How best to contact the Lindens?

Methods I have tried:

AR- need to do it ineficiently, get a lot of your friends to AR whatever early and often .... and hope the right Linden sees it sometime this month

Ticket- see AR, but with better tracking

Live Help- no power to do anything other than read the wiki to you and tell you to file a ticket .... even if your complaint is they did not answer your ticket

JIRA- the most voted-on one (adult content) was ignored, need more examples?

official forums- anyone seen a Linden post here since Zindra?

official blog- it never helps that I have seen, but at least you have a slightly better chance of having a Linden read it

Off channel- this might work but is HUGELY inefficient, but by ignoring the rest LL seems to be making this more appealing

Also, office hours.

(I've actually had fair success with tickets, and a bit less with ARs)

It entirely depends on the reason you want to contact LL. I've used support tickets a few times and have always had a solution within a timescale that ranges from 'very quick' to 'acceptable'.

I've put in a handful of ARs over my time too - all for cases of deliberate and offensive or disruptive griefing.

You forgot one:
Develop knowledge of how the use whatever communication channes that arel available to you and use them wisely.

If you don't understand the use of the channels, learn. Using whatever is available to you without such knowledge will cause frustration, anger, and you likely will not get any results (desired or otherwise........you'll simply be ignored).

Problems with the present system? Oh yeah, you bet there is. How to fix it? Well, it sure ain't preaching to choir. Level headed, non accussatory dialog mixed with a lot of readiness to listen and patience will get your message through. Also intelligent, well thought out alternate approaches to the issue is extremely helpful (not that "I'm a successful business person IRL and by God this is the way it should be....your way sucks.".

I can guarantee you that no one here has done so. A person who has taken that route has either triumphed or knows the reason why he/she failed..........and would not be one to rant and rave in a public forum (which wiould undermine any true attempt are good change or help. And that person is smart enoug to know that). They are the smart ones.......and, on this subject, I don't see many (perhaps any.........including myself) showing much more than ignorance..........up to and including stupidity in some attitudes.

Change or help comes from making your issue known, through the proper channels, to the correct people. I see a very big portion of the users of the forums who, though they say they care, actually don't............they want it their way. That's fine if you are in a position to demand your way........but you are not. You need to understand that.

It is one of those "my way or the highway" things.......but it's you who are facing the highway. You want change, go about it the proper way.........and after years of this same BS, people still do not understand that.

If that's a fanboi statement........then I'm guilty.

They seem to be quite prepared to unite with folks at AU, and even participate in the shouts etc.
So, for now, that might be one way to catch their attention. Not sure how effective that would be.

If you call them names or damand attention the effectiveness will not be what you want.

They have no idea who they are connecting with at AU. And you have no idea if you are connecting with a Linden. Maybe after 3 dozen Linden names are created, they will fix that.

Despite claims to the contrary resident input has been taken onboard.

I've been at office hours where people asked for an end to grandfathering on transfer, indeed I spoke up in support of it, they've now announced it's going to happen.

Ad farming generated a lot of hostility towards Lindens due to inaction, so did camping and bots, all of these have to some extent had policies implemented.

The adult content policy was introduced because people were apparently complaining about it, that they made a hash of the policy doesn't begate the fact that it was in reaction to feedback.

Allowing people to reclaim their homesteads, LL cited a date that people who owned homesteads on that date could claim them back, some of us complained that we'd given ours up prior to that date for the same reasons and they agreed and brought the date back to when the price hike was initially announced.

I'm sure there are other examples people could cite, but some of these policies weren't introduced because everyone played nice, quite the opposite, there was some fierce criticism before they were introduced and there's fierce criticism that they haven't been effective.

Other - put an RLV collar on one so you can TP him around at will.

That's certainly true.

Just yesterday I went over to Nascera for the first time in weeks--the topic of ban lines* had come up in a discussion here in the Forums, and I wanted to check my facts.

Interestingly, the Lindens HAD listened to the complaints that the sims were too flat: the new sims being added have a sort of 'irregular mesas' look that will add some visual variety.








