The role of Infohubs

For all that's wrong with InfoHubs, I don't see how they'd get better by having NCI InfoNodes disappear from them; if anything, the congregating of ne'er-do-wells would worsen, unencumbered by newbies actually trying to use them for the original purpose of the places.

Nor do I think this would hasten LL's instituting any positive change to the InfoHubs.

That's not to say that nothing can be done to push things along. There's exactly one direction that will cause LL to make a change, and that's an appeal to their current hot-button item, improving New User Experience.

They don't care about other issues of sim performance nor prior commitments to residents nor anything else. Maybe they should, but they don't. To get results, those topics just have to be cast aside, and the focus has to be on LL's current pain point. To get results *fast*, there has to be a clear, workable proposal to address that specific problem--a practical, practicable fix for the NUE, not simply removal of InfoHubs because they're bad.

Thanks for that, Qie, you got my passive-aggressive intent summed up quite nicely there. I have always been interested in how to aid in new-user retention. For all the great builds and places to explore on the Mainland, you first have to get the eyeballs to stay. I am hoping by covering this issue here and on my website we can remind the Lindens of what is going on and the history that may have been forgotten. That they felt the need to go to an outside source to create a new user experience flies in the face of years of work by in-world groups such as Carl's. And the few comments from newer residents providing accounts of their experiences are important as who knows what approach this outside firm is taking and what has been provided to them to base their plan?

When I joined I went to Orientation Island. The little tutorials on walking, flying and touching things were not needed for me. While I may not be happy with Second Life's user interface, it's not difficult, especially compared to those of MMOs that so many people are already familiar with. I was then sent to Help Island which had a few dozen people grbbing freebies and landmarks and others chatting or asking questions. The question I had (why is there no voice, no support for gamepads and analog control) seemed ridiculous for the helpers milling around so I went straight for the Escape From Help Island kiosk and was whisked away to... a crash. I never arrived at an Infohub.

Despite the crash I signed up as a Premium member and when I logged in again received a message about a problem with my destination and was plopped down in a square surrounded by shops. It was dark. What did "SLT" mean? I wandered into some shops. I had only a little L$ and wanted to buy more. Why was there a restriction on purchasing L$ when my Premium stipend was so quick to register? I wandered around a bit and after realizing I couldn't afford to buy the ineresting things I saw and wanted, headed off to claim my First Land. I never experienced an Infohub. I went straight to a web search to find an alternate way to buy L$. I didn't think of going to an Infohub to ask that question. I'm sure there was a notecard I was given that would have told me about using them as a resource, but the signs with writing were more effective than the 1980's-era unformatted text notecards.

So I was curious how this sequence played out for others, and still am as I document them for SLMainland. Why aren't there larger public venues for gathering provided by the Lindens? Why does the Infohub project appear abandoned? Why are more water regions hosted than land? Why are the sandboxes segregated? Why aren't there videos and scripted tasks to educate new residents? What sort of package recommendation can both long-standing and new residents provide Linden Lab to help with the retention issue?

Thanks to Carl for that Infohub reference. I had found it and then back-traced earlier info. It's a shame the forum archives can't be browsed as searching for the entertaining related discussions is far more difficult than finding a date and time and checking out the state of topics. I have updated this history a bit more:

http://slmainland.com/infohubs_page/

And I will continue to do so as I explore the remaining Infohubs. While part of my intent was to call for Infohubs on the other continents, I'll reserve that for a better strategic plan for public land to prsent to Linden Lab before this New User Experience is released. They are not mutually-exclusive issues and I hope we can all better serve the needs of users of all virtual ages.

It might help if, on arriving at an infohub, the newbie would see a clickable object that could either let them return to Help Island or move to another infohub.

Once the newbie clicks the object to move to another infohub, they would not only be moved, but their Home would be reset to the new infohub.

If each infohub had this, a newbie could keep sliding until they found one that felt like home.

