Is there anybody there?

As a result of reading this forum, citing my own experience (my "Catch 22" thread), and talking to helpers on Help Island in desperation, there seems to be a definite trend here in Secondlife... it now seems to be utterly impossible to get any help with any kind of problem that needs intervention by any human being actually authorised by LL to fix anything. Where is Secondlife going? Does anybody inside or outside of Linden Lab actually know, and if they do are they willing to tell the rest of us?

My impression is that there is still a vast army of dedicated and willing helpers out there who are continuing to do all that they can to help residents, in spite of feeling totally snubbed and rejected by "the powers that be" in Secondlife management. Is that an accurate assessment? If the current system is not an improvement on that then why is it not being restored to something that worked? If the change was simply a knee-jerk response to unwelcome volume as an outcome of too-rapid expansion, then why not deal with that, instead of simply driving existing paying customers away with something that doesn't work?

For my own part, I now simply have three e-mailed response numbers, each automatically issued in reply to my own e-mails over the last week or so, none of which appears to have attracted the attention of any human being with the power to help me, since they were automatically issued. My land, which I bought with money purchased with real currency, and have paid LL real currency tier for, is now being built upon by people who have paid nothing to either LL or myself for that privilege, whilst I am myself unable to do anything to prevent that, and am unable to attract the slightest interest in those who were happy enough to take my money.

IS THERE ANYBODY THERE? If you ARE there, and a member of "the management" and reading this, will you please talk to those of us wanting help here, or if you cannot help us personally, then please throw the responsibility for this utter shambles that purports to be a help system back up the management structure in LL to where it belongs?

I have paid in advance for a service which now appears to be being denied to me. Is that a legal way to act in any civilised country?

Written as a totally disillusioned SL resident.

Same here; my computer has been blocked access for days at a time on 4 separate occasions. My tier was $125 per month not counting my Estate land; I have sold all my mainland, will tier down and wait to see what happens.

As a SLGreeter, I'm afraid I don't go to help islands, nor respond to crys of help ingame anymore, unless I happen to meet someone face to face. The sad fact is, now that live help and many of the direct contact pathways have been lost, it seems left upto the volunteers that give their time freely, to sort out frustrated people and situations, and I think it has gone too far. Once upon a time, we could call for assistance from a Linden, but those days are gone.

The solution to your freeloader problem on your land is to turn on autoreturn or set no build. You can also do manual return. Myself I do manual returns every couple of days of the litter left by people.
The lindens will not be in a hurry to response to problems that they feel the residents can solve themselves.

You are able to do quite a blt yourself - there is just a learning curve you have to overcome.

You should take the time to read articles in the knowledgebase or search there for your answers - you might be suprised how much you can do to help yourself.

You can access the knowledgebase by pressing F1 in-world or by going to your account page at secondlife.com, then click the Knowledgebase link at the left, near the bottom of the page.

-2fast

uh....no.
I have spent HOURS reading knowl. base, 'plz read b4 u post', known issues, F1, etc & hav gotten (almost ) no where. these answers are usually 2 things I already know, have nothing 2 do with my issue, or way over my head. (like cars, there's a limit to wat I WANT to know about computers). there has GOT to b a better way.

answers to faq & especially new questions are all over th place, so spread out thers no way u can find wat u need in a reasonabl amount of time. like a library with everything spread all ovr th floor insted of organized on shelves & in filing cabinets. wanna find a book on diy deck building? good luck. "take th time to read'? I'm here to play, not read.

if residents are like me, we're freakin out ovr th unknown, wich always frightens & angers people. many hav invested a whole lot. having no way to find out exactly wats affecting their / our own performance, is infuriating, naturally. sl isnt th only virtual world.

didnt somthin like this happn 2 aol 8-9 years ago ? overwhelmed?

oy!

-sug

You misunderstand my friend, I am unable to do ANYTHING except build on this land now. This has left me with exactly the same privileges as any other resident - on my own land - no more and no less! I am unable to remove ANYTHING belonging to anyone but myself.

