New "First Experience" for SL Residents!

Well, LL hasn't seen fit to make an official announcement on this, so I guess it's up to me.

Last Friday, all of the Orientation Islands (except OI Public) were deleted. New residents now rez at Help Island for their initial experience of Second Life.

Maybe there was an advance notice, and I missed it because I wasn't at the Friday night Mentor meeting. Maybe I missed a blog entry, or something on the Mentor email list. But whether the fault was mine or LL's, the change sure caught THIS Mentor by surprise.

[EDIT: It seems there was a blog post after all, and I missed it. Would have been nice of LL to give the Mentors a little warning. ]

In one way, the change is a good thing. Help Island is completely unstructured (sort of like SL itself). Residents can wander around, touch things, talk with mentors and other new residents, and learn by simple immersion. Also, there are now more help notecards and signs in foreign languages (but no Spanish!).

However, it really puts the burden of introduction and explanation on the Mentors. There are no self-paced tutorials any more. Any questions must be explained, often at some length, by a Mentor.

I suggest that all Mentors stock up on notecards with explanations of things like how to open boxes, how to adjust appearance, how to fly, how to earn money, etc. and be prepared to hand them out. Lucrezia Lamont's Newbie Kit is a good resource. There are also MANY helpful items for Mentors available at the various kiosks on SLVEC. Making gestures, or a notecard of cut-and-paste help phrases will also save you a ton of typing.

A couple of minor points.

1. Some newbies are winding up stuck in "vapor" mode. The fix for this is the same as the old fix for being "gray Ruthed": Open the Advanced menu (CTRL+ALT+D). Go to Advanced/Character/Character Tests/Test Female (or Test Male).

2. You can rez items from inventory on the Help Islands, at the Sandbox or Freebie Store or Demo areas (but not in the central arrival plaza). However, to create objects, you must have the Admin menu visible. (It is a real pain to try to explain to a newbie why he has to go through this arcane dance in order to make a plywood cube). CTRL+ALT+D to open Advanced. Then Advanced/View Admin Options. Further note: Once you rez an object and stop Editing it, it loses its owner information, and you will not be able to edit it further, although you can return it to yourself or delete it. Don't plan on doing any complicated building lessons until they fix this bug.

3. The Map function is mostly disabled on the Help Islands, the same as it was on the old OIs and HIs. You must explain to your newbies that they should use the Search and Map functions once they reach the main Second Life world to find places of interest.

I'll conclude with a call to arms. If you are a Mentor, and haven't been active lately, or if you do most of your Mentoring at somewhere other than OI/HI, PLEASE try to spend a little time on the new Help Islands. We need everyone we can get. If you are not a Mentor, but have held your account at least 6 months, please consider volunteering for the Mentor program. I don't know if LL is accepting applications just now...but please apply anyway. I don't care what they tell you; you are needed!

I'm not seeing the blog post..

/me looks confused.

This is the one that I see::

http://vteamblog.com/2008/08/05/qa-with-blue-linden-oihi-changes-august-4-2008-2pm-pdt-edited-transcript/

And, Blue has talked about it a couple of times in his office hours. On top of that... There are clues to some future modifications to HI. (^_^)y

July 15th - http://vteamblog.com/2008/07/15/hi-is-the-new-black/
August 1st - http://vteamblog.com/2008/08/01/hi-is-the-new-black-officially/
August 5th - http://vteamblog.com/2008/08/05/qa-with-blue-linden-oihi-changes-august-4-2008-2pm-pdt-edited-transcript/

Even if you don't attend the office hours this would have been rather hard to miss.

Ohhhh.. I thought we were talking blog.secondlife.com here.. Never mind.

Nah, it was easy, Kitty. I can't attend office hours, and I almost never read the VTeam blog. In fact, I make it a general rule NOT to read blogs. Forums, si. Email lists, si. Group chat and group notices, si, si. Blogs, no.

Agreed with Lindal - except for one thing - they are not accepting Mentor volunteers now. I have a good friend who would love to be a mentor, and would do a great job at it, and she can't volunteer. I think the backlog of volunteers got to be too much, so they stopped accepting apps until they can get caught up.

HI's seem to be a little tougher on new residents than the OI's were because there is no direction, but I suspect this will sort itself out. I've had several people not realize that it's sort of an introductory area or a place to learn the basics and think that was Second Life in it's entirety. Just 8 people, some dumb mentor named Trout and one island - that's all there is to SL. It would be nice if they combined some of the elements of OI with HI and gave people some kind of notice that the HI is only an orientation area where they can get comfortable with the game interface, pick up some free inventory items and absorb some basic skills before heading to the main grid.