Linden Lab recently attempted to evaluate the efficacy of its user-volunteer corps as a part of the new user experience (NUE) in Second Life. Two NUE areas were selected (Hanja and Korea), and baseline results established. Then testing was conducted in two phases using one area as a testing ground and the other as a control. The first incorporated themed tours by volunteer greeters, and the second involved general mentoring in conjunction with the original style of Orientation Island tutorials.
Phase one seemed to draw some very successful results, while phase two only showed a slight improvement. The phase two results look to be well within the margins of error, and essentially statistically insignificant. The sort of mentoring you might find at Help Island Public would, based on these results, seem to be broadly ineffective.
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It is pleasant (and somewhat surprising) to see some actual published results, though without clear definitions of the terms, the numbers given are of little objective use to third-parties and observers (which is, unfortunately, somewhat less surprising).
For example, among the assorted figures given are 'active first week' -- but since there's no definition of 'active' in this context, and the most two obvious definitions of active is already covered by other statistics in the chart, it is quite difficult to imagine just what the criteria for it might be.
Despite that, it seems fairly clear that the themed guided tours represent a significant short-term gain for the early new user experience over traditional mentoring.
'"Did the help from Second Life Greeters have any impact on your desire to stay in Second Live to learn and discover more?" came back with a resounding 91.7% response that the Greeters did increase the desire to stay in Second life!'
Whether this translates into practical longer-term retention is another matter, but it certainly seems to support the planned scheme to remove Second Life mentors from the NUE, and replace them with a more carefully, and rigorously selected and monitored group of volunteer greeters. The volunteer mentors, as they stand, do not seem to be providing significant benefits to the initial user-experience.
