Choose Your Greeter From The Sl New Account Start Page

There is an existing HUD right now that's supplied to Mentors which identifies the Welcome Areas, Infohubs, and Help Islands with the highest head count of new residents. It also lists which sims are not staffed with a tag-wearing Mentor and acts as a "Birthday Radar" to indicate the distance and heading of the youngest avatars within the sim. (^_^)

I'm not sure how to get it distributed outside the Mentor's group and I guess listing Help Islands won't help anyone who doesn't have access... But, I can imagine making a Welcome Area HUD for non-Mentor volunteers would be a great tool. (^_^)y

I wonder if any of the other Mentors here can chime in on resident availability of this HUD... (o.o)

The one the SL Mentors use (as ppl can guess: NOT developed by LL, written by a volunteer) is essentially a series of radars in newbie areas and the results can be remotely monitored via the HUDs.

The SAI hud is pretty much a pager system. A new user touches an object and it sends an alert on all the online huds connected to it (you can turn them off to take a break). When a mentor answers the hud it stops sending the alert, says who answered it, and supplies the slurl.

I am not sure what the availability is but the SAI hud was written by Charles Mountain.

Ah.. Different HUD... I was referring to Lum's HI-WA Birthday HUD. (^_^)

And, yes, resident made. (^_^)y

I am hoping that these gateways will be direct-accessed from the website after the noob makes their avatar.

As the sign up system is currently configured (I just tested this), you don't seen the page that gives you the choice between Help Island and a Community Gateway until after you have made set up your account.

First you enter your RL information, then you pick your Avatar name and password and secret question. Then you hit "submit" (preparing you for the barrage of BDSM in world, no doubt).

That takes you to an "Activate Your Account" page. Then once you click the activation link in the email it sends you, go to a "Choose Your Starting Location" page giving you a choice between "Go to Help Island" and "Browse Community Gateways".

Help Island is described as:
* Learn tips & tricks to get you started in Second Life
* Get help from volunteers
* View demos and tutorials
* Browse galleries and freebie stores
* Created by Second Life

The Community Gateways are described as:
* Visit themed locations built for specific interest groups, languages and cultures
* Created and run by community members
* Get help and learn tips on how to explore Second Life
* Meet people who speak your language

From the "Browse Community Gateways" page, you can change your mind and go to Help Island via a link back. Paging back in the website appears to let you change your mind about your starting location, too (in both directions).

The Community Gateway page starts out with a list of English language gateways (presumably because I listed United States as my location during signup). The CGs are no longer listed in alphabetical order; it appears to rotate as to who is on top at any time. All the CGs are on one long web page, which is a major usability improvement from the old "see ten and click for more" system.

Overall, this is a significantly better sign-up system than LL had before the website upgrade.

Oh--also, the page you go to if you select Help Island has a link to a PDF download of the SL Quickstart Guide. A very good idea!

I hope they phase out these 'help' islands and make it all Gateway Locations.

I feel that before the Gateways are displayed the new user needs to check off some 'interests'. Perhaps a list like this:

I WANT TO START MY SECOND LIFE BY EXPERIENCING: (check all that apply)
-A job in SL.
-Sailing.
-Scripting
-Making clothes
-Performing
-Horse-back riding
-Parachuting
-Teaching
-Learning how to be a landlord
-Dancing
-Owning a club
-Role Playing
-Involved in Politics
-Non-profit development
-Social networking

Then the choices that appear from what they chose. And after they choose their gateway they then get a list of greeters from that gateway that they can choose to be their first contact in-world.

Right, it would allow specialized gateways (virtual ability, language-specific, etc) to focus more resources on the topic they are there to address. Not to mention that I am guessing the new residents who choose a starting location that speaks another language do not stick around SL for long.

The Community Gateway program has addressed that to some extent by encouraging each gateway to host a LM giver for Gateways in other languages. In addition, most Gateway helpers have translators HUDs of some type (Ferd's Free & the Simbolics are the most popular) and can manage to provide some assistance in languages other than their own--at least enough to get the new resident to an appropriate Gateway.

I think the list would be a good idea if it were carefully monitored. It has been my experience that such self-nomination processes are easily abused, however.

As for the "pick your greeter" concept, I think it would be difficult to implement for two reasons:

1) Gateway helpers are not on call 24/7, so unless there were some way for the system to know when a helper considered him or her self "on duty", it would dump most new residents into the world with an absent greeter (that's what happened back in 2005 when I started and a greeter system was in place).

