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It needs to be more obvious

People don't know what they don't know, and that applies both IC and OOC. Staff time is valuable, and a lot of us older players don't have the IC information at our character's disposal to be able to share what we know OOC. This could free up a lot of player time for people who burn out repeatedly teaching these generic things to people ICly, and allow them to instead dig into more subtle and nuanced information sharing.

Here's a simple solution: Get SIC chatter buzzing with more actually relevant things, plot breadcrumbs, and use it to teach players IC and OOC about game systems. Give more 'powerful' knowledge to institution keys, if you'd like to gate it a bit in themely ways. I think it sounds way more complex than what it actually is, so I'll give some examples of what I mean.

JoeBaka: "Man, those people in the markets buy all sorts of shit, almost anything of value man. I heard that market hawkers can make a killing, if they know the ins and outs of working the stall owners." - This is an example of teaching about second hand markets and a skill in the game that people might not talk about.

Milton: "I believe I saw someone out on Soma Street looking to buy staplers. People keep stealing mine every time I order them, and then selling them to these black market stapler traders! I've had to order five of them!" - This teaches players about corporate fraud, how to launder money, and how you might abuse the system to your own gain.

$NLMKEY >> Just talked to Barbie from accounting, she said that she threw an office party, and a bunch of people turned out and had a great time, but what's really crazy is she expensed the entire thing to the company card… And made a killing! - Teaching opportunity to let people know that making content can be free and that it can also be very profitable.

If you feel there is a need for it, some of the more niche information could be shared as well, because there are far more things that your average player doesn't know about the game than what they do know about the game. Game knowledge like this is beneficial to spread for the overall health of the game, but trying to do it in ways that fit theme can be extremely difficult.

I think that outsourcing this to player submissions is a fine idea, however, I do think that it sort of edges against rules for sharing IC information. You do need to be more specific about the how, when and where for these things because the subtle angle clearly isn't working out.

I'm not saying the NPC's need to go "GIVE ME X AND GET MONEY!" but you do need to be pretty explicit about it, simply because there's just so much of this stuff that can be misinterpreted, taken out of context, or misread. Puppets are good in this way, because as anyone who's run plots for other players knows, you like really honest to god do need to club people over the head and scream from the rooftops at times.

But automating the process gets rid of unnecessary puppets or short uneventful scenes of just "Hey. billy the rat, where do I find x?" And then they tell you and zip off.