social islands

[crazydudemartijn]

reason i post this is becouse the amount of people complaining about how much they miss the old beach on social island 3.

my question is, Can the beach be added to the new island or change social island 3 back to the old one.

if u dont beleave me go check social island 3 and ask around 

 

 

 

[Alwin Alcott]

ehm..this is just a forum, not a request for sims or support from LL

only residents will (99.9999%) respond here... the remaining 0.000000001 % is LL

 

travel around a bit, there are a few more sims than those

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

There are over nine thousand places to go in SL.  Why bother with the layout of just one? ()

 

[Alwin Alcott]

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Imnotgoing Sideways wrote:

There are over nine thousand places to go in SL.  Why bother with the layout of just one? (

)

 

---

just a few more 24529 sims

[Syo Emerald]

What was so important about that beach? There are so many beaches out there. And some are also frequented by many people.

[crazydudemartijn]

the difrence is that this is a starters island where old and new SL people meet. the amount of helpfull / funny / happy moments was made on that beach. now its gone, im not saying changing all social islands back they just want the beach back. 

 

one of the solutions is changing just 1 sim back to the old sim, like there are 8 social islands wich most of them are not realy used  only island 1,2,3 are being used alot so why not changing the least used island back to its original state

[wherorangi]

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crazydudemartijn wrote:

the difrence is that this is a starters island where old and new SL people meet. the amount of helpfull / funny / happy moments was made on that beach

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probably the beach was nerfed for that exact reason. The idea of the starter social islands is to provide a place for new people to get started in SL and then to go on. Not to camp out there forever

[ChinRey]

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wherorangi wrote:

probably the beach was nerfed for that exact reason. The idea of the starter social islands is to provide a place for new people to get started in SL and then to go on. Not to camp out there forever

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Hmmm, they nerf it because it's too popular? Yes that makes perfect sense ... somewhere... in some weird alternative universe where natural laws are very different from here.

[wherorangi]

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ChinRey wrote:

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wherorangi wrote:

probably the beach was nerfed for that exact reason. The idea of the starter social islands is to provide a place for new people to get started in SL and then to go on. Not to camp out there forever

---

Hmmm, they nerf it because it's too popular? Yes that makes perfect sense ... somewhere... in some weird alternative universe where natural laws are very different from here.

---

when OP says that stuff is funny when happening at newbie starter zones,  then whats funny is typically the same funny to be found in hazing newbies at boarding school. The newbies rarely find this funny. The oldbies think its hilarious

eta:

i didnt mean to divert you ChinRey down a path in my earlier. I think that the OP got what I was meaning wthout me spelling it out to them

 

[ChinRey]

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Imnotgoing Sideways wrote:

There are over nine thousand places to go in SL.  Why bother with the layout of just one? (

)

---

Because Social Island was special. The southern part of the sims was a professionally and extremely well made setting specially designed to highlight the best SL has to offer, let newcomers practice the essential skills and ease them into this rather confusing and complex little world. I suppose you never saw it Immy but I happen to have a tester alt young enough to have access so I did. I can assure you it was nothing like any other introductions/newcomer tutorials we've had in SL over the years, it was at a completely different quality level.

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say every day a newcomer spent on the old Social Island doubled the chances he or she would become an SL user.

Unfortunately it was also seriously nerfed in that the path laid out for people to follow was carefully laid out to lead them to the northern part of the sim, away from the facilities rather than to them.

I had a look at  the Social Islands now and it's not just the beach and not just no. 3. It's everything. They've ruined it, they've completely ruined it. This is going to hurt the retention rate badly.

(Edit: elaborating a bit and correcting a few typos)

[Pamela Galli]

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ChinRey wrote:

---

Imnotgoing Sideways wrote:

There are over nine thousand places to go in SL.  Why bother with the layout of just one? (

)

---

Because Social Island was special. The southern part of the sims was a professionally and extremely well made setting specially designed to highlight the best SL has to offer, let newcomers practice the essential skills and ease them into this rather confusing and complex little world. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say every day a newcomer spent on the old Social Island doubled the chances he or she would become an SL user. Unfortunately it was also seriously nerfed in that the path laid out for people to follow was carefully laid out to lead them to the northern part of the sim, away from the facilities rather than to them.

