User:Orange Planer

29 June 2008

Nice to meet you, come on in! Can I get you some coffee? I just brewed it. Here, have a seat at the kitchen table. Tell me about yourself. You want to know about me? Oh, I don't know. There isn't a lot to tell. I've been in Second Life since August 2007. I discovered a lot of people, for whatever reason, just couldn't seem to figure out what they were supposed to do, or how to do it. So, I listened to a couple people and picked up the patter. Left-click on that sign right there. No, over there. Here, let me walk over to the sign so you can see what I'm talking about.

Anyway, it grew from there. Someone asked me to become a mentor, but I'd only been around for a couple months. So, I waited. The day I turned six months the person came by and said "It's time." I had to laugh. Anyway, I applied, got accepted, and started looking around. The state of mentorship? Oh, it has its issues. Too many people have no clue what to do or don't care. The process took all the warm bodies they could find, so it's been rather interesting to see what's been called a mentor. Now they're trying to fix it after the fact, which is like closing the barn doors after the horses have escaped, but what the heck.

I couldn't just sit there and do nothing - I mean, people run around spreading wrong information without doublechecking what they know. "Sure, I'm police. Who told me that? Oh, I heard from another mentor (whose name I will never reveal to you)." Yeah right. Did you check the wiki? Did you look in the JIRA? What about the knowledgebase? Did you ask the VTeam? How about any of the mentor groups? No? Come on, you can do better than that...

Someone suggested running a class, an idea that had been percolating in the back of my head for awhile. I've taught. It's not easy, but you get used to it, and there's a big upside at the back end when you see someone walk away with newfound confidence. After sending the other person an email or two we began a group dedicated to creating a class for mentors. I'm hoping we actually get the class off the ground. Right now we're brainstorming.

Peeves

• Griefers
• People who should know better
• Litterers
• Gas guzzlers
• Glaring bugs in programming
• Being sick - it's just such a drag