I agree that SL needs teachers. I also believe that the potential for SL is greatest when new people (including myself) are introduced in the best way possible. How do we best encourage that introduction? What skills do good citizens need? What attitudes do they need?

The answers to both questions reflect values and ethics. Mentorship and instruction reinforce the values and skills that SL needs. Looking into the future, any decision made now will have consequences. What are the possible and likely consequences of a decision to devalue education? On the other hand, does a change in the structure of how people are trained really devalue education?

It seems that there are some important questions. It is through the ongoing conversation that we (collectively) will find answers.

This leads to another question (for me, anyway): What demand could there be for a resident philosopher in SL? In some ways, I would love to take on the task. It would certainly feed into some of my studies in philosophy and leadership.

If you have gotten this far, thanks for listening.

Searaven

I was repsonding to your generalization that SSI=Destitue. I’m on SSI and I’m not. I’m one of the lucky ones with enough $ left over from “rl” to spend some on SL. It’s the causual dismissal of entire groups of humanity as not being important that anger me, and that you don’t even seem to realize that you do it. My mother talks like that when she voices her opinion of, well, lets just say she she doesn’t call people “black”. A group like those on SSI is huge, and you casually used it as an example of a group that worth worrying about, because they don’t impact SL. How do you know? Where are you getting your data? It’s this dismissal of huge numbers of people that I see as one of the major flaws in the reasoning of your arguments.

And for someone disabled, SL can mean a LOT. It’s almost the only time I “get out of the house”. I’m guessing that anyone who’s physically disabled and encounters SL will stay, and be VERY enthusiatic about it. But many of those won’t be able to afford to spend rl $ on it.

Many of the problems you describe are real, I’ve either seen them myself or seen many posts about them. But I still think you generalize too much, and ask others to take it as an absolute.

Again, I think it’s a mistake and an injustice to lump all people without financial resources into the “shouldn’t be here, if they can’t pay they can’t stay” category. You keep insisting that everyone can pay something. That’s true if they can earn money in game, then they would have $L to spend, which would be great. I haven’t yet heard from a new resident who successfully made money at anything but prostitution and “dancing”, neither of which I want to suggest to new people. (And don’t anyone mention those awful camping chairs)

I’ve run across too many people without money but with the enthusiam and desire, and sometimes skills, that would make any world better. And I meet those many times more often than I meet unpleasant people. I suppose I’m just lucky, or perhaps you’re just unlucky. Plus, since you can’t do a background check before renting to someone in SL, the bad ones who want to stay freely anonymous because they’re jerks who don’t want to be accountable for their actions may be gravitating to your properties, to take advantage of your low rates. Pity, if that’s the case. I’ve been taken advantage of by strangers, I know how much it stings.

But all the more reason why we should be encouraging those with the will to make the SL world better, regardles of their effort to pay for the chance to do so. We need more people who are enthusiatic about what it represents.

And re: jobs. Yes, I would like to know how new residents can make money by working. I really hate the concept of camping chairs. You come to this wonderful new world, than sit in one place for hours. Wretched. I can’t believe that with all the creative and intelligent people in SL, someone hasn’t come up with something that actually works.

If anyone knows of REAL jobs that new residents can do, that will actually earn them some money, please IM me in game. I get asked that a lot. I really hope that just because I don’t know about it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Again, I will state my position, and rephrase it. I’ll try to avoid any ambiguity:

Any education system will need some sort of feedback system (hopefully not easy to abuse) to allow potential students to make an informed decision on which teacher will provide the education they desire.

There needs to be some system to educate those with a will to learn, but of few resources. Again, hopefully one that won’t be abused - I have no idea how that would work, but wouldn’t it be nice?

If Linden Labs is going to provide a free education system, and I hope they will, it needs to reward good teachers and discourage (dismiss, ban, whatever) bad teacher. Otherwise, as I see it, they’ll just end up with bad teachers.

I’d rather see a teaching community where all types of systems (free,pay-for,tutors, whatever) could be tried, a central resource that anyone can find easily. As long as there’s some sort of check and balance system, like feedback, then the good methods will prosper.

I still think group learning is a good idea. Prokofy keeps equating that with butts-on-seats in a room, which he says doesn’t work, and isn’t wanted. I don’t know if he’s really right about it not working, etc., but I agree that sitting in a classroom in SL doesn’t really make sense. In this new world, a class can be taken anywhere in an instant. Huge numbers of opportunites are opened up. I often take my “class” of one to four people on a tour, using the free vendors in various locations (freebie clothes, or things like “ice cream” and “popcorn”) to illustrate how to deal with common tasks, wear clothes, prim attachments, etc. It’s a great way to involve them in “learning by doing”, and to see some of the more spectacular sights in SL as well.

