Nobody goes to the Community Exhibition in WelcomeHub.

[Jaylinbridges]

7 hours ago, Viola Mole said:

Hello folks! One of our team alerted me to this forum, they were very upset actually. There are some comments in this forum which make me understand why.

Those some comments that personally attack the mentors and/or Moles could easily be removed and the very few persons (one, two?) who are making them could be removed from posting in the SL Forum.  The forums would be more pleasant to discuss everything if a few were not here.  So this is something you need to discuss with your Forum moderators, in my opinion.

Welcome Hub design and feature discussions are fair game to discuss.  If someone objects to the Buy Lindens kiosk in the Welcome center (and most have), the solution is to remove it, or place it in a less obvious location,  for example.  

 

Edited February 21 by Jaylinbridges

[Persephone Emerald]

22 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Those some comments that personally attack the mentors and/or Moles could easily be removed and the very few persons (one, two?) who are making them could be removed from posting in the SL Forum.  The forums would be more pleasant to discuss everything if a few were not here.  So this is something you need to discuss with your Forum moderators, in my opinion.

Welcome Hub design and feature discussions are fair game to discuss.  If someone objects to the Buy Lindens kiosk in the Welcome center (and most have), the solution is to remove it, or place it in a less obvious location,  for example.  

I think the remedy would be to remove the offensive parts of those posts and send the people who posted them a reminder about not attacking other users. Mentors are not Linden Lab employees. They're fellow residents who donate their time and experience to try to help new users. The Moles deserve our respect for all their hard work, as well. Remember they're fellow residents too, and none of them are getting rich from the work they do for SL.

[Rowan Amore]

I've read a lot of negative reactions to the buy Lindens and Earn Lindens from Games kiosks.  If you've spent any time at all talking with new residents, you'll see that's often among the first questions asked.  The first one being, how do I get a good avatar.  So, after explaining how they can find free stuff and how to find free clothed, hair, shoes, etc for that free stuff, they then ask how to make money to buy an upgraded avatar.  

While games can make you some Ls, you still need payment info on file and used at least once to.redeem anything.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

29 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I've read a lot of negative reactions to the buy Lindens and Earn Lindens from Games kiosks.  If you've spent any time at all talking with new residents, you'll see that's often among the first questions asked.  The first one being, how do I get a good avatar.  So, after explaining how they can find free stuff and how to find free clothed, hair, shoes, etc for that free stuff, they then ask how to make money to buy an upgraded avatar.  

While games can make you some Ls, you still need payment info on file and used at least once to.redeem anything.

True, in part, but...

 

"Hey Noob, you need 1L$ to buy these half dozen Sux-Ra addons, which is refunded after purchase. So now you need to buy a couple of thousand L$ with a substantial *cough* transaction fee *cough* that you didn't expect, and with no explanation about buying from other players via an exchange, so it looks to you the Nob, like a total scam..."

 

If you want to offer them a chance too load up with L$, you do that RIHT before a shopping mall with actual SL products, that don't cost 1 L$, and where it's CLEAR they are buying from PRIVATE sellers.

"Oh, so this is how shopping works, got it!"

 

Problem with that is, who gets to be in the Mall, whatever system you pick for selecting the "lucky merchants" who get shown to Noobs on Noob Island, EVVERY SINGLE merchant who isn't on the list will scream about favouritism and nepotism, and corruption.

 

Better to not have the "buy L$ now" thing at all. At least not on Noob Island. Leave that for some stage two, say a portal park kiosk leading to whatever Shop-N-Hop is on, or to popular shopping events.

 

"Take the portal to Fame-Shed. Would you like to buy shopping tokens before you go?"

 

[animats]

13 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

I make large language model NPC's for my own sim

How's that working out? Links?

I've seen it done a few times. The trouble is that the LLM usually knows little about Second Life and not much about its environment. So it's just a generic chatbot.

An LLM loaded up with knowledge about a roleplay sim would be useful. Load in all the lore and background,, and interesting stuff that happened recently. A lot of work, though. Might be worth it for one of those complicated RP regions where new users need background, such as Dark Future or Crack Den.

 

[animats]

43 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I've read a lot of negative reactions to the buy Lindens and Earn Lindens from Games kiosks.  If you've spent any time at all talking with new residents, you'll see that's often among the first questions asked. 

The WelcomeHub lacks a good explanation of what you can get and do for free. Something like this:

Second Life and Money:

Your free account in Second Life lets you go most places and do most things. You can get free clothing, vehicles., and weapons The free stuff, of course, is not the best stuff. The good stuff is created by other residents and put on sale by them. There's online shopping, with a web site, and thousands of in-world stores, where you can see, and often try, the thing before you buy.

