What is a Community Gateway?
A Community Gateway is on the Virtual World Second Life a portal where new avatars get in an area where they get easy instructions about the use of this virtual world. At these portals Mentors where provided for any questions.
The Programme
Linden Lab the maker of the Virtual World Second Life guided this programme with the Community and set out rules and regulations.
One of them was that you must have three private regions to be a gateway and the gateway must be PG.
When approved the Community Gateway will go into the registration path so that new registrators could choice in which community they like to land on and get help.
This was really a great solution for people that does not know the English lanquage well as many Gateways where developed by lanquage and culture.
This was a great solution for huge Universities that could bring in their people straight to their Virtual Campus.
This was great for businesses. If they have a time saving/cost saving Virtual Conference so that people in intrest did not have to be lost in the help islands and might be showned different directions.
Progress
The Community worked very hard on these gateways with great Linden co workers. Admitting its never easy but the programme became very close with eachother and helped eachother on issues. Solutions where found if one accidently would come to a gateway which a person did not understand. The Gateways warned eachother if their might be a griever or what was much greater to hear the possitive news which was shown on tv or other media channels in each country. This warning could help to give the idea why suddenly gateways where busy.
Some English Gateways where open also in time difference zones so help would be there 24/7
Together with the Linden Co Workers we were planning positive pr campaignes and also cross media events.
This whole programme gave some Gateways uppertunities for bringing in more business and sponsering. Specially when you are investing a sim for this gateway in benefit for both parties.
The Gateway had regular meetings to improve and a wiki to communicate.
The ending
Unfortunate one of the great co worker of Linden got a different assignement and the Programme was given to three others.
From day one of the meetings we noticed that there was no intrest in who the Gateways are and what really the programme achieved,what it was all about and who were behind them.
As excuses they gave us theoratical numbers while practise was showing so differently.
No one listens deeply and unfortunate conclusions where made.
Gateways were told that they will be taken out of the registration paths. Meaning no one will be able to find you in your own lanquage, timezone, business or education intrest or intrest in roleplay.
They gave the Gateway uppertunity to go in a destination guide where so many are on and so hard to find.
At this point personal VH decided to step out as the investment was to hard to maintain as it had no value anymore as in the uppertunities first given by LindenLab in this programme.
And more where amazed by this as many invested so much and even as said before got companies sponsoring posibilities.
The Announcement
On 19th of august an announcement was made A New Approach to Welcoming Residents
In other words As community with the guidance of LindenLab we invested a lot of money and time for this great programme and with the new direction of Lindenlab we can just go....
The Opinion
I responded with an opinion on the blog as follows unfortunate I can not give a link anymore as suddenly they toke the Opinion away for no reasons.
"LindenLab must understand that not all residents understand the English lanquage. Even as we do we still feel comfertible to have a quick word in own lanquage and with cultural view. Specially if you talk about technic... As CG we toke people by the hand, as CG among eachother we communicated about major events happening in own country or roleplay community.
About the figures is such a bullshit statement we had to hear after that the programme was taken over when unfortunate the creator of this programme moved away to other assignment.
I remembered one time on summer holiday when normally people are outside all dutch speaking CG was busy. We warned eachother that many new residents were finding their ways into SecondLife and we toke them by the hand.
And why did that happen is because in the Netherlands three weeks in a row a documantry about SL and Virtual Worlds was showed on tv and people got curios.
Same as it happend when discovery showed items. Meaning it was mainly about how you present yourself in press and I can tell as many countries if that was bit more supported by LL more would have joined.
There was a power between the CG warning about issues or warning about that there has been a great event so many resident mind follow up on that.
We learned from eachother, met eachother in rl and kept improving everything but because of the changes we did not got a change ever to develope more.
This is a huge mistake!!! Better is to find a solution to co operate with the CG then to get rid of them!!
As I say the power was lying the own lanquage culture and also knowing the view about Virtual Worlds in their areas as secondlife and work on that.
That is something that never can be centralized!!! CG toke a lot of hard work away in that case.
What LindenLab now is doing is breaking up a great group of people!! and all of them serious people that had only one goal is to help people to find their way in Second Life.
Really come with a better solution and work with this great Community!!
The experience came from them and because of the diversity the CG programme made sure that residents will find their way where they felt comfertible....."
Conclusion
No doubt everyone agrees on improvement and therefore a community can help in many ways. Like this Community Gateway programme and the Solution providers Programme.
In my honesty LindenLab is not a great partner to work with at this moment.
To handle decisions like this. It is bad costumer service and community treatment.
At this point they are unstable in this in many ways. As we notice besides this programme in technical service. In handeling problems even as community managers from these Gateways and other programmes we understand how things difficult can be. Therefore co operations is better then kicking them out.
I hope this will be realized and taken in consideration as company. Improvement is good, looking great is good but it is the community that makes it. Sometimes it does not matter how you look. (see habbo hotel) Before people will leave. As we noticed great users are looking for other Virtual World Solutions.
Nevertheless the programme itself will find its on solution to continue.
One positive point of all this. The netwerk among eachother is great.
