Talk:Volunteer Portal

SL Certification

Volunteers! We are embarking on the creation of SL Certification. We believe that this process must involve Resident participation, and particularly, Volunteer participation. Volunteers are the most knowledgeable Residents in Second Life, and so we ask you for your feedback. Please see SL Certification for more information, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me, Heretic Linden. 11:11 am, 23 April 2007 (SLT)

Portal Redesign

See: User:Baba Yamamoto/Volunteer Portal for proposed layout of the Volunteer Portal which is more in line with the other portals (Main Page and Open Source Portal) --Baba Yamamoto 17:41, 12 January 2007 (PST)

French translation possible

Hi I'd like to know if a french translation about this wiki is possible? As far I can call friends to help me, in this task. Sebcaen Ulysses 04:37, 5 March 2007 (PST)

See Project:i18n

SignpostMarv Martin 12:02, 5 March 2007 (PST)

Volunteer portal not good for newbies

• --Ok, I'm passionate about this. At least for now. SL is overwhelming to many newbies, and we probably lose a lot of people that way. secondlife.com/support is extremely dis-organized (from a newbie perspective), as is the viewer's F1 help.

--After talking with Jeremy & Jon Linden Friday during office hours, it's clear LL offers next to nothing in the way of documentation for newbies. There is nothing good for newbies on secondlife.com or in-world. The 1 thing LL offers, is when you first login to the Second Life Support Center there's a link titled "New to Second Life? Find out how to get started." But the info offered there is WAY too brief!!!

--If LL, or this wiki, offered better docs for new users, Mentors might be less overwhelmed handling basic problems, Help Island would probably be less crowded, and other citizens might spend less time hand-holding newbies and more time doing more advanced, satisfying activities. I bet SL loses confused newbies in droves over the lack of docs.

--I got the impression from

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#What_is_this_wiki_for_.3F that this portal is supposed to be for general help. But if this portal wants to be good for newbies, I think it needs changes. Either that or we need a NEW portal called "Second Life Help". Jeremy said I should look again in the wiki for docs that are good for new users. And there are some...but they're only linked to the Volunteer portal. We need some kind of portal all this stuff is linked to so that people can come to one table of contents that lists everything intro help article they could want to read. Search is no good, because newbies don't even know what to search for. We need a single entry point, perhaps something like this:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Jaszon_Maynard/Proposed_Second_Life_Help_Portal

--I'm a newbie, and I never thought to look in the Volunteer portal, I doubt most do. I've spoken to other newbies in-world, they've visited this wiki, and thought there was absolutely nothing here of any value to newbies. Because they couldn't find it.

--First of all, the portal's name will put newbies off. The "Volunteer" portal? I wasn't looking to be a volunteer, or to find one...I was looking for help text.

--Next, the main page description doesn't invite newbies in, it puts them off. The description on the main wiki page says "Learn more about our Resident Volunteer program and access shared Volunteer resources. Resident Volunteers are participants in our Official Volunteer Program, providing guidance and assistance to Residents blah blah blah....". By the time any newbie reads 2 lines in, it seems pretty clear that the volunteer portal does not offer what they're looking for. It doesn't say "general help in here!"

--Next, all the things a newbie would want, the Library, Links to Helpful Resources, and "Looking for a Volunteer with a specific skill", are at the bottom of the page. Even with a fairly large screen and an average size font, these can easily be completely off the bottom of their browser window when the newbie first enters. Or so low in the window as to not command their attention. They're going to be hit in the face with sections on Official Volunteer Meetings and Communication, Volunteer Special Focus, Languages, Who We Are, Groups, & Opt-inRoles.

--Guess what? After scannning over those titles and whats in those sections, a newbie will be thinking "oops, guess I'm in the wrong place, nothing for me here". That's what I thought.

--Let's say a newbie actually notices the Library (bad title for a newbie...how about "Help with Second Life"). What are the first few titles in the Library? All about topics of 0 interest to newbies. Just scanning the 1st 5 titles I bet their eyes glaze-over and they think "ohhh, none of this is for me". All the good stuff, for newbies, is put farther down (perhaps off the bottom of their browser window). Will they persevere long enough to notice?

--Also, the Library is missing important articles, or better names for existing ones.

--Where's the dictionary for newbies? We should have one in this wiki, not just linked-out to other sites. Why don't we have a setup like this one?

http://secondlife.wikia.com/index.php/Category:Glossary And why don't we include every term from that wiki, and from

http://sliktionary.sliki.info/ and from

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Becky_Pippen#SL_Glossary and from

http://secondlife.com/app/help/commonterms.php Or, if we're going to link out, it should be a really prominently labelled & featured link. Because EVERY newbie is DYING for a dictionary. We should make it really easy for them to find it. Not the last link in a list of links at the very bottom of the page.

--Where's the beginner's intro to SL? (I even have ideas what should be in there, and in what order...I have "fresh eyes" on the newbie experience in SL) That's REALLY the ONE title EVERY newbie is looking for. If they don't see it, they probably cruise off the site looking elsewhere hoping to find this holy grail, because this site will look like it's NOT catering to newbies...only hosting in-depth articles for non-newbies.

--Where's the overview of the SL viewer? With sub-sections or links to articles about each menu (Edit, View, World, etc), etc?

--Where's the general FAQ? This article:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Help:Second_Life_FAQ

should be a prominent title featured in the Library, not buried under "Text from In-world Notecards", if we want to be helpful to newbies. How about even a link that links you to a category of all FAQs?

--There's great stuff inside of "Text from In-world Notecards"...but with a title like that, how many newbies are going to think there's anything in there worth clicking on? They may not even know what a Notecard is! Heck, just change the title of this link to "Help on various topics" and you'll get a lot more newbies clicking on it.

--As for this wiki, what if I don't want to join any organizations yet (I don't), but I do want to add/edit articles? Am I allowed to add/edit in the Volunteer portal? The descriptions & posts I've read implies I should not. There needs to be a freely-editable help wiki or people aren't going to edit it.

--I started a discussion on the wiki main page about possibly making a new portal. So...thoughts anyone? New portal? Change this one? If I hear nothing...maybe I'll make a new portal one of these days.

--Jaszon Maynard 22:00, 25 February 2008 (PST)

Little bit too much text for me to read through atm.

But the basic gist is that the Volunteer Portal is aimed at Volunteers, not newbies.

SignpostMarv Martin 05:16, 26 February 2008 (PST)

Like Marv said and like I wrote here, the volunteer portal is not meant to be helpful for newbies but for volunteers. How ever, there is content wich is helpful for newbies as well. The mentioned Text from In-world Notecards is what it name indicates: Text from In-world Notecards. It is named that way to make it easier for Volunteers to keep up to date with the useful content they provide. So we won't hand out notecards In-World which are obsolete. This was not meant as a resource for newbies on the wiki but as a help for the 3000+ volunteers to keep organized with what they provide In-World. As I stated out at the other discussion: I like the idea of a newbie help portal on the wiki and some of the resources of Text from In-World Notecards might be linked there as well. But this here is not the right place for it to discuss. So let's keep it here or at the topic of your private discussion page =) Greetz, --Zai Lynch 15:43, 26 February 2008 (PST)

History Notice

The edit history of this file couldn't be preserved. For the previous history, please look at the old backup. It is located at Project:Flagged Revs Backup/Volunteer Portal. --Khepri Contractor 02:16, 21 July 2010 (UTC)