*Sadly, ban lines ARE enabled and I think they will cause a problem for LL in the future (in that many of the Beta testers dislike ban lines and won't use them in any circumstances. But the actual newbies won't have learned to dislike ban lines. Therefore when a few people put them up, it's more likely that all the people in a 'neighborhood' will also put them up, and the place will be unwalkable and not easy for flying, either.)

It's whether it happens as the exception to the rule or whether it happens most of the time that counts though.

Aside from that LL does things at a glacial pace: ad-farming and traffic gaming was already there when I joined so it "only" took at least 4 years of virtually non-stop whining before they acted on it and ad-farming/extortion even was something that impacted a signifcant number of people.

In 10 days LL will have fixed the "first land" problem as well and they'll have listened to all those people who suggested different approaches. It once again only took them 2-3 years between the time the problem existed and the time they came up with a solution.

I'm not sure what the general lifespan of a resident is but it's safe to say that a few generations of residents will come and go before any random "problem X" that's there today is addressed.

So even if you want to argue that they do listen they do not listen in a timeframe that matters to the average resident because they'll have left SL for whatever reason long before LL gets around to even acknowledging the problem.

Really?

You puzzle me. Then again, I could use an acquaintance who is all-seeing, all-knowing, so perhaps I should just worship you.

Oops, forgot about them. Although I would class them as off-channel as they are not the best way to contact a Linden (esp if you can not get to the hours of the right one).

You forgot "File a DMCA Take Down order".

And none of the above are probably as effective as locating a linden in-world, if you can, and if they have any authority to resolve your issue.

Interesting that you should choose that example.

Recently a friend was about to start a project inworld. Myself and another person were discussing her plans with her since we had plenty of experience with the results she wanted. We immediately could spot several critical weak points in the business model she was proposing. Rather than state it was flat out impossible to use the model, we both took the tact of explaining what the problems were with it. When asked if there was a chance it could work we agreed there was one .... but a VERY small chance since we could not name any success stories that used the same idea. Several times emphasizing that both of us would have looked to other plans (which we offered specifics on) to accomplish the same goals and meet her level of risk.

Right, saying 'I am successful so you should do xyz' is not a valid logical argument. Making a reasoned case (explaining why plan ABC has a certain chance of results while DEF has another chance) is free advice though. Sure you can choose to be pigheaded and ignore it, but you do not just do the opposite (and cost yourself business) just because you do not want to admit someone else MIGHT know what they are talking about.

BTW, I decided to run this poll because contacting the Lindens came up in another thread .... I did not know what was the way that people have in mind when they say that. I usually have to go off-channel (email, meet inworld, etc) as the responsiveness I get from the ways they put forward is never what I would expect of any company's support channels.

Oh they move slow, there's no two ways about it and their response to feedback when they invite it is awful, as exemplified by what's happening with the forums, they know it's not what forum users asked for, that input has been ignored and I'm sure there are many other examples, well there are, the adult content policy, the homestead fiasco, those were more examples of inviting feedback and ignoring it, it's better not to invite feedback if you're going to do that.

"apparently"?

Allegedly, perhaps.

lol good point, I certainly didn't see any great complaints about it. I'm told that some people are scared to go public with their complaints but quietly contact the Lindens about issues, which is to be fair a convenient excuse for implementing policies we've seen no great clamour for.

I haven't had a lot of need for support, but when I have, I've had pretty good luck with tickets; they've been responded to within a day or two and resolved almost as quickly. The last one though, it's been a week with no response. It's the problem with alts with payment info not showing up in the profile (MISC-315). The long response time seems odd to me because this is an issue that the Lindens recognize and specifically told people to file tickets for, because there is a "quick fix" for the problem. Ah well, nothing and nobody is perfect.

batphone, works everytime

A note on a rock, thrown at their heads can be effective.

Things that worked for me in the past:

IM a V-Team linden (nolonger works now the mentor program is abandoned)
Tickets (only works for estate problems, others get to many tickets per linden)
Live help (same as tickets, they have no power but can allert the right linden in charge or tell you what linden to contact)
IM a resi-linden (for dealing with an AR investigation if you actualy know what linden worked on it)
Other channels largely depend on what linden is working on it.