I had a look at  the Social Islands now and it's not just the beach and not just no. 3. It's everything. They've ruined it, they've completely ruined it. This is going to hurt the retention rate badly.

---

Well damn. And isn't that just the Linden Way? And here I thought they were working to improve retention.

[ChinRey]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Well damn. And isn't that just the Linden Way? And here I thought they were working to improve retention.

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They are but, we've discussed this many times before, they don't seem to have any educators on their staff. Except for Torely of course but he's just one man (although he sometimes looks like a crowd) and seems to have been sidelined recently anyway.

They don't understand the fundamental principles of good education, such as: Focus on the essentials, take one small step at a time and keep distractions down to a minimum.

I'm also beginning to think they're short on salesmanship knowledge. At least they certainly miss one crucial point: The people at Social Island are not Second Life users, they're prospects. You got their interest, now is the time for the sales pitch. And every good salesperson knows this fundamental rule:

If you shout "Buy, Buy!" too soon, it becomes "Bye, Bye!"

[wherorangi]

i am not sure what is the problem exactly

at my home Social Island 1 theres about 20 people at the moment. 6 people at the beach dance place. 1 new person, 3 newish and 2 not newish

5 not newish up on the central platform, 4 of them (not new people) have tags over their heads and/or on their profiles saying that they are helpy helpertons types (in the same way that what used to be called rogue mentors)

the rest on the sim are new people (1-3 days old) wandering round exploring and completing the orientation task HUD. Like they used to do, following the paths and signs, at the ancient orientation places. Now they follow the HUD in a quest-like fashion, which is actually easier to do. Rather than have to try cam in on inworld signs like in the ancient days

all the social islands have been rebuilt in this greeky ancienty style. Functionally tho in terms of new resident orientation is no different to what the previous style was. If anything its more integrated than the previous setting which was sectionalized more

the orientation task HUD is quite good I think. I have 100 fake L$ from the HUD tasks. I am thinking of buying hair with it, in the fake L$ shop on the island

+

eta: apart from Amy who is sitting on the swing in the meadow (:

[ChinRey]

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wherorangi wrote:

4 of them (not new people) have tags over their heads and/or on their profiles saying that they are helpy helpertons types (in the same way that what used to be called rogue mentors)

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That's good to hear at least. If they're good, they may well be able to compensate a lot. The ones with tags that is, I don't think newcomers are likely to check people's profiles to see who they can ask for help.

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wherorangi wrote:

the rest on the sim are new people (1-3 days old) wandering round exploring and completing the orientation task HUD.

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Yes, it's back to school, isn't it! Do this! Do that! and don't you dare to argue!

Second Life is supposed to be fun and entertaining and the first thing you're met with is a long and complex tutorial, is that that the way to do it?

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wherorangi wrote:

Like they used to do

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ChinRey wrote (about the previous Social Island incarnation):

I can assure you it was nothing like any other introductions/newcomer tutorials we've had in SL over the years, it was at a completely different quality level.

---

 

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wherorangi wrote:

the orientation task HUD is quite good I think.

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You mean apart from the tacky design and the fact that it takes up way too much screen space? But those are minor issues.

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wherorangi wrote:

all the social islands have been rebuilt in this greeky ancienty style.

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As a general SL build it's really good, although a bit too overloaded and laggy. but no, it's not very functional for the purpose it's supposed to be made for.

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wherorangi wrote:

Functionally tho in terms of new resident orientation is no different to what the previous style was.

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Did you actually see the Social Island as it was a few months ago or are you comparing to the older entry systems? The current Social Island concept is similar in many ways to the old Help Isalnd/Orientation Island setup and very, very different from the first version of Social Island.

