What is the Second Life Knowledge Base?

The Second Life Knowledge Base (KB) is an easy-to-access repository of information about Second Life. You can browse the KB just like you would a forum, or you can search for specific information. You can also subscribe to receive alerts whenever articles on a particular subject are added or updated.

Each article in the KB has gone through an approval process and is kept up to date by Linden Lab and expert members of the community. Even if you’re not an expert, you can contribute by nominating topics and by commenting on the articles you read.

What about the Second Life Wiki?

The KB moved from the Second Life Wiki to the Second Life Community site in March 2011.  The SL Wiki is still an important information resource, and remains the home for:

• Official policy and product information that is not appropriate for community contributions; See Policy, Service, and Pricing Information.
• Content for the Viewer 2 help system, including the comprehensive glossary.
• LSL documentation, including language and function references.
• Documentation for prerelease "beta" features (such as mesh import) that are not yet part of the main SL Viewer release.
• Other developer documentation such as that for APIs, advanced content creation, and the like.
• Information on open source projects, including Project Snowstorm.
• Second Life Viewer Release Notes and Server Release Notes.
• Transcripts of user group meetings.
• Additional Resident-created information that is not suitable for the KB.

Second Life Answers versus the Knowledge Base

Second Life Answers is an area of the community platform where Residents ask questions and get responses from other Residents.  Question authors can select the best response(s) as accepted solutions. Accepted Solutions are automatically nominated for inclusion in the Knowledge Base. See Community Help for more information on Answers.

Information is appropriate for Second Life Answers if it:

• Addresses one specific question or issue.
• Describes a troubleshooting or workaround procedure for a specific situation that will not apply generally to all users.

Information is appropriate for the Knowledge Base if it:

• Addresses a general topic broadly or in depth.
• Includes procedures and information generally applicable to all or many users.

In certain contexts, related Accepted Solutions that are individually appropriate for Answers may be consolidated into a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) article appropriate for the KB.

Using the Knowledge Base

All Second Life Residents can:

• Read KB articles to learn more about Second Life.
• Accept solutions in Second Life Answers. This automatically nominates the post to be considered for inclusion in the KB.

Additionally, if you have the requisite role, you can:

• Comment on KB articles.
• Nominate forum topics as new KB articles.
• Review or edit articles.

For more information on roles, see Roles and permissions below.

Finding the information you need

When you are browsing the KB, you will see all articles by default.  If you wish to view only articles on topics of interest to you, check the boxes next to one or more labels in the Filter by section on the right.  You can also filter by Date, for example to see only recent articles and updates.

Use search to find specific information quickly.  Enter your search term in the text field at upper right. Choose KB in the drop-down to search just the KB, or All to search the entire SL Community site.

If you speak a language other than English, click the link to your language in the International section on the right side of the page..

Contributing to the Knowledge Base

Nominating forum topics as new articles

If you come across great material in the community—helpful questions and answers, or just plain useful information—you can nominate the topic for a KB article once you have earned the Contributor rank (see Roles and permissions below).

To nominate content:

1. Go to the topic you want to nominate.
2. Choose Topic Options > Nominate to Knowledge Base.

The Linden Lab editorial team reviews all nominated topics for potential inclusion in the KB. Once a topic is accepted, a KB Linden author can use it to create an official KB article.

Criteria for inclusion in the Knowledge Base

For an article to be added to the official KB, it must:

• Address something not already covered in the KB.
• Be reviewed by the Linden Lab documentation team for accuracy and completeness.
• Meet the guidelines outlined in our Knowledge Base Style Guide. This often requires some editing.

Please check the KB carefully to ensure that you're not duplicating existing work. For example, a guide to troubleshooting hot router issues might be a good candidate if the KB doesn't already contain such info. If the article has quality content but largely duplicates what can be found elsewhere, the new content may be incorporated into existing articles.

Commenting on articles

If you have reached the Advisor, Contributor, or Helper rank on the SL Community site (see Roles and permissions below), you may add comments to an SL KB article by scrolling to the end and clicking Add a Comment.

Roles and permissions

When you first log into the community website, you are considered a New Resident and can read KB articles. With active participation, you can increase your rank and gain more abilities.

Once you have earned the Member rank, you can:

• Add tags to articles

At higher ranks you can contribute in more ways, including:

• Commenting on KB articles
• Starting new KB articles
• Editing draft (unpublished) articles
• Nominating forum topics for KB articles
• Including externally hosted (YouTube) videos in posts
• Editing published KB articles.

All Resident contributions are reviewed and published by Linden administrators. For more information, see Community Help - Roles and Ranks.

Style guide

For information on writing KB articles, see the Knowledge Base Style Guide.