help-island
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Updates to Second Life volunteer programs
Linden Lab has finally finished processing the results of the Second Life new mentor renewal program. Starting with approximately 3,700 mentors, roughly 1,700 went through the renewal process. This far exceeded Linden Lab's expectations for renewals, which were anticipated to only range from about 350 to a little under a thousand, based on observations of volunteer activity. The renewal process was officially advertised through the (admittedly unreliable) group notices system, in-world mentor meetings, and on the V-Team Web-site. Keeping up-to-date with one or more of these channels is now, apparently an ongoing requirement for group membership. Additionally many mentors and new-resident-support groups advertised the renewal program within groups and among friends, which appears to have led to the unexpectedly high renewal rate.
Second Life shutters orientation islands
Linden Lab has chosen to close its existing task-based Second Life Orientation Islands, which have been problematic in so many ways. Instead a modified version of the so-called Help Islands will be used as default user-entry-points instead. These modified islands were a part of an A/B testing program last month, and Blue Linden, Linden Lab's volunteer coordinator, said that the modified Help Islands 'are proving to do a bit better' according to the internal metrics that Linden Lab keeps. Just how much better, we're not sure, as Linden Lab generally plays those cards fairly close, but one Linden staffer is reported as saying that the hub-structured, task-oriented Orientation Islands are currently only yielding about 1%. We're not even sure whether to believe that grim statistic, as it seems to be shockingly low. Linden Lab's testing seems to indicate that the task-oriented nature of the Orientation islands is a mark against them, while many others have suggested that it is the hubbed layout that is at fault. Certainly everyone agrees that the outdated and faulty Orientation HUD system (an attachable user-interface item that is intended to guide and instruct) is a major strike against the existing orientation experience. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Linden Lab skips orientation
Wednesday through Friday this week, Linden Lab decided to skip starting some new Second Life users on their Orientation Island, as an experiment, and land them straight onto ten updated Help Islands instead. We use the term 'updated' rather loosely here, unfortunately. Help Islands 201 through 210 had a few more exit signs placed around the island, and some SL-in-your-own-language signs. And ... that's about it, apparently. Given that the orientation HUDs keep breaking, we can only guess that someone figured maybe going without instructions might be better than with instructions that are out-of-date or not working.
