I'm very understanding if someone says "I don't know" (I do, a lot) — but denying that a popular (as I've seen on *many* YT channels) control exists and not taking a few seconds to verify is irksome. I have pictures of the SL UI on my Flickr photostream I refer to without needing to log in.

I'm also understanding that not a single person will know everything there is to know about a product/service — when things get complex, it's well-worth hiring "connector hubs", people who are especially talented in knowing "who does/knows what" and routing knowledge to the correct places. It may seem like a trivial thing to do, but just like broken hyperlinks, ultimately frustrating if your crucial messages don't reach the right people. I've more or less served in this sort of role in different flavors at Linden Lab, depending on projects.

@economic: More details (or even a blog post of your own!) would be helpful and actionable to pinpoint problems. That's why I wrote mine out. It GRIEVES me to hear of simple things that get missed and leave you suffering, so if your lacking experiences which I'm sorry to hear of included some of those, let me know.

Incidentally, that is exactly why I followed up with: http://torley.com/fixing-the-small-stuff-and-making-a-big-difference

Please let me know which companies have great Knowledge Bases and bug trackers you prefer too (I found out recently Skype uses JIRA too). I like to learn and adapt from existing successful models.

@Laetizia: Well, you know, Google is so heavyweight…

@Lhynnan: That sounds glum, like awkward communications breakdowns. No Net access? For crying out loud, WHY?

@Ari: Thanks.

@Lovebird: Thanx, I've checked them out too. I do not know a single video-sharing service which offers all the features I need. Others than YouTube have SOME of the pie but not ALL the pieces. Veoh isn't as openly-embeddable and doesn't work with security restrictions on WordPress.com (which the Official Second Life Blog is hosted on), alas.

http://www.veoh.com/

… on the website, it states "Veoh scours the web for millions of videos, and organizes them in one place. From CBS and MTV to YouTube and MySpace, it's on Veoh". Hehehe. Heard it gives crystal clear resolution (unlike the "slightly blurriness" of YouTube, if you know what I mean. Anyways, just a little "try it" to you! It's good to try something new!

Very good article, Torley. I've been saying this for as long as I can even remember.
So my most profoundly concerned, carefully contemplated words of wisdom to all regarding your article:

ditto.

hows this for customer service - I work for a car insurance company who does quotations over the internet. Because we 'supply' car insurance for different 'brands' there are LOTS of different websites that we work through (more than I could feesbly remember and check in my own time).

The problem is this: the company doesnt allow us internet access…

This often leads to the following dialogue between me and customer:

Customer: "On your website it says X"

Me: "X sounds plausible so I take your word for it. I believe that X is true"

OR "X sounds implausible, please could you print out a screenshot that proves proposition X is on our website and fax it to me so that I can validate proposition X"