Some of you know an ample chunk of my workdays includes editing and writing articles for the Second Life Knowledge Base. Behind-the-scenes, I've basically been aggregating a lot of frequently-asked questions (FAQs) that come up and getting them inserted, or at least, queueing them to be. I'm amassing a tail of issues, y'see.

One of my more — ahem! — enduring and enduring works lately has been an overhaul of the Preferences guide. It's a fairly involved piece of documentation, and quite a useful one at that too — I can't imagine a single ongoing Resi who hasn't touched it at one point or another.

Needless to say, I originally intended to do a few "quick" corrections of glaring out-of-dateness. That transformed into something else, and based on Lee Linden's early work, I'm close to revamping the whole works — with tidy reformatting and pictures! I confess, I spent most of my day doing this.

If you ask, "Why's Torley telling me this?", it's 'cuz:

1. Second Life documentation has traditionally been short of visuals - C'mon, think of the avatars! Notecards suck (I'm making a horrible generalization here) because you can embed textures, but not show inline thumbnails. Monotony of WORD AFTER WORD isn't memorable, and it certainly doesn't educate. People are short on time. Which is precisely why I when I wrote the "How do I clear the Second Life cache?" article, I put in pictures of the SL interface itself: after all, that's what you'll be clicking on. Short of me being at your computer in person, there's no better way to show you.
    
2. Second Life docs have been short on style - Before I get further into this, I'd better share some of my writing influences in the tech-instructional field: David Pogue, the Lifehacker team, Adam Engst, and Guy Kawasaki. I've come away learning a lot from them: every time I do an article, I find ways to include new techniques, and build on my skills, which benefits the reader as a result. Style extends past a conversational tone, and also includes neat formatting. I'm not a big fan of plaintext (another shortcoming of notecards): I love applying bold and italic — made ya look! — in suitable places for variation, emphasis, and overall optical flow.
    
3. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants - A hypercritical eye may say, "Wait, Torley, you dissed the documentation that came before you!" Not so. I profoundly recognize and respek the energy it embraced, as well as the teeming many who've already been helped by existing documentation. What I'm pointing to here is, I love taking what's good and making it better. I'm the AggregaTorley, so it only makes sense I observe my roots:
   » notecard packs compiled by Volunteers
    » some of that documentation put in the Welcome Area dispensers
     » those notecards included in the Inventory > Library folder
      » F1 Help and Knowledge Base
       » eventual future merging of support resources like the JEDI LIBRARY!

My friends, we're living in an ample age of info, but it won't do you a dang if you can't find fish in the sea. I know this, and I also know how many things just can't be obvious enough. I look for the patterns, cool 'em into formal writings — we call this distilled achievables here at Torleyland, folks — so tribal knowledge finds its way into process documentation. Making it ultimately easier to share.

Anecdote: this is coming full circle. SL historians know one of my first mentors is the great Kex Godel. Amongst Volunteers, she's a legend. And she gave me the first guide to SL Preferences I ever saw, covering version 1.5. Y'know what? I offered her suggestions, she included them and so graciously credited me, and I got hooked.

That's right, folks, I started editing various notecards. And it led me all the way up to the present day, where I am working for Linden Lab, doing this professionally. Which brings me to…

WE'RE LOOKING FOR A FULLTIME KNOWLEDGE BASE EDITOR! The full qualifications should be listed on our Employment page shortly — I've personally recommended beyond SCEP (Smart, Creative, Passionate, Energetic), we need someone with "laser eyes" for the forest and the trees, and oh, machinima-making skills would be awesome. Why the hey? 'Cause if you're a good storyteller, and have strong narrative skills, then you can lead me step-by-step through a very confuzzled first days of my Second Life! So if you're interested, stay tuned for more, send in your resume. I look forward to working with you, I really do, we've been expanding with lotsa new Lindens — it's a pleasure to see the company grow, and heading into 2007… lots of adventures to come!