The role of Infohubs

Ok, maybe I'm not understanding this here. You oppose the LL Infohubs but you run a school to teach others how to create their very own parking lots, er I mean "clubs"? I don't see the difference.

What infohubs mean to me...

NOT a Welcome Area. To me a Welcome Area is on the cusp of 4 regions, is X shaped (or T shaped as the case may be), attracts obnoxious types, and sometimes has an art installation.

An infohub is a place which has clickable info for those who need a brush up on basic SL stuff such as how to edit your clothes. The better ones have clickable billboards which offer Landmarks to resources and key learning places such as the Ivory Tower of Prims, or display those awesome maps of mainland. They may offer freebies. They usually follow a theme aesthetically and make a good meeting spot or rest stop.

On a sick day a few months back I "I-hopped" from hub to hub to see what they were like. They seemed to be built and managed by citizens, although it was on Linden land. Or they were set up that way back in the day.

I felt these were sorely missing on the newer continents, but
when I looked into being able to participate and offer my services as a volunteer, I learned these infohubs were now made by freelancers, and you had to submit a portfolio and compete with countless others. I just wanted to be able to help out and give something back since they had been useful to me early on, but I guess the nature of what an infohub means to LL has changed.

They mull a great deal over New User Experience but over the past few months have distinctly offered less to new users who have no affiliations.

Same =)

When I first came I found my way to a dance club which I thought was amazing because it was the first one I saw. Was all these people there and they was dancing. There was a big sign that said to click on the ball to dance so I did and wooohoooo!!! was so kool =)

After a bit I say "hi =) this is great" to a person near me and she not say anything back and just keep dancing. So I think o well! some people are just like that. I say hi to another person and he not say anything either. So after a while I stop dancing and thought these people are pretty snobby because they not chatting to me or anyone. Unlike people at my homeplace.

So I try one more time and say hi to another person and he ignore me as well. So I say Hey! You! and nothing. So I start going around and chatshout BOO! and HEY YOU!!! at people and nothing again. Then I chatshout BOO! at a lady and she shout BOO! back at me and it came over my speaker. I nearly fell off my chair I got such a fright lol !!!

Anyways we had a chat and I tell her this was amazing club and she say thx and that it was her place. And then I ask why ppl not say hi back to me and she say they probably just away from their computer for the moment or they maybe in IM. I say ooo! hope they dont mind that I shout boo at them. And she say that I would be fine and noone would mind really. So I was a bit relieved about that.

I asked her if I had to pay to be in her club and she say No but I could put a donation in the tip jar by the stage if I wanted to. So I did. Then she say thx very much and she had to go but I could stay as long as I wanted and to enjoy myself. I thought that was very nice of her. And she went away. I only stayed a little bit longer myself because while it was fun dancing it wasnt any fun being with the snobby people who didnt want to chat me or even chat each other.

I didnt find out until later on about campdancing. I can be soooo dumb sometimes. Specially when I think everyone else got paid to be there when they wernt, and I was there and didnt get paid, and I ended up paying them myself. dumber than dumb even. o well =)

This is about sim resources. Infohub parking lots use alot of sim resources 24 hours a day. That warm and fuzzy feeling you get from being dropped into a parking lot full of people willing to acknowledge your presence is just lovely. But only 41 avatars can fit in a mainland sim at once. So when said parking lot fills to capacity - the people that pay tier to use resources in that sim are denied what they pay for. Infohub parking lots can be placed anywhere on the mainland. Every mainland sim has Governor Linden Land set aside in it.

Proper CUSTOMER SERVICE representatives would make sure that their tier paying customer from 2005 to the present in the same location would not be inconvenienced or denied services due to nonsense. The issue goes away when the service provider moves the parking lot. That is what a company with good customer service, good urban planners and good will would do. But not this company. It is very odd that Linden Lab wants to keep this issue going when it is easily resolved without dragging staff and residents into it making it some sort of Mexican standoff.

We can only hope that someone on the staff of the Linden Lab comes to their senses and ends this nonsense. If not it will just continue to balloon out of control as we move toward the two year anniversary of this debacle.

M. Linden and Robin Linden could easily put an end to this - but they rather sit back and watch it all unfold. Bad customer service starts from the top and trickles down.