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wherorangi wrote:

I have 100 fake L$ from the HUD tasks. I am thinking of buying hair with it, in the fake L$ shop on the island

---

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ChinRey wrote:

If you shout "Buy, Buy!" too soon, it becomes "Bye, Bye!"

---

 That was one of the three significant flaws the original Social Island had and rather than fix it, they've emphasized it.

 

I live close to the Help Islands and Orientation Island so I've always had quite a few newcomers blundering about trying to figure out what they're doing. I did notice an increase in their numbers before I read thsi thread and was wondering why. I suppose I got the answer now. One thing those lost newcomers have in common is that you see them once but never twice.

[wherorangi]

the greeky style has been this way since I started over at least on Social Islands 1 2 and 3. I actual started on Island 1, but sometimes when I press home I get sent to Island 2 or 3 when 1 is full. Dunno about the other islands 4,5.. etc, they may have since recently been converted after LL got some feedback/tracking data from new residents actions with the new design. Dunno

with the previous design, the beach had a dance venue on the water with its own design different from the other activities, each having its own as I remember. I remember it had portals to get off. I dont remember it having a Experience Orientation HUD tho

+

just about OIP. It used to be a overflow sim when the starter HIs were full with new signups, specially on weekends

once upon ages ago now I used to stand at the OIP temple with a badge on my head. And watch the new people make their way from the corral along the path to the temple. If they made it I would go: "Well done! you now ready to level up" and most would go: wooohooo! yay! phew!! That was after they managed to get out of the ravine in front of the temple (:

i think the HUD is way better than the signs. They were torture for a lot of new people back then

was other badged people who would stand in the corral or at the bottom of the hill from the corral on OIP, who would take the new people who asked for help, by the hand

i was more into the survivors who made it to the temple on their own. Invariably when I said: do you wanna learn how to build ? they said Yes please! so they would pick the HIP landmark giver and off. Where I be standing on the far side of the sandbox. If they made it off the platform all the way over to by me then they ready to build. If they got distracted on the way over by the big green sign then guess not today (:

is quite interesting the Class of 2007 that came out of OIP as new signups. Who they are. What they became. That some of them turned into really good builders, and quite successful merchants, and helpy helpertons who still post on this forums even, and still can be found inworld sometimes helping people as best they can

was and still is a pretty amazing group of people that OIP class of 2007. For sure the class of 2003 are legends but is the class of 2007 that made SL a world, and not just a cool sandbox building game

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

ChinRey wrote:

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

Well damn. And isn't that just the Linden Way? And here I thought they were working to improve retention.

---

They are but, we've discussed this many times before, they don't seem to have any educators on their staff. Except for Torely of course but he's just one man (although he sometimes looks like a crowd) and seems to have been sidelined recently anyway.

They don't understand the fundamental principles of good education, such as: Focus on the essentials, take one small step at a time and keep distractions down to a minimum.

I'm also beginning to think they're short on salesmanship knowledge. At least they certainly miss one crucial point:

The people at Social Island are

not

Second Life users, they're

prospects

.

You got their interest, now is the time for the sales pitch. And every good salesperson knows this fundamental rule:

If you shout "Buy, Buy!" too soon, it becomes "Bye, Bye!"

---

And we in the forums aren't prospects, we're Second Life users. Whatever happened for us worked, but for the vast majority of our peers it didn't. It's been that way for every orientation system.

There's a logical fallacy called the "Survivor Fallacy" which states that you can't necessarily judge a system by those successful using it if a lot of others were unsuccessful. It dates back to World War II when an engineer was told to examine bombers that returned from missions full of bullet holes to determine what parts of the planes needed reinforcing. The assumption was that you'd reinforce the parts most riddled with bullet holes on the returning planes, but the engineer quickly realized that the parts that needed reinforcing were the parts that had no holes on the returned planes, because that would suggest that any plane that did get shot in those areas never returned.

