What is a "community"?

You probably know that for a while now, Linden Lab have given people the option of going to Orientation Islands other than the standard Linden ones.

But when I checked the Join page I found they've gone further now - they aren't just letting you choose a tutorial. They're referring to the act of going to an OI other than the standard one, as "Joining a Community". (Unless you join the Voice Beta.)

This, I think, is going a bit far. By that logic, places like Caledon, Nakama, the Furry lands, etc, _aren't communities_; but Dreamland, Azure Islands, and even - dear god - Ben'N'Jerry's virtual factory _are_.

But.. on the other hand, the idea of helping new users to discover the genuine communities that do exist within SL is a good one. It's just a shame that the Lindens determined who was considered a community by who was prepared to buy an extra island to build an OI.

Can anyone suggest what a better way of involving people in SL communities would be? Is what LL are doing now really the way we want to see a "community"?

This is a *really* interesting, tough question...

...to be honest, I stumbled upon this myself before it ever even started up - I asked about the possibility of having a little 'welcome area' waaaaay back, because it was pretty obvious that someday one welcome area just wasn't going to cut it, and the 'win win' implications are pretty obvious.

I was referred to the API program that does that, and it was no closely held secret.

If you are dealing with a mini-continent you are sort of on the lookout for these kinds of things and likely to be talking to folk who would suggest it anyway. It's information that would be kinda pointless to all the people who never plan on more than say, a dozen private islands or less, so I'm not really too damning simply because they didn't heavily advertise the program.

I considered carefully - but to be honest, I can't properly support the new user traffic I have now! That, coupled with the realisation that providing a 24/7, quality, new-user experience was *not* something I could do single-handedly. Or pay people to do, either - Caledon simply doesn't make that kinda money.

And the Caledon residents are... residents. Not park employees. While many might enjoy welcoming new people, I'd be dangerously close to asking them to be Disneyland staff if I forced a firehose of new users into Victoria City Park!

Which, incidentally was designed to be new user friendly and Caledon's Welcome Area when the time does come... if it comes... and I'd probably have to upgrade the server.

I'd say... give the program a year's chance, and let's hear if the user retention rates improve.

It's not so terribly unfair just yet... those that can provide good user retention deserve to stay. Those that can't deserve to leave the program, and within a few months it will be kind of obvious what prerequisites it takes to make the grade. Which I don't think I have quite yet.

The moment I think I can provide a quality new user experience, I'm jumping into the pool, and I get the sense that anyone who wants to dive in with a good chance of success will be allowed. Why not?


Well that's my rambling thoughts on the matter. GREAT topic Yumi, and one that will make or break huge fortunes in 2008-2010 I'm guessing. It doesn't take much for people to realise that new users = $L.

Sure, I like money too... but if I did a new user experience badly, regardless of what the Company found acceptable... well, I'd rather be a gentleman baby baron that did right by each new person, than a rich megabaron who cranked 'em out like sausages and set 'em loose looking for prim dicks and bling.

Which means: no Welcome Area for Caledon yet. They'll just have to find me the hard way.*

* Edit: as if anyone could avoid my chattering on forums in the first place! grin

I thought this was temporary thing they were testing out.
I thought they included the L word. I actually went there, the buildings were impressive but it was pretty dead and nothing really very remarkable was happening there. I forgot which places they selected but I assume they would pick indivual companies with biggest properties because they can handle the traffic.
I have been almost here for year and I don't really know of any active or interesting communities or new comer friendly communities except for NCI. L word and few of regular places that do free teaching events but I also tend to keep to myself and the few close friends I have.
My community is my friends who accept, care and help me here.

I linked the join page in a post recently and clicked the link to see if it works. First thing that popped into my face was this community selection.

If I were to join SL, I'd find this quite deterrent. A new user might wonder what implications the choice of a community has. Different sides in an ongoing war? Citizenship in a certain region of this virtual world, without being able to select another region later? Will one be able to buy land outside of the chosen community? What are these communities about? Do members have to follow certain rules?

People want to quickly create an account, log in and find out what this virtual world is about, before they decide to join any groups or communities. Don't give them too much to bother with before they even downloaded the client. The avatar choice is already to much, people might think they're forever stuck with one of the horrible newbie avatars.

Daniel talked about this in the video interview. General orientation with the "SL is what you make/want of it" just isn't working, so the next experiment is to simply let residents divide the world into different communities.

The idea is that the sooner a new resident runs into something they're interested in, the more likely they'll stick around. If you're a furry enthusiast, you start at a furry-run orientation, if you're into Gor, you start at Gor orientation, if you're Spanish speaking you end up in a Spanish speaking community, etc.

It's a win-win situation for LL as well. Whoever runs their own OI is paying full price for it, and the more there are of those, the less OIs LL has to run and the less LL has to care about supporting new residents, turning something that is currently a cost for them into a profit.

