, it is up to LL to find a way to give the customers what they want. Third party forums don't cut it.

You can quote a phrase for a direct match, just like you would when you're searching for an exact match on Google.

Combinations of "start/open a store/business" yield threads with tips and information about:
* the futility of "business in a box" (with detailed explanations of why)
* you'll need land
* you don't have to be premium, you can rent
* various building tips (including the fact that there are building classes)
* most people don't actually make money

Will those answer the question? No, they'll likely create a dozen new questions but that's actually a good thing because they'd have something specific to ask questions about. "It looks like I need land, but how..." shows that you at least did some basic research and specific questions will yield more useful responses than a vague "How do I..." all-encompassing question.

If you use the KB one match yields "Guide to Jobs in Second Life" (http://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=3977) which should at least looking interesting enough to click even when you're looking about information about a store and is actually quite good for a KB article.

Search won't answer a lot questions to someone's satisfaction, but definitely for "vague" questions it'll give you various leads on things to ask about.

Actually they are not obligated to provide any forums at all. In fact I am shocked we still have the ones remaining. It would be sad if some SL users left only because LL didn't provide a General Argument forum.

If they want to please their PAYING customers then they are obliged. But of course this is LL, customer service is not a strong point of theirs.

As I said, I don't expect anyone to know to do that before they're allowed to ask a question. I suspect that most will not quote a phrase for search, or limit search to relevant forums, or search titles only. If you type "open a store" (without quotes) into the keywords box you will get a lot of noise, and I suspect that that is the experience of most people who use search. It'd help if providing more information would indicate more specificity, not less. That is, keywords should be ANDed, not OR'd. Try it at google and you'll find it works this way.

A more realistic expectation is that someone will have read some posts. Since there's a long history preserved you can do a lot of lurking in a single sitting. When I visit a forum looking for help I don't spend weeks lurking, I read weeks worth of relevant posts. And I use the search.

Used to be it was expected you'd do some reading before posting.

Edited to add: In fairness, "how do I open a store", or even more specific "how do I set things for sale" or "why do some stores use vendors" and a million other store-related questions are not asked as often as people think. "Rent or buy" is done to death, but even that is burried in the noise.

My expectation of the store thread poster wasn't even that she'd read enough forum posts to answer her questions, but that she'd spend time in world before asking how to open a store.

In fairness, it is not just newbies who find it hard to find what they want.

First rule of Customer Service. Even if you were perfect someone would still be carping.

In fairness, they shut it down because a small minority of customers paying or otherwise used it to make the company look bad, attacked each other and many other things. There's no onus at all on a company to provide an open and relatively unrestricted Forum on the same page as their corporate face with the ability for people to rubbish the product.

Perhaps the forum description neeeds to be changed to suit the residents that post responses. At the moment it says:

"We want to encourage a comfortable space for getting the help you're looking for, so don't be shy—go ahead and ask, and make some new friends too!"

and perhaps should be changed to:

"If you are going to ask a question please indicate that you have tried to resolve the question yourself, or just don't ask it, as people often have better things to do with their time".

No one expects a new poster to have resolved everything, but there should be more thought than "zomg that looks neat hee hee tell me how to do it!!" Because if these kinds of posts got the response they deserved (which is, none) the same people complaining that people are mean would say that the forum is unhelpful.

A lot of us take our businesses seriously, and if someone else can't be bothered to make basic observations, it is understandable that such a post would be met with derision.

I'm rather fed up with people thinking steep learning curve is the one that means it's hard....it isn't. A shallow one would be hard. Steep means you start and the first few steps are really easy and it only later levels out and gets harder-just what Rhaorth said was her experience, actually....

But that's just the linguist, and if I dare mention that or try to correct someone, I will be told off, I know.

I am not really different in SL, on the forums, and in RL-I AM snarky. Sorry.

Derision is not really necessary though is it? I am as guilty as the next person on this, occasionally, and it does annoy me if someone does not appear to have used the search for rudamentary things. And also when people keep raising the same subjects in new threads ...

However a lot of the time I just don't answer.

I've never found you so.

Ive just read a question posed by a new resident on 21/12.
It was well answered by many experienced people, it covered many aspects of where this new resident could go for help and gave good advice as well.

This was the thread

/327/17/231175/1.html


Today I read a new question posed by the same new resident...

/327/d3/231632/1.html

Now sniping and sarcasm might not be desirable in RA but given these types of requests for help and advice and the apparent disregard of said help/advice given, I can see exactly how some people may become exasperated.