I didnt see camping chairs in the infohubs I visited.

That would be just lame and against the very spirit of SL. It's hard to believe the Lindens would have camping anything since it's - as you say - a drain on the resources.

The purpose of Infohubs would be to give Lias a cross to bear.

cross to 'bear'. That's a good one.

Firstly.....No this thread is NOT about sim resources, it is actually about the role of infohubs. Secondly I notice that Lias has no objection to the hub being anywhere else on the mainland! Not in my back yard eh? The question has to be asked as to why her back yard was built AFTER the hub became popular. Also if Lias is against the hub so much.......why on earth are there a multitude of HUGE yellow signs advertising her business all pointing directly at the hub? Like I said, Don't believe me?......Go take a look for yourselves!

I would also like to ask that you at least address the regulars of the Bear Infohub with some degree of respect instead of classing us all as "loiterers and greifers" I'm not at all a "troll" and have answered your posts here without being abusive or disrespectful....I ask that you also apply the same manners Lias? Thanks.

The issue of Bear has been covered in countless threads (just do a search on Lias's name) and frankly it's all wearing very thin. You have been offered an equal amount of land somewhere else on mainland but you have refused to accept this. The hub was running and the regulars were there a long time before you decided to add another three clubs. It never has made sense why Lias closed her private island and moved her interests right next door to the hub! Countless options (some of them very lucrative) have been offered so this constant battle just seems to make less sense every day.

The role of the Bear Lodge Infohub has always remained pretty much the same, it's a place where newbies land from Orientation Island and it's also a place where quite a few of them choose to stay and chat to find out more about the place. I've either helped many many newbies myself or watched as other Bear regulars have shown them how to dress and teleport. This can only add to Linden Labs player retention rate and I am one such person that the Bear Lodge Infohub was responsible for retaining. I've made some very good and close friends at Bear that i would not have made otherwise and many of these I can remember as newbies on their first day.

It's also worth noting that NCI have chosen to place a node right next to the hub which gets used every day by many of the newbies that land here and also by some of the older players for various reasons. As already mentioned Torley Lindens excellent video tutorials can be accessed from here. There are no "camping chairs" in the hub at all but there are chairs placed inside the lodge to encourage group chat between players.

Something that is important to remember is that we as humans like to socialize... The hubs are important because most of us at some time like to pop into our favorite hubs to meet our friends and catch up on the chat. If the hubs were removed it would fragment the whole community and players would be very much more isolated. That can only be a bad thing for Second Life as many of us were attracted to the place for the social aspect of the game.

One last thing.......I am a premium account holder and I have a good size chunk on a mainland sim. so it's not a case of freeloading at the expense of tier payers. It is very much more a case of enjoying all that Second Life has to offer and socializing at the hub is part of this.

I somehow know I'll regret stepping into the middle of the Bear fray (again)... and it's kind of unfair to Clubside for us to hijack his thread--which has some important unfinished business, I think. But I feel that there just has to be some rational solution possible between the parties in Bear that also serves what has to be the first priority of that sim now: making new residents feel welcome. That is the only important role of the Bear regulars and the landowners in that sim. Everything else is just nice-to-have. That's what Bear became when the InfoHub was put there. So if the use of Bear by "regulars" any way conflicts with that priority, that's gotta change. And if that priority is interfering with commerce in the sim, commerce has to take a back seat. For both parties, that's just how it is, and how it was destined to be the moment the InfoHub was assigned to that sim.

Once both parties accept that NUE is the only thing that matters in the sim, then it becomes a question of aligning both parties' views of what optimizes that experience.

So both parties should consider Bear from a new resident viewpoint *only*, come to an agreement about that, and only then try to derive how they themselves can best serve those new residents.

Perhaps a new thread would be helpful to hash-out that agreement about what is the absolute best experience Bear can offer new residents. Or I'd be happy to host an in-world meeting in neutral territory over the next few days.

But I have to warn both parties in advance: personally, I don't care about what you want out of it, or what your aggrieved history may have been. If it's not about NUE, I'm just not interested. And frankly, it's not in either of your interests, either.

Qie you are the eternal optimist

One party has already resorted to an attorney's assistance; as such I doubt anyone will walk away warm and fuzzy from a meeting.