The net result will likely be that the number of people who never leave their little corner of the grid will grow larger and larger, but it increases all the numbers which is ultimately the only real thing that matters.

Yes it could be a big work load for medium size private island groups, I agree with Desmond it could be a 24/7 business, a tough one to call in terms of rapid expansion vis-a-vis stability and a profitable hobby

You get this issue, as an owner, in almost any business. In rl I own a profitable business that consists of my wife and me. It would be quite easy to attempt expansion but the number of people I have seen trying to do this (my type of business) and going skint are numerous.

Some businesses work best at a certain level, trying to alter that can be difficult. A partnership can sometimes help but that has its own risks too.

I think it's a great concept. It's a nod to the reality that we are much more so a number of individual communities than one big generic one.

One issue that I see with the current implementation is that, to borrow a favorite saying of Linden Lab, "it's not scalable", and the appearance of endorsement is just a bit too strong, as Yumi suggested. It's workable with the handful of 3rd party RegAPI participants they have today, but as the program grows, I think that the work of capturing and registering new residents should happen within their own webspaces.

For Linden Lab's part, they would offer their standard registration and drop-off into their own OI, or link out to a separate page with a full listing of RegAPI participants, with a clear message that these are resident run community experiences, and not operated or endorsed by Linden Lab.

The issue of "adult" oriented communities participating is troublesome. Maybe. I would understand, being that the secondlife.com web space is PG, a hesitation to include links to BDSM related communities from the Linden run portal, but if the API were open and transparent enough, there's no reason to believe those communities couldn't run a successful registration campaign entirely within their own web spaces. In fact, the "high nail" <- another borrowed phrase <- of success for the program would be for it to gather enough momentum within the 3rd party community spaces for it to be entirely self-sustaining without the need for Linden to link to -any- of them from its own registration portal.

When it reaches this point, a full listing would be impractical and cumbersome to manage anyway.

The preceding thoughts brought to you by two cups of Peet's French Roast.

As I see it, there are 3 problems relating to new user retention:

1) they don't know what SL is. Any Mentor who has worked OI and HI will tell you that an appalling number of people sign up for SL without the first notion of just what the hell it is. Yes, there is a website, but it is fairly clear that plenty of signups are reading impaired. What would work much better would be a page of 30 second videos that capture some of the things that SL is about: social communities and roleplay, content creation, games, exploring, etc... People who won't read, will watch a video. Give them 12 videos to get acquainted with SL and see right there if something interests them. The number one question that Mentors get from new residents is "what do I do here?" That is a problem that needs fixing.....

2) orientation into user interface. The one thing we all largely agree on is that the current introduction to using the client sucks. As Aleister mentioned, a lot of new users just want to get in and see if they want to stay - which is where the videos mentioned above come in handy. Orientation needs to cover the basics of the user interface in a way that makes it fun and interesting.

3) first home. IMHO, the last piece to this puzzle is dropping a new user into an environment that they will find some commonality in. This is where the welcome areas across the grid come into play. If a new users can choose the environment they drop into and make their first "home" in SL, they have a far better chance of making friends. Finding friends and people with whom you share a common bond with is the key for most people to staying in SL. People need to feel like they belong. This is why there should be a furry welcome area, a cyberpunk welcome area, a dance club welcome area, etc.... These places should be the first home for a new user, not some non-descript welcome area. Home people someplace that they feel and affinity for and can make friends at.

I think instructional videos are a great idea, especially in today's You Tube/My Space culture, but even for readers like me, the available information is not that great either. It's mostly promotional hype, not really a good indicator of what to expect. I glanced through the site and just figured I'm only gonna know by jumping in. I do think better official documentation could help.

I agree about the scalability issue - there's already some aspect of that, in that it seems that when you arrive at the "join a Community" page, it selects 6 random communities from the entire registered list. You can see them all by reloading a couple of times, but of course most new registrants won't think to do that.

But moreover is the idea that it's connecting things up in wrong ways. Being a good community organiser is not necessarily connected with being a good builder, or making a lot of money, or being a good teacher, and yet that's what LL is demanding: a "community" must provide an OI, they must pay for the OI, they must also build the OI, and doing that will require teaching skill. This is a bit like saying in real life that the Rotarians can't be a community, because they don't run any grade schools. (We'll leave out the fact that the process for applying to be a "community" after doing that is entirely oblique.)

The irony is that the kind of "closer-knit" community that has single representatives who can organise these things are exactly the communities that won't be able to scale to handle the potential firehose of new users coming in. There are wider communities that could handle it, but they aren't the kind that could organise this. Who gets to build the "scripters OI", or the "artists OI", or (heaven forbid?) the "sex OI", and who has to pay for it?