Spam in the Group Chat

It seems to never end. Endless spam in the instructor IM group about the most basic things.

How do I stretch a prim? How do I teach a class? Where can I find the Texture controls. How do I see my self walking? I have heard them all. Not in one of my classes but in the Instructors group IM.

Isn't there a way to check the instructors and give them a little test to ensure that they know what they are doing? Not talking understanding all of SL but a basic knowlage and a grasp on how to figure things out and where to find out what they lacking.

I am not against helping those who have though out the question and tried a few things and hit a brick wall. To have no idea and expect the Group IM to be teacher for kindagarden is just wrong.

I think Instructors realize that the Instructor Group has a vast ammount of knowledge about SL.

Remember it's possible that those people that turned to the Instructor's Group did so because Live Help failed them. The wiki barely scratches the SL surface on alot of things.

In fact SL has so MUCH to learn that what may seem "basic" to you, just might not be to someone else. Every day I learn how to do something new or even something old in a new way. Besides possibly quaternions nothing in Second Life is really hard... it's just a matter of not knowing how to do something.

There is no end all be all manual that tells how to do every single little thing although I'm sure many would really like to see that!

If the spam is truly too much, you might enquire as to if being in the Instructor Group is needed to be an Instructor. I've never seen any announcements go out that weren't also given out via notecard and/or e-mail.

Kelly Linden has mentioned the possibility of having a client side group chat mute capability, and gave some hope that this could actually be done in the near future . A show of support for this might move it up on the Linden's priority list.

Group Chat will help out with normal groups but it wont with Volunteer groups. What would help is a bit of screening and a bit of responsibility.

If you're a mentor ONLY use mentor group IM for things related to mentoring. Locating someone to help a new person, mentioning that the Help Islands are under monitored. Finding someone who speaks a given languages. Ya know, MENTOR issues. Not 'how do i get a box off my head?'

If you're an Instructor ONLY use the instructor group IM for things specifically related to the group. "How do i submit a class?" "What do i need to do about posting events for my lecture?" "Where can i find tools related to helping me do a class more effeciently?". Ya know, INSTRUCTOR issues. Not 'how do i get a box off my head?'

Now Live Help on the other hand IS the place to address those questions. Help -> Live Help. Doesnt matter what group (if any) you belong to. Ask live help for the answer. DONT IM THE GROUP THOUGH. Use the normal feature via the help menu. In a lot of cases you'll be told its in the F1 help options. And it is so you should use it. Or you'll be given a forum or wiki link of some kind. GO READ the links you are provided with.

For reference im in all 3 of those volunteer groups. Live Help members use the highest level of responsibility with group messages. Mentor used to be horrible when i first joined but has made MASSIVE improvements in the signal vs noise ratio. Neither is perfect but Instructors is by far the furthest from constructive usage.

Now back to why i said the group muting wont work. ALL OF THESE volunteer group IM channels have a purpose that when used responsibly really SHOULD be things heard by all online members. Closing out individual sessions when it doesnt apply to you is useful but if you mute it entirely you'll also end up missing the questions that you DONT want to miss. So in the end we might want the group tools for other instances but the volunteer corps as a whole need to just use some responsibility in what the group channels are used for.

Those who don't wish to use group mute don't have to use the option.

Group mute would enable one to get peace from all group chat, not just the SL volunteers groups.

Please excuse me for piping up.....

Im rather new, but to me it seems that if group mute would be a possibility, then perhaps leaving the group would work better.

I entirely agree about spamming in group chats, however to quote many SL instructors/teachers.. there are no silly questions. Perhaps if something like that happens, another instructor willing to put in the time and attention could IM the asker, and discuss a few SL basics.

Personally if I have such an issue (And I am Aware that the question is a rather simple one) I would rather IM a friend and ask, rather then make it public knowledge that I dont know how to do something. Though, if I'm unaware that the question is simple and I should have known how to do whatever it is within my third day of SL.. then no one really can be to blame. Those are the times someone should speak privately and nicely to me and say, hey didnt someone teach you this? Well here.. let me help with that, and anything else you need.

Ocher
The lil'n

Generally, group memberships are also required for other things. For example, many vendor locations require you to be a member to have a store there.

Specifically, in this case, the groups involved are rather special though. If you leave the Instructors group, I'd guess that LL would no longer recognise you as a registered instructor, and would refuse to pay you. If you leave Mentors, you can no longer get to help island. If you leave Live Help, you can no longer connect to the system to receive questions and answer them.

So, for the SL volunteer groups, leaving them is simply not an option.



While it is true that there is no such thing as a silly question, there are silly places to ask a question. The instructors group is specifically for instructors to use, for instructor-based discussions. It is not a place to ask any question that you happen to think of about the game. That is what Live Help is for.



We all have mental blanks spots - things that we should know about the game and don't, but, in the same way as it would be inappropriate to find a random group based on the number of members, join it, and ask "how do I make a square prim round?", it is inappropriate to ask the question in the instructors group. (or the group chat for any of the other volunteer groups.)

the only thing you will hear out of me is

Osgeld Barmy has Left the Session

and yea most of the time the questions are verry simplistic, and i get discuraged becuase the "teachers" in SL cant seem to look up info for them selves

todate ive seen

1 billion basic SL use questions
a handfull of event promotions (sigh)
and one honest question, in which i did reply

If telling their assistant to hold all calls would be a possibility, then perhaps resigning one's position would work better.

