'Live Help' particpants should be granted L$ Incentives

In the spirit of fostering willing participation beyond voluntary cooperation for Live Help, Linden Lab should consider grants for participants in the program. The reasons break down easily to:

1) Live Help is a way to relieve the pressure from the in-world administrative staff, and is a service that allows Linden Lab to operate more efficiently without headcount requirements.

2) This service, performed by volunteers, radically differs in individual motivation, but would benefit from some kind of acknowledgement of service beyond inclusion in the group.

3) Given that I'm not a Live Help volunteer, I can present this in an unbiased, objective format.

4) This would foster willingness beyond a vague and general directive of 'help who asks - if you can'. A simple monitor of this metric would be responses grepped from the logs, or some automatic method of ensuring that particpants don't submit 'yes' and 'no' answers to complex or more involved questions. There is room for discussion of implementation, but I'll stick with the core reasons here.

5) Live Help would be enhanced by receiving L$ compensation, SL by the increased commitment of the helpers and overall new user retention.

Thanks for reading.

Not!

I'm a Live Help volunteers - I don't want compensation.

Keep it so.

LL will get the pants sued off them.

(Reference: AOL/UO)

I vote "No" to this proposal unless a separate rating system for this is introduced :

_ check here if the LH(livehelp) person was helpful
_ check here if the LH person was pompous
_ check here if LH should get money for helping you
_ check here if you were rushed in asking your question
_ check here if the LH was brusque in answering your question
_ check here if the LH assumed you know a great deal about SL already and gave you a short simple answer which did not clarify anything for you
_ check here if you knew that the LH is staffed by volunteers
_ check here if all the LH should be stomped on by Hippos




***
kidding aside, maybe a popup should come up when going into LiveHelp and say "Live Help is staffed by Volunteers from the SL Community. They are only able to make suggestions and refer you to Lindens if they cannot help you."

(Disclaimer: I am a Live Helper)

I'd much prefer that absolutely no compensation be involved, so that the people who *really* want to do it are the ones who do it, not someone who needs the money doing it reluctantly.

If SL ever grows short on people who are willing to help for absolutely free, then maybe it's time to close the doors, because then it is truly not SL anymore.

Ok, seriously folks. LL will get the pants sued off of them, unless they pay the Live Help people at LEAST minimum wage. And then it becomes a job, not a volunteer position.

BTW, Thanks for the suggestion Maxx, I know your intentions are good

(Yes, I am a live helper)

Please don't give L$ for helping others. It would make it another way to earn L$ and not a task that is done for the sake of helping others.

I do appreciate the sentiment behind the suggestion, but I feel it would kill the great start the Lindens have made towards involving the players in supporting others and shifting the load from the Liasons leaving them free to help on matters that we can't.

I think I can safely say that all the Live Helpers love the Live Help IM's and it seems other players do too. We get a sense of satisfaction and have fun too. That is enough reward for me and I suspect many others too.

LH participants were selected by LL. Many volenteered to be a part of it and i'm sure many were turned down. If LL started giving incentives to LH, those who were turned down would be bitter they were not selected. More over it would be taken out on LH members, and that is just not right.

While agreeing with those who don't want to see L$s rewards for helping, I think there should be a Live Helper of the Month, as there is for Mentors and Instructors.

Just to keep us all on our toes

Thats reasonable.

We discussed this issue at a recent Live Help meeting, and unanimously decided against financial incentives.

How about Live Help channel dwell?

Just imagine the developer incentive list then!

Heady stuff.

Sure!

<scenario>

LiveHelper IMs all their friends : Come spend some time with me while I'm LiveHelping!
<offers teleport to everyone>

LiveHelper to other LiveHelpers: Look! my dwell is so much higher than yours! I will get more L$!!!

BTW, the current set of Live Helpers isn't set in stone. As I understand it, there will be some sort of cycle to bringing on new Live Helpers to replace or supplement the existing set of Live Helpers.

Thumbs down on this one!

You heard right!

Not a live helper, I would like to be though.

I do not think Live Helpers should get any L$ or any money, more than likely this would cause more people to attempt to sign up just for the benefits. Also the heat garnered from this would be hurtfull.

You can't pay the volunteers in any way financially anyways, linden dollars or otherwise.

There have been precedents by the folks at Ultima Online where their volunteer help force sued for wages earned, or something similar.

Besides, as soon as you introduce money into the equation, every greedy yahoo is going to come out of the woodwork wanting to "help", as long as they get their paycheck.

BTW, I am a live helper.

LF

The majority of us do NOT want L$ compensation. We are doing it because we want to help & I think some of us feel that if L$ compensation is added then that will modivate people to want to be a livehelper for the wrong reasons.

Thank you for thinking of us though

I strongly disagree as well. That's why it's Volunteer work.

It's like...

Chance Small: Can someone please do me a favor and script this for me?
You: Sure, for L$1,000.
Chance Small: I aked for a favor, I wasn't offering you a job.

Not the best example, but I'm sure you get the point.