The New "Help Island"

I think the WA serves a valuable purpose. It gives those griefers who like to prey on the weak and powerless a place to go. I think the idea of an island for newbs to actually escape to is a great idea -- that way they don't have to stay there and actually get griefed.

The one question I asked someone when I got to the WA (which was little over a month ago so I remember it well!) was "what do I do now". This person was unable to answer this question. So I left, figuring, correctly, that if I was to have any fun in SL it was up to me to find it.

Frankly, I'm not seeing what good an island will be but I hope if the Lindens are going to do this, they'll do it right. I've helped a lot of newbs since buying first land because, well, when you buy first land your neighbors also tend to be newbs. People need to know about newbie resources like Yadnis, Gnu Inc, and the Shelter. They need to know about money trees. They need to know how to find a job and what being an escort really means. They need to know that many people that offer freebies are trying to attract newbies to their big shopping mall to up their dwell and get the newbie to spend his or her money on a neat bright and shiney that may not be of any value. They need to know how to find the Ivory Tower and Robin Wood's texture tutorial. They need to know the difference between leasing from a third party and buying land from LL and that selling your First Land for 1500 sounds like you are going to make triple your money but in reality you will not be able to buy non first-land for that amount. They need to know how to get stuff out of a box.

There's more -- I'm actually in the process of writing my own document about it so I can have newbie classes at the Spa.

Honestly, I'm not against the island but whats the point? If LL isn't interviewing people at age=one month and age=two months and asking them "what did you learn in your first months" and then addressing that -- then this is an exercise in futility.

If you teach newbs all this in the first few hours, then you don't have to worry about people preying on them. They'll know not to sell their first land so fast. They'll learn how to sift through the events listing to find the stuff that's worthwhile. They'll use the search functions to find stuff they enjoy. And then you don't need an extra special island with an extra special staff. And you won't need to spend time screening applicants to be that extra special staff since you won't need them.

This stuff needs to be written down and given to people when they enter the game. It needs to be on the website and easily accessible. Newbies need tools they can continuously use and refer back to -- not another hour on an island that LL will soon find too time consuming to monitor efficiently and staff appropriately.

I'm not knocking LL here. Doing this correctly takes a lot of time and a lot of resources and its overhead heavy. How to acclimate newbs has been the problem child of online games and worlds since these things first began. But building an island is, IMHO, an inadequate solution that will deteriorate rapidly as good intentions become overrun with the cost of doing business and spiralling problems. If I was going to put LL resources into helping newbs, I'd put those resources into creating better documentation.

Retention and conversion of productive and contributive new members of SecondLife versus the current WA which acts as a sieve that only allows the most stalwart of jackasses through.

The WA is a petri dish for prepubescent cockoffery.

Fine but no one has explained yet why or how this island would be different and how it would help.

Because it would be restricted to people who actually want to help.

You don't know that. The chat log that was posted said nothing about it being restricted. Furthermore, its already been mentioned in this thread (and in many others) that the screening process for mentors and greeters is inadequate. As mentioned previously in this thread, even official greeters and mentors can and often are there for purposes other than helping -- like getting new people to sell their first land.

A new island in no way ensures that only newbs and those that want to help will be there.

It's more controlled. Even if the screening process is inadequate, it's a smaller group and people can be easily removed from that group. Linden catches wind of a mentor or greeter engaging in harrassing behavior won't be either for long.

It's ludicrous to try to imply that a helpstaff-only island for newbies would somehow be "no different" than the current WA.

Yes, an idiot may slip through. But that is NOTHING compared to the current free-for-all that the WA is right now.

It's also a bit lacking to assume that the help-focused island wouldn't be restricted to help volunteers.

It sounds like you yourself are worried that LL may turn off the spigot of fresh meat provided to the WA.

This discussion is ridiculous. The ONLY disadvantage of such an area would be to those who want to screw with incoming signups. Absolutely everything else (oh, they won't get a proper taste of the culture of SL, oh, it'll be just as bad as the WA because the mentor/greeter screening process isnt perfect) is just a red herring.

And anyone arguing against it, I venture to say, is simply worried that their lolly is about to be taken away.

Man. I love when you decide to chime in about an SL issue-of-the-day.

Your comments have been most enjoyable.

Yay, Katiahnya is great

Indeed.

If someone wants to help, there is nothing stopping them. There is no rule that you can only help in the WA. There are numerous newbie places, all very helpful.

Or, Apply for mentor status, all one needs is clean record and the desire to help.

As a mentor, I welcome the new plan. There is far too much spam, audio clips, attention whoring and grieving going on in the WA. It's not LLs fault, it's the residents. It's unlikely these residents will change behavior, so LL's hand is forced. For every griever incident, a bug goes unfixed.

Well, I'm not worried about any lolly being taken away.

coco

Yeah that's a wonderful way of discounting my argument. Rather than using logic or discounting the reasons against that I gave in my rather lengthy post above, which would be, y'know, HARD, instead you just decide to accuse me of being a griefer. Not that you know me, or of me, or anything about me, but doing that must be easier than actually using debate skills.

For the record, I haven't been back at a WA since I first came into game A MONTH AGO as I already pointed out above, unless a teleport took me to a hub there, despite your unfounded accusations to the contrary.

Here's an alternate reason against such an argument that I'll RESTATE and I'll use very small words so that you can be sure to understand:

It is a waste of resources. Resources that could be put to work doing something more useful. Like documentation.

That was random.

Uhh.

Well, as long as we're randomly sharing that which we are not worried about, I have one!



I am not worried about tripping and falling into a hole which leads to a magical world populated by women in Playboy Bunny costumes and sentient turtles.

You been pulling on the hookah again Ena?