By 'NUE' I presume you mean 'new user experience'? While I agree that is important, to the point of trying to be helpful with regard to that myself as best I can, it should not be allowed to trample everyone and everything. It doesn't matter if Lias is a compelling figure to help, or not.

Personally, the cynic in me says we should just ship the new users to Carl and Travis and Prok and people like that, who can manage the infohub experience far better than... well I guess nobody's really managing the other infohubs right now.

Not to worry Qie. I will not be responding to the greifers and trolls.

I assure you the Bear Regular Loiterers have no role. The infohub came a year and a half after I was there because I told Torley I would be happy to have a place where new residents could rez and explore. There was no talk about using the space as a chatrooom for anyone on the grid. I was new and did not think Linden Lab would allow the space to turn into a parking lot and insist I leave to accommodate it.

Agreed.

Okay, never mind. This morning, before Des's post above, I looked at Bear again, not having visited there for... a long time, maybe a year. Then I toured a few more InfoHubs--and bumped into another Forums regular, doing the same thing (!).

At this point, I truly have no idea how to fix the InfoHubs in general, nor Bear in particular.

As a source of information, I gotta say that NCI stepped into a gaping void with the InfoNode project, and is to be commended for the initiative. My tour was far from exhaustive, but there was actual content worth a newbie's attention at Ross--and that stood out as an exception. (It's not the first time I've had to grudgingly acknowledge the contributions of S/he Who Must Not Be Named in the Forums.)

Most of them were, as noted by others, pretty little builds with not much reason for a new resident to spend much time there. Because they weren't really set up for "self-serve", about the only information I saw getting imparted was by conversation with older residents congregating on the site--although some were totally vacant when I visited.

Alas, Bear. Such a beautiful bit of terrain, so ravaged now by the war there. It's markedly worse since I last visited, on both sides of "the wall." Well, on the plus side, the sleazy freebie-reseller seems to have vanished. But there's a notorious adscammer now offering the one parcel for sale in the sim--at a characteristic adscammer price. The sim was crowded (in this instance, mostly not at the InfoHub, but I can see how that could happen too), and suffering horrific lag spikes, below 1 FPS.

It is at this point no fit place for a newbie to arrive, a business to function, nor a group to gather socially, yet it's crowded with avatars trying to do each of those things. It is a problem that doesn't want to be solved.

Yeah, there are a ton of conflicts on the grid that just won't resolve happily. I've tried to be a reasonable voice of mediation in the past but have regretted it every time. Just how many times have you seen anyone change their opinion on anything, without getting horribly stung first.

Hey, I got 20-odd openspaces right now - just doing my best to remain classy myself lately. Probably not too hard to guess how I've been feeling.

NCI places our InfoNodes near every LL InfoHub we can buy or rent land close to or adjacent to. It is true that our InfoNode in Chief--just across the sim border from Bear was the first one. That was because I used to co-own a mall in Chief, and I kept the land the InfoNode is now on for future use by NCI when we sold the rest of the Chief land.

Thank you Qie.



Prokofy has always been a strong advocate of helping new residents. Not only has he helped NCI in the past, he also has several properties offering discounted rentals of homes and business spaces to people under six months (I think that's the cut off point), and is co-developing--with Jessica Ornitz--an InfoHub-like area near the Iris "Temple of Moth". Prokofy also operates the Public Land Preserve with a number of park-like open areas throughout the mainland. If he were inclined to "play the game" and seek out good press for himself, he would come off far better than quite a few of his enemies.



From my understanding, that's because LL told them to make the builds and LL would be responsible for the infomation content.

I work in Bear sim 8Am to 10AM SL time daily. I have personally witnessed the greifing the infohub causes from overcrowding. Linden Lab really needs to move that parking lot to where it will not negatively impact a premium account holder just trying to hold classes and have an occasional event. I am happy to see that some outside intenties are beginning to find out about this issue. Perhaps Linden Lab will come to their senses and stop the harassment http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2008/11/the-megaprim-sp.html

Prokofy Neva comments on this thread at length on his blog:

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/11/memory-bazaar.html

You beat me to it, Carl. I feel like such an ass for my post...

