Answering questions on Linden Answers

Delighted to see that really fundamental questions, which affect so many people on the grid like this:

/139/8a/154493/1.html

are answered within 24 hours

While unimportant questions like this:

/139/4d/153524/1.html

are still not answered after 5 days

My question.

Why are so many questions left unanswered when they are extremely relevant?

Yes I do have an ulterior motive, I still have a question unanswered that is now a mere three days old.

edit: Thank you Torley and yes, I will take your challenge to suggest workflow ideas, which I will email.

All the best

Hi Nowun,

Inshort: the Community Team I'm on is taking a serious look at the future of Linden Answers. A large percentage of the questions don't belong here and aren't appropriate, or wouldn't have to be asked at all if we had a Knowledge Base already containing the answers in articles. So that's clearly important.

Over time, we've aggregated a "net" of a lot of the hot spots missing, and we're making moves to address that, and put those answers in the Knowledge Base. It'll be ongoing, and noticeably a lot more actionable when we have a fulltime Knowledge Base Manager. Watch for a formal job opening on:

http://lindenlab.com/employment

in the near future.

Many relevant questions here happen to be the same (duplicate) questions, or have already been answered on the blog, as detailed here:

/139/7a/152037/1.html

or on another source. Likely even more were answered previously on Linden Answers, which is why more searching should be done. It's thus to our benefit to keep learning and take suggestions for how we can make that existing info more accessible.

Like Live Help inworld, Linden Answers wasn't designed to scale (many questions, few Lindens), and rather than disappoint a lot of people who'll likely never have their questions answered — we'll have to adapt.

Due to a lack of luxurious time, we unfortunately can't get to all questions. Some are too abstract, some aren't really questions at all (incl. troll posts, which waste everyone's time), and some just don't have answers we're in a position to give yet. We can't treat all questions the same, because they're not equal. We do strive to triage things in the heat of the moment, and I know firsthand that recent blog updates were in response to timely questions, including those which came up here.

Additionally, many Lindens, myself included, answer numerous questions throughout the day on other channels too, like blog comments, emails, IMs, etc. All of these take time, and the pie is only so big. Thus, it becomes wise to see what the peaks and patterns are, and handle those as they come, time allowing, of course.

As we continue to improve...

I'm actively vetting time-saving tips to streamline workflows. If you've got any, please send them to me: [email=torley@lindenlab.com]torley@lindenlab.com[/email].

For the more overarching umbrella of scaling support, please see:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/11/26/changes-coming-to-customer-service/