I like being random.

I'm sure you mean well, but I'm afraid you'd need to understand a bit more about the history of the welcome area to know why this move by Linden Lab is so critical. If you've only been here a month and you haven't spent any time there, you've missed most of the drama that's happened.

In any case, just because Linden Lab isn't saying

"'ey, kids. We gon' let in a few of yous guys and if you screw wit our newbs, we gonna ban your porky asses sooner 'an you can play a looping ass-beating sound effect. Capiche?"

That doesn't mean that's not exactly what they'll do if and when the situation calls for it. A buffer for the new folks is the very best thing we can ask for.

No, man. 'Cause, see, I'm not worried about that particular scenario.

I am worried about US energy policy as well as federal education programs, but that's a different topic altogether.

What are places which would be equivalent to the WA in online games like?

bout the same. Handful of regular players that don't necessarily want to be an official volunteer but want to help. Handful of official volunteers. No actual game staff. Handful of griefers that neither the players nor the volunteers can do anything about. Handful of confused newbies.

Thank goodness for missing drama. But I've been around online games long enough that I think I know what newbie areas are like. And I applaud the sentiment of making them better. I just don't see how this is a substitute for good documentation.

I'm new enough to remember how confusing my first day in SL was -- and I've been around the internet since Al Gore invented it and playing online games since the early days of Delphi and Genie. I had already checked out the entire SL website and nothing there prepared me for what I was hit with mere moments after entering the WA. I spent the next week reading the forums, checking out the fan sites, and STILL found out most of what I needed to know in game.

So yeah its nice that they are giving newbs an island and all that but I think they'd do better by having better documentation and just locking the WAs from people older than 1 or 2 months.

Having been in game for approximately two weeks now, I believe I can voice up on this subject.

I barely got the basic understanding from the tutorial area.

Teleporting to the welcome area brought me into a world of high lag and idiots. I marvled at the particle effects for a moment, but realized it for its true value. Useless spam.

Fortunately, I was found by a kind soul who helped me out with a new avatar...(I still need to spam his positive ratings...) and introduced me to his club. (Rainbow Tiger, if you're interested.)

From there, I have branched off and learned very quickly. I've not had any problems with scammers, yet, though I'm sure I will eventually.

Some of this ... (insert expansive hand gesture) ... "stuff" is rather intuitive to me, I guess. Experience in other MMOs (UO, CoH, MUDs, etc) has helped. Second life just adds an additional dimension to it. Mainly the third, but also the creationary and persistant aspect.

I'm sure that not everyone will have this same experience, nor have my unique world view and background...but it worked for me to (literally) keep my head down and wander as best I could out of the WA.

It's only been a combination of good horse sense and thinking fast on my hooves that have gotten me this far.

I'm happy LL is trying out a new way for people to come into SL. But I do think we could also use better documentation. There's a series of Live Help notecards that are great, and cover a lot of bases. I tend to think they should be part of every person's library folder in their inventory for quick reference.

Not that people would actually read them.

Gas stations placed throughout the grid where we can stop and ask for directions.

It's a waste of what resources? The computer that the island would be hosted on?



Howsabout locking the WAs from people who are older than 1 or 2 months, *and* allowing in people who have specifically volunteered and applied to help people in world...

Oh. wait... Durnit!

You seem to imply, somehow, that improving the welcome experience and improving documentation are somehow mutually exclusive. I am quite sure, Vivianne, that Linden Lab has a handle on their "resources" and wouldn't have suggested this measure unless they felt that they had the "resources" to go around.

Some of us volunteer to add to those "resources". How about you apply for a technical writer position, if you're so hot on "documentation"?

Linden wants the introduction to SL to be *experiential*. It seems that you want the introduction to SL to involve sitting on the hopper and taking a dump while paging through a tome and gleefully referencing indices.



Blammo. That's the Welcome Experience as it stands.

Second I have to put that adding a 'mentor/greeter'-only newbie island is NOT restrictive. Remember, that ANYONE can be a mentor or greeter. It just involves at least the convincing pretense of doing away with your 12-year-old jagoff ideology.

Thank you Enabran, Michi and Lo for supporting my opinion on this issue. You as well as the other voices in this thread has inspired me to submit an application to become a Mentor. *bow* I guess we'll see in 2-3 weeks if LL could use my assistance.

No. That's miniscule. Resoures are also people in terms of man hours. Those are the resources I'm speaking of wasting.

If there is already a need for mentors/greeters etc and that need is not being met already by volunteers, then creating a need for yet more volunteers will not fill that gap.



They might very well be mutually exclusive. You don't know that they aren't and neither do I. What I *do* know is that they are not talking about improving documentation -- they *are* talking about making this island. From that I deduce that the island would be their primary focal point and not better documentation since we've not seen that discussion. Hence their resources would be directed to fill the focal point and not towards documentation.

If you are aware of a discussion about better documentation directed towards new players, I'd love to see a link.

Further, I wonder that you can be so sure that they have resources to go around a subject that isn't even being discussed (documentation that is).



I have a job, thank you very much. Further, I wasn't aware that Linden had job openings for technical writers. None are listed on their website.

However what I am doing, and I'd already mentioned this in that post you obviously didn't read, is creating my own document for new players that I can pass out at an upcoming new player class that I plan to hold on a regular basis.




I'm assuming that denigrating anyone who has an opposing viewpoint from your own is standard operating procedure for you. I've merely offered my own opinion as was requested by the original poster. It is a valid opinion backed up with logic has a sound solution. In return you've accused me of harassing new players, put down my ideas as childish, and ridiculed me. Are you unable to debate without doing these things or is attacking people without any knowledge of who they are or what they have done just the way you go through life?