Thanks for the continued feedback! I hope to get another five Infohubs posted on the site by the end of next week. I've been scouting a bit since visiting Orientation Island Public as that one was a different experience. Not because of the antiquated Orientation Island experience, but for the 32 gathered residents who's voice chat continued through my photo shoot without abatement. This gave me a little insight about the "gathering place" use some of you have mentioned. I guess some of the people spread out on the region could have been new residents, but honestly I don't recall any of them not having group tags. Two people dominated the voice chat, constantly berating another resident who as I found out before leaving was solely using text. Around twenty avatars just seemed to be sitting there watching/listening to this squable which seemed to be some long-running fued. It is certainly not a "role" for Infohubs I had considered!

I wanted to throw out a few things as I move further south in my own Infohub research. These are preliminary recommendations based on what I've seen so far and wanted some feedback on them from new and old residents alike.

No Infohub should be smaller than 1/4 of a region. This is meant to be connected land such as a square, not disconnected parcels or long stretches around the region to add prims. An Infohub should be an actually usable and sizable area for both residents and Infohub information alike. All current Infohubs smaller than this should be relocated to regions where a larger land area is available. I have a bit of a problem with this recommendation myself as Iris would fall into this category and I have spent quite a bit of money to secure the area after the Lindens decided to dump much of the land back in 2006. Maybe some deal could be worked out with other local resident groups to merge land in such a case to keep the location.

Infohubs should exist on all Minland continents. Right now, except for three on the Atoll, all of them are on the original continent. Besides the lack of land, new residents aren't likely to see what there is to offer elsewhere unless they happen to wander. As Infohubs often remain "Home" for many, why not give Mainland owners of the other continents easier access to new residents?

Infohubs need to dispense more information visually. Notecards suck. The technology is lousy. That they haven't been converted to HTML is a travesty. Even if they had, they still need to be "opened". How about more signage and videos? Some of the most important concepts of Second Life are only covered in notecards at the moment. The concept of Land could easily be discussed visually, pointing out the about land icons and information in the menu bar. Indicating that other residents are paying for your experience until you buy your own land is an important concept. Concepts such as groups, voice chat and others deserve signage as well. Many of these things are as important or more important than how to rotate a prim.

Okay, there's three to get me started! Thanks again for reading and the continued feedback.

Lias, if you post with your alt here, you might have to think about not making the exact same typos as with your main character. Greifing = griefing, intenties = a dutch word, not English.

I think that except for the few that earn the blatantly low amount of less then a dollar per hour working for you, most people are very tired of hearing the same old story for over a year now. Constantly you are slagging off the good people that meet each other at the infohub, who are just having a normal conversation.
You call everyone that just visits the infohub in stead of your holy club griefers, but in reality those people have no means to grief, since the infohub is without rezzing, or scripting capabilities. And in fact, most people just come back to a place where they started, because they made friends, and an infohub is a perfect place to do so.

To get back to topic, whatever the place is called, it serves a unique purpose, friendships are made there, new people that come seeking information will be helped by people that are longer in SL. If you would deny the "older" avatars to come to an infohub and hang around, the new people that will arrive in SL will feel lost and they will think SL is empty. No matter how or in what way you will offer them information. Most (new) people do not like to read and have not much patience, so they will like to communicate with other people.

If you put that into the light of a club like Lias' club, where the screaming signs indicate that everything is just about money. Whether it is about selling all kinds of goods or trying to hire people to work in the club for a few cents per hour, in addition of all kinds of negativity about "gross abuses" and "loitering" or misuse of mega prims, I think any normal reasoning human will make their own judgement on what is better for newbies to be confronted with when they start Second Life.

On a personal note I think that the harrassment of people that visit bear infohub by this lady, whether it be in voice or chat, or trying to gain new slaves for her club for a few L$ has to stop. It disgust me, if I hear this lady talk about this nonsense, while hearing lots of children in the background. I mean, how important is this really if you put it in the light of things? Get a grip, please. Go play with your children, in stead of sitting behind the computer, standing half naked in a virtual world telling other people what to do.

The childish argumentation about who came first in the region, it does not matter. This virtual world is created for people who like to get away for some time from the real world.
They like to meet other people, talk and have fun.
There is no need for power hungry people, that like to think or have the world turned around their finger. It does not work that way, not in real life, nor in the second one.

