Overall, Whyville's unwieldy navigation is somewhat of a problem for it. The virtual world component features strongly -- most areas consist of interactive environments around which you can navigate your legless avatar -- but some of the content is in web page form, some areas are accessed by clicking icons, and others require links or menus. There seems to be no consistent system for locating content, and a lot of paths lead to a text page with no clear links to the next area. It makes the virtual world interface feel a little redundant, as if Whyville could be more effective -- and less confusing -- if it was simply a browse-able portal with links to the learning games.

However, setting it up this way would remove an element that seems to be a major draw for the loquacious Whyville users -- the social factor. Lots of the Whyville users seem heavily involved in the facial customization, personalizing their crude pixel selves with impressively elaborate and creative looks, each an expression of personal style and interests. In addition, chat's prolific, especially the one-on-one "whisper" chat, and the users seem to make extensive use of the ability to congregate and talk in a kid-friendly and parentally-sanctioned educational environment. Though they, as kids do, are more interested in talking about relationships, snacks and music than the pH of the ocean or the vectors of wind.

This makes the three-day suspension of chat privileges for new users a little bit of an odd move. It's understandable the moderation would seek to prevent wham-bam griefers who sign up for a little hassling and then bail, but the complicated, not-necessarily-intuitive chat quiz (which took me at least fifteen minutes to sort out and get right) seems a good barrier in itself, and the reporting system is easily accessible. In addition to reporting offenders, users have the ability to completely block bad apples from interacting with them altogether -- they don't even have to see them. At the very least, three days is a long time; asking familiar users for help or directions is one of the most naturalistic ways to get acclimated in a virtual world, and being isolated in the most vulnerable phase seems like a counter-intuitive measure in terms of user involvement.

Most of the educational information is not in the virtual world itself. It's not evident how many of the exercises translate to actual scientific facts or learning-by-doing -- the pixel-based virus game, for example, is clever and fun, but its objective or method isn't stated outright, leaving users to fumble around simply to figure out the game mechanics and how success is achieved, let alone how picking and matching colors correlates to the spread of illness in a population. The avatar who volunteers to explain about the lab has nothing to say besides "welcome," and the "tutorial" for the game is simply an animated slide that gives precious little explanation of either the game or the mechanics of disease biology.

It was the same for the balloon game I tried -- trial and error, for example, showed me that heat makes the balloon rise, the wind determines its direction and weight causes it to descend -- but for an elementary or middle school audience, this might not be eminently clear. To be fair, these sorts of exercises might be intended to be explored within the context of a classroom curriculum or with the guidance of a teacher who explains the physics involved -- but even I couldn't figure out how to make the balloon descend at an acceptable speed or what the factors within my control had to do with it -- and moreover, didn't understand why I should.

The pastiched interface and obtuse game objectives definitely hurt the educational objective. One of the sponsors was a musical artist called the Jonas Brothers Band -- for example, kids are rewarded by jukebox tokens if they visit the band's website, and in kind, 'tween rock tunes often blared loudly over my scholarly pursuits, sometimes unpredictably. I was impressed, though, at the complexity of the subject matter -- Whyville clearly puts world social issues and science on the radar of kids who might have showed up hoping for some hip social hangouts, and that can only be a good thing. Some of the web pages have copious student essays that are demonstrative of the sort of awareness and education they've received as part of Whyville's community on topics like environmentalism and art, and it's heartening to see.