As I mentioned last week, today the Second Life Forums, Blogs, Knowledge Base and SL Answers are now temporarily in read-only mode. This means that everything housed within the http://blogs.secondlife.com site is available for you to read, but you cannot post comments--or contribute content--until we launch our new community platform (http://community.secondlife.com) on March 2nd.

Get ready for a more robust self-help platform with powerful capabilities, including unified search, reputation systems, new community tools, and social media features. And, please pardon our dust while we transition over to the new system.

To be informed immediately when the new community platform is live, follow us at @Second Life on Twitter where we’ll be officially announcing the launch.

I wanted to give you an update on several important new Customer and Community Support initiatives currently underway. We have recently added significant resources--of both people and technology--to improve your experience with both Customer Support and community interaction and communication.

On the Customer Support front, we have increased coverage to eliminate our backlog within the next 3 weeks and have already resolved 70% of the outstanding tickets. We are also continuing to work on changes to our Support processes and policies to improve communication about cases and speed up resolution time.

Additionally, we are actively investing in technologies that help you to quickly solve problems, find answers, share insights, and get help from the community.

Powerful New Community Platform To Launch Soon

On March 2nd, we will launch a new, and much improved, self-help community platform--comprised of Forums, Blogs, Answers, and our Knowledge Base. This new fully integrated platform helps you to more efficiently leverage the power and knowledge of the community. Among many architectural and usability improvements, the system also includes:

• Robust Self-Help Functionality: It will be easier and faster to find the answer to your question or the information that you’re looking for. For example, in Answers, when you begin to type a keyword, an intuitive category search will return common matching solution results. And, solutions accepted by the question author are automatically nominated for Linden editorial review and possible inclusion in the Knowledge Base.
• Unified Search: You can find the information that you’re looking for in one federated search field that returns organized results from relevant content in the Forums, Blogs, Answers, and the Knowledge Base.
• Single Sign On: Just as you can in the current system today, you will use your current Second Life username and password to log in to the new platform.
• Contribution-Based Roles: Based on your contributions to the platform, you will be able to earn new capabilities and roles in the community--from a brand new Resident to seasoned and experienced Helper.
• Easier for Experienced Residents to Share Their Wisdom: If you’re an avid Second Life Resident who wants to participate in the community, then it will be much easier for you to update existing articles; comment on published articles; and nominate, review, and include subject matter for the Knowledge Base.
• Industry-Standard Social Media Features: As you can in many other community platforms, with the click of the mouse, it will be easy to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc., interesting content that you want to share with your friends in the Social Web.

The Resident testers who were given a sneak peek into the system gave us great feedback and insightful reviews. Big thanks to everyone who participated!

Forums, Blogs, and Answers will be in Read-Only Mode Starting February 21st

We’re in the final roll out stages and wanted to give you notice on what to expect. At 12:01am PDT on February 21st, the Forums, Blogs, and Answers will switch to read-only mode until March 2nd, when we launch the new system. This means that everything housed within the http://blogs.secondlife.com site will still be available for you to read, but you cannot post comments--or contribute content--until March 2nd. Why go dark for over a week? Good question. We need the time to make sure that the data set, housed within our current system, is safely ported into the new platform and that everything is fully operational and ready to go for you on launch day.

Looking forward to sharing more on launch day and to your contributions to the new platform.

I wanted to give you an update on several important new Customer and Community Support initiatives currently underway. We have recently added significant resources--of both people and technology--to improve your experience with both Customer Support and community interaction and communication.

On the Customer Support front, we have increased coverage to eliminate our backlog within the next 3 weeks and have already resolved 70% of the outstanding tickets. We are also continuing to work on changes to our Support processes and policies to improve communication about cases and speed up resolution time.

Additionally, we are actively investing in technologies that help you to quickly solve problems, find answers, share insights, and get help from the community.

Powerful New Community Platform To Launch Soon

On March 2nd, we will launch a new, and much improved, self-help community platform--comprised of Forums, Blogs, Answers, and our Knowledge Base. This new fully integrated platform helps you to more efficiently leverage the power and knowledge of the community. Among many architectural and usability improvements, the system also includes:

• Robust Self-Help Functionality: It will be easier and faster to find the answer to your question or the information that you’re looking for. For example, in Answers, when you begin to type a keyword, an intuitive category search will return common matching solution results. And, solutions accepted by the question author are automatically nominated for Linden editorial review and possible inclusion in the Knowledge Base.
• Unified Search: You can find the information that you’re looking for in one federated search field that returns organized results from relevant content in the Forums, Blogs, Answers, and the Knowledge Base.
• Single Sign On: Just as you can in the current system today, you will use your current Second Life username and password to log in to the new platform.
• Contribution-Based Roles: Based on your contributions to the platform, you will be able to earn new capabilities and roles in the community--from a brand new Resident to seasoned and experienced Helper.
• Easier for Experienced Residents to Share Their Wisdom: If you’re an avid Second Life Resident who wants to participate in the community, then it will be much easier for you to update existing articles; comment on published articles; and nominate, review, and include subject matter for the Knowledge Base.
• Industry-Standard Social Media Features: As you can in many other community platforms, with the click of the mouse, it will be easy to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc., interesting content that you want to share with your friends in the Social Web.

The Resident testers who were given a sneak peek into the system gave us great feedback and insightful reviews. Big thanks to everyone who participated!

Forums, Blogs, and Answers will be in Read-Only Mode Starting February 21st

We’re in the final roll out stages and wanted to give you notice on what to expect. At 12:01am PDT on February 21st, the Forums, Blogs, and Answers will switch to read-only mode until March 2nd, when we launch the new system. This means that everything housed within the http://blogs.secondlife.com site will still be available for you to read, but you cannot post comments--or contribute content--until March 2nd. Why go dark for over a week? Good question. We need the time to make sure that the data set, housed within our current system, is safely ported into the new platform and that everything is fully operational and ready to go for you on launch day.

Looking forward to sharing more on launch day and to your contributions to the new platform.