Leaving Mentor group due to IM nightmare

I am leaving the mentor group owing to the constant chat/IM problem, I find its ruining my 2ndlife, a constant barrage of IM's. Everytime I do anything I want to concentrate on a new mentor group IM starts - its very annoying! Do we need these constant calls for some one with building skills, someone with scripting skills, someone who speaks german etc etc etc - IF WE WERE FREE AND IN MENTORING MODE WE WOULD BE ON HELP ISLAND! IF WE ARE BUSY YOU WILL HAVE TO MAKE DO!

Anyway, there you go, I will carry on helping newbies and others in world, but will not be on help island or part of this group until the IM's problem is solved.

Different folks get annoyed by different things, I suppose.

The vast bulk of the membership of the volunteer groups seem to be able to tolerate the spam, or the groups wouldn't have so many members.

This discontent illustrates how nice it would be if we had a bit more power and flexibilty in the chat system.

One should be able to turn group chat off.

You want people to do LL work for free and have the awesome power to switch chats to a particular group off? Hmpfh!

It's not really a thing to want for SL volunteers, it would benefit everyone. I wanted this ability before I was in an SL volunteer group. It's a useful change to the code that would not take too much brainpower or be a challenge to the programming staff, which I suppose is probably why it doesn't get done. Only changes that are fun to code get considered, mundane coding that would produce immense benefit for the users with little work by the programmers doesn't get done, because such coding is not interesting. Picking the low hanging fruit is boring.

The chat system should have an option to include or exclude IM chat from the public, channel 0 proximity based chat display, that by itself would reduce the aggravation factor of IM chat a great deal.

Plus one should be able to turn a group's chat off.

Yeah, I left for the very same reason. What got me more than the requests was the responses:

> Any scripters available?
> Nope.
> Not Me.
> sry
> iveneverscriptedbeforebuticantrylol!!11!1
> haha
> no
> Yes. Wait, no.
..etc etc etc..

If I'm not available to help, I simply close the box after reading the initial request. It's not being rude, it's not ignoring the problem.. just close the box

On the other hand, having the ability to shut off those IM's would be great.. but sometimes it's just the laugh I need while I'm in the middle of something complex

There's always 2 sides to every coin..

I quit because of this, after two years in the program.

Granted, I did 95% of my mentoring on on one, so it's no sweat for the group or myself that I left, but it was the spam that started to get out of control which led me to eventually quit.

It's not so much the calls for help - although "OMG there is a guy here naked!", or "he has a penis on his head, what do I do?" are indicative of a problem, because any Mentor should know to call live help or a Linden, which makes me wonder if it isn't just attention whoring - it was the line after line of peanut gallery, idle chit-chat after the call for help that eventually made me want to leave.

Actually, Alysa touches on it above, when speaking about getting a laugh out of it. The channel was much more heavily regulated (especially when Char was heading up the program) in times past, but somewhere around the second half of last year, the silliness started mounting incrementally, and it started to become less and less tolerable for me personally.

Being able to mute that channel when I was doing something important would have been nice.

Maybe someday, probably right after the Havok upgrade.

Thats my ideas on how to fix Mentor Chat Spam

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Well written Eric. But in defense there has been considerable less mentor spam this month than last. It was really grinding my nerves but I think all the recent talk about mentor spam has finally kicked in and people are policing themselves "somewhat" more again. Hopefully it keeps improving cause its still an annoyance regardless of improvement.

well it seems to be the theme these days for the mentors. alot of problems = drama and alot of wasted emotions.

I have noticed that the mentor chat spam has been reduced in the last month or so. However, these threads seem to multiple like rabbits. I don't consider spam those that say, "I'm the only one here, can someone come help?" or similar chat that includes we have to few mentors for the new residents on HI, Waterhead, etc. What is annoying is the overwhelming requests for TPs. Its not that hard to type HELP ISLAND in the map section and teleport oneself to the island, I know I do it all the time. I am quite thankful that when someone requests assistance for a new resident in an area that they aren't able to help with only those that CAN help respond and not, as stated above, the immense NO NO NO. When we ask, we aren't looking for who CAN'T, but who CAN.