And on a final note, Prokofy: You state that old people shouldn’t have to work to provide young people the means to play internet games all night. On that, I tend to agree. But what are you teaching them if you shut them out completely? That people really aren’t nice, and no one will give you a break, even if you’re willing to try to do well. And, if they aren’t allowed around adults who behave responsibly, and speak well, and treat each other with respect, where will they learn how people should behave? From other young people?

No one can explain to me how even being on SSI, you can’t pay even $2.75 US for a month of a rental or a vehicle or whatever or anything of a similar vein in SL. After all, you have to pay for Internet connection, and everything else associated with SL. But let’s just suppose that your income is so low, and you are so impoverished — what, even $10 *Linden* in a tip jar of an instructor is an impossibility? You can also find/earn money within SL itself.

I’m not a Republican; don’t be silly. I’m a liberal, and not a leftist, and I don’t countenance all the weeping and wailing about the need to carry the poor. Jesus said, “The poor ye always have with you.”

As a person who actually goes way overboard subsidizing newbies and helping them endlessly (and am more and more determined to let this go, just like the Lindens have let it go, because it doesn’t work, and leads only to more grabbing), I simply reject the champagne-drinking cliches. Give it a rest. People in the land business work very hard — it’s very labour intensive. And for what?

Asking everyone to pay SOMETHING within their means is not saying “poor people suck,” it’s saying that spongers and loafers and entitlement-freaks suck. Everybody can pay SOMETHING.

You have no idea what I do in SL, and your comments are merely misinformed and tendentious.
Many of the people who are altruist in SL seem to be buffing their resumes. We’ve all watched as this oldbie and that oldbie who inflicted their freebies on us for years, and lorded over us on the forums, turn out to be the very same people commanding five-figure RL dollar fees for their sherpa services in SL now. One could celebrate their huge windfall now if they’d been decent before all this.

We’re not all obliged to help everyone in the world and subsidize them. One of the real downsides of globalization and the Global Village and the instant quality of the Internet and television and now Second Life is that it sets up a rising tide of expectations that no one can meet, and actually leads to anger and resentment.

I think anyone saying that paying through the Internet is insecure has more of a tinfoil hat than I’ve always accused of wearing. Get a debit card, put only small amounts on it, or a PayPal card, and use it for things you find that feel risky to you, like SL.

We’re not obliged, as older people with RL jobs, to sustain the young of the world who wish to play on the Internet all night. Not at all. Their parents aren’t paying — why are we????

Honestly, I don’t pay for my kids’ Internet activities, they pay for them themselves either by making things in SL or selling their game gold or — gasp! — doing chores in RL and getting an allowance or doing odd jobs around the neighbourhood.

I’m glad that young fella’s mom won’t give him her credit card for him to buy pixelated game money. That’s a good stance for parents to take.

Everybody can pay something; if they can’t, it’s not my obligation to support them. Why? They are making no effort, even.

I don’t have any different class of newbies than anybody else. While newbies who rent are a separate class, I find many of the “no payment info” manage to scrape together at least a $100 amount to get started from all sorts of sources around SL. And the newbies I just help in the infohub near my properties who are all sorts of people from all over usually have one question: where do I get a job? 95 percent of them asking this actually don’t mind working.

And the single greatest response I get to my poll about improving the newbie experience is: create jobs for newbies.

Whoever figures out how to do that on a realistic basis without forcing people into the sex trade will save this game.

Yes, your perceptions are skewed. You are meeting the same people I meet — high school students actually too young to be in the adult grid or just barely old enough; dependent wives fearful of running up even a $10 charge on husband’s credit cards; disabled people. Somehow, you’re jut more guilt-tripped by them than I am — I’ve seen it all, heard it all, and it’s very hard to convince me that anyone has the right to sponge in SL anymore.

We’re not *required* to carry the load of all these people endlessly — it is too great a load. They can either confine themselves to free entertainment on the Internet, or they can find a way to work or make and sell things on SL without me or any of us feeling some curious and unjustified obligation to subsidize them fully.

