Help Island

After Months and months of waiting I was finally invited to become a mentor..

I've seen some info about the Help Island not being active.

Is this true? And if so what exactly are we doing to help the current set of new residence other than trying to catch them in the greeting area.

if its not down, lastnight when I typed help island in my find area in my map it simply acted as if it wasnt there.

It's down. Why would anyone lie about that?

I have heard it is due back Wednesday.

For now we are meeting up with newbies in waterhead but Help Island may be up Wed. that is what we are hearing so then we'll meet with them there

Kristine, I was made a mentor myself the night before the upgrade to 1.9, and have had the same problems you have. Visit Waterhead in the meantime to help out, like people have said, and apparently tomorrow's update will hopefully allow people back to Help Island. Also, I hear you have to have the "Second Life Mentor" group Active when you do a search on the Map for it.

I actually just got into the mentor gig, but I don't have a group for it.

Do you know how I get added?

thanks

Not quite, Jaycatt. At least thus far, you haven't needed to have the group set active, only to be a member of Live-Help, Greeter or Mentor.

So I finally found this thread...

Does Tateru's post imply that if you registered while it was down you're out of luck? I had heard good things about HI (indirectly from Tateru as it were), so was looking forward to it, but it may be possibly unnecessary after a few weeks play.

Thanks.

If you're still on orientation island, you've got a shot at help island. If you're not, seek out one of the new resident organisations. They're plenty helpful too!

Not to mention that there are plenty of Mentors, Instructors and other helpers on the mainland too.

Having been in a place (dare I name it?) called Active Worlds, I didn't expect to have big problems navigating here.
However...
I arrived on what I now know is called Orientation Island for the first time just two days ago. After moving about for a bit, I wanted to go back to where I started, so, supposing that the default Home would be the place one first enters, I teleported home.

Not a very friendly surprise! Suddenly I'm in the middle of some place completely deserted that I've never seen before.

So... do I infer correctly (not having found it in the FAQs or explicitly, yet, on the Fora) that it is now impossible for me to go to Orientation Island with my one Basic Account? That the only way to get there would be to start a second account, which would cost me money?

Sounds like a great way to get unsuspecting newbies to pay-up before they're sure they want to stay around.
Yes, I'm cynical, but I'm more than a little frustrated by that extremely counter-intuitive event. Why should I be sent somewhere as "Home", other than a place I've already been?

Actually a lot depends on where you are. If you wound up on Help Island, then there are still four Orientation Islands available to you.

Pull down the HELP menu, then select LIVE HELP and ask for assistance, and someone will see what they can do to help you. Also the orientation stations themselves are replicated in a number of places around SL, so that's an option as well.

Hi Lihisom, in spite of your experience, welcome to Second Life. I am sorry you found yourself in the “Welcome Area,” which is the name of the place you probably found yourself. Actually, you might have been lucky to find the area deserted.

Unfortunately, the Welcome areas aren’t always welcoming. Often you will find people with nothing better to do than cause trouble hanging around the Welcome area. Then there are the “recruiters,” a nice name for people who get paid to entice you to their place of business.

Normally new residents will have their home set to the Welcome area. There are exceptions but unless you own land or belong to a group that has group land, your home will be the welcome area. It isn’t a “to get unsuspecting newbies to pay-up before they're sure they want to stay around,” scheme.

A couple of ways around it are: join New Citizens, Inc. They have a small patch of land which you can use to set your home or, set your preferences to log you in at the last place you were, when you last logged off.

Please, feel free to IM me when you are next in game. If I am not in-game, I will get an email from you. I will be happy to work with you on the basics of SL, and show you around SL. It really is a special place.

Jen

Sorry if I sound like a nag, but I still didn't get a direct answer.
Is it now impossible for me to get to Orientation Island?

No, once you leave Orientation Island, and or Help Island you are unable to go back.

That's pretty cheesy.
There should at least be a warning somewhere in the first thing you see, or when you click teleport the first time, if the default isn't going to leave you somewhere on the island.

If the rest of the interface is as ill-considered, I probably won't be around long.

Thanks for the answer, Eric!

Jennifer, I wasn't ignoring your offer of help, I just wanted to be sure I wasn't inferring somethng inaccurate.

Still doesn't seem like very professional coding, to set such a trap (intentional or otherwise) for the newbie, when it could have been so easily coded to help rather than hinder.
I'll have to give this some thought.

Thanks, again!

It's not so much a trap. The Help Island is pretty new, and still finding it's place. The problem is (or was) that people would leave HI as normal, then a week or so later we'd find people coming from the mainland with their latest make-money-fast scam and trying to rip off the newbies on the Island.
So a rule was made so that once you left, there was no way back. But it's not impossible. While a mentor can't bring you back to HI, some of the Liaisons can. Speak to Jeska Linden, and she may be able to help.

Thanks, Siobhan!
I'll try to contact Jeska, if I don't hear from Robin first. Sent an e-mail yesterday, after seeing someone with an even worse problem in another thread, who was told to do so. (software glitch or server fault apparently kicked them off OI/HI)

The reason you cite is what I had guessed was the motive, and I agree completely with the goal. My problem is with the solution. There's no up-front warning.

Anyone coming in with any previous sim experience would hardly expect teleporting 'home' to take them to some random location from which they could never return. There should be something to alert them to the fact before it actually happens.

Thanks again,
Lihisom

Lihisom, it probably is a bug in the system or just an oversight by the programmers. You ca help by filling a bug report. Go to Help in the Menus on top of you screen and, you will fin the Bug Report in the drop down box. All bug reports are looked at by the Linden programmers and become official.

Although, SL didn't make a good first impression on you, please try and keep an open mind. I believe that once you get into the game a few days, you will see that it is like no other game.

Jen

Do all Lindens have the "god-teleport" capability?

As far as I know, they all have the ability, but HI is a special case, and not all of them have permission to tp random people there... Or at least that's my impression of the sutuation.

Your case is definately unusal, the Mentors on Help Island will usually tell the New Citizen that once they leave HI/OI, they can't come back. The problem is more than 60% of those who come of Orientation Island, go right to the mainland without even stopping to say hello.
There are signs all over HI that say, "Ready To Explore Your Second Life?". You click the sign and you're given a notecard and a landmark.
The notecard reads exactly as follows: (Even the spelling mistake ) )

"Landmarks and Teleportation
---------------------------

Now that you've learned many of the skills you'll use in Second Life, you're ready to join the Second Life community! To do this, you'll have to teleport to the mainland where you will find activities you can enjoy such as shopping and games or meeting places where you will meet others to socialize with and just hang out.

You have just been offered a Landmark to the "Weclome Area" - Click the 'Teleport' button and you will be sent there!" "


You're definately correct that there isn't a "warning" associated with this notecard. It should include something. Hopefully, with this thread, your experience will change that and a notice of non return will appear. I want to be the first to thank you for your heads up on it.