Dumping newbies out of Help Island and into random mainland sims

Help Island crashed last night. A new user that I met was quite distraught, because when she tried to log back in, thinking that her own system had crashed, she suddenly found herself in the Korea sim. She immediately asked Live Help for assistance in returning to Help Island, as she was far from done investigating everything there. She was flatly told "Sorry. No." I found her wandering, completely lost and alone.

That made me think. I have found myself in the Korea sim many times, after the sim I was in had crashed. Why there? It has no Welcome Area, and more often than not I got dumped under water, as the new person reported also happened to her.

Great way to treat our new people. Dump them in the middle of nowhere, unprepared, and refuse to allow them to finish orientation. There should be some sort of flag set to prevent that. If they haven't left the Orientation or Help Islands yet, they should NOT get dumped into a random sim.

I helped the distraught newbie to get settled, but she is still peeved that she didn't get to finish the tutorials, or even to finish the conversation she had been having with another new person when it crashed.

Search for "Orientation Island Public" in "Places" - it's an exact copy of Orientation Island, with all the tutorials for brushing up on, accessible from the mainland.

Not identical but close.

Lewis

I'd have to guess the fact that all four of the "Korea" sims are marked as Infohubs makes them get a larger chunk of the randomization. I agree that only Mainland Infohubs should be used when this occurence happens, and that the new resident should have been allowed to return to Help Island (as I was when I joined and logged in to find myself in a very strange place and wanted to finish checking out Help Island).

I always thought banishing newbies the first time they leave the island was insanely stupid. Give them a week (tweak to suit), then banish them.

Since there at least 3 Help Islands, it would seem to me that a person who left a Help Island due to a crash and who restarts before the one they were at when the crash occurred is back online should be restarted in one of the other Help Islands. If all the Help Islands are down, they'd get a message explaining they can either wait for a Help Island to be back online or proceed on to main grid location.

Also, they can in fact be put back on Help Island by liaisons. I know Hermia Linden and Robin Linden have done it.

If a liaison tells someone that it is not possible to put someone kicked out back on H.I. they are just wrong and the person who needs this done needs to contact a different liaison or other appropriate Linden staff member and get someone to teach the liaison who doesn't know about this ability the proper answer and procedure to follow for this question.

Additionally, the Public Orientation Island is northwest of beautiful downtown Waterhead.

I still think you should just start in some random PG sim with a hud mounted guide.

Chapter 1, section 1: picking and teleporting to a help island or sandbox.

Right now it could use llGveInventory to give you a landmark and tell you to click on it.

The signs on orentation island could be in a scripted hud unit and it would not matter where you are.

Grumble's idea sounds good to me although it would have to be a really really easy to use interface on the HUD since it's made for use by newcomers.

Another thing to do about stranded newcomers - if they want - get them into NCI or the Shelter. There's nothing all that special about Help Island. It has some helpful people who are willing to abide by PG standards while they on duty - well so does NCI and so does the Shelter.

Indeed... All the services a New Resident should need are available on the mainland. Sadly not allways easy to find tho although Live help should have the landmarks.

Korea is, it seems, an official leaving spot from Help Island but doesn't seem appropriate. My RL partner got dumped there when she left and an alt I created to try something also ended up there.

Speaking of help island. I noticed theres 2 of them now. 1 of them has 4 oriantation islands surrounding it while the other is alone. I think 2 of those oriantaions islands need to be moved to the other help island to make them sorta identicle.

Yea it does suck that once your leave help island (volintary or not) your not allowed back in. I see why they have it this way. To try and prevent older accounts from trying to scam newbies and such. I just wish there was some plan. Like if your account is less then a week old you can still TP back.

I don't think the placement of OIs relative to HIs matters - I think there's only one case where there's a land bridge from OI to HI; most of the time they teleport. Actually I wish the OIs were not next to HI because some new folks mistake the islands they see in the distance for the mainland and fly over to them.



No, any amount of time makes it possible for griefers to head to the mainland, pick up a big gun, then TP back to help island and start shooting people. Yes, they can do that with the Linden popgun but that's not anywhere near as much trouble as other things could be..

Preventing new people from returning, when it is clearly documentable that they got dumped out by a crash just minutes earlier, accomplishes nothing. A griefer doesn't need to TP to the mainland and return in order to be on Help Island and possess any mainland item they could ever wish for. All they need is an accomplice who is already on the mainland.

I started a new alt a while back, and was able to get an avatar to her, while she was still on Help Island - a "Tiny" avatar that is certainly only available on the Mainland. I could just as easily have gotten any weapon to her that you can imagine.

I won't go into more detail than that, for fear someone might use the information inappropriately. But it didn't involve any hacks or breaking any rules that I am aware of. In fact, one Mentor on the island complemented my alt on her avatar, and had no problem with the fact that she had obtained one from a mainland source.

The newbie that I spoke to had little available on-line time, and was taking her time about examining everything before moving on. She had been on Help Island about three and a half weeks, judging from the 'birth date' in her profile. But she said she had only logged on about 5 times in that period.