Linden Answers forum closed...

They have closed all our channels of communication with them one by one. They want us to go to the blog where they have more control over things, for once we cant start a thread there, so no chance of us telling them things are wrong in any way. They decide where we can participate turning off comments where they can get responses they dont like.
I really dont understand. People who come to the forums are involved in sl because we love sl and want it to get better. Lindens should really take our posts as a feedback even if they DONT like what they read, instead of throwing a tantrum deleting and sending warnings when people speak up their minds.
After all, Second Life is a business and ANY business basic knowledge is "customer is always right" with us residents being customers.
LL should appreciate that even with their bad service, their lack of customer service, the down time, the lag, missing inventories, etc, we have been loyal and stayed. We're good customers, we're even stubborn because no matter how many times I've said, this is it, I'm selling and leaving this place, once I cool down I stay. This should certainly mean something to them. I wish they stopped considering us their enemies when we point things out and consider it a chance to show all they're capable of.
Yes, I still trust Linden people, yes, I still think that someday they'll take what they now think to be trolling and flamming to be a valuable feedback, yes I still think someday they will really listen to us and think that maybe we want the best for sl, yes I still believe they will understand that if we're willing to pay each month is because they have a great product and that as much as they fail we will still remain here hoping they will do better next time.
Please Lindens, dont let me down, dont let down all the people that like me pay each month to be in this place you helped create.

Only speculation on my part, and somebody else said it as well - Linden Answers was closed primarily because the majority of posts into the forum were evolving into troll posts. Two issues:

As the community grows, the capacity for Linden Lab to keep up with just the polite, honest, on-topic questions takes a hit. They're forced to further streamline the various support avenues. Some will be discontinued in the process. It's a perfectly natural step in the process of growing.

The other issue is of course the trolling. The mean and nasty editorial style comments flaming Linden Lab from every direction that had flooded the forum in recent weeks has pretty much ruined its effectiveness for its original purpose. Why should they be expected to continue hosting this?

From what I have seen, the level of access to executive staff that Linden Lab has traditionally provided is actually pretty rare, when you compare it with other companies with a similarly sized customer base. If you want them to continue that, and continue to interact directly with the community in the way they traditionally have, then perhaps alot of you need to re evaluate how you are using the tools they provide to do so. I have yet to see a forum anywhere on this site entitled "Flames, Gripes and Complaints to Linden Lab".

My $L.01

zk

I think it is becoming clear that the Linden team wish to withdraw from what we could call hosting the 2D web that currently enables "off world" chat by residents, into the Second Life world itself.

I think there are complex reasons for that, some of those issues I can understand from my previous experiences of another type of virtual (but real life related) financial worlds.

On that basis I do fully expect this last forum to eventually close and I think Linden Labs will encourage residents who wish to meet and chat on BBs to migrate to third party sites.

Regards

John

Have you also noticed there is NO MENTOR/GREETER?Life Help signup anymore?!.

All I can say is: yay!

That forum had degenerated into a gripefest.

So the Lindens take away the forum and add a place where we can go in world to bump into them -- that's GREAT! I had a Linden in my shop last night buying stuff and she talked to me via IM. I would take up the person on the $100 bet but I don't want to take your money so easily.

Forums are a thing of the past. SL has grown beyond forums. Can you imagine there being a yahoo forum?? That's what we have here -- something more like yahoo than like some mmo where there are forum junkies who come to get their rage fix rather than playing the game. Especially since you could see the same people complaining over and over again.

So I say YAY!! Well done LL!!

But please please please don't take away the content forums!!!!

OH JOY! so that means there is wors support then ever............Oh thats a real good though So there well be more confusion, more misunderstanding, etc etc etc etc etc.......

Yahoo really has no need for customer support, perhaps there is one for all the advertisers, but I'm sure they have phone lines and customer support e-mails that get responses otherwise nobody would advertise on Yahoo. People who pay LL should be able to ask a support question and get it answered by LL, but right now that just doesn't happen 90% of the time.

I've been watching this happen, his ramping up of Lindens in the village.

Two months ago, you could have crashed Ambleside, Hawkshead, or Grasmere and not bugged a single Linden. Nowadays it's becoming purty common to see at the least MichaelFrancis in Grasmere, Beast and Lucy in Hawkshead, and Harmony, Ben, and Lizzie in Ambleside.

Over the last week, just for yuks, I started catchin' pictures of the various liaisons in Linden Village (click the snapzilla link at the bottom of the page to see 'em). As we as he above, I've seen Cyan, Dustin, Jesse, Torley (who I also had a heck of a long talk *before* the LA closing about liaison stuff), Chadrick, Jose, Claudia, Data, Neo, Michael, and I tink a couple others.

