Need Help? Good Luck!

Sooner or later every Resis runs into a situation that cannot be solved other than by a liaison. That's what they're there for, right? Unfortunately, most likely because of being overworked, understaffed, and soon burned-out, liaisons appearantly have to hide themselves, or they never can get anything done. Understandibly.

Say John Doe needs help. He doesn't need notecards, he just needs a 'clear and obvious' violation of Terms of Service and Community Standards to be taken care of. John files an abuse report, supplies all info required, and hits Submit. Nothing happens. A day later, John returns and expects the issue being taken care of. Still nothing happened.

So John looks further. He selects Help -> In-World Help from the top menu. Black screen, no help, no instructions, no direction elsewhere.

He doesn't give up and tries again, this time selecting Help -> Additional Help. Black screen, no help, no instructions, no direction elsewhere.

Determined to find help, John now selects Help -> Second Life Help F1. After several tries in which he gets an error message saying that the webpage cannot be accessed (some internal server error) he gets to the webpage 'Locations for Support Information' and reads under Inworld help: "Our Inworld Support team handles issues that affect you while logged into Second Life". That's what John wants. So where's the Inworld Support team? He's to visit the Public Help Island.

Littledidheknow that the Public Help Island has become a popular hangout area and newbie store, filled to capacity with Resis lucky enough to get their spot early and not in any need of help, nor in no appearant hurry to leave.

John mastered his camera controls, teleports to a adjoining region and scans the Public Help Island for any avatar with a last name Linden, or a group title 'Second Life Help', or even 'Second Life Greeter'. Noone home. Getting a little desperate, he uses his camera to scan Public Help Island for anyone with a group title that doesn't have 'playboy', 'escort', 'maffia' in it. No luck either.

Back home he returns to the help pages. 'Abuse Reporting' - Questioning his ability to have filed the proper form, attached enough return stamps, and enclosed a check for the correct amount (after all, Linden Lab's procedures have become more complex than those of the IRS and INS combined), he continues following the links... Back to where he was before, he follows the links again, maybe he missed a junction...

With the last bit of determination, he finds something that looks promising: "Residents with a Basic account should go to Help Island and talk to someone there." Arrgghhh!

Next try, trying to find the help on how to properly report abuse, he gets to the the bottom: "You can submit an abuse report by selecting Help > Report Abuse from the menus at the top of the Second Life window." Now John gets frustrated, and surpresses a few of his popular expressions that are unsuitable for a PG region and Forum. "Was this answer helpful? [Yes] or [No]" the webpage dares ask poor John. John hits the button, and instead of being offered any other form of help, he gets the rating results!

"Thank you for your rating.
115 of 943 readers have rated this topic helpful.
Rating: (0.5 of 5 stars)"

At least John now knows that it's not his own stupidity that makes it impossible for him to find any kind of help. 115 of 943 readers found it helpful, leaving 827-plus-John who are still wandering around in SL with no help from Linden Lab whatsoever.

He sees an option to comment and tries that. "Comments entered here will NOT receive a personal email response." Hmm, no good. "Please select 'undefined' from the choices listed below to have a representative contact you." "There we go!" he thinks, but his revived enthusiams is killed before he could even lift an eyebrow. There is no "undefined" to select anywhere on that page!!!

John then tries Linden's official blog, and reads how (ex-)Resis had to file lawsuits in order to get Linden Lab's attention. Is that what it has come down to? Has Linden Lab made itself so unavailable that only a court can get through to them?

John decides to write down some of his frustration and send it to a few people he met. Those more experienced Resis helped him often before, but this time had to tell him that intervention of Linden Lab was required to deal with the violation of Terms of Service/Community Standards. Actually, they also warned him, explaining that Help was no longer supported by Linden Lab.

(translated)

Truer spokes were never worded.

I haven't had a situation that NEEDED LL intervention, but even so I can see how hard it is to contact LL.

I have had an occassion where a Linden was necessary for the a resolution......griefing in world. I got somewhat lucky and found one who took care of my problem in a relatively short time frame. But that seems to be not the luxury now days. No one seems to care anymore. They constantly whine about being overworked and out of resources for in world problems..............well, it's their own making.

They can spend dollars on new continents, new islands, new (innovative) features........yet, they cannot seem to spend dollars on solving current problems.

Bad, bad, bad. It will eventually lead to Sl's fall from the top of the heap in virtual worlds. A freaking shame too.

We have a blog? um..Oh that thing.........