According to New SL Sims in the past week it seems Linden Lab have turned off two Linden Helper Islands and two Greeter Islands which is a real shame because the beta program could of been a big success in Second Life. I first noticed Linden Helper and Greeter regions back in early November 2011 where many new residents were directly teleported to after signing up. There were Lindens helping answering questions from new residents but then in January 2012 everything went quiet with the regions being inaccessible to anyone. I guess the beta program failed in some way or another! 😦
It could of worked out if both Lindens and volunteer groups came together to help new residents but that didn’t happen sadly. Linden Lab have turned off the following regions…
- Linden Lab HQ 5
- Linden Lab Meeting 1
- Linden Lab Meeting 2
- Linden Lab Meeting 3
- Linden Lab Meeting 4
- SL Work Hub 1
- SL Work Hub 2
- SL Work Hub 3
- SL Work Hub 4
- Welcome Island 27
- Welcome Island Clone2
I guess things didn’t work out in the end. 😦
Daniel Voyager 
that’s too bad – helping a n00b can make a big difference but i guess some metric showed it was not worth spending 15 minutes with one
it’s like when they dumped the Mentor program a few years ago – i used to mentor a few hours a week and loved it. so if a free volunteer base did not work, who would have thought actual paid Lindens would?
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I agree 100% Ener helping new residents can make a difference and it’s a shame the programs always seem to not work out inworld. I used to be a SL Mentor on the main grid for about a year and was invited straight away when I arrived. I went to Help Islands and the old welcome hubs around the grid for about 40 minutes helping new residents.
Since then I spend about 20 minutes at various locations helping newbies. I do manage Resident Greeters to make a difference on the grid and things are going well in that area so far. 🙂
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Lately the newbies I meet are even more pathetic. They are letting them out into the world knowing absolutely NOTHING. It’s a shame. Why should they be tortured like that?
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I don’t like how Linden Realms boards on the welcome islands because most newbies teleport there without even going through the tutorials first. The lab should put this board at the end of the Welcome Islands.
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Well better to jump to LBSA plaza on Os Grid, so many there last night:)
Yes i know Im always speaking now about Open sims, but i just found them and it seems just in the good time, when Npc’s are already fully operational, the grids are stable as Sl (or even more, at least Rlv still works in there) and even that i can host my own grid and travel to others using hypergrid (Diva distro amazing setup to host a personnal but online grid)!
And seems more and more are just discovering now, that there is in fact already something that can be better and free, then Second Life and it is fully independent already,
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I do like Os Grid (opensims) and spend some time on various grids every week or so. I think the trend continues that people/places are switching over to opensim for many reasons. I’m glad there’s choice!
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Yesterday I just hyperlglided to several diff grids, so easy and without any lag, that i’m really starting to think that Open Sim is entitled to be pointed as a stable as Sl.
Rezzed on Lbsa Plaza and i tend to normally great all there by their 1st name, well on the last 2 days (and i only go to Lbsa for a few min if most, the rest of the time is spending working in our regions or exploring to grab new materials we can use on them) it is taking em a lot to salute all there:)
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I agree and Open Sim will get larger (regions/population) as the years go by.
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This continues to baffle me, and has for years.
The lackluster intro folks are given is just strange.
Put the community portals back, or develop an actual tutorial zone. Take a page from an MMO and the old ‘first few levels guided tour’ trick.
Scan the chat logs of new users for the first hour of content, over the last year or two – and look for commonalities. Here’s something those techies can hook into – database search it, and put it all on a graph. What are folks looking for in hour one?
– How to do this or that?
– How to buy something?
– How to wear something?
– How to get a home?
– How to meet someone?
– What?
Build a tutorial around that.
If community portals failed, why? Did they address the wrong need, were they abandoned (like the one I used)? Were they griefed? Were they failing to be griefed?
– Run some metrics, find out why; invite some FIC-ish community groups in and present the data. See if they can make new Community Portals that work. Uprank the search results of the ones that do work.
(If Caledon’s portal results in 10% more retention than NCI’s, give them 20% more of the new logins – or vice versa if the other way around – let the metrics weed the playing field down.)
Doing -nothing- is the worst possible choice.
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Right. Its a shame things are so bad at the moment. 😦
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