Help?

Help Island 217...


If you are over about a year old in Secondlife you won't recognize these islands. These are the "new" Help Islands....

Those of us that came earlier, came to the first Orientation Islands. A place of basic tutorials that had to be completed before we could move on. Just really basic stuff...how to chat...walk...find your inventory or your yellow dot on map. {Stuff it took me 45 minutes to do in 2007 =^..^=}
Once we completed the tutorial we teleported to the old Help Islands. The set up was similar except since *building costs* have increased the new HIs no longer have a freebie store...just a billboard open air setup.



Island Center...
This is where one enters Secondlife now...One after another new comers drop into our world at this telehub...often just standing there totally baffled...until new people landing on top of them push them to one side. As helpless as brand new babies... one gets a sense of just how confusing Secondlife can be at first.

The Answers?...

OK... now to the details I wanted to get to in this post. The above sign is just off screen to the right in the second picture above...this is all the help and information new people get today.

To give one an idea of how many people enter Secondlife...At any given minute there are approximately 100 new residents on the 40 HIs.  Avatar limits seem to be set at no more than 13...I'm guessing the HIs are *homestead* regions. Low avatar limit and 3750 prims would indicate 4 sims per server...and that does work well.

Linden Lab understands infrastructure well as far as the HIs go. The problem is trying to have people click a help board for answers that they don't have questions for.
A really well done piece on exactly what's important for the newest residents can be found in Blue Szondis comments on my post *Sadness Personified* dated December 11th. She mentions things like understanding how to use our camera to see...{easy now..remember when?}

OK... in no particular order...how stuff works {or doesn't maybe}.

The Secondlife Mentors are gone...some say good riddance...I say the help they gave was priceless. Was that program as well run as I think it should have been..no!
The program was allowed to get too big...with just one or two Lindens to oversee over 3000 mentors one can see it ended up with the inmates running the asylum. Will a program similar be reinstated? Maybe...but not soon....Linden Lab seems to be just another corporation that will never admit to screwing up. What I see as working well would be a limited number of *mentors/helpers* specifically helping on the HIs. You want to have a tag that sets you apart?... fine. To retain that tag one would have to agree to spend a given time every log in mentoring at an HI. Should be easy to code a way to have the person involved to just *touch* a designated prim on arrival and departing..or easier..{I'm certainly over my head there}

The new Gateways...poorly disguised rare meat thrown to so many of a chosen few. A small area for new arrivals...just looks like a way to funnel new people into a marketing situation. Looking at the group chat I get from one of these gateways...no way in the world can they handle the incoming new resident load.

Lastly...perhaps a rather grassroots move to using alts on the HIs could work. The downside to that is there would be a lack of the ability to watch for predation. A concern for me is that eventually the HIs will be closed to avatars with a rezz date older than "X". Then the chance for them to hear and see another person tell them, "Hello, I'm glad you're here..Welcome to secondlife." will be gone.

Like so much in any life...It's so easy to postulate cures for perceived problems when one can't see all the ramifications of the *cures*.

I just feel that I want more of the 90% that don't stay in Secondlife to get to feel what I feel here.
And so it goes
Love always, brinda
Namaste