Comments on: Inaction, deletion

By: Jinxed Destiny

Jinxed Destiny — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:08:16 +0000

I read this furthermore to this case: a new case of IP theft concerning the Mental Mentors group that may be of interest to people:

http://praddles.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/15/

By: Cory Bjornson [TG]

Cory Bjornson [TG] — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:25:09 +0000

1) @ Robert:Go Awai.
2) Someone needs to make a Telegraph
3) SculptyPaint is back?

By: Talia Tokugawa

Talia Tokugawa — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:38:28 +0000

“Robert” you want to leave your full Second Life name and give your “hot air” some kind of meaning.
If you are indeed a mentor your exhibiting the traits of what is wrong with the mentor program. You really think your statements are representing Linden Labs as they would want an officially sanctioned group member acting?
A little further background of my experience with the mentors.. I was live help before I was a mentor, when they closed live help I transfered over to mentors. Back then the group was pretty tiny in comparison to what it is now. Being a mentor meant something. Being accepted for a mentor wasn’t adding your name to a list and promising that you had been around for 6 months and then you are in. There was a waiting list..or some kinda selection process. You applied, and were lucky if you got in 6 months later.
Hmmm maybe I am just taking the bait here.. but I love playing devils advocate.. always need to hear both sides of the story… and would love for you (”Robert”) to actually back anything you’ve said up with some additional information.
If you are worried at all, IM me inworld.. (my sl name is Talia Tokugawa).. and I will relay anything you say to here (with your permission) keeping your sl name confidential. Wouldn’t want to be breaking the Tos being the responsible mentor that I am. *winks*
t

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:19:10 +0000

Mental Mentors has no disppeared no will it. You spin this crap any way you want. You are full of hot air and if you want to talk about what is terrible talk about the slanting of your reporting and other reporting in SL.
Your brought nothing unbiased. You bring your stories full of untruths and hot air. No one gives a crap what you haev to say your just another avatar in the big grid. No one is going anywhere, life goes on. STFU. Get a life, one of your own.

By: Talia Tokugawa

Talia Tokugawa — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:49:45 +0000

I would like to reiterate what a fair few of my fellow mentors have been saying.
The mentor system has been debased by LL letting pretty much anyone in. The number of times I have not known whether to laugh or cry over some of the questions that are asked in the official mentor channel. (I have never joined mental mentors for the same reasons merry stated.)

I am a collector of freebies for giving to newbies and I quite often clear my clothes folders of older no copy items I don’t wear so much to give them too. I wouldn’t give them items that are resell. I use a lot of resell items in various things I make and they are a complete godsend in most cases. (coincidently I just bought Cel’s entire range of sculpties). People copying stuff like that just makes people less inclined to make stuff with those rights in the future, which I would hate to see.

In terms of content creation.. I am predominately a scripter, so my content is better protected than most, I make freebie scripts for people and have a series of “viral scripts” I hand out.. but when a fellow mentor and very close personal friend had her textures stolen I went on the war path on her behalf. She was on the verge of quiting SL due to it, (incidentally the texture stolen was one custom made for me, only she had a copy and it was the texture exploit that enabled the theft). Theft in SL hurts everyone except those making a quick buck from it. Just in my case alone… had my friend quit… SL would not be SL and I would have probably followed her.

Okies rant mode off.. content theft and the dilution of the mentors are both sore points for me…

By: Shannon Carroll

Shannon Carroll — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 01:06:48 +0000

Ordinal: short answer - you are not a bad witch. Long answer will be in the comments on my own blog, if you happen to be interested. :)

By: Ordinal Malaprop

Ordinal Malaprop — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:22:25 +0000

I certainly would not say myself that mentors were necessarily corrupt - er, some of my best friends are mentors and so on - but I would stand by my statement that the system has become “debased”. I certainly know people who are mentors to whom I would happily send anyone with a query, but their being Official Mentors is irrelevant to that, and I would not advise anyone to trust somebody more because they were one.

I also stand by the statement that reponsible parties should be dealt with. I have conflicting stories as to whether the group concerned regularly engages in copyright violation, I wouldn’t wish to make any judgements on that basis, but it has been reported that there is a particular person responsible, who has now “apologised” with the following:

> “AS far as I am concerned, I have done nothing wrong, full perms means just that, a notecard doesnt mean jack, it is simply the creators wishes, he elects to sell full perm things. anyway.”

Such a wonderful attitude! Apparently nobody wishes to _name_ this charming individual for some reason, perhaps inhibited by the “naming names” trope which I might emphasise _does not apply outside of SL itself_. If anyone cares to pass me the name I will quite happily post it myself without revealing the source (unless it is a malicious libel, in which case I _will_ reveal the source).

But I really would not wish this to become about mentors. That is really just a detail. The basic point here that I wish to make is that this is an example of lax or indeed non-existent protection of rights discouraging a producer of content from continuing with that. Sculptypaint is well known and well used and thus makes a good example here.

By: On Second Thought

On Second Thought — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:36:31 +0000

Broad Brushes…

We are not the damn Borg. :P
……

By: Merry

Merry — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:06:30 +0000

“Mentors are corrupt” is rather a vast generalization. I’m a mentor and I certainly don’t feel ‘corrupt’. However, I feel there are a lot of problems with the mentor system.

Firstly, and the rest hinges on this, it’s far too easy to become a mentor. There’s no questioning of skill or morals or appearance…it’s just a matter of patience. For instance, in the official Mentor group not a few days ago a Mentor said, “I have a newbie who put on the furry avatar. How does he change it?” Needless to say, my mind was boggled by a Mentor asking after such basic knowledge.

Secondly, in spite of the numerous (though very light-handed, in LL’s rather naive, hippie way) warnings the Lindens give to Mentors about how we are NOT the grid-police…a rather large percentage of Mentors really do feel as some sort of powered up vigilante group.

In fact, the ‘Mental Mentors’ group stemmed from this. People would announce griefing activities or whatnot on the official group, a bunch of others would jump in to ask for teleports while another bunch would jump in to berate the first group for playing Grid-Police. Finally, a Linden would come on, to try to shut everyone up and everyone would complain that they couldn’t ‘chat’. Thus, Mental Mentors was formed by that sort of person…along with their ‘welcome packages’ and vigilante police, none of which are at all sanctioned by LL.

Nonetheless, there are plenty of Mentors, like me, who still try to honestly help people. I’m not handing out dubiously ‘free’ stuff…there’s plenty of legitimately free stuff offered in the user Libraries and offered on the starting islands themselves. I’m not pitching my views on virtual politics nor am I using the position to sell my product or myself. I’m just answering people’s questions…just like the job was explained to me.

By: Jaymin Carthage

Jaymin Carthage — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:34:40 +0000

It’s a common MMO problem, admin tasks are either underapplied or overapplied. Last night, in it’s infinite wisdom, LL’s new server code decided to ban me for two weeks for “Global Attacks”. The sim in question was a private IBM sandbox related to an IBM event. The only code I had there already been running for two weeks. O_o If nothing else this will be a test of their appeal’s process. If it’s anything like Neopets, then it will be grim.
Interestingly, my previous experience lead me to submit a patent that provides a scalable, fair, easy to implement solution to this problem. Unfortunately I’ll be shot by my IBM masters if I talk too much about it before it’s files. :-(