If I could solve this I would - I cannot. I need help from someone with access to parameters that I do not have, and that is the only reason I am writing here.

Please read my reply to Destiny Niles. This is not a matter of reading ANYTHING. All of the parameters in "about land" are greyed out... hence I do not have access to remove, reset, change, modify, or any other darned thing - it is as though I no longer own the land I bought and have not yet sold. Nor can I re-form my group who still own the land(?), because it still exists apparently, even though the system says it doesn't and is telling me that I cannot join it! In short, something here is broken, dead, extinct, knackered - it is not simply resting, it is one totally dead parrot!!

Reading things will not help here. I think I am generally aware of what can be done when the software is working correctly. It was not working as anyone might reasonably expect when it created these anomalies that I referred to previously as "Catch 22". It has backed me into a dead end and it is preventing me from extricating myself.

But anyway, may I say that I am grateful for your sincere and well-meant comments.

Wish me luck, I think I am going to need it.

I am very sad to read that, AWM. If the community spirit that existed before, which I experienced when new here myself is now being lost, then something very valuable has died! Perhaps helpers, greeters, and we ordinary residents need to combine our collective clout somehow, to ask the Lindens what they have in mind to replace that priceless asset that they seem to have ignored into extinction. For sure with the present "official" help structure, help with many matters that bother people is going to remain difficult/impossible to obtain. I have not attended any Town Hall meetings in the past - perhaps I should try to attend the one this week?

And that is why we are transforming support. See the recent blog posts here for more info on changes to come:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/27/short-update-from-the-concierge-team/
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/26/introducing-liaison-specialist-teams/
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/25/support-update/
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/24/new-region-down-form-added-to-the-website/

Thanks for your feedback, and keep talking to us!

Hera, I love you dearly, but that's not taking care of *immediate* things... Lovely griefer attack last night with oodles of ugly sponge bobs floating around. The land owner of most of that sim lives in england and was in bed so he wasn't available to send junk back, so 1/3 of Dimidiata was clogged with spinning boxes, and Saturnia was flickering on and off like a faulty light switch. AR sent, but those sometimes take DAYS to get response on, historically. I put a message out via my groups (which i am loath to do), hoping a Linden would hear my plea, but with group IM being so jacked up (yes, I know a fix is on the way), response was X has left this session. But that loss of clicking Help - Live Help for an immediate response "OK, be there in a jiff!" just kind of leaves things floating out in the great grey wilderness of the grids, and our minds.

I understand that it frees you guys up for more important things than "OMG I AM NAKED HOW DO I WEAR CLOTHES?" questions, but we still need a good, live avenue of communication. I am aware that there are some LH replacements in the works, perhaps dangling this carrot more prominantly would be good, to give users hope.

/327/b4/181005/1.html <-- digging brings up gems sometimes

Surely the answer in even the average business plan would be to install the alternatives first, before removing the essential asset in the first place, and then 'appearing' to be knee jerking a substitute plan from what appears to be a problem... that comes over as fire fighting, not planning.

Sorry Heretic, but I'm with Ganesha and AWM Mars all the way on this one! Websites are all very well and good - but they are simply cold dead things that too-often make promises that they are not necessarily going to keep.

You want feedback? OK! This then is my take on it for the Lindens...

Secondlife is an amazing virtual world, with people-like beings in it. How stupid is it then to deal with users' problems with faceless emails, phone help or anything else that does not present a human face? (assuming that any of those eventually happen) Wake up guys! You have a unique and very powerful tool here that could be used to transform the face of helpdesks across the globe, whatever the business being supported might be! Ok, that last was just an idle dream, a business suggestion perhaps, because I know that an imaginative solution such as official avatar helpers in a help centre that you can see and relate to is the last thing you want to consider, when you can't even maintain a type-in live line to help your own customers in-world like it used to be.

You asked for feedback, you got it. Rant over. Bye for now. HG