Since Help Request was removed from the Help menu in the Second Life viewer on Wednesday, several Residents have expressed their concern to me that no immediate help will be available for urgent problems on the grid, primarily griefing attacks and region downtime.

We had two significant problems with Help Request: one was asking volunteers to take on a task that was extraordinarily difficult as the grid population skyrocketed, and the other was the inefficiency of IMs as a communication option for support questions.  Trying to respond one-to-one to each question became a herculean task.  Worse, the system made no distinction between urgent problems affecting many, and questions from individual Residents requiring a less immediate response.

Yesterday Cyn Linden blogged about how to contact support in the absence of the Help Request line, and I thought I would elaborate on a key change which will make this new system work: Liaison Specialist Teams. (more…)