What keeps people in SL is some sort of *connection*. There has to be a person, or an interest, or an unfulfilled desire that they find here.

Also, we all have different ways of learning. I got so frustrated with little things -- details -- that didn't work... like the fact that I didn't seem to be able to change my Home setting... or take off the black underwear painted on my skin... or find out how tall I was...

And, you know, I *asked* people. I would stop people passing by and talk to them, but most of the time they didn't know what I was talking about. ("What black underwear? I've never seen that... and who cares how tall you are?"

Well, I quit logging in. Instead of going inworld, I read through the knowledge base, and began doing Torley's tutorials. THEN, when I felt like I knew what the eff was going on, I logged back on.

Most people would prefer to learn by doing, but what are they going to do?

Maybe the way to retain users is not to orient them better, but to make it easier for them to go find whatever it is they're looking for. Then they'll work out all the details.

I've been googling to find some saying I can't quite recall... it's about a good teacher being one who gets out of their students' way... or something like that.

If they're not coming back, they're not finding what they're looking for.

This. It's the key to the whole thing.

I suspect, too, that most come *and stay with* SL because it can provide them with something (tangible or intangible) that they cannot otherwise attain in the "real world."

And yet, it seems so many miss this.

You have to aware of mainland sim resources. You can't just rez pretty things, inform the public and leave the tier payers of the sim to just deal with it. Infohubs were established by the residents who paid tier in those sims. The new definition still defines them as resident run sites (but of course residents have no say over these parcels). But when they were being built Premium accounts in the sim where the hub was being built had a say in what these places looked like. LL promised they were for new players to rez and explore. Now LL promotes them as gathering and social areas for all avatars (like a sandbox). This is irresponsible and since LL added UNFAIR USE OF SIM RESOURCES to the Abuse report queue - is obviously not allowed.

If all your going to do is put lipstick on the pigs then your contribution to the mainland and user retention will not be effective in any way.

There are, but they aren't that easy for a new resident to find. Torley Linden's made a large number of tutorial videos.

I mean in-world at these locations. Sony's recent release LittleBigPlanet has some fairly complicated parts because it allows user-generated content. They include a number of tutorials to walk people through the building process that feature video in addition to interaction that isn't possible in Second Life (or difficult due to LSL's design). In these areas more parcels could be sliced out to allow people to go from station to station watching a targetted video for most basic features, seeing it work rather than hoping to achieve what the Orientation Islands ask of you.

NCI is not my business. NCI is a not-for-profit resident run, resident financed help group. I can't do anything about the original poster's issue with Linden Lab. However, he indicated he had a less than friendly experience at a NCI campus, and that is something I want to look into.



It would be nice if we were partnered with Linden Lab on the NCI InfoHubs. I think we could have made many of them work better. However, all of the NCI InfoNodes are independent of LL, other than their locations. We have either purchased (and pay tier on), or rent land, or have had the land donated for all fifteen of them.

Additionally, our NCI InfoNode adjacent to Bear is located in the Chief sim, so if anything, it would pull people out of Bear.

That--of course--was not our primary goal. NCI's InfoNodes are designed to provide help to new residents where they are, as well as to direct them to other places that can help them. We decided to build them because the existing network of LL InfoHubs was not doing the job that LL repurposed them for when they became spawning points for new residents.



Most LL InfoHubs are not functioning as they were supposed to--but not for the reasons you think. They were originally supposed to be areas where new residents (and old) could get information and help. However, LL never followed through on adding the information content to most of them, leave a large subset as simply pretty areas. While individual LL InfoHub operators (such as the Second Life Hobos at Calletta or Prokofy Neva at Ross) added information, many still stand as simply pretty places.



Bear is a special case. I've not observed issues of the same magintude with any other InfoHubs I've spent time at. I don't know the solution to the issues at Bear. If I were you, I would consider getting together with other Bear residents who have a problem with the LL InfoHub there and petition LL to buy me out at favorible rates. You and the Bear regulars have been fighting each other for nearly two years now. I can't imagine that it is worth it for either side.