If the intentions of you, Lias Leandros, are truly of a good manner, show it by doing something to the benefit of others, rather then for yourself. Egoism is never rewarded in the end.

Saii Hallard.

I will respond to you in-world. Thanks.

Work? At an infohub?

Are you a sekret Linden Alt?

During all this big debate I can't help thinking that some of us have missed the point here.
If we look back through our lives it is a matter of fact that we learn the vast majority of the things we do by being shown by someone else......Did any of us learn to drive by reading about it? The jobs we do in real life? My point is that no one is ever going to stay long if the learning curve is made steeper by having to read notecards or fumble through some awkward automated tuition. How many of us actually stayed at Orientation Island and went through all the lessons? I know I didn't and I certainly know many many others who didn't either. Why? Because for most of us we wanted to get out into the world, we wanted to see what it was all about, we wanted to start making friends in our Second Life.

I've been a bear regular for a couple of years now, like I've said before it is where I cut my teeth. I've watched a good many people come and go and I've made some very good friends at The Bear Infohub, second life and real life!
The newbies I've seen come into Bear almost always ask one of a set number of questions. These are normally along the lines of.....How do I get these clothes changed, how do I find such and such a place etc etc. All very basic things that they simply have not picked up on Orientation Island. What do they do? They almost always ask a regular oldbie how to do these things. I am happy to say that many newbies have been helped this way and since Carl built the node they are also pointed to that.
I'm willing to bet that if we are honest a good few people reading these forums can say they have been helped or made friends at an Infohub when they were new, I know many people in Second Life that could say this.
My point is that more than anything else this is a social pastime, without the people Second Life would be nothing but a simple building game. The chat and social aspect of the Infohubs is a very important part of Second Life and it is a major factor in player retention. Why else would voice have been introduced but to enhance communication between players?

One other point worth noting here......As I've said I have been a Bear regular for two years. In that time I've popped in to The Infohub nearly every day. Over the course of that two years I have seen the regular crowd at Bear change several times to the point that the original players that started there are seldom to be seen sitting on the bricks....they have simply moved on, made relationships, built houses or gone into business. It isn't a case of the hub just filling up every day with the same old faces.

It is then surely a shame that one person and her club (sorry four clubs) came along and decided to build an empire in a sim where there was obviously a thriving Infohub? Yes I know the lady had land here already but at that time she had just one small warehouse with minimal use. Surely it should have been obvious that clubs requiring over twenty avatar spaces would have been better built in a sim with no Infohub? At the very least the traffic generated from the hub would be welcome by almost anyone else?

Clubside had some good observations and suggestions about infohubs on the mainland.

Clubside you still have not addressed the issue of mainland sim resources. If a infohub takes up a quarter of the sim - how would traffic be controlled so the tier payers in the sim are not inconvenienced. Are you considering suggesting that the land be accessible by avatars 30 days old and younger (and members of approved resident help groups)?

And yes, squabbling is a major part of infohub loitering. It seems to be some form of entertainment for the extremely bored.

With so many posts on here, over 1000, it must be you who is extremely bored.

And yes, you're exactly like the people that make the decision to live near an airport that has been there for decades and then start whining about the noise the planes make.

Because in whatever language you will try to convince other people, the fact is that:
- You made all the clubs well AFTER the time that Bear infohub was well established and maybe already a year in the top visitor list
- You have on each given day MORE people per/hour in each of your FOUR (!) clubs then those who stay at the infohub itself.
- You cause griefing with your objects that SHOUT all across the sim: Sploders, announcements, DJ's, music loop emitting objects etc etc.
- You are griefing by harrassing people with your loitering blah blah. Not to mention the fact that new people that come into SL for the first time are accussed for... being there. Now that is very beneficial to Second Life!
- You have MORE megaprims used in the sim, then the few used at the infohub
- The scripting time needed for the stuff at the bear infohub is probably 1% of all the scripting time needed for all your tipjars/dancefloors/dance machines, contest machines... not too mention times FOUR.

So basically this whole accusing of griefing, resources and parking lot... who is the guilty one? Anyone with common sense will know the answer.

You need a reality check, really.