With the recent troubles which we know is annoying for many users, we have been forced to reconsider how we structure our support team and what tools we provide them to manage problems. Another issue raised is also the avenues available for users to seek assistance and I believe this side of the problem is something you as our community should have a say in. Our support team at the moment is split into vendor support and buyer support, each is specialized to best handle the problems they may face and makes for more efficient workflow but all support is done through tickets and therefore can actually take hours or days to resolve issues even without a queue. A quicker line of support could be offered by Silk Road to firstly reduce the load of primary market support staff and secondly increase the response time drastically for minor issues to take them out of the queue. A practical solution on already available and stable technology is IRC. We could not offer a web-interface for an IRC server of course, but it is possible to connect to a hidden service IRC server with no special changes being made to a client. Such IRC servers already exist on an unofficial basis although their usage remains limited to a small group. For TAILS users, you would only need to paste in a .onion address and connect straight away, and those using only the tor browser bundle having to change 1 additional field (port) to connect. I know if I am to present this idea to the management I would need to assess the suitability and demand for such a feature. Therefore I am appealing to you (the community) to let me know your thoughts on such an addition once we have cleared up the current support problems. Would you use this if it was implemented?