If you've been hanging around the GCD in the past week, chances are you've heard of the fate that has befallen TinierMe and its members. If you haven't, here's the short version: TinierMe, a competing avatar site, announced on 9 November that it will be shutting down. With the site set to close completely by 10 December, a lot of TinierMe members have started resettling in Gaia; while some of the members of the diaspora are Gaian expats returning home, the vast majority are completely new to Gaia and are starting completely from scratch.
How does this concern the GIB, you ask? With a few exceptions, these are people who know very little of Gaia Online, of how things work here, of the finer points of Gaian lore. This is a golden opportunity to perform community outreach by educating the incoming newbies and helping the returning expats catch up. Who knows, we may even be able to get a few of them to enlist with this organization.
What You Can Do to Help- Frequent the Welcome to Gaia forum and post in the welcoming threads of TinierMe refugees! Make them feel welcome!
- If the refugees have items on their wish lists, pitch in to help them out! Alternately, just give them a good gift! It's the thought that counts, after all.
- It never hurts to send them friend requests.
- If they have questions, give them good answers.
- We now have our own
TinierMe forum for the moment in Hot Topics; it'd probably be worth it to spend a little time there as well.
- Humble suggestion for the staff: Try to look into collaboration with other organizations, like the
TinierMe guild.
Any other suggestions?
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