Mari

I to will take the bet at $100 Theres a few of us now and as i said in the blog and i quote it here:

"Good Move LL’s and for the moaners i do believe we were all informed this was going to happen eventually when the other forums were closed. A far better way to reach the population by having more Lindens accessable in world imho and im sure we will see more customer services being more accessable in world, but these things take time.

Maybe if we supportted the changes the transitions would be smoother for all. Its not the end of the world and i can see personally that LLs are listening to us and making subtle changes on the fly and seriously guys no one is forcing us to stay here, we stay because we want to and it has been muted many times that if anyone is that unhappy with SL then we can always leave

We are in a unique enviroment so why not help make it better with constructive points rather than the constant whinging when something changes, embrace the changes, i shudder to think how some people react in RL when faced with changes and challenges if here is anything to go by

I for one look forward to meeting the lindens in this new enviroment

Peace"




I cant find the thread right now but we were told late last year that all these forums would eventually close as the in world communications channels opened for us so yes here will vanish eventually and im sure be archived for future visitors to read the archives and say what a bunch of idiots we all were moaning about SL as by then it will be all grown up

As a footnote how many of the whingers here have downloaded the "Firstlook Viewer" and are using it to help LL's improve things for us?? They ask for our help in these changes and all some can do is moan, so if you are not prepared to help improve our enviroment here please go and moan elsewhere

Peace

I'm not so sure. These forums are restricted to residents only (don't newcomers even need payment info on file to use them now?), whereas those forums infamously closed by other companies due to concerns about bad press were usually open and indexed by major search engines. For example, just Googling for a specific Dell PC would return dozens of complaints posted to Dell's Customer Service Forum in the first few pages of results. Hardly surprising that forum was closed amidst such uproar then.

If LL really are closing the forums for the reason you state, they're scoring a home goal because people will be driven to complaining on forums that are far less controlled but much more accessible to the world at large. Exactly what happened to Dell could happen to Linden Lab, but in this case because they closed their forums.

Dillon - interesting. The only problem with that is that no Lindens will read or post on other forums...so complainers will be screaming into a big, dark hole.

I didn't post on Linden Answers much. But I read it every day to get official answers on common problems. I think it's a very poor form to close the only avenue left with no new options in place...but promises of them "months away" as Robin said.

Pffft. Not a good move but not unexpected given the way things were going. This was telegraphed a long time ago.

You'd be surprised. They even post at Second Citizen from time to time.
Yeah, I agree Gillian. Not unexpected...particularly after all the forum closures last August. I was gonna say I hope the forums won't disappear altogether, but now that Land Management and Linden Answers have gone I'm not sure I care anymore.

Yes, I can hear all the cheering you made when EII closed the Horizons forums down, too.

If anyone wants a perfect example of what is happening to Linden Lab and Second Life, with respect to communication, you have to look no further than the EI Interactive buyout of the MMORPG Horizons: Empire of Istaria. They have been paring away at the forums since the buyout, rarely bothering to post anything, and using a biased, self-interested, jackbooted thug of a lead moderator to quash all dissent against the company (who, incidentally, are under investigation for wire fraud due to their incompetent handling of their billing, causing multiple cases of overbilling).



Yes, we both know very well WHY it had done so, too. It also had many good, important questions in it, which will probably never get answered now.



Uhhh.. Linden Village wasn't "added"; it's been there for a long time. Problem is, like others have said, it's a frickin' ghost town the majority of the time. Basically, unless you want to camp there and wait for a Linden to show up (many of them do NOT show anyone online status anymore), then hope and pray it isn't the educational liaison or some other one who basically "takes a message", there's even less chance that your questions will get answered than with LA.



Maybe we should just shut down RantsRefugees and put up a blog, then? Forums are hardly a thing of the past. They are a valid and useful communications tool, one which pales most of the new "fad" communications facilities by several orders of magnitude. Sure, if you want to just preach to the unwashed masses from the pulpit, blogs are great. However, for organized, orderly communication WITH said masses, they are hideously inefficient, even when they are used properly.

Linden Lab is hardly like Yahoo. Yahoo, amazingly enough, has working phone support, and they respond to emails promptly, even though they are completely different animals. The difference is in professionalism. Yahoo has it; LL, well, you draw your own conclusions.

The reason you saw the same people posting over and over (I posted the same question FOUR TIMES over the course of TWO MONTHS; it wasn't even a complaint, but a valid technical question that only a Linden could answer), is BECAUSE their questions weren't ANSWERED. As we have both seen with EII/PME and Horizons, the more you ignore your customers, the madder they get. It's the same dance, and it's not even really a different tune, either. It takes a CM with gonads to get in there and handle the customers with zeal and charisma; LL seems to be drawing dust up from that well.



