Cabinhead is Dead
by Alphaville Herald on 16/07/05 at 8:16 am
As reported in the SL Forums, Schwanson Schlegel has pulled the plug on his Cabinhead project – a private welcome island he set up to help acclimate newbs to SL. Several reasons are given, but (1) and (5) stand out:
1) Continued shitty customer service from LL. I find it increasingly difficult to communicate with LL. I can not justify spending so much money with a company that does not seem to care about me.
5) Crappy customer service from LL. (Was worth repeating)
Prokofy Neva
Jul 16th, 2005
Apparently Schwanson’s beef wasn’t directly related to Cabinhead per se, but was in a separate matter regarding LL not getting back to him about a requested island sim. I remember months ago when I first saw Schwanson complaining about terrible service on islands, I was given enormous pause and decided not to buy an island, especially not a used one. Well, that just left the field open to Schwanson then, who is in the used island (and presumably new island) resale business lol. Ok, fine lol.
I was an early and sharp critic of Cabinhead, for which I am hated. The quickest way to get a tekkie-wiki going and muster all kinds of sympathy, freebies, and pro-bono help is to say “think about the children” which in the SL case is the newbies. And the quickest way to be loathed for life is to question whether the children are really being served by their would-be helpers.
I pushed hard against what I saw as a naked bid to get the newbie stream into the FIC economic networks, with Linden endorsement. Not unlike the 17k bank bid dealie. In fact, if it were up to some FIC, like Lordfly, the Welcome Areas would be sanitized of all but official Greeters, and Helpers and Mentors, and Cabinhead of course could supply all 3.
How could I be so evil as to be against something to help newbies? Well, geez, the poor, like Jesus said, ye always have with you. I help newbies constantly — I spend hours and hours on them, and I never have to be “jealous” of something like Cabinhead even if it gets top-drawer Linden diversion to its stream. Of course, Pathfinder joined Cabinhead (then later left it when the issue of his membership in resident groups was raised), and earlier praised Kex Godel’s newbie helper card and said he’d distribute it in game, and it seemed like the usual done deal. Loads of people turned up and said they’d provide free classes, free clothing, free housing, etc. Um…they need Schwanson’s special loss-leader private island to do this? They don’t have, oh, their free 4096s for this purpose?
Then…nothing. Cabinhead’s cua Curie turns up in the threads about bounce scripts to tell us that Cabinhead planned to put in one of those mother!@#$!@#$ aggressive security things to bounce avs not on the special list, under 90 days, to kingdom come. Bleh. Some welcoming committee! Lots of people join then set the game aside…what if in 91 days they wanted to go to get newbie help?
And when I flew out there a few weeks ago to see what was up and to see if the bounce was already set to me, I saw….nothing. Just some stupid prim-generating sculpture. Not even some 512s with newbie cabins. They could have at least done that, given the first-land shortage!
I view this as yet another attempt by FIC to burnish their reputations by grabbing what seem to be voluntary, free helping kinds of things for newbies — which impresses harried Lindens who need help dealing with all the unwashed. But as soon as the Lindens either don’t fete them as they wish, or don’t help as much as they’d hope, or it just plain becomes boring and hard, they flake. And that’s what we’re seeing now.
I know I’m supposed to be in awe of Schwanson’s generosity and help to Avkind by his selfless gesture of an entire private island for the newbie cause. But…these gestures are hollow when you withdraw then a few months later because you don’t get your way, having nothing even to show for that interrim.
More to the point, this really isn’t the way to go. The Lindens need to scrap all these mentors and helpers and wizards drawn from old player ranks with agendas and bias, and stop throwing business to FIC, and just hire professional telecommuter staff to orient and teach newbies. Those who want to help newbies should charge at least some low-cost fee so that they can recoup the considerable cost of land and labour and supplies. There is nothing wrong with that, and in fact they could be helping to generate more jobs in the economy by organizing older newbies to help younger newbies.
The allergy to commerce, the self-aggrandizement involved in the tekkie-wiki mode of seeing oneself as voluntary and Giving Back to the Community is pretty worthless, IMHO. Not only do people in that mode not deliver, they make it hard for the rest of us struggling to make a real economy that might really have places for newbies in it.
Everybody needs to stop posturing so much about newbies. They’re just people with DSL connections, high-end computers, and disposable income like the rest of us. Instead of looking at the newbie stream as a reputation-enhancement machine and a means to suck newbies with loss-leaders into apprenticeships and economic dependency, provide services to them, even at a low-cost, or if free, just shut up and do it without the Lindens. They’ll thank you for it.
Pirate Cotton
Jul 18th, 2005
I’m kinda inclined to agrree (Heck!). For everyone, if you’re starting a huge-ass business/enterprise in SL – DO NOT PLAN for LL support. 90% of the stuff LL supports or has supported stood on its own two feet first.
Still, it sounded like a good idea, helping newbies is good after all. Best way I’ve found is to hang out in the newby area and just take newbies off to explore or learn things. I recommend building classes using Deyvedee Maelstrom’s warbots, for example.