@Timeless: Well-said!

@Rosie: I think it says a lot about people who skip over my text! I generally get better communication from those who've read it, and I do my best to read theirs in kind — e.g., creators who prefer notecards over IMs, I'll do that! Thanks for sharing how you do it, that reinforces my point. And NO ONE is above being courteous, that's rude.

@Taryn: I'm going to see that soon, you know how much I luv synchronicity. You're… so welcome!

@MincedMedia: I appreciate you sharing this, as sad as it is. Then, wording things clearly and carefully may serve as a sort of "human filter" to point out *who is* reading.

I love life's graceful shortcuts, but in cases where someone "cuts in line" and causes trouble for many more people, that's selfish. I prioritize dynamically.

I understand the "one-on-one attention" and that's why, despite me being one person, I like to share at Office Hours, take questions, do followup. Things tend to get very active in open chat at those so I can't attend to individual IMs even then, tho. I certainly felt special at the Apple Store's Genius Bar, and think it's wonderful.

@ economic mip
Automatically accepting notecards, landmarks, textures is a non-issue. You can always weed out what you don't want. I automatically accept friend requests, even if I don't know the person. I declined a friend request one time and was treated to a barrage of chat text obscenities. It's not uncommon for me to TP somewhere and in seconds see friend requests before anyone has chatted with me. It's better to just take it all in, and sort it out later. Someone who hasn't established a relationship with me will soon "fall off" my friends list, because it doesn't make sense to allow tons of people access to interrupt my in-world time with random TO offers. TP requests w/o prior IMs? It's spam like any other.

@ Dimitrio Lewis
"My online status is displayed above…" - I might try that.

Yeah, it's long…. I have a lot of time to kill at work

Oh, and… thanks for the IMs and flickr pic comments you've posted for me, Torley… never expected, but always much appreciated.

And thank you again for taking the time to reply me the last time I IM'ed you, I was honored you took a minute out of your busy day.

In a world with no wheel, we'll make a wheel, but in a world full of wheels we want shiny wheels.

Once that's created, it could have name-links for the lindens who have office hours (that point to the office hours page) and then all the lindens could put that link their profile "I can't help you with x, y or z, but check this list to see who can" kinda thing.

Can't be any worse than now, right?

@economic: Thanks for sharing! Another odd thing for me is, there's no easy way for a Resident who's not on my friends list to IM me without seeing my profile beforehand, so it's like the important text gets glossed right over — I don't like that, and in my experience, it's often an indicator of someone's character or how unrewarding future exchanges will be (I mean that as not specific to Second Life, but human "nature"). We (Linden Lab) are in the works of upgrading the orientation experience again in hopes of improving retention… and lessening frustration.

I wish I could spontaneously send IMs inworld as easily as I can post to Twitter!

@Timeless: I don't know "when" but it's those sorts of things I hope for. I share your pain right there!

@Gigs: I wasn't aware of that before, thanks. Interesting — and discouraging re: feelings of how slow it'd be to get implemented, but I'd certainly advocate for it. Previously, I did have an email autoresponder setup, but that only increased the noise of correspondence.

@Dimitrio: Ah yeah, those "r u there?" (and that's not meant to insult anyone's typing, it's actually what I've often seen written) and the ones without useful context. One of the prime things I count on is "clarity of next actions", meaning if I can't figure out what I need to do to help someone appropriately in an email or IM or whatever, then I move onto a message which I *can* move forth with.

You raise good points about perspective. I think about how someone who gets very few IMs might treasure being flooded — even for a little while. When I was new, I felt that way, envious of my content creator friends who wrote contact policies in their profile. That still makes me feel strongly about explaining one's self and where you're coming from, regardless of individual correspondence load.

There's still a BIG opportunity to better explain "which Lindens do what" — the Office Hours page is a partial step (with all those topics listed) but there could be more effective communication on that too. The continual dilemma is "How much info?" because when people, especially new Resis, get overloaded with data, that defeats the purpose.

I bet some of the most effective solutions to this are simple ones, but no matter what technical methods are employed — just like whenever I hear that someone didn't read the Community Standards upon first login — it'll continue to include people problems.

@Razrcut: Thanks for your thoughts! "IM storms" are inevitable for me and I certainly don't want to be standoffish in welcoming a continued exchange of ideas (which I can help advance). The "few seconds" add up into a lot of time over weeks, which is why in earlier years, I did try to respond individually to all. But then, my time got crushed more, and I started copying-and-pasting standard "refer to Support" messages. That too, ate too many cycles… evolving to how I do things today. I'm happier and far more streamlined in doing work, as a result.

Yup, I use alts for privacy (for work and play purposes) but I don't want that to erode the usefulness of using my original Torley Linden account. Hahaha your example with Pastrami is so funny! ;D