In other words, we're not necessarily able to judge what a good orientation system would be. We come at things from a different viewpoint. Some years ago a veteran SL blogger tried the new user process with an alt and was saying it was awful - her avatar never even rezzed. How could they come up with a system that was so bad? Well, it turned out she was using Phoenix (because How Could Anyone Use Any Other Viewer) and Phoenix automatically attempted to create the "bridge" on every login and the orientation islands didn't have scripts enabled which prevented the bridge from forming and therefore left her avatar as a cloud. She couldn't conceive that a true new account wouldn't be using Phoenix and therefore wouldn't have that problem.

You say that a long tutorial is bad, while Jo Yardley, who is at least as successful as you as a Second Life user, believes the exact opposite. You got into Second Life for building; I got into it primarily for avatar customization and started buying things immediately. I'm probably still on SL because of a chance encounter in a store in the first few days I was here. We can only judge things by our own biases.

The Lab has actual data on new-user retention rates; if any system they tried was a massive improvement over any of the others it would show up in the data. Apparently it hasn't, and probably never will. There's a Canadian beer (Alexander Keith's) that was bitter and hoppy before hipsters drank beer and therefore never became a mass-market beverage. Their slogan was "Those who like it, like it a lot." For those who are easily frustrated Second Life will never be an option. Even if there's a smooth and painless initial introduction they'll immediately run into something inexplicable after getting out into the real fake world because of all the layers of legacy items out there.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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wherorangi wrote:

 

is quite interesting the Class of 2007 that came out of OIP as new signups. Who they are. What they became. That some of them turned into really good builders, and quite successful merchants, and helpy helpertons who still post on this forums even, and still can be found inworld sometimes helping people as best they can

was and still is a pretty amazing group of people that OIP class of 2007. For sure the class of 2003 are legends but is the class of 2007 that made SL a world, and not just a cool sandbox building game

 

---

2007 was the height of the Second Life "baby boom" - I think the difference was not so much in the process but that the hype funneled so many prospects through that the small fraction of successful users looks bigger in absolute numbers. There was also the whole "This is/will be amaaaayzing and world changing" vibe which, although silly in retrospect when you look at what Second Life was and is, attracted those who wanted to be part of something amaaaayzing and world changing.

[wherorangi]

yes. by class of 2007 I include from endish 2006 to middish 2008

the height of the hype as you say

was extraordinary the numbers piling into the starter islands at that time. Used to get literally run over constantly if you stood to close to the spawn point

dozens and dozens in a single hour piling into a single island. The group chat be going off like crazy sometimes. Halp halp !!! Island 22 halp !!! Is 40 of them just piled in and imma by myself haaalllp ! (:

 

[ChinRey]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

We can only judge things by our own biases.

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Fair enough. My bias here is that I've worked full time as a teacher for more years than I care to admit I've lived, working at all levels from childcare, through elementary school, high school, college and onto post school teaching of adults. I've written textbooks and had them published, I created succesful online teaching resources. When I finally got so fed up with school bureaucracy I quit, about half my colleagues where my former students. And I was even once given some very posh and official looking papers claiming I was a qualified teacher (I wasn't back then though, that came later).

Just ike in all other crafts, there are some basic principles for teaching. Three of them are, you have to make the students perceptive to the teaching, you have to involve them in the process (the more they can figure out on their own, the better) and you have to be careful not to overload them. A fourth principle that I strongly believe in, although other educators may disgaree, is learning by doing. What you learn from your own experience is much better remebered than what you learn from readin or from being told.

The previous Social Islands followed these principles very well. They did have a few flaws of course but nothing in life is perfect and they were all quite minor. Except for one: the newcomers were lead along one specific path all the time adn that path went straight through the empty path of th sim and right to the old portal park. Unless you looked around very carefully, it was very easy to miss all the good stuff.

[wherorangi]

is pretty interesting the learning paradigm. How to go about it

in my case I have a social worker background. We use "we" a lot in this field. Like we can do this thing like this, or we can do it like that, or we can think about how else we might be able to do it, and so on

when working with older teens and adults then is more a peer-to-peer relationship (power equality - we) rather than a more formal tutor-to-student relationship (power inequality - you and I)

 

eta: typs

[wherorangi]

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ChinRey wrote:

the newcomers were lead along one specific path all the time adn that path went straight through the empty path of th sim and right to the old portal park. Unless you looked around very carefully, it was very easy to miss all the good stuff.