More expensive does not always mean better. Each seller sets their own prices, and some charge more than others.All that is entirely user-run. Linden Lab itself doesn't sell items. They make their money renting out land in Second Life.

If you want to buy stuff, you need Linden Dollars, which sell for about US$1 -> L$250. It's possible to earn Linden Dollars working in Second Life. It's usually not worth the trouble, because pay is very low. Work in Second Life is roleplay, not income.

There are both free and paid accounts. "Premium" membership gets you an unfurnished house that you can furnish, and some modest perqs. There are some model homes here in the WelcomeHub. Second Life has somewhere around 100,000 such houses in landscaped communities with varied layout.

The Premium homes offer a quiet suburban lifestyle. You can also buy bare land and build, rent land, rent apartments, etc., just like real life. You can even live in roleplay areas. Steampunk cities, magical fantasies, cyberpunk streets, high-crime areas, and luxury estates are all available. That gets complicated, so spend a few days in SL, look around, and talk to people.

Lindall Kidd used to teach a land class at Caledon which covered all this.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

The forums would be more pleasant to discuss everything if a few were not here.

Providing you only want to discuss "how great every thing is, and perfect, with no problems whatsoever".

That's not really a discussion is it? It's more of a corporate blog, and I'm pretty sure there is already one of those, so, might as well close the forum down altogether.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 minute ago, animats said:

The WelcomeHub lacks a good explanation of what you can get and do for free. Something like this:

Far too long for a Noob Island sign.

You have obviously never encountered the "Run-B4-Rez" types.

They finish the "how to move" tutorial assault course, with always run enabled, don't get told how to turn that off, and race about and PAST signs before they rez in enough to be readable, and generally NEVVER read anything.

 

SHORT announcements in BIG letters, at lower "fast rez" resolutions.

 

[Jaylinbridges]

32 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

SHORT announcements in BIG letters, at lower "fast rez" resolutions.

Big Prim letters, one letter per prim,  rezz in fastest.  LL has plenty of free prims to use on their properties.

I have given up waiting for some of those scripted text signs to clear up so I can see the letters.  Just write your message on a sign made in photoshop, move it to a  texture in SL and slap it on a prim.

37 minutes ago, animats said:

Work in Second Life is roleplay, not income.

Until you try to cash lindens into USD, then it is income. I play myself in SL, and it feels like work.

Edited February 21 by Jaylinbridges

[Arielle Popstar]

7 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

2. There are many SL creators who sell translators inworld and/or on Marketplace. If LL were to develop their own translator and give it away for free, they could honestly be accused of undercutting their resident creators.

LL's business is selling or renting out land not giving creators a place to sell their creations that offer a service LL forgot to include in its beginner packages. LL giving out Translators to new residents as required would easily be seen as something that is both expected and normal in the pursuit of new active residents. It certainly would not be the first time LL has put out something that might be in competition to a store on the MP.

Looking in my inventory I already see 2 full perm free translators I've picked up over the years and looking on the MP I see several more. That doesn't include the 6 or so free full perm ones I have picked up on other grids. Why should LL not be able to put out translators that are already free? If there are higher end ones being sold on the MP that is fine but that in no way should be a bar to LL making a free basic one available to those needing it.

[Ksenia Elcano]

To entice residents to visit the Community Exhibition in the WelcomeHub, LL could waive the transaction fee for buying Linden dollars at the kiosk. That would make the Community Exhibition in the WelcomeHub one of the most visited destinations.

[Extrude Ragu]

2 hours ago, animats said:

How's that working out? Links?

I've seen it done a few times. The trouble is that the LLM usually knows little about Second Life and not much about its environment. So it's just a generic chatbot.

An LLM loaded up with knowledge about a roleplay sim would be useful. Load in all the lore and background,, and interesting stuff that happened recently. A lot of work, though. Might be worth it for one of those complicated RP regions where new users need background, such as Dark Future or Crack Den.

 

Kokoro Academy's NPC's have various forms of situational awareness. The main challenge is the size of the prompt because they run on consumer hardware (an rtx 4090). I'm just a hobbyist working in a hobby budget.

We use a term vector database to store summaries of the NPC's interactions with people that are generated with a dedicated summarizer model. The memories are injected into the prompt based on what has recently been said in the transcript, along with a few random character memories. In effect giving the NPC's long-term memory. Because it's term vector based, exact keywords are not required, just related terms.

