I was looking on the Second Life Destination Guide today and came across Greeter Island on the front page. I was interested to see if this was at first a resident sim or Linden sim. I logged in and teleported into Greeter Island at the corner of the sim because of access rights.
Greeter Island map view showing a central welcome hub surrounded by stations. It doesn’t appear to be open everywhere but to get a sneak peek use the camera to look around. On the left of Greeter Island there are two Linden Helper islands which appear to be closed to the public.
Nearby I clicked on About Land and it seems that Greeter Island is apart of the Linden Helpers project beta program that will be assisting new users getting started with the basics of Second Life. Linden Helpers will be available between 10am-6pm SLT/PDT – Monday through to Sunday.
It’s not clear if this project will enable SL volunteers / mentor groups to help out new users. This is a good step in right direction I think after the mentor program was shut down in December 2009 and it will be exciting to see how the Linden Helpers program develops in the coming months.
Daniel Voyager 
It would be nice to have a LL supported orientation that can keep up with changes to the viewer and UI quickly. Many of the really good orientations around SL have been hard pressed to keep up with the changes, thus making some of the orientations obsolete or, at least, confusing to newbies.
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@Kathleen: I totally agree with you on the lab updating orientation areas in Second Life. Welcome areas, Orientation Island Public, Help Island Public etc seriously needs to be updated with new resident resources. It’s not been changed since the early days of Second Life which is really alarming.
Hopefully new this program will change all of that.
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I’m also curious to see what happens — will volunteer resident Mentors, or whatever the new group will be called, be allowed again to be at this new Orientation Island?
The major problem which forced LL to shut the group down was the difficulty of being in touch with the 5000+ volunteers — most of them never came to meetings or discussed strategies in helping out residents, etc., and were quite unfamiliar with procedures and so forth. It would be nice to know that LL has found a solution to that problem and reopens the volunteer groups on LL-owned Orientation Islands…
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Of course part of the problem was the meetings were always scheduled at good times for LL. Which in a way makes sense I guess, but a lot of people were either working or not awake during them.
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@Gwyneth: Good question. Lets hope volunteer mentors will be able to help out on the new regions soon. That’s true about the SL mentor program. I still miss those days. 😦
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I like the idea. Just hope it doesn’t become a welcome area ghetto. Some community policing should be enforced. Bring new visitors into a place where SLs netherworld seems to surface to grief new residents, that would not be worth the effort. Helpers have the courage to eject that kind of behavior. Jus sayin
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How many months do we give this until the helpers get laid off an the lindens move on to a new shiny, leaving it the same kind of griefer hotspot as Help Island is?
For that matter, can this please come with the deletion of the Help Island sims – all those sims do is cause new people to leave in disgust…
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@Kara: Yeah I had trouble going to some because of the UK time > SLT difference. I enjoyed the mentor meetings for many reasons.
@Yordie: I went over to Greeter Island at opening time for a few hours and the layout looks good. There were helpers (31 in the group so far) > (Lindens) greeting new residents and hangout areas around the sim. I like the idea but I have a feeling now its just for Lindens only.
@Pussycat: The old Help Islands need to go and new ones to be introduced. This program has just started in beta and I have no idea what the lab plans on doing next or how long for.
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i knew about LL setting up a new help area because i use the beta viewer and it was in there. though the land etc was not open yet.
i am wondering if they are pushing premium accounts.
i do not think they will go back to the mentor/volunteer way of doing things as they seem unable to control people and enforce rules. they have a very poor track record in that area. other areas too, but they are slowly redeeming themselves with some good decisions and well implemented ideas.
if they pay the helpers there though, they are paid to be controlled.
however, coming from a long support background, i am wondering just how much “support” they give. which is something i intend to try and test. are they like a lot of other help/support departments who are not very good, but their customer base do not know any better.
i am skeptical at best right now, and do worry about what other impacts this may have.
i could be wrong though. might the start of a grand new LL adventure that will make SL a better place.
we will find out at some point i suppose.
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Help Islands are really a hindrance to keeping new players in game. I really wish they’d hire a group of people who actually play and work in SL to do them totally over. Always thought mentors were a great idea.
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@Rob: Thanks for your comment Rob. 🙂
@Tess: I like the sound of that.
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They kind of are doing that right now with the new Adult Hub thing – funneling residents to a resident run help hub.
For new people, just flipping the login switch over to Caledon would do wonder… But LLs convinced itself a year ago that resident run help locations are no better than the linden infohubs, and got rid of the whole community gateway program… Back then, they should instead have individually tracked each community gateway to see if perhaps only some of them were failing while others were a success.
Maybe they did, and maybe Caledon is a big failure, but I just find that hard to believe.
I hope my prediction in my post above is flat out wrong, and this thing becomes something long term. But I’m low of faith.
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bring the mentors back!
It will save LL a lot of money if they have to do this themselves… Also its a great start for new people to get in interaction with the ‘old’…
Melvin
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@Pussycat: I love Caledon for many different reasons in Second Life and it’s been a success in my eyes. I agree with you on the tracking and today the NHN doesn’t seem to be a hit with the lab anymore.
@Melvin: Yes, bring back the mentor volunteer program.
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