Based on the quote you posted from Travis, his problems with the Isabel LL InfoHub are the exact opposite of your problems with Bear:



He holds Bear up as an example of an InfoHub that works, in comparison with the problems the Shelter had at Isabel.

It would make my job a lot easier if we were partnered with Linden Lab. But NCI is not.

They don't provide us land, they don't provide us tier. While for the past few months, LL has paid us for the use of our FreebieNode and SLInfo Wall systems on their help islands, we've never gotten any L$ donations from the LL (though I'm sure that various individual Lindens may have contributed from their own funds over the years). We don't get concierge service. We don't get Educational Pricing from Linden Lab (we are not a "real" 501c3 non-profit).

Fortunately, that's not up to Linden Lab, and is not likely to happen--short of LL closing all the InfoHubs and selling the land off. NCI has no plans to end its InfoNode project. In fact, we just purchased land close to the Mauve InfoHub--just over the border in Charteruse--and will be building and InfoNode there soon.

I spent several evenings recently hanging around infohubs, out of curiousity and a wish to help newbies. Due to the bruhaha about infidelity in SL the areas were much more chaotic than usual. Some had a scattering of mentors (formal and informal) to answer questions (Ahern, Hanguel) while others were totally unattended. In some of the areas scripts are enabled, and there was a constant barrage of griefing attacks (aural and visual) and a lot of avatars asking "how do I get out of here?!" My impression was one of overwhelming confusion and sensory overload.

There has to be a happy medium. Dumping a newbie in a small crowded space with avatar titles bobbing all around and chat spinning by at a million characters per second is a sure recipe for losing many customers. But it's also important to not dump them into an uninhabited area.

Personally, I don't agree with the decision to get rid of the Orientation islands. When I joined, I was petrified to talk to anyone and probably would have given up if I'd been dumped into an infohub mob. I think that SL needs to provide an equivalent safe space to the Orientation areas, to explore the user interface and find your footing. It needs to be scaled appropriately to be intimate but not confiining (not too many walls for newbies to crash into). And SL definitely shouldn't impose the burden of hosting those areas on landowners.

Well said. So much more could be done and -- as much as I like legacy content -- some things could *really* use a refresh. Some of the stuff in the Ahern and Waterhead WAs are *quite* dated. That is being polite.

Carl, you put your space next to a infohub - of course they encountered rudeness. The infohub is a free-for-all for everyone and anyone to do whatever they can get away with. But you are already aware of that.
You take pride in telling everyone how close your parcels are to these Linden Parking lots. These areas are not something anyone should endorse.

You added that (and old) part. The infohubs were specifically built to service new players. LL changed the definition twice since they were built in 2006. Please remember I was premium member owning land in Bear Sim before the telehub and the infohub. The facts don't escape me.

Just bring The Shelter up on your map. Sim full 45 avatars. Some in the shelter and the rest loitering in the infohub. This is nothing new.

WellI have no intention of being chased off a server that I was on first and have invested nearly four years of time, money and energy into. That little Hut that makes up the infohub can easily be moved into Cheif sim or anywhere else. Loiterers have no preference. I do not see what the big deal is. The new AR catagory of UNFAIR USE OF SIM RESOURCES seems tailor made for this situation. But the Lindens do not think their own rules apply to themselves. I suppose that is why they have never emerged victorious in any lawsuit filed by any of their customers. So the Mexican standoff between service provider and Premium account holder continues.

That is obviously not my interpertation.

These sort of atrocities caused by the service provider will definitely negatively impact their new initiative to bring more premium accounts to the mainland. of course if the ykeep rezzing Nautilus then they may do ok. I am sure nautilus does nto have any abandoned Linden parking lots in their region though.