We maintain a static lore book in json format with information about the world/keywords, which similarly get inserted into the prompt but here based on keywords in the transcript (We will probably move this to the term vector database later, it was an early stab at environment awareness). In addition, each NPC has their own lore book. Every NPC in Kokoro will talk to you in a different style, and some will be more happy to see you than others.

NPC's in Kokoro Academy are scripted agents that are aware of where in the world they are, and what action they are currently performing. We have a standard list of area ID's in our sim and we use that to give the NPC context about the area they're currently in. We also factor things that adjust this prompt such as time of day etc.

We have a system for inserting temporal events into the prompt. For example, if you walk into the chat range of an NPC, this adds a temporal message to their prompt, [Captain Ai enters the scene.]  which leads to them greeting you.

We had the issue of NPC's being too chatty at first, because they responded to every message. So the way we solved this was to not actually put the NPC's name into the start of the prompt, instead letting it predict who speaks next and choosing whether it speaks based on that.

We've been experimenting with letting the NPC's make decisions from the language model (in effect, giving them some level of self determination) but found it can make them quite 'flighty' in that they often prefer to explore than talk to whoever is nearby. This is an ongoing challenge. We're looking into using a dedicated multiple choice model for this. When the NPC's are not being interacted with, they fall back to a weight based decision making model in LSL. There's a huge table of possible decisions they can make/when they can make them/who can make them based on roles other factors etc.

Another challenge is that language model software is not always bug free. We have hiccups now and then because the LLM will  become 'stuck' which requires human intervention.

Our NPC's can walk around the world using pathfinding, but because they are scripted agents, can only use the static navmesh. Which means they are terrible at avoiding dynamic obstacles such as other avatars. Although I attempted to solve this, the solution is not fully effective and tends to result in NPC's walking right into people. I haven't had time to fix this problem yet.

We also added a needs system to our NPCs, similar to how the Sims works. Needs include fun, hunger, social, energy, hygiene, bladder and all steadily rise over time. The needs affect the NPC's prompt in turn affecting how and what they talk about. We're also considering using it to affect generation 'temperature' making the NPC's more creative when they have energy. The needs also affect what choices are available to the NPC and weights when not using AI etc.

As for how they have effected Kokoro - I would say they are no replacement for an actual human, but they make for a fun activity for guests in the sim. I have seen people bond through playing with the NPC's together and it's not uncommon for people to share memes of what the NPC's have said in our private discord. They're generally enjoyed and received positively.

Phew! That's probably a lot more than you bargained for. As for a link, our sim is Kokoro Academy but note it's an anime roleplay sim with a dress code.

 

 

[QuietEventide]

14 hours ago, Viola Mole said:

Hello folks! One of our team alerted me to this forum, they were very upset actually. There are some comments in this forum which make me understand why.

I'm definitely not going to say anything. 

 

Edited February 21 by QuietEventide

[Sid Nagy]

17 hours ago, Viola Mole said:

Hello folks! One of our team alerted me to this forum, they were very upset actually. There are some comments in this forum which make me understand why.

 

Everyone has their view of what can or should be done differently or better and people will gladly listen to helpful suggestions from different perspectives. This can help us all make positive developments.

 

Builds and exhibits are fluid, can be changed, rethought, improved, reduced and expanded. Perhaps though, you could have some consideration for the feelings of the creators who have worked so hard to make what many people do consider a great starting point for newcomers, including having consideration for the Community Exhibition builders who have so positively entered into this initial stage.

 

What cannot be changed however - is the gut wrenching feeling that a kind, caring person who wants to spend time with others and assist them gets in the pit of their stomach while reading insulting comments about themselves and their helping companions. Demoralization takes a lot of coming back from.

 

Rather than take a swipe at people you do not know, or at a group about which you know nothing, please be kind enough to direct any of your complaints or comments about the volunteers directly to me rather than unfairly putting people down in a public forum.

 

One thing I can assure you all about, is that in the eight months this mentor team has been together, not one person has spoken unkindly about anyone they have met or helped and we try to accept everyone, taking into account their weakness and strengths. If people fail to keep these standards they will not remain in the program. 

 

I am very proud of the people in this new generation of Second Life Mentors. Gentle Heron is an honorary member, some of our members are from Virtual Ability.  We have linguists and people with fantastic Second Life skills and we also have people who are just caring, who love to connect and spend time with others. Most of our volunteers spend many hours helping newcomers in a variety of ways.