I’ve been subsidizing newbies for 2 years now — the kind of newbies who at least pay SOMETHING. And I’ve become to cut back and even eliminate some of it, just like LL (because they’ve cut back and eliminated subsidies of people like me with things like developers’ awards). Why?

o alts are everywhere, and you can’t tell if they are just oldbies, even rich oldbies, on new accounts
o people don’t stick no matter what you do, are day-trippers, and I can’t justify time and expense on them as they stay 3 days or less
o the more you give, the more they take
o their sense of entitlement is enormous — casually placing 1,000 prims out on a 512 meant for 117 or 150 in the group, despite repeated warnings; casually griefing and harassing others; constantly screaming for more and more changes, amendments, exceptions in the lease
o treating SL like a vast first-person shooter game, or like a giant game of Peeping Tom

I think if you saw the amount of subsidized people I’ve dealt with over the years — thousands and thousands — and saw the little results — and saw the rampant abuses and taking advantage, you’d re-think this in a jiffy. You are still living in the luxury of thinking ideologically, in the abstract.

Above and below water.

These bodies of water really need names.

/swim does not work.

Or a group of Lindens. They use the “Prokofy Neva” persona to attack popular opinions, driving people in the way they want them to go. If you look for it, the evidence is everywhere!

It’s a fascinating study, regardless of whether one agrees with Prokofy or not. And I do in fact agree with many things he says, or professes to support. Although I notice he seems to attack both sides of some issues, so it’s a bit hard to tell exactly WHAT he stands for sometimes.

Hence my belief that “Prokofy Neva” may be a group, not an individual.

Kerunix, the people I’m trying to champion are those that manage to get into SL, but really hesitate to spend US$ for whatever reason, but it ignorance or lack of funds, but are REALLY excited about the possibilities of this new world. These seem to me to be “average joe public”. They have a computer, and a high-speed connection, but they may only ever have used them for email and ebay.

Many have them have never played a MMOORPG before. I never have, and I feel that I’m pretty “techie”, having been in computer-related business since the Apple IIe came out. (Extra points for anyone who remembers how the case was held together, I still think it’s brilliant…).

BTW, if that “job” you mentioned will work for others, please let us know. I’d like to pass the info on to the newbies I meet. Also any other suggestions for jobs, from anyone (please, no more “escort” suggestions - it makes me feel like a pimp when I tell people that’s a popular way to make money. Or do I mean panderer?)

Until recently, I didn’t even know that LL had teachers…everything I learned was by doing or trying or calling on previous knowledge of how computers work. This method does not suit the slim majority of the people I meet, they simply don’t have the background.

Really, our education system does not teach people how to teach themselves. It spoon feeds them. I find most people not only don’t know what questions to ask, they don’t know that there is a question to be asked.

My teaching method involves teaching people how to find their own answers, as well as giving answers. I always encourage people to explore and experiment. And I do encourage them to keep learning in RL as well!

So you see, I maybe am looking at a small segment of the SL population in reality, but they are an important part, I feel. They are the ones who are ENTHUSATIC about learning how to do things in the world, how to built things and start businesses, but either lack the funds or simply don’t understand about taking a loss for a few months until the business at least pays for itself, if ever. They either can’t or would be hesitant to shell out thousands of L$ for classes on how to be more involved in SL, whether that means just learning how to use the software, or full-on texturing and scripting.

This is why I feel that some sort of public eduction system ought to be available.

So I reiterate:
If LL wants to run only on volunteers, there needs to be a feedback system to weed out the bad apples, and some sort of reward to encourage the good ones to keep at it.

I feel a better solution would be the “free market” that Prokofy feels so fond of, but with controls (that I know would cause a knee-jerk flaming-fit in him. Btw, if you didn’t know, I found out Prokofy Neva is a “he”.) Again, there needs to be some sort of feedback or rating system to help protect the inexperienced from being taken by scammers. Getting ripped of in game can really kill a person’s desire to continue in it. In a free-market system, people can charge what they like, or nothing at all, for their services. Hopefully, their reputations, once established, will enable the better teachers to succeed and expand their services, escpecially by teaching more teachers.

But whatever is done, there needs to be some sort of checks and balances, otherwise the unscrupulous with money win - every time. And those without resources get nothing.

I thought of another teaching method: animated displays.

For instance, a “life size” cutout of an av, that shows how to wear clothing. Images of an Inventory and Appearance window appear beside it, with text (and possibly audio) explaining each step.

I really like to teach by showing. That’s why I sometimes take my “classes” on a tour - using “real” examples of how to do things, like getting and wearing an ice cream cone from the free vendor at the Riverwalk, and the effect of the eating animation etc. That sort of thing could easily be done by animated images (well, easy for someone who knows how to create animated images…).

Anyone think this is an idea worth pursuing?

Hell, if someone will tell me how to make animated images, I’ll take a stab at it myself.