2) LL currently seems very wary of doing anything that could be seen to imply an employer/employee relationship between residents and Linden Lab. Directing Gateway volunteers to help specific people, could be seen (by the lawyered) to be directing specific tasks (as an employer does).

I meant to focus resources of the CG. For example, a place that natively speaks Spanish would be best for Spanish residents when they first rez (I don't care how good the translator is, native speakers do it better). Someplace like VAI could concentrate on the needs of disabled new people rather than them being served less because we are busy with someone nondisabled who would have wanted a gaming CG if given the choice, etc.

That is an ongoing huge problem with the SL Mentors group as well. For all the latter group seems like the public face of the lab to new residents, LL does not want to create an employee relationship.

It is odd though when you compare it to other things though. The moles are contractors and LL has no problem with that relationship.

Unlike the Mentors, LL pays the Moles, and Mole contractors are limited (due to LL's interpretation of employment law) to residents of a limited number of US states.

At least at Caledon Oxbridge, we don't have much trouble quickly redirecting people who need specialized language help. It really has not been a huge issue.

Carl, could you or Desmond tell us how it the Gateway is working over at Caledon Oxbridge in a little more detail? I think you guys may have some great best practices to share.

Or even provide a basic User's Manual. They didnt, so I wrote one:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User%27s_Manual
[img]https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User%27s_Manual[.img]

Search > All > enter User's Manual, click the first link, then enlarge the search box for easier reading.

Cool Daniel! Thanks!

The Caledon Oxbridge Community Gateway is designed so that new residents start in an entry area ("the Cathedral" with posters giving a brief explanation of what SL is, what Caledon is, what an Avatar is, and how to use the tutorial. There is also a poster with Windows/Mac keyboard equivalents.

New residents follow red arrows on the ground throughout the next six halls (styled as "colleges" to match the Oxbridge theme):

Movement (walking, running, flying, sitting, teleporting, using the map)
Camera Controls (keyboard & mouse controls, screen controls, mouselook)
Communications (chat, IM, groups, friends, voice, SL etiquette)
Finding (inventory, search)
Avatar Customization (shapes/skins, clothing, attachments, appearance mode, animation overriders, plus free Victorian/Steampunk AVs for new residents under 30 days)
Money & Commerce (L$, getting L$, buying things, opening boxes, prims & land, finding freebies, plus a "side tutorial" on using the Lindex)

The tutorial ends at a group of signs with LMs to other places to explore in: Caledon, the Steamlands, Second Life, and Educational Locations. Plus some info on Caledon citizenship and the Caledon Library.

Between the rezzing point at the Cathedral and the College of Avatar Movement, there are places where Oxbridge helpers tend to hang out and ask if people need help or have any questions.

Since NCI and Caledon parted ways, I've been working a lot on the Oxbridge CG. I've done a revision on the tutorials, including an all new section on SL etiquette, places to go and see in Second Life, and a "side tutorial" walking new residents through the process of buying L$. I've also built a sandbox up in the sky with an attached tutorial area, containing a variety of free and purchased tutorials on Scripting, Building, SL Basics, Textures, Sculpties, etc.

Working with Oxbridge "Deans" Martini Discovolante, we've begun to assemble a slate of basic classes. Our goal is to have one "Introduction to _____" class every evening at 7pm SLT. We hope to have them up and running by the end of October (no promises). I'm currently revising and updating some classes and slides I wrote for NCI (NCI retains the rights to use their "fork" of those classes). I'm just about done with "Introduction to Textures" and will next revise "Introduction to Land". We've got an excellent scripter working on "Introduction to Scripting" and "Introduction to LSL" classes, and another Oxbridge helper writing an "Introduction to Appearance" class, plus volunteers for a number of other classes, I'm going to be contacting this weekend.

Thanks for sharing that info with us Carl. It is great to see we will still have some quality free basic education opportunities in SL run by some well-seasoned admins.

I think LL will need a Community Gateway Admin Manual for the folks that are chosen to run a CG but do not have efficient skills to make something like this work.

Speaking of "help island"...things have sure changed since May 08. If I'd run into as many truly ignorant and rude potty mouths there back then as I did tonight, I'd probably have never continued in SL.

A little voice told me not to go there, but my curiosity got the best of me.

Thankfully, when I came in, I got out of there fast and began my own journey of discovery further into the world of SL and the very many nice people in-world who helped me simply because they were nice people.