Trial User Ratings.

Did I read this right? From the LL email, discussing bonuses: "Trial user ratings will not be counted."

Why *on earth* would LL want to discourage us from being nice to newbies?

Do they want to discourage mentors from welcoming new players when they arrive in the world? Helping them take their first steps and guiding them through what can be a confusing orientation period - especially during a European morning when there is no liason presence at all.

I spend on average around 5-6hrs a week of my time teaching basic building almost exclusively to trial users. I work extremely hard both during and after these classes and I never worry that most of it is unpaid. It is enough satisfaction to see trial users going from not understanding a thing about building to being able to build a house by the end of the class. But it's always a nice bonus that most of the newbies are kind enough to rate me positively. And in return, I like to think I've played a small part in helping to convert one or two trial users into permanant members.

This will all stop when this change is made.

For such a smart group of people, LL seem to have made some very stupid decisions recently.

I am not sure this is the case.. what they said could either mean...

If a trial user rates you, it is meaningless.

...or...

Trial users don't get any weekly rating bonuses.

When I read it, I assumed the second.

Lindens anyone? Want to clarify?

I took it to mean that trial users will not have their ratings counted - I hope that is the correct interpretation. A rating is a rating, whether it comes from a trial or live user, and it should be counted. If Viola is correct, then she is right in saying that a smart group of people has made some really stupid decisions of late.

I think they made the decision based on the number of people complaining about silly newbies giving away random negative ratings.

If it is the case that Trial Users Ratings wont count, I'm against that, a person is a person wether trial user or not and their vote should count just as much.

The way I'd work it is that ratings by trial users don't count until/unless they sign up for an account. That will keep griefers from signing up trial accounts just to give out bazillions of negative ratings, and encourage everyone to get trial members to sign up.

Another solution would be to only allow trial users to hand out positive ratings. I agree with Viola that this negatively impacts people who go out of their way to help trial users.

Another idea would be to make mentoring a paid position, like teaching classes is already.

Mentoring is a paid position - you are paid for hosting mentoring events, just as you are paid for teaching a class as an instructor. I know a lot of mentors spend time outside of that in the welcome area, just as I spend a lot of time helping people with building outside of class. As both a mentor and an instructor, I have been paid for both things. It is too difficult and prone to abuse to pay for just helping individual people on a one off basis - that is how the positive ratings benefitted us in the first place.

Thanks for clearing that up Christiano. I've never been a mentor so I wasn't sure how it worked. Maybe they should add another paid position for welcome area helpers. No doubt that it helps make people feel welcome and be more likely to convert their accounts, which in turn helps every other business in SL attract more customers.

I like that idea Chip, you could have shifts with two people working each shift, or one or two people depending on how popular those time frames for that shift are for floods of people. They could be called Greeters, or Welcome Wagon

I nominate Oz to be the Welcome Wagon.

Hah, I can be so anti-social sometimes. Might be fun though

Would be kinda cute if always sat in a Wagon right by the welcome area.

"Yah'll come back now, yah hear?"

actually, i think it works best to have lindens in the welcome areas. i'm sure they appreciate us helping but i think it would be a mistake for them to start paying others to be the welcome wagon instead.

trial users can't beat stumbling off the pad and bumping straight into a real live dev. how much more encouraging can a virtual environment be your first day?

well thats why they have liason lindens, but i have to agree it is nice to have a bit of a more social area around the welcome area... i hang out there alot too and id have to say it'd be alot more inviting to a newbie to walk into a group of 3-4 players actually having fun in the game than to jus bump into a linden... which is kinda cool hey its a staff guy whee... but can be a little sorta one dimensional...

I wasn't sold on buying in at first off my trial but near the end there was dave linden hanging out and like 5-6 people who'd turned into little kid av's running round an round him and jus bein silly and i knew right then like i HAD to buy in, and buy in big.


Basically liason's are good but people buy the game cause they see other people in there having FUN and want to have fun themselves ultimately, so havin more people, havin fun, in the welcome area can't be a bad thing.

We also need a telehub IN the sandbox so that we can encourage newbies to go over and take a peek at what weird/grandiose/amazing/fun things other players are working on like every single day.

I used to spend a lot more time in the welcoming area than I have in the past month or so. This is rather ironic, because spending more time on my own property (checking clothing designs, talking to friends, hosting the occasional event there, etc.) is what led me to getting a "developer incentive" bonus and daily dwell money. And I'm sure spending time in the welcoming area is a positive thing for SL, because, as several people in this thread have said, it can be what influences new folks to join when they see lots of friendly people hanging about there. So basically, SL rewards me better for spending more time away from the welcoming area... hmmm...

I think it's great that the devs are around in the game sometimes. One of the biggest things to impress me the first day I was here, was when Cory Linden was hanging around the welcome area testing a new client and I asked him a few technical questions and he was very open in answering them...

I probably spend about 95% of my time in Morris, Ahern, or Dore. I try to do my best to welcome newbies and give them a good impression of SL, especially when no Lindens are on during the late/early hours when I sometimes lurk about.