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 horribly 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!!!

--LL doesn't give a dictionary. LL doesn't give a browse-able overview of the client, so you could just poke through a table of contents and read-up about the features in the viewer. LL gives no intro for newbies (though there are some pretty good, outdated, but disorganized notecards kicking-around that do this...but how many newbies ever find/read those?).

--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 newbies in droves over the lack of docs.

--If this portal wants to be good for newbies, I think it needs changes. Either that or we need a NEW portal called "Help with Second Life".

--I'm a newbie, and I never thought to look in here, 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, 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.

--Where's the beginner's intro to SL? (I even have ideas what should be in there, and in what order) 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.

--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.

--Also, as a computer veteran, programmer, gamer, & user of many products...it is WAY weird to have to login to a support system before being allowed to read basic help info. I am accustomed to only logging into anything if I want to make posts (forums) or submit tickets. But not just read help!!! Probably 2 kinds of people come to SL Support...those, like me, who aren't used to logging-in just to read basic help...and those who aren't used to logging into anything at all ever. Either kind of person will be confused by SL Support. They're just looking for basic help. They're asked to login to something?!? I wonder how many of them are annoyed & confused.

--LL is offering nothing for newbies, and I'm pretty shocked. But the community could do it. I've already got some great notecards to start with and some great ideas to add in. But this wiki needs some changes first. I would start putting some of my ideas in, but there's no point unless we either make changes to the Volunteer portal, or make a new portal. I'm willing to WRITE the 1st draft of the intro for newbies, I'm willing to setup the structure for the dictionary and make the first entry in it, I'm willing to setup the structure so others can fill in the details about the client (menus, dialogs, etc), and I'm willing to setup the structure so others can write about everything else in SL (socializing, avatar customization, sight-seeing, classes, Events, money, land, building, scripting, role-playing, businesses, etc) and it'll be find-able easily in a browse-able format to newbies. 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 20:14, 22 February 2008 (PST)