Again, I'm not really sure what good would come out of Carl pulling his nodes out of infohubs would do. It would just mean people visiting those areas wouldn't find out about NCI.

I think some of the respondents on this thread are taking an oldbie perspective on a newbie issue. Yes, the Infohubs are not what they should be. Yes, LL ought improve them. But they are where newcomers are directed via the current newcomer experience. As long as all this remains the case, the best thing a non-LL agency can do is provide information about other places that newcomers can get help. This is not "endorsing" the current state of the infohubs, nor would refusing to provide that information change that state.

Well I suppose NCI does no harm. I just feel any endorsement of these mis-managed disaster areas is misguided. Time rolls on. A sim that can only support 40 avatars cannot support these rez areas for anyone and everyone and the people paying tier there. Linden Lab needs to acknowledge these changes and adjust these situations. I guarantee that there would be a dramatic decline in abuse reports if Linden Lab stopped pretending that these places did nto exist. abuse report

All this may be true, but it doesn't matter because the argument falls on deaf ears. As I said before, the only possible win here is to craft a new argument based on a concrete proposal for improving NUE. And there's plenty of opportunity for that, given the failure of InfoHubs as implemented.

Maybe NUE shouldn't involve dedicated-use InfoHubs at all. But really, if InfoHubs including Bear actually served their original charter, everybody would be happy: new residents, LL, Bear landowners, NCI. I'd even venture that most of the "Bear regulars" would be happier somewhere else if Bear became a newbie-centric region--as it was destined to be when the landowners agreed to host an InfoHub there.

The only message that will get through is a positive one; everything else is filtered out.

To be fair to Linden Lab, NCI's expertise is not in the "First Hour" part of the New User Experience they are interested in changing. We usually get new residents after the trauma has already been inflicted I do hope that the Big Spaceship people will talk to us and listen to our experiences. I think we have a lot to offer. For example, I've designed (and had good reviews on) an orientation path that's considerably different from both the original "Talking Parrot" OI, and the second "Hub & Spoke" OI.

Agreed. I say since Linden Lab has lost positive control over the infohub - (allowing 70 avatars to be randomly placed there daily from Help island is just stupid) - then they should fix the problem or hit the delete button. LL happily ended First Land when it was being abused. This is no different.

The original poster indicated he had encountered rude behavior at a NCI campus, not an InfoNode. That is why I wanted to follow up with him on that issue.



I take pride in putting our InfoNodes near people they are designed to help.



I am working under the current LL policies and definitions. I am aware they have changed, and will likely change again.



I'm familiar with the Shelter. I think your description of the situation in Isabel is inaccurate.



LL has made it clear that they are not going to do anything about Bear. Quite the contrary, they've actually changed policies to in favor of the Bear regulars. You are wasting your time and energy. I'd move. It sucks, but it is not worth the amount of stress it is causing you. I have been there. I and some friends had to move our stores out of Mullet in 2006 because the sim was constantly filled with campers at a casino there. It was annoying, but it made good business sense, and we ended up in a better location.



Do you think they are actually going to enforce that AR category in your situtation? No--they are going to do the exact same thing they have been doing about Bear for the last two years. Nothing. You are banging your head against a stone way. The stone wall isn't going away, but eventually you will crack your skull.



We are looking for a good space for an NCI InfoNode there. Feel free to come camp at it when we are done

I just had an idea for a positive, easy to implement proposal that could fix the problems at Bear. Ask Linden Lab (perhaps via JIRA and/or Office Hours) to up the maximum avatars allowed on Bear to 80 and place it on a class 5 server. Islands can (and do) support up to 100 people. This could be a solution that would make everyone happy.

When there was a casino in Bear in 2006 I discussed it with the owner and we worked around each other's event schedukles and actually sent each customers. Linden Lab is not so community minded. LL has decided that they will push me out of my parcel so their parking lot will flourish. Changing the parameters of the agreement we made does not change the fact that their new definition of Abuse of sim resources fits right into what tis happening at the infohub. If they want to continue to get the negative attention of this situation then I am more than willing to give it to them. But I did get an attorney in California t send a certified letter to Linden Lab's legal team. We are awaiting a response before we move forward.

