Mentors Mentors Everywhere!

I had a little time yesterday and decided to give it to a volunteer program close to my virtual heart. So, being suddenly responsible, I joined several of my fellow mentors for a mentors meeting. I know, I know. You're shocked at my sudden sudden sense of Linden patriotism.

Honestly, I would be delighted to go to more of these if the players were all a little more professional. Don't get me wrong - the Lindens are almost always lovely. And most of my mentor colleagues in attendance are a hoot. But I really do struggle with one issue that gets under my skin. It's the problem of the group IM chat window.

Cranky mentors don't play well together. If someone needed assistance, they asked for it in a chat window. And generally, people responded. This worked well for me for a few reasons.

First, I had a handle on what was going on with the grid. For instance, the problem of the skirt. My skirts would appear for 1 second, then poof, leaving a small panel across my tooshy and a transparent cylinder around my ankles with what looks like a webpage reflected in light hues. This ended up being a glitch that is being addressed. But in the meantime, here I am, walking around without a skirt, bewildered as to why my bathing suit wrap looks more like some weird restraint device. Open problem solving chat would have put me on to that answer WAY sooner than it took me to navigate the Wiki (which I find a bear as I have no knack for getting around that thing yet).

Secondly, open chat helps me learn. You all know that I stumbled into the plague a few months ago which was solved with mentors from another mentor group (God bless those guys!). It's a semi rare thing, but common enough that lots of people know how to resolve it. And yes, it is on the elusive Wiki (which I searched for over an hour and never found). Had a newbie mentor stumbled into it, and had they posted to chat, and had people responded, we would have witnessed the process by which they corrected the problem and when I stumbled upon it, I would have had the knowledge to walk her through it rather than disturb what ended up being 7 or 8 mentors (all patient, humorous, knowledgeable and a joy with whom to work).

Frankly, I hate spam. Most of us do. But there is a distinct difference between a decent conversation and a bunch of silly flirting or rambling. Instead of learning to work together, the IM chat has been limited to "Chinese speaking mentor needed at THIS PLACE." and "Resident in need of assistance regarding missing inventory. Please IM me." That "please IM me" part is now a REQUIRED thing to have lest you risk be kicked out as a mentor.

God forbid someone actually respond in chat!!! They'll spend the next 5 minutes being rudely attacked, listening to other mentors scream about the rules and how (s)he is a spammer. This has happened to me. Before I was aware of the irritation of others, I responded in chat with some satirical quip (which received chuckles and lols) and before I knew I had three or four people screaming at the top of their non existent virtual lungs about spam and how unprofessional I was. Apparently their OCD doesn't allow for the tiniest bit of patience to leave a chat tab open until things settle down so that they can safely close it, comforted in the knowledge that the discussion is over.


Of course, in our mentors meeting, all was going decently well (okay I tolerated it) until near the end when our Linden buddies make a statement about honoring the chat rules and threatening that if they are not followed, they will shut it down. The language used was beyond stern. It was flat out tyrannical.

I took several deep breaths and tried to be patient and limit my boiling irritation. I wanted to firmly make the comment that people who lose their patience over something so silly should have their mentoring tags removed and be booted from the program. Why? Because if they loose their patience and are rude over conversation that might be helping someone, imagine what they do with residents who are not their perfect little mentoree subjects.

My other mentors group, Open Chat for Volunteer Mentors, rocks. Made of mostly crusty SLers, you post a problem. There is this odd lull. (I imaging the crusty brains processing the problem, their mentoring box in their head scrolling through mentor notecards until they pull just the right one and scream, "Ah ha! By Jove, he's got it!") Then suddenly, someone clearly posts either a pointed question or a solution. If it's a question, I answer it. And during the lull as they roll their Rolodex of answers again, I thank them for taking time to help. I do mean it sincerely, but the timing of doing it is really because I feel bad for asking and disturbing their day. They may not feel disturbed but after the drama in the other chat, I feel compelled. Eventually they work out a solution, we get the resident on their way, and we exchange sarcasm and tea and crumpets.

I think my hesitation and mousy approach to asking developed from drama abuse. Why do I say that? Because that kind of behavior is seen in women who were abused by husbands, children who were abused by parents, and weak men when they approach someone in need of something for themselves. It's a behavior that takes years of therapy and behavior modification to overcome. The result of all of this?

I'm a victim of SL Mentor Drama Abuse.

Bling, BANG, and a Side of Meat

Some colleagues have been wrestling with a lot of issues relating to groups - things like how many should we have, how often should one post, how does one deal with abuse etc. It's an ongoing problem in SL for the business person, regardless of their field, be it entertainment, retail, PR, etc. Over the last few months, I've struggled with many of these issues too. We all want to embrace the best practice for the most effective means of delivering our interests.

But I have a confession.

JCNY is one of the best jewelry designers in SL. If you don't believe me, check out the bling in the pic. Their staff, although my contact with them has been limited, are very good businesspeople and very nice folks. Having said that, their group was getting out of control thanks to spammers.

This probably is not their fault. No one can be online and monitor a group 24-7, nor should there be that expectation. However, every time I was online it seemed that I was being attacked by large cans of spam. Not in their notices mind you - in their group IM.

Not a problem I say, when it is one person making an error or making a statement once. Just close the window. What got me was the five or six or twelve people who had to chime in after him or her, stating how he or she should not spam. That meant several more close clicks, all on top of a laggy SL day, intermingled with a variety of other tabs open.

Perhaps my frustration was complicated by the fact that I had a person in IM who was highly at risk and I was working with the avatar to find some resolution in SL and RL to protect one's safety. Perhaps I was just really tired of people saying "shut up!"

So this is how it went down. Someone spammed. One or two people told the person to stop. Then a conversation ensued ending with someone (we'll call her W) saying something about how it had to stop or they would loose members in the group.

I snapped. That comment set me off. Someone spamming even more, with a spam about consequences regarding spam!

So I committed the cardinal sin and spammed myself. My response was something like, "Yeap. Like me. Have fun folks! I'm leaving." and I left the group.

Not a minute later, BANG I got an IM from W criticizing me for being THE problem.

Now at the time, I figured it wise to let it go. Getting into an in depth conversation about her bacon, spam, and other issues with virtual meat was going to take me away from the problem at hand. But don't think for an instant I was so mature as to let it go for long.

Okay, I was mature enough to bite my tongue and protect her well meaning, although poorly executed, name. But I must say that her action was not the best solution.

Allow me to propose this course of action. When you are spammed in a group IM, first stop and consider if it was an oops or a legitimate spam.

Secondly, IM the person directly rather than spamming even more.

Thirdly, try and keep your sense of humor. If you do choose to spam the group back, a gentle coaxing and a laugh will make it better for everyone and might even inspire the original spammer to think twice.

Fourth, don't leave the group - instead, make sure you drop a line to the group owner in the event it gets really bad. He or she wants to keep members, not loose them. Be polite, share your concern. They may not even know that they have a problem.

Luckily, my sister sends me all the juicy news anyway so I'm still plugged in. None the less, I owe JCNY's owner a note.

Let's all be better meat buyers in the future.