 

I would ask you all to remember that across any demographic, newcomers, visiting residents and volunteers who might all meet up at the Welcome HUB that some people face significant life challenges.

 

Anyone can help someone else anywhere at any time, in fact, if people did not help each other in all aspects of life, life expectancy would be shorter, people's mental health would be worse and both the real world and our Second Life worlds would fall apart. 

 

Please do not belittle those who choose to do it in an organized environment as a team, learning from and supporting each other.

 

Nobody spends more time than me with the volunteers, or at the Welcome HUB, therefore I would be glad to talk to anyone about their queries. 

 

I would however ask that you come as 'yourself' not as a pretend new user. 

 

I prefer voice but do of course take into consideration people who may not be able to or wish to use it for various reasons.

 

You can also email me - violamole.ldpw@gmail.com

 

I see people on this forum with amazing skills. Bring them to the table, we will find you a newcomer who you can spend time with showing them your creations, helping them become body beautiful or help them with scripting and building. Let me know you are willing, we will link you up!

 

Let's be positive and grateful for all we have here in Second Life and provide ideas and suggestions in an emotionally intelligent way, otherwise please let those of us who are positive and grateful 'do our thing'  to the best of our own individual abilities.

 

Thank you and have an amazing day.

 

Viola.

 

 

I was simply too direct in my now withdrawn responses for the American culture of discussing, I guess.  A bit of clashing of different cultures. Maybe even a dash of lack of knowledge of the finesses of the English language on my side.
The Dutch are used to discuss matters straight to the point.
I wasn't aiming directly on our mentor group but on mentor groups in general. Somehow that was not clear enough for most.
It was never my intention to attack our volunteers or Moles. Of course almost all of them work with high enthusiasm and a lot of dedication. My sincere apologies if some felt personally attacked.

I try to make my point with an example outside of Second Life:

Imagine there is a hospital somewhere.
Staff:  One doctor, two nurses and 200 volunteers.

The volunteers do what they can, are committed lovely people with the hearts on the right spot.
But the survival rates of said hospital are poor for the patients.
If the hospital is satisfied with their low survival rates, nothing has to be changed.

But what could they do best if they want to try to improve those survival rates?
- more volunteers?
- more qualified staff?

I think I know the outcome of the discussion and I hope that everyone sees, that this is no attack on the volunteers in that hospital. They are not the problem, but also not the main part of the solution for the hospitals problem.

Back to our wonderful world with wonderful volunteers, Moles and other residents:
The solution of getting better retention rates lies in hiring professionals, like people who studied communication, marketing, psychology and so on. In the end, one gets what one pays for. Volunteers can play a part, sure, they are not the problem, but also not the main part of the solution.

 

 

Edited February 21 by Sid Nagy
Spelling grammar and slight adjustments

[Persephone Emerald]

4 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Back to our wonderful world with wonderful volunteers, Moles and other residents:
The solution of getting better retention rates lies in hiring professionals, like people who studied communication, marketing, psychology and so on. In the end, one gets what one pays for. Volunteers can play a part, sure, they are not the problem, but also not the main part of the solution.

Resident Mentors have one advantage in that they have real experience of being in SL. Most people who would be hired as an expert in marketing, video games, or social media would be clueless about the unique culture, economy, and challenges of SL. They could spend some time in SL with an avatar, but they wouldn't have the years of experience that our mentors and Moles have.

I think there is a place at Linden Lab for outside experts, but I don't think it's with guiding newbies inworld.

[Love Zhaoying]

Everytime I see the OP Title, I think:

"Nobody Visits"=>

"Nobody Likes"=>

"Everybody Hates Chris" (the American TV show). In the show, "Chris" is an Underdog.

I don't know about you, but I root for the Underdog.

I root for the WelcomeHub!

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

16 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

"Everybody Hates Chris" (the American TV show). In the show, "Chris" is an Underdog.

I don't know about you, but I root for the Underdog.

Everyone hates the Taxman, is the Taxman an underdog?

Just because "everyone hates" something, doesn't make it an "underdog" that must be "white-knighted", against the "haters".

 

[Charlemagne Allen]

I've been accused of being a bot sometimes for asking people if they wanted help. It would be hilarious if it came true and I could pretend to be one.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Everyone hates the Taxman, is the Taxman an underdog?

Just because "everyone hates" something, doesn't make it an "underdog" that must be "white-knighted", against the "haters".

I did not say that, there ya go again, twisting words.

I clearly did not say that I ALWAYS root for the underdog. 

Silly!

