Errors in Help Island Tutorial

In item 6, "You" appears as "ou", a useless obsolete mention of version 1.6 follows, there is no space between the words in "optionof" , "and" appears as "an", and the bug described may well be fixed by now. (I don't know)

It seems odd to me that a company wanting to impress people wouldn't be able to take the time to proofread these tutorials before putting them in place.

Is this the level of care given to their program code?

The content of this tutorial object seems to be alright - is this information displayed in this form on the secondlfe.com website?

There is a help viewer built in the client that can display a text html file - can this be made to show pictures and display information like these tutorial objects have in them?

The visual quality of the images in the tutorial objects has been decreased by having to be limited in size and run through a compression process, like all the images in SL are.

A system for displaying help information in a nice sharp manner like a web browser does - with pictures and links - would be a good way to make SL more accessible to new users.

Help Island is amazing, we have so much stuff ready to go and and it's not even officially done.

Now would be a great time to check check check every bit of info on the island.

The new infonet terminals dispense some cards that I wrote and I looked at them closely only to find 1. typos and 2. out dated info (mention of "talk to"

While everyone has been an amazing help, I think it's time to both check you're own contributions to the island (Kiosks and freebies) as well as checking everyone else's. I opened some freebie boxes only to find nested boxes in boxes (I don't reccommend putting oldbies through that much less newbies.)

I heard one newbie says "oh so the way I unpack it will completely depend on how it was made". While this is a valuable lesson, I'd like to think freebies on the island would be packed neatly and with pleanty of specific and correct intstructions.

Another issue I just found was on an example I put up. I used lit objects because it was made before full-bright existed. Thus I will be remaking it and recommend everyone else look at what they give out as well.

Would anyone mind getting with me so we can trade notecards and review each others's work?

(*there are no less than 3 errors in this very post, spot them all and qualify for being a spell checker)

Suez, who did this tutorial? Maybe let them know, or show it to Jeska?

No wonder there are typos, there are several in your own post.

Theres a difference.. Her post isn't one of the first things greeting newbies, teaching them how to texture..

Many new residents think everything built is built by the creators of the game.. If the first thing they see is typos, they may well think the rest of the game will continue this way..

No I meant in the post of the person involved in help island construction who replied.

I ran across this as I am waiting for SL to come back up.

I am glad to have seen it.

It is not the fault of the Lindens.

However, my name is mentioned several times in the tutorials and would appreciate people getting back to ME so I can fix mistakes rather than having people not responsible for the errors to be taken to task.

I am a multiple stroke survivor and spelling errors will creep in despite my having read the tutorials several times. Many of you who responded here know me. I hope you know that I did not intentionally send something along that was full of errors. It was a personal project that I offered to the Lindens. I am sorry the mistakes are in there. I will try to get things cleared out as they are pointed out.

Suzanne, it would have been nice if you had contacted me (my name is in each tutorial) rather than taking it to the forums. And I hope that any other problems that come up can be solved by talking to me, too. I am more than happy to make corrections.

I tried to find all of the "old" information and update it before presenting this to Jeska last week. Apparently, I missed a couple. Thre may be a few other errors too. This last stroke in August has presented some interesting short term memory problems that gave me considerable grief in finishing them. This is not an excuse for the errors. I am just saying they are not their out of not caring about a good product.

As far as my writing style goes, I tend to try to keep things varied. Some comments may not be informational in the strict sense.. but tutorials can get really boring fast. Sometimes it helps to have the information broken up. If it is too obnoxious, and most people don't like it.. I am flexible.. I can redo it.

But, I have to know about the problems before I can fix them. I rarely read the forums because I spend my time in-game. My name and location is at the end of every tutorial. I ask for questions and suggestions.

If there are any others, let me know. IM me or come on over to Dreams in Luo. That is where I am stationed.

personaly i cant spell and if u cant handle that tough
but also so what if theres a few spelling mistakes as long as they understand what its trying to say also spelling mistakes means we r human i rather have the newbs think of me as human then a robot becuase alot of them come in and ask if we r real people well real people make mistakes if u r perfect good for u your life must be grand we r here to help people as best we can each of us has our own way of helping as long as the new people understand us great if i cant explain something i ask for help if a newbie has decided they would prefer domeone else then so be it i will be happy to find them another person anyway noone is perfect spelling mistakes just means we r all humans

When you don't think a thread had merit, it is often best to not respond to it, since that bumps it up to the top of the listing when sorted by last post date, as they usually are.

and your point?

I'm asking that my work be reviewed by others as well as everyone get their work reviewed.

So why don't you try something useful like applying that skill to the content and not my post.

I'm not involved in help island construction.

Before you post "yea but you said", I'll say.. someone put up a kiosk which gives out cards that I wrote. If I was actively making stuff for Help Island it would be much more error checked and hey.. omg that is what this thread is about "Let's go error check! who wants to help me with my erros!"

