A Volunteer Program should never be attacked the way Blue Linden attacked it. There are professional ways to lower ones responsibility and lesson ones load. This was not it. This was a amateurish abuse of power over-laid with trickery and deception. To applaud this scheme reflects badly on you. The end result was a pure waste of time - 1,700 members will still be mis-used and mismanaged. Patting the service provider on the back for a job badly done gives them the idea that their business model is one their customers accept and want to see more of. Absolutely no where in the world would it be accepted that a volunteer program be treated in this manner. We need to applaud professionalism and progress. A 'angry outsider' with a personal agenda may not recognize this.

Oh, knock it off, Voodoo. The Mentors have been *a horror*. They are a bloated, corrupt, unaccountable group of Linden pets and sychophants using the welcome areas and infohubs and orientation islands as their personal fiefdoms. Over my four years in SL, I've seen the most gross abuses by them, harassing people over land sales, bullying people to get their way by invoking special powers and access to Lindens, shamelessly sweeping up newbies to sell them content, griefing, stalking, carrying on like drunk lords. That there is some loyal handful of girls who like to make themselves feel important and wanted by helping newbies selflessly, and then constantly bitching on lists that they aren't appreciated, doesn't make up for the whole sordid mess.

Blue deleted people who hadn't logged on, hadn't done anything, weren't contributing. Good lord, there were THOUSANDS of these people -- lifers, loafers, goofs. Many a time I would come on an alt to check how NUE was going, and I'd see these idiots cavorting around among themselves or AFK or in IMs or bickering on their special "comms" instead of helping.

I advocate entirely nuking the Mentors. It's an unaccountable group. By sharp contrast look what happens when the free market and free society creates a voluntary, non-Linden group like NCI. They function 1,000 times better, they attract resources like donations, sims, freebies, they have actual newbies they help. The deadening hand of the state in creating these oligarchs only proves why the state/LL shouldn't be in the business of welcoming. It should be utterly privatized.

Volunteers earn respect, they don't command it merely by strutting around with a Linden-given title over their heads. As a smaller, streamlined, more accountable group, there's hope the Mentors may reform, but I doubt it.