You seem to believe that Linden Lab has every right to block me from using the server that I pay them $125 USD a month to access. And I am telling you that American law will prove you wrong.

And thsi level of harassment will prove their downfall.

They can move their hut and Bear sim will go back to being the non-issue it was for two years. As will I.

Carl then there would 50 loiterers and Linden lab would send 50 new players from Help island. I had them up the number from 35 to 41 a year ago.

The only solutions is to pick up that Hut and put it in chief sim or anywhere else. Why should I move from 16,000 meters when LL cvould move the shack and this nonsense could end? I think your all just stuck on being the ones in power that I should bow down to. I see myself as a paying customer that should not have to deal with bait-and-switch, harassment from agents of my service provider and resource abuses from the resident builder of the infohub. I am not a emotional little girl. I am not going to crack under the pressure coming from all sides. I have no intention of moving or just putting up with this nonsense.

Well here we go again where Lias hijacks another thread crying to people how it's not fair that she can't use "her sim". What she doesn't tell you is that at one time she had just one warehouse in the place and ran a small school there. Since then she has built, I think, (I'm sure she will correct me if I,m wrong) four clubs in the sim knowing that the infohub was there! She has since gone on to relentlessly post thread after thread about how she pays tier and should be allowed to have more of a say than anybody else. All I can say to anybody reading this is......go take a look at the mess she has created and the campers she constantly has inside her (very tasteful lol) club!

Anyway trying to keep on topic....I joined Second Life a couple of years ago now after seeing an article about the copy bot saga. I did as most people do and left Orientation Island at the first oppertunity. I began to explore the world not understanding anything about camping etc and spent many hours wondering why i never got any chat from the people sitting in the camping chairs (no one ever told me they were all away or how the chairs worked) After a few days I found the place pretty pointless and was about to move on to something else when.......
I happened to notice that whenever I logged in I always seemed to be in the same place, a nice looking place that always seemed to be full of people chatting. Now the main attraction of Second Life is that you can communicate and interact with people from all over the world and here it seemed like I had found a very good place to start.
So it is to The Bear Infohub that I owe my two years of experience in Second Life. Here I found regulars that were happy to explain to me what camping was, how to dress, the currency and how to use it and also how to teleport and use the landmark system. The Bear Infohub was the very thing that made me stay and the regulars were my source of most of the cool places i visited.
These days it's still nice to see newbies landing there just as I had done in those default avatars and clothes. I've spent many hours showing people how to dress and where to find stuff and so have the majority of the regular people that have come and gone during my time in Second Life. Also I remember seeing a post about Torley Lindens very informative video's being hard to find.....Well come to The Bear Dream Lodge Infohub because thats where you will find em along with all the great stuff from the NCI guys.
It's not nice to be abused by one or two bad eggs who own land near the hub and it's not pleasant to be called loiterers and griefers simply because you dont happen to like the traffic the hub is inevitably going to (and has always) generated. Many people would LOVE to own land next to a busy hub and I do believe that an offer was made to give an equal ammount of land in a mainland sim to the owner that is still complaining! There is simply no pleasing some people and it seems thier sole ambition is to waste their life fighting and complaining with the regulars of the hub. This has no positive outcome other than annoying the regulars and annoying Linden Labs with constant false abuse reports.
To finish I invite anyone to go take a look at our "parking lot" (I find this deameaning also) and decide for yourselves if this is indeed an "abuse of resources".

I spoke to the OP and Carl in-world to conclude our discussion earlier today. Our rational discussion ended rationally. Cam can troll alone.

Ive never saw Obi-Wan at Lime in the last days of Havok1 so is maybe why he said that =)