I'd recommend you get involved rather than waste your time correcting my posts.

You are more than welcome to sign up as a mentor or greeter and join us.

Being a horrible speller, I know what you mean.. however... I'm also a teacher. When I make curriculum I get someone else to proof it (as do most authors and other folk, we can't all be good spellers, we'd put proofreaders out of work!)

Good spelling can be anywhere from vital, to minimally a wonderful polish to the piece of work you put out there.

Of course not Sojo!

If I had known who it was I would have sent them an IM/PM asap, but I don't get to spend much time in world recently..

I'm sorry if I came across critical I was just trying to show the difference of a forum post and a tutorial.. It looks like a great tutorial, and its much more than I could ever attempt with my poor grasp on words and spelling, as you probably already know

I think errors in tutorials does have one major feature that we can not ignore.

It means someone took the time to write one at all!!!!!

I mean, what other game would anyone do this in??

Hmm I just figured out how to get lots of gold in WOW, I think I'll write a tutorial that can be seen in game and show the world.

Really SL has so many *shutter sound* Kodak moments.... *sniff.

I did not mention anyone's name in my post or make an attack on people whose talents lie somewhere other than spelling and typing accuracy.

It seems to me that professionally produced instructions would be a great benefit in getting people who visit Second Life to stay in Second Life. Second Life users should not be having to produce the documentation that Linden Lab has failed to provide. Linden Lab's failure to provide decent instructions hurts Linden Lab in the pocket book.

They are attempting to deal with this by building Help Island but they don't have the ability to display a simple HTML document on a prim on Help Island. Pending such capability professional grade help should be available on the website, and reachable by menu choices on the user interface.

The help available at secondlife.com/help is not professional quality. The help available in the program through F! is woefully lacking. On the help menu, they added links to the online help that exists only a step at a time, under direction from the users, when the usefulness of such links should have been readily apparent to anyone in the company who took a few minutes to look at the menu options.

In modern times information needs to be made in video form in order to reach some parts of the audience. It is possible to produce interactive videos that would show how to use the build editor, for example, with the various fields identified, their purpose explained, read by a professional announcer.

Linden Lab could set up some form of two way voice chat to be able to help people much more efficiently than typing everything.

If people want to misread my desire for Linden Lab to look like a class act and to provide first class instructions for this somewhat complicated and quite idiosyncratic program instead of depending on charity from its customers as something bad there is nothing I can do to stop them, and I'm not going to try.

Whoa.. I guess I won't be back on this thread. However, I want to leave some parting thoughts.

1. I agree that the Lindens want a professional product to help the growth of their product and to assist the use by their customers. I think all of us want that. We, who have responded here, are invested in Linden and their product or we wouldn't be here.

2. I DON'T agree that Linden needs to farm out projects to people who are considered "professionals" and are outside the game. They have many, many talented "professionals" within the game. However, unlike people who go looking for that job, many of us do not wear our credentials on our sleeve (resume). Our credentials are more hidden.

3. Not all media are appropriate for all learners. Some people learn best by spoken word, some learn best by written, some by kinesthetic. Others need a combination. That was the purpose behind the tutorials. To provide one method for people who are having trouble with the classes or notecards to pick up some of the basics in a way that they could take their time and progress at their OWN pace, coming back to things as needed.

4. Feedback is and should be welcome on all things presented to the public, whether professional or not. I do and always have welcomed feedback, as most of you know. But, if that feedback is hidden somewhere that I dont usually travel, there is not much I can do about it. The particular tutorial in question has been fairly heavily used in all my properties and affiliations since May of this year. No one has ever commented other than to say how useful they found it. Therefore, I did not seek to make changes.

5. Please be careful about judgements about what was done or not done in preparing materials used in-world. The particular tutorial you are speaking about was given to a number of well-read, intelligent, users of SL before it was ever released in May for their opinion and proofing. Many changes were made, but apparently a few things slipped by. Just because there may be an error in a document or product, doesn't mean that care was not taken in the production.

I do not want this thread to escalate into any hard feelings in any direction. My purpose in writing has been to take responsibility for my errors and to ask that feedback on any other issues with the tutorials be directed to me. I am still proud of my achievement. No one knows more than I do the cost of having done it. And, no one more than I wants to have a good product.

I also understand that the original focus on the errors was not so much the fact that the errors were made as much as an example for why another, different mode of instruction should be made available. Personally, I would not use that mode because it does not meet my learning needs. But, that doesn't mean that that mode would not help others.

As I said before, people have all types of learning styles. If the one I provided helps a few, I am satisfied. That was the only purpose of it. It was not constructed with use by the Lindens in mind, but I am glad they found a use for it. I will continue over time to improve on it. Within the next couple of days, I will have given Jeska a corrected version of the texture tutorial.

Again, I invite you to IM me or come and visit me at anytime at Dreams (Luo). I am there way too much. (lol)

Onwards and upwards, Soj.