Purpose of SL Mentors v. Lindens

What exactly are SL mentors supposed to do?...

When I joined a year ago, they were here to help people and greet people on the orientation island. Today, SL Mentors are being overused as replacements for Lindens. We are expected to hold classes for apprentices, greet & run the OI islands, and be replacements for proffesional translators.

In addition to all this, the Lindens (who own SL) continue to reduce their role and bestowing upon us their responsibilities.

I'm an SL mentor coach & Buddy and I'd like to know what I'm supposed to teach incoming SL Mentors. Am I to tell them that we are to do everything the Lindens once did?

wiki link http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Second_Life_Mentors

The monthly SL mentor meetings that once provided us with information now do nothing to improve our skills. We spent over 30 minutes congradulating ourselves?! The question time is a complete disaster (only 2 questions were asked out of the 50+ mentors who attended!)

I simply feel as though LL is using us. (I hope I'm wrong. )

I have asked a number of othe mentors and they are begining to feel the same way. The group that once progressed and taught us more about SL is dying away...


Please post your opinions/thoughts.

EDIT:

I also would like LL to administer some sort of test to incoming mentors to see that they are indeed qualified and possibly to help sort their skills.

Bump

So I take it that I'm the only one who feels this way?

Or is it that the "official" forums are "unofficially" dead?

Of course they're using us, Bobby. (Wouldn't YOU use free help rather than pay for it?)

Of course we are being asked to take on the tasks that LL once did with employees.

This is called "volunteer self-sufficiency".


But why gripe about that to the newcomers you meet? For that matter, why complain about it here? Either you're happy to volunteer, for the pleasure it gives you and/or for the sake of newcomers who need your knowledge...or you're not.

The fact that the mentor's role is expanded now, compared to what it was in the past, is irrelevant.

Are you attempting to debunk me?

So they are using us...

All I ask is that the lindens partake in what should be their business and hire more lindens. We aren't a replacement for professional linguists. This isn't volunteering, this is using.

It gave me pleasure before to introduce and help people in SL, but now I feel as though LL is simply using us as a free armada of helpers.

I will still help people (as I always have), but I believe that the Lindens should not be treating their mentors in such a manner.

Wait.
You mean SL Mentors don't get paid? No free land, no free tier, no life time membership, no special benefits whatsoever?
/me raises eyebrow

I always wondered what those classes are about?

Related: I wish LL would actually focus on quality vs quantity. The level of questions being asked on the group too often mimic questions newbies have and are things that an established resident - especially a mentor - should already know.

That's my point. If you feel used, then take off your mentor tag and go about your business. Do what feels right to you.

As for me, I help people (like you do.) I'd do it whether or not I was a Linden volunteer...so I don't feel "used" by LL at all. I'd give the same help to newbies with or without the Mentor tag. I just feel I can do a better job by being tied in to the LL volunteer group and resources.

You can feel used, or feel you're using the system. It's all a matter of attitude.

They used to get paid(just barely) ages ago. Beside that, the only benefit is being able to communicate with Lindens more often.

Tied in to the volunteer group and resources...?

The lindens treat don't treat us properly(I don't know how else to express it).

They hold these "meetings" in which ABSOLUTELY nothing is learned. These monthly meetings are supposed to teach and devolp our second life abilities with solving problems. Instead they are a method in which the Lindens spend 30minutes going "Woot woot"!!!

I too help people in their transition and entrance into Second Life and hence that is why I joined this group a year ago and became a mentor coach so I could teach other mentors as well. Now, however, I'm noticing less activity by the Lindens. Meetings which once held question periods(and the lindens answered them) now instead are used for promoting morale in these meetings.?

I take it that we are the only two mentors in these forums?

The questions you asked towards the end of the meeting weren't anything the VTeam would have had any clue about so it's not terribly surprising that they weren't answered, they're simply the wrong Lindens to ask about future technical changes to the grid/viewer.

If you have specific concerns about volunteering then Blue, Amber, Mia, George and Lexie all have individual weekly office hours dedicated (or partially dedicated) to volunteering where you could bring those up. As long as the criticism is fair and non-threatening, I've never known any of them not to at least listen and discuss to offer their/LL's point of view.

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We have several sims dedicated in our honour just next to volunteer HI with no cost watsoever, i know we dont get paid but we do have several other benefits that some mentors dont utilise. and isnt it good we are taking some of the workload off the lindens? they still do heaps behind the scenes!

Since when has the volunteer system been above criticism? I would defend any volunteer's right to criticise the system in which they're volunteered. Criticism and debate are very obvious ways of bringing about progress. So you disagree with him? Fine. Engage in debate. Outline your position and tell him why you think he's wrong. Anything but tell him to shut up and leave. (I know you didn't say that, but "take off your tag and go..." ) Hell, he seems to actually care about the future and effectiveness of the mentoring system. Is that such a bad thing?

Also - the SL Mentors group strikes me as the *perfect* place for this topic.

It's true the group as a whole is being asked to do some translation.

I've never gotten the feeling that I personally am being asked to do any translating.

I feel extremely sorry for anyone that is dependent on my translation abilities.