[Charlemagne Allen]

On 2/19/2024 at 12:52 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't see how they could be, when they haven't likely filled in their profiles yet. I always urge newbies I run across to put in a picture ASAP so they aren't viewed as dweebs. I think it's free now but some people use up their free one and get stuck. I even have free images to pass out in one of my infohubs because I think the reaction to an empty profile pic is "Griefer".

I suppose LL could see which country they are coming from or something and possibly profile them but I find it hard to believe they would have the time and staff to bother. They throw "Mentors" at this task, which is one of the reasons why it chronically failed.

They need a paid, benefited, full-time high-quality staff person to stay in a welcome area all day, or at least circuit ride through a group of them, to solve these problems of retention and griefing by watching what happens and attempting to intervene.

Jack Linden, who was an accomplished professional BEFORE joining SL, used to do this very thing himself even when he was VP. It's like when they make the DoorDash engineers go out and do a dash now and then. 

How to tell an alt, based on the experience of someone who spends hours of my life on hubs and helps new people:

1. They have updated their avatar in any way within a day and it looks normal and it is not a rip. Noobs do not get the SL inventory.  Even noobs from IMVU who use a YouTube video guide do not get it without being explained.

2. They have a profile picture or text in their profile and they have more than one group that isn't a free body or newbie group.

3. They either stay for days in one place (bot) or immediately get out of the newbie hub.

4. They favor system bodies and it looks well put-together. That is an oldbie returning.

 

Edited February 21 by Charlemagne Allen

[Persephone Emerald]

3 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Everyone hates the Taxman, is the Taxman an underdog?

Just because "everyone hates" something, doesn't make it an "underdog" that must be "white-knighted", against the "haters".

Bad analogy. The tax man is just some guy doing his job. If we didn't have taxes and people enforcing them, we couldn't have public roads, schools, police, a military, etc. 

Who's a villain vs. an underdog often depends on how they're portrayed or which aspects of them we focus upon. The Joker, for instance, is a villain until he's viewed as a poor, abused and misunderstood everyman who finally decides to stand up for himself. (We'll conveniently ignore the fact that he kills and tortures innocent people, because that doesn't fit the narrative we want to create.)

Is the crabby old lady who yells at kids to get off her lawn a villain or an underdog? Maybe we need to know more about her to really know?

[Sid Nagy]

13 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Resident Mentors have one advantage in that they have real experience of being in SL. Most people who would be hired as an expert in marketing, video games, or social media would be clueless about the unique culture, economy, and challenges of SL. They could spend some time in SL with an avatar, but they wouldn't have the years of experience that our mentors and Moles have.

I think there is a place at Linden Lab for outside experts, but I don't think it's with guiding newbies inworld.

In world experience has it's value, that is a fact.

But selling a product (in this case SL to new residents) has mainly to do with quality of the product, analyzing the market, careful product placement. What do you offer first, what next and then etc. That can all be carefully planned by using almost universal rules and 'tricks'.
That knowledge has to be learned either through normal education lines (meaning hiring pro's) or the hard way by trail and error (the mom and pop shop approach). The first method is most of the time more efficient and more successful.

SL might be a rather unique product, but selling stuff to (new) customers isn't. Most of the psychological tricks and rules for setting up a shop apply for setting up orientation islands as well IMHO. No building skills needed, but knowledge. Others can build and later on fill the isles.
Ans then the help from volunteers would become more usefull and practical too.

But of course it is just my 2 cents.

[Sid Nagy]

42 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Everyone hates the Taxman, is the Taxman an underdog?

Just because "everyone hates" something, doesn't make it an "underdog" that must be "white-knighted", against the "haters".

 

But there are people who love the taxman. Some are even married with one.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

But there are people who love the taxman. Some are even married with one.

Good point. I assume Jesus loved Matthew (who was a tax collector), for instance.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 2/19/2024 at 1:03 PM, Persephone Emerald said:

Now there's a good idea. Would LL be able to provide a free translator at the Welcome Hub?  The one I use is not free, but's come in handy when trying help newbies who don't speak English well. 

This is why we created International Bazaar at the infohub in Ross, so that people can be directed to RL language/country sims where there are those who speak their language.

The listserve for this is also put on one Linden welcome area and various people have put the terminal in their welcome areas. It's hardly a substitute for real-time translators, but the Google API for translation outside their Google Translate was deliberately retired and broke in SL long ago. People use other translators now that sometimes don't work.

I tell people to go outside SL on to the, you know, World Wide Web, where you can still access Google Translate and translate at least a pargraph or so of stuff.