Cherry, I am not one to beat people over the head about not using search.

And although it is annoying to have the same threads show up every day or two, I don't beat people over the head about that.

But some people come here and basically expect us to tell them how to run their business, as Caroline just pointed out. This is not the same as asking for something specific they don't understand. That's just ridiculous.

Yes, that'll do nicely. How do we get Strife to make the change?

Seriously, though, it's not a matter of time. The answer I gave took time, and if it successfully conveyed the warning, "this path is fraught with failure" then it was time well spent.

It's not a matter of time, it's a matter of making reasonable requests. "I just signed up, how do I open a store" just struck me as over-the-top unreasonable. I think it was greedy and disrespectful.

I didn't read the two threads that seem to be under discussion here, but I do have a couple of observations about THIS thread:

>> If someone has a problem with something I've posted or the style in which I've posted it, I request strongly that they simply IM or PM me with their objection. Threads like this, where accusations of meanness or cruelty are levied against the entire forum, dishearten me greatly and I think do not help anything. There was another recent thread along this vein, and afterwards I began backing off from responding to newbies questions, probably for fear of somehow, inadvertantly, tragically traumatizing them. That is actually why I never read the shop or apartment threads.

>> I do sometimes point to older threads, which I'm beginning to get the impression is always perceived as insulting and useless. This puzzles me ... there are some older threads with excellent information in them that cannot be surpassed. But, bowing to popular opinions, I guess I will keep those links to myself completely in the future. *confused* I really do fail to see why a simple link to an older thread is wrong, but oookaaayy ....

I'm going back to wrapping presents Panettone, anyone? icanhaz sweet butter too!

Some general commentary from me on the debate so far and some of the issues raised by people.

The origional post was not about 2 specific threads. More a general pattern.

I actually agree it is not our job to make SL look like a utopia it is not. Rose colored glasses are not good things. That said though, it is often HOW we say something more than WHAT we say that makes the forums appear a hostile place. Is it so difficult to ask the poster of an absurdly general question "Could you be a little more specific? It would help me answer you better." Rather than writing them off as lazy and getting snarky. IF they actually DO respond with more specific questions great. If they dont, hey have at it, I like a good debate as well as the next person.

Maybe some of you have been so lucky as to never have been in the position where you had an idea but had no clue how to even start. I have been there many times. Took me months to figure out HOW to search the forums and to this day I still stink at finding what I want. When I landed in SL I had come from TSO. In TSO land was zoned (sort of) you couldnt put a Store on a residential. I asked basically the same kind of question. How do I start a store? Why because I couldnt find Store plots! I really wanted to know "Whats the first step?" . Now in hindsight I could have phrased it much better, But at the time I was clueless. Yes probably some are looking for a business kit in the forums. But I am betting some legitimately dont know the first step. A careful gentle probe for more info would weed the 2 out quickly.

It is true that we had at one time a General Forum. Yep it got ugly regularly. Driected at both LL and other residents. As to WHY it got shut down I dont think anyone has a definite answer. LL quoted something about usig too many resources if I remember correctly. No one bought the answer, I do remember that clearly.

On starting Resident Answers it was flat stated it was for answering of resident questions and was NOT intended to replace the old General Forum.

Many people have worked hard to turn resident answers into the old general forum. I have been guilty of this on occasion although I have gotten better at monitoring myself with that regard. All I can say is beware. LL I think would be very happy to shut down all the forums entirely. I would hate to lose all the vaulable info in RA, and the other specific topic forums. But in this day of LL withdrawing as much in the customer service dept as posible its probably coming.

I have decided not to go find the 10 or so threads that led to my first post. Those that undestand what I was referring to dont need them. Those that dont understand will just use them to continue the sniping. So the time it would take is wasted effort.

TO the one that poked me with a pin. /me removes pin hands it back and says " see I didnt pop or deflate, still standing here strong"

I will watch this thread with interest but I have pretty much said my piece. Feel free to go on with the debate. I grew a thick forum skin long ago.

If the product is not up to snuff, then maybe the company needs the negative comments in order to improve. Now we have a worthless blog and a select few being invited to corporate headquarters to give the Lindens verbal sex.

If the customers are asking for it, then there is an onus to provide it.

LL is fairly lucky in that they currently have what amounts to a monopoly. But when a competitor does come along who will respond to customer wants and needs, SL will die a quick and dirty death.