When I started in the mentor program I didn't feel we got anything much other than the ability to go to OI. We didn't get much, but we didn't need much either. We weren't expected to do much. Just hang out and answer questions if we feel like it. If we weren't feeling like answering questions, we were expected to turn the group tag off. Not much of a demand there.

So far as I can tell we can still do exactly that. When you're feeling mentory, and wanna answer questions from n00bs, go to a n00b joint like Waterhead or an infohub, or an OI or an HI, and answer questions. When you don't feel like that, don't.

You don't have to learn a foreign language, you don't have to attend any continuing education classes, you don't have to pay attention to the SL Mentor chat, or join any extra Mental Mentor groups etc.

When you say "We are expected to hold classes for apprentices, greet & run the OI islands, and be replacements for professional translators," what do you mean by expected?

No Linden staffers badger people to do these things. If a person finds these actions pleasant, they can do so; those of us that don't want to do these things, don't have to.

I think the expectation may be in your own mind. You expect yourself to do these things. You feel an obligation to do more than you really want to.

Walker, you misunderstood my intent. I'm NOT saying we should drop this topic, I'm NOT suggesting that Bobby "shut up", and I DO think that this is the proper place to debate mentor issues.

My gripe with Bobby is that he thinks he's being used by LL. Well, duh...yes, of course we are. But while Bobby feels slighted by this, I see it as an opportunity to Do Good for new residents.

As for making the mentoring system better...boy, I'm all for it. There ARE flaws. Instead of whingeing about being "used", let's do talk about those, and ways to fix them. (And, by the way, one of the biggest flaws, one I griped about for months, has just been fixed. The waiting time to get approved has gone WAY down.)

Here are a few things that could be addressed:

Translation. We're always getting calls for translators to come running and help. Let's have a class in using a web-based translation utility. Let's find or make an in-world translator that doesn't stop working in no script areas, like the Babbler does. Let's publish a multilingual FAQ sheet on notecards so mentors can cut and paste stock answers.

Newbie Kits. Several mentors have information, or even collections of clothes and stuff, that they hand out to newcomers. Let's standardize, and issue a package to ALL mentors.

Coverage. Let's have the map show mentors who are wearing their tags as yellow dots instead of green. We could see in advance which OI/HI needs a helper. And residents could see where to find us and get help.

And Bobby's comment about the meetings being nothing but an LL feel-good session. Some of that's great, but I agree with him that the last meeting was pretty much a waste of time. Let's use that time for discussion of real issues. One thing that could help would be for mentors to submit questions and discussion topics a week in advance of the meeting.

Well at least you agree with my gripe that the monthly mentor meetings LL is hosting are lacking any content. I don't get how other mentors can view such meetings as being productive...

The wrong lindens??!!

I'm already aware LL has serious communication problems ie. their blog, but they brought the topic up asking for feedback and simply didn't listen. They said they wanted a way to mark people as authentic Linden certified helpers and I suggested to mark it in their profile.

And Blue was (Busy) for the first 20minutes of the meeting. Mia, George and Lexie barely said anything except for initiating the cheer after Amber spoke...The meeting was a complete disaster!

Taking workload off lindens...in other words being used?

Just like any other company each Linden has a specific task (or set of tasks) he/she is responsible for, asking them about something that's outside their area isn't going to be very productive. They may have picked something up somewhere, but they could be oblivious to it as well.

You asked about when WindLight would be updated, which only the WindLight team would know about. Updates to the way profiles look probably fall under the UI team, so you have Benjamin as a Linden to bring that up to during his office hour.

I meant their office hours: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Office_Hours

Quite a few Lindens have an hour every week they dedicate to a back-and-forth discussion with residents. They might have picked a set topic they want to discuss or explore in a given week, so it's not guaranteed you'll be able to voice your concern, but you could at least point out that you have one and usually they'll make time to fit it in. Others simply give an open floor to whoever is there to discuss various things.

I wasn't asking any technical aspects. I wasn't asking about how windlight is rendered or anything to do with its source code.

I simply asked a simple question...when?You don't need specialists to give a date, it should be general knowledge amongst the lindens.

As for profile updating(which should be done someday given the outdated graphics), they said "it would require rewriting the ENTIRE viewer"?

And as for productive... for the last several meetings, most of the time has been going to congradulating everyone for how they've done.(30minutes worth of congradulating). These meetings aren't ceremony's, these meetings are held once a month in hopes that mentors will be enlightned somehow.

It may or may not be common knowledge among the Windlight team themselves. If there are bugs to work out and fix, it can be very hard to predict how long that will take.

I’m too new to the group to know how things were done in the past, but I agree that raising concerns about legitimate issues with the program should be encouraged. If the monthly meetings have turned into nothing more then a RAH RAH session then lets work with the V-Team to make them more productive for the people that do show up. Which BTW from what I saw could only be a fraction of the number of Mentors in the group.
I’d like to add that this Forum is greatly under used by Mentors and volunteers in general even though I know there are a many of you out there that post regularly in the RA Forums. If more issues were aired here in the forums, then maybe I would have fewer SLV Digest emails to sort through each day.

At least more mentors are realising the disintrigation of the discussion at these mentor meetings.

As for the official SL forums, they are generally "dead". People tend to use the SLX and other "unofficial" forums to discuss SL.

There should be some sort of timeline nontheless.

We aren't talking about Iraqi withdrawl.