Ok before posting this I went and searched the groups for Instructor group, and I found it isnt a group just any smo can join and send goofy questions to. So to back the OP of the thread how can you be a Instructor and not know how to do the basic things in SL? I do believe this is what the OP was asking in hte first place.

Exactly ty!

I always try to be nice and I understand a person can't possibly know everything about SL just because they may be proficient in one thing, there is plenty I don't know. But I am amazed at the kinds of questions and comments I see pop up in the instructor group almost daily.

There is a time and place to ask. If you have a question unrelated to the class you are teaching then you need to just ask somewhere else. But, If you teach a class on prim building and you don't know how to put a texture on a prim, (an example that stunned me one day) you should not be teaching the class. People WILL and DO ask questions you need to have the answers to.

Furthermore the Instructors group is NOT a place to spam to see if someone has this script or that texture. I don't even think the people doing this are doing it in support of a class.

I agree the spam in the instructors group is getting out of hand.

These were taken from the past week.

Q: does anyone have a note card with a classical music stream?
Q: anyone have a new script for a visitor tracker ?
Q: Does anyone have the landmark for a Nice place to take a friend to dinner?
Q: Does anyone have a really good bling script?
Q: I am a teacher in need of a script for class.
Q: Got a guy looking for a good scripter who is good with weapons scripts. IM me if you are interested.
Q: Anyone know the name of the script that gives an http address? I have it somewhere in my rotted inventory

One applies and I guess gets chosen randomly. No one came and talked to be as far as I know. I do build a lot so easy to see by looking at my home. But did anyone?
With some of the questions asked I do think that some have no idea at all how to build and that it was something they signed up for when they first logged on. Is there an instructors course? I would have thought that was a worthy thing to do. PADI does very well because it got all instructors of diving ont eh same page teaching the same thing. Makes the students confident and gets a uniform message across.

so is asking for a script a valid use of the instructor group? I'm curious because I see that most often. Script or texture questions.

With some certain exceptions, I would say generally no. If you're teaching about scripts or textures you shouldn't need to ask for any. If you're teaching about something else, what would you need them for?

If you're writing a script FOR A CLASS and you forget a line and need some help, thats fine. If you just want a free script there are other more appropriate places to get it.

I often suspect that when people ask for some of these simple things they're not really teaching a class on it, they're just using the group as an easy quick way to get something for their own personal use.

So like... why do we not say something when they do this? We could stop this silliness right?

Glad to see this issue brought up. It's the reason my partner and I both quit the Instructor's group last week.

I've offered help where I could when people have asked for help relating to their job as an instructor, but 9 times out of 10, the requests are merely a lazy way of avoiding the proper channels for finding what's needed when what you're looking for has nothing to do with your job as an instructor.

In order to maintain the Instructor designation, you -must- belong to the group. It was no longer worth it for the very reasons that have been outlined above. I've gritted my teeth for several months, and simply shut the window when the daily spam started up, but last week it got so ridiculous that I finally spoke up in chat. I was polite, and asked if the person's request (anyone got a bomb script?) had anything to do with their position as instructor. He said no. (There's the script wiki and the forums here for asking for that kind of help). No sooner did I speak up when I was scolded by a number of other instructors for not being willing to help. They believed that it was our job as instructors.

I'm sorry, but I absolutely do not agree. When I signed on for this job, it was because I had a specialized knowledge in a particular area that I wanted to share, not because I wanted to become the live help line for building bombs and any number of other requests that regularly flood this group's chat.

The reason I remained silent on the sidelines for so long is because I didn't want to look like an unhelpful arse, but at what point is the lack of judgement exercised by some many of it's members (abuse of this group) seen as unreasonable?

My partner and I also hung in there because we were told by a Linden that a tool was coming that would allow us to mute group chat. Didn't come soon enough.

In the end, we did what was already suggested earlier in this thread. We left. We'll teach on our own without the designation, which at this point merely seems like a label for abuse.

My opinion on the matter is that policy should be brought in not to use the instructor group chat for matters other than those DIRECTLY relating to instructors, if that. And the same for the mentors. Char used to make it inexplicably clear that the channel wasn't to be used.

Even if Live Help is slow to reply sometimes, thats the place for questions. And lets not forget, both groups have access to help island, if they have questions and LiveHelp isn't responding, they could pop over to help island and find a mentor or instructor. Or find one from the group list.

They're not short of options.

Zap

And it is not the place to announce classes, either, while we are on the subject.

If at the time that the spam (and that is what I consider it) comes through I am not already really busy with something then yes I do respond. Much of the time I am very busy in SL, hosting or editing or any number of other things. At those times I tend to sigh and shut the IM. It feels like no matter how many times we tell people what the group IM is NOT for it doesn't make a difference. I wanted to teach classes, I still want to teach classes but right now I'm one more frustrating interuption away from quitting the group.

Last night somebody brought up the current cry-baby subject, taking Photos with the new system... when people objected with "SPAM", others responded with "Just close the IM window". That's hardly the right use of Instructor, and hardly the right response. I shouldn't have to close out the IM just because somebody wants to be popular and toot the current cry.

By joining the group I was hoping that I would be exposed to higher caliber people, both in Instructor and in the people that I eventually teach. Instead, so far, it has been just more of the same.

I don't think that it needs to be "mute". I just want the system not to mix IM chat dialogs into the main one.

I want to be able to mute group chat, and so do many others.

I also want to be able to decide whether group or individual IM chat gets mixed in with the normal proximity based scrolling chat.

No reason why we can't have both.

I thought that you could fix that in preferenences, was that changed?