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i kinda skip over this earlier

it still does work this way. We spawn on Learner Island. On the beach at the bottom of the cliff. And we follow the path to the top of the hill and then out thru the portal to Social Island

the Learner Island path is only about learning how to navigate our avatars. Walk, run, turn, fly and jump, as we go up the path

tThen when we get to the portal and thru to Social Island we get shown other stuff on the HUD. Like how to interact with what we see, etc 

[Nalytha]

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ChinRey wrote:

Just ike in all other crafts, there are some basic principles for teaching. Three of them are, you have to make the students perceptive to the teaching, you have to involve them in the process (the more they can figure out on their own, the better) and you have to be careful not to overload them. A fourth principle that I strongly believe in, although other educators may disgaree, is learning by doing. What you learn from your own experience is much better remebered than what you learn from readin or from being told.

 

---

 

Since we are talking about various backgrounds we come from, I come from a long time gamer background. The above really clicked with what I've also learned in my journeys. Actually, one of my favorite games, World of Warcraft (try not to sneer) has been addressing this issue for the last few years. As their numbers have declined, one thing they have addressed is simplifying the introduction to the game so new players are not overwhelmed. They have overall simplified the entire game to address this issue which long term players do not all agree with. But they also teach by doing. When you start off, you aren't just given lessons, you are given "quests" so that you can practice those lessons. You complete a quest, and move to the next. 

[wherorangi]

yes. LL are doing something similar now (questing) with how the Learning/Social intro/onboarding process goes

if was up to me then the things I would do to help with this further are:

with the exit portals I would make 3 of the gates bigger than the others, to emphasis them more

a) the Music gate. I would link it to music Events that are happening now. There are people at those events

b) a/the Whats Hot Now gate. There are people at those destinations

c) the Portal Park gate. There are quest/games at that Park. Paleo Quest and Linden Realms. They are quests/games to play and there are people there also playing those games

the other exit portals can often lead to interesting stuff also, but sometimes/often is nobody there. Which is fine for the solitary personality who is self-contained and quite resilient

however for more people is about not being alone (in a who else is on this game, in this space, other than me sense, at this moment in the onboarding process), even when we might never engage with the others we see

[ChinRey]

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wherorangi wrote:

when working with older teens and adults then is more a peer-to-peer relationship (power equality - we) rather than a more formal tutor-to-student relationship (power inequality - you and I)

---

I go for the peer-to-peer approach even when teaching small children. That's the educational culture where I live. I didn't list that as a "fundamental principle" since I know there are lots of couhtries that still use the old authoritarian school model and they seem to get good results there too - there is always more than one way up a mountain.

But that was the approach of the previous Social Islands. It wasn't a school or a formal tutorial at all - or at least it never felt like it. It was a concentrated, distillied, simplified version of Second Life. It was a miniature SL where newcomers could practice the essential skills whilst having a good time and without being overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the Big Thing.

The new Social Island has much more a formal school feeling to it. Even the architecture there emphasizes that. The newcomers are sent through a path from station to station where they are told all everything they need to know about Second Life. But they better listen carefully cause they're only told once. How much do you think they remember of it all next time they log on?

[ChinRey]

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wherorangi wrote:

with the exit portals I would make 3 of the gates bigger than the others, to emphasis them more

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Oh, the portal park. They did remember to fix that, didn't they? That was the other HUGE error at the old Social Island.

You went through the Role play gate and you were either sent to an empty building where apparently somebody tried to make an rp sim hub many years ago or to a fairy community who had asked LL over and over again to be removed from teh category since they weren't an sp place at all.

If you went thrugh the Music gate you always ended up in an empty shopping mall where you could faintly see a just as empty techon club in the distance.