I'll remember that when you have issues getting a Linden to listen to your complaints and concerns, too. I'll be sure to review it in gory detail over at RR.



Why bother? Forums are a thing of the past, remember? Use a third-party resident-supported content blog. Yay! *grumble*

While you're cheering, don't forget the immortal words of Pastor Martin Niemöller.

"Has anybody seen my left sock?"?

I think closing the LA forum is a big mistake. It was a line of contact between us and LL. I firmly believe they don't want to listen to us at all, just take our money at the end of the month.

Live Help is non existent and where you would, many months ago, see Lindens in the Welcome Area on a regular basis, they have stopped going and the place has degenerated into a place where new residents land and get ignored by the older residents, who only go there to show off their latest outfit.

1. I agree completely with Mily Sartre.

2. It feels to me like we're people in a house, but the host keeps closing off one room after another, and now we are jammed into a little closet! (Where the host conveniently isn't to be found.)

3. The Linden Answers forum was NOT unscalable. The Lindens work only on what they want to work on (it's the corporate mantra, I kid you not), and nobody wanted to work on it.

Philip Linden said so. He also said the forums depressed the employees. He also said, I believe, that they, LL, failed at that, they aren't good at it, and it was a waste of resources to keep trying.

Now, I appreciate a guy who's willing to say they failed at something.

But such failure was not inevitable - it was a result of the corporate mantra, which has the effect of keeping employees happy, but makes customer satisfaction secondary. It was the result of a refusal to require employees to do the job, or hire people to do the job.

4. Anyone calling other people "moaners" and "whiners" would do well to be aware that the other people could just as easily call him "ass-kisser," "uninformed," or even "stupid," if they were the type to call names.

coco

P.S. With this latest closure, I just noticed - the entire top section of the forums - the section called "Linden Forums" - is now dead.

Until you have a game that is playable you could just as well close down the whole forum. I'd rather see my money invested in making the game playable, than a forum that you don't read.

So fed up right now. Do we get compensation for waste of time and money?

* farts *

I can't believe I was the last person to get an answer on the Linden Answers forum.
/139/5d/161556/1.html
And what a pathetic answer it was.

Wow they claim they have improved customer service. closing linden answers and never helping people there. Phone lines that never get any one. You leave a message and they never even call back. In world service, aka live help. That they only respond to help friends and griefers. WOW great improvements. Maybe you lindnes should go investigate what true customer service i

SO IT WAS YOU!

You're the straw that broke the camel's back!

GET HIM!!

err, her?

It's all my fault, and I apologize to everyone for getting LA completely shut down.

I asked too many legitimate and important questions for LL to handle, so they decided it would be better to just ignore them and move on.

I have asked them now at least 4 separate times, as well as any time I comment on a blog, to fix the missing water issue. It's not even on the known issues list, and they keep telling me it is. Well, it's not there.

As a software developer today, and a product manager several years ago, software development is all I know. Product life cycle is something I take very seriously, and making sure that QA teams forrow the correct guidelines to check for issues from previous builds.

The way that LL keeps track of bugs is the most disorganized process I've ever seen. There are many better ways.

I have even offered to work for LL for FREE and help them with their ongoing QA Team issues. I've even tried to just work as a spanish speaking liaison to tyr to help out, but they'd rather hire someone who doesn't know how to spell Liaison in English OR spanish. I really just wish they would accept the fact that they are doing a horrible job of developing software, and just let us residents who know what we're doing help out a bit.

So, I post 6 straight questions that are 100% legitimate. and LL can't handle it.

Next, I'm flying out to SF, and I'll just stop by the LL offices and just make them let me work for them.

Come on LL, you know you wanna.

God.. it's only been a few hours since I learned about this. I was a bit upset at first.
I don't even care anymore.

Torley's gonna make us a "phone list" of people and places to go when bad things happen. That's far more useful than LA ever was. While I doubt it will ever stop the drum beating of the Professional Complainers.. maybe it will reduce the signal to noise ratio when the complainers realize that there's no public glory in flaming and challenging the lindens in private.

And maybe the occassional REAL problem will get addressed.


Oh and by the way... (took me 3 minutes to find, without using "search"
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/01/workaround-if-you-have-a-missing-water-problem/

the trouble with that is, they have never helped anyone on anything. Even now we are asking for help, in a polite way. They just keep closing the help que. How can they even call it help when they dont even respond. I bet there just sitting with there buds thinking of ohter ways to piss off all there customers.

Well said, Winter.