The chat group has improved immensely as I said, in the last month or so, however we must be diligent in how we use it. I have, unfortunately, noticed more rudeness when someone does request assistance. How can we have a good group of volunteers and help others, when we are rude to our fellow Mentors and unwilling to help them?

*tosses in two cents* something I don't do often pertaining to the mentor forum.

There is a tear between wanting to be able to message the mentors for expertise but there is no way for busy mentors to turn it off (aside from "busy" but that turns off too much).

Currently the Lindens have provided an object for greeters to have a way to have availability turned on and off so that they don't get messaged when they are busy, but so that they dont' have to be on HI just to be available.

While I applaud that this can be "scripted" I think it's too useful to just apply to greeters.

Mentors and, in fact, everyone in SL can benefit from being able to join groups and turn on or off group notices from those groups.



Yes please.... if you get an IM it does NOT help to say "no I can't", simply don't answer.

Someone made a group where "spamming is ok" but it has the following problems....

1. The "spam" has nothing to do with finding or accessing mentors.
2. It's not limited to mentors.

It seems that mentors should get a similar object such as the greeters have.

Can you provide evidence for this statement? Isn't this like saying you left the mentor group before the beginning of existence?

Does that make Introvert the Chicken?

There is one easy way to get rid of the perception that Mentor spam is an out of control problem.

Join the Elves group.

BIGGIE SMILE

In response to this, I made the group where we allow the spamming.

1) However, although some spam is not related to mentor actions, it all does help to bring us together as a group. Majority of the time it IS related to Volunteer actions.
With updates and help requests.
We help each other all the time and it has been a massive success.
It has also contributed to the decrease in Official Mentor "spam" as people as on our group for help first now.

2) as it may not be limited to mentors.... it IS limited to Volunteers! Mentors, Life Help, Instructors and Greeters ONLY!! some alts are there, so people can still take a break on an alt and contribute to the group, change to main chars when they are needed.
There are NO non-volunteer members in the group.
Everyone is welcome that wants to join, we add people whenever we see them, or atleast offer the invite.
Almost 100 members now and its a good group.

As for the Spam on the main channel.... just close the window if u can't contribute in a positive way.

There is no need to moan or complain. no need to point out if its inappropriate post... Lindens read it too and are the only ones responsible to sort that out... leave it to them.

You can just close the window, but unfortunately you'll be closing it about every 20 seconds. As soon as the next piece of spam comes up the window appears again! Closing the window doesn't really help remove spam, it just provides you with another activity to do whilst you're watching the spam roll in.

It'll stay closed if u close it.

Only time it re-opens is if a new session is started.

Not quite...

Actually, once you close it, you get NOTHING from that IM session. You will only get a new popup when a new session starts - i.e. someone who closed the window opens a new one to send a message to the group (or the session expires due to extended silence - (10s of minutes)).

So, closing the session really does shut it up for a fair while.

Hmmm......whenever I've done this the gap between closing the window and the next pop up has only been a few seconds, but maybe I've just been unlucky.

Probably just unlucky m8....

...but honestly, that should close it.

If the flood of messages is really extreme there's a tendency for the window to repoen. I've not seen the code, but I assume it's because the timestamp on your "close" reaching the group database is later than the timestamp on the messages it's trying to send you, so it sends them to you, just in case.

The one that's the most irritating to me isn't that, I'm prepared to keep hitting close (although a harsher cut on the close window might be something to ask nicely for, it shouldn't be that big a change), is logging in to find a ping and "X has left this session" messages popping up. That's just daft.

yeah, there is that.....
.. it appears that if u close the window just as people are posting, u still get thier message and the session stays open.

Just hit close again

If I'm working on something, I've discovered that if I open up the chat history window and close the IM or minimize it, I'm not flooded with text across my screen. I can then make my chat history window as small as it goes and even move it slightly off screen. That keeps your view clean and clear and allows you to work on the delicate project.