second-life-mentors
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Linden Lab to disband moribund mentor group
Yesterday at the morning Second Life mentors' meeting, Linden Lab staff announced that Linden Lab's sponsored mentor group, which had been functionally closed (in all but name) for approximately a year now, would finally be disbanded in practice. The move doesn't really come as much of a surprise to observers of the Lab's sponsored volunteer programs over the last eighteen months. Almost immediately more ex-mentor Second Life social groups than we could comfortably count sprang up, as people prepared to maintain their network of contacts without the overarching group umbrella. While there was surprisingly little actual yelling, some members of the organization feel the blame lies squarely at the feet of Linden Lab's CEO Mark Kingdon, though there's not a lot of apparent evidence to justify that.
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.
Lab publishes NUE test results. Greeters vs mentors: Greeters win
Linden Lab recently attempted to evaluate the efficacy of its user-volunteer corps as a part of the new user experience (NUE) in Second Life. Two NUE areas were selected (Hanja and Korea), and baseline results established. Then testing was conducted in two phases using one area as a testing ground and the other as a control. The first incorporated themed tours by volunteer greeters, and the second involved general mentoring in conjunction with the original style of Orientation Island tutorials. Phase one seemed to draw some very successful results, while phase two only showed a slight improvement. The phase two results look to be well within the margins of error, and essentially statistically insignificant. The sort of mentoring you might find at Help Island Public would, based on these results, seem to be broadly ineffective. 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.
