History of the Welcome Area

I am interested in knowing more about the history of the various incarnations of the Welcome Area and the surrounding areas. How many times have they been reworked? Were residents involved in their creation or were they entirely Linden projects? That kind of stuff.

Thank you!

There's some information here.

<3

I found a couple of threads in the Gallery forum that may be of interest...

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and..

/53/b5/38715/1.html

Thank you all. This is great information. Does anybody have any insight into whether these projects have always been handled entirely by Lindens, or if there have been residents involved in the planning and/or construction of the various Welcome Areas?

I don't get this dintinction you make between lindens and residents
Pretty much every linden was once a resident.
I also dont understand why it matters so much to you... are you a FIC-o-phobic or something?

No, not at all. I am not phobic about anything ... except eggs ... armed eggs scare me

Breifly put, I think the Welcome Area could be a lot more effective at its primary purpose - and one way I think it could be made better is to involve the community in its design. I have been putting together some ideas and I was just wondering if Linden Lab has in the past solicited feedback and/or assitance with the design and construction of the Welcome Area.

A suggestion box can be found in the WA

Currently a "help" type island is being built that new residents will teleport to immediately AFTER Orientation Island. This new island will only be accessable to Mentors and Greeters and will be a central location for new residents to get help, ask questions, etc without having to worry about the general craziness that is the WA.

If you have some ideas about what this new HELP island should include Persephone, I think you can contact Jeska Linden for more information.

Yay!

A few very naive observations from me:

1. For anyone who hasn't been there, if you go to Lime, there is an area that is like a sibling to the way the Ahern-Morris WA used to look. If you turn on Local Lighting at night, it's beautiful. The area feels kind of haunted because it's so lonely, tho.
   

1. For the current "4-corners" design, yes, Linden Lab did dip into the SL forums for some feedback. I got to see it during construction too. Ryan made an announcement. Here's one particularly busy discussion thread of months past.
   

1. Resident contributions were asked for things like art sculptures—there's one pavillion where you'll see this, and the newest art added in there was Talila Liu's Relay For Life one, I think.
   

1. The game Prim Attack, by Don Linden, used to be played much more, because it was out in the open. Now, it sits under the games pavillion and doesn't see as much use. But in Ahern-Morris, you could surely count on those particles springing up and prims rearranging themselves. It was kind of like chess in the park offline.
   

You're hired!

Hired? For what?

Rick, thank you for this information! I had sent Philp some thoughts (really frustrations) concerning the WA and he offered to hear additional suggestions via email. It sounds many of the things that I was going to suggest are already underway and I am very happy to hear that. I probably don't have anything more useful to contribute. I guess I should be attending those Mentor meetings so i will know what is going on!

I typically spend a couple hours a night at the WA and have been blessed to be able to help scores of newborns though their first days in Second Life. But many nights I am litterally pulling my hair out just trying to cut through the noise and chaos. I know for a fact that we are losing a lot of potential residents before they have even made it out of the four sims that were designed to welcome them. In fact, I have found that the sooner I pull a noobie away from the WA the better my chance at getting them excited about SL. But if I do that, how can I help two, three or even four people at the same time - which is so often the case on a really good night.

I am really glad to hear that the Help Island will only be available to Mentors and Greeters. This policy alone will solve most of the problem - provided we can keep the Help Island staffed.

Wow! Really? I'm so there! Gee!

While prior forms of all 3 welcome areas have been Linden Created, the '4 corners' Ahern, Morris, Dore and Bonifacio are currently one of LL's newer 'user contract' attempts, as in, a user was asked (in that particular case) to design a new welcome area to replace the model that is currnetly depicted in Lime/Plum (designs vary), Lime/Plum uses the "Get Started!" format, which was a public commons, and a walkway with various informative notecard dispensers along the route, the 4 corners one was more north back then, and Morris had most of the walkway, Ahern had the commons area (the line was angular under the sign).
The newest welcome area in the eastern expansion area of Q1 2005, is in the sim 'Waterhead' and is called the Hidden Lakes telehub.
Additional to all these telehubs, is a wierd artefact... the Teen Grid Graduation Welcome Area (which itself does not have any telehub facilities at all, but rather a Linden's manual teleport on one's 18th birthday) is modeled directly after the teen grid's coffee shop. and is located in a former void sim (I am not sure if Blue would like me sharing it's location, so I'm omitting it at the moment.)

If this info's in the history Wiki, I'm sorry for repeating myself, if not, I... still need to make myself a user there x.x

Ice, Torley, et al:
The wiki article on the WA is a touch incomplete. If either or both of you would like to work on it, please do. You will, of course, also be eligible for my standard reward of up to L$1000.

Any other information about this available?

Apparently Jeska mentioned this at a Greeter's meeting, but there isn't really any additional information available at this time. It sounds like a postive move forward though.

With the new residents going to an island what will all of the little neg raters, griefers and other assorted nitwits do in the Welcome Area without a crop of new people to harress and bore to death in the mistaken idea that someone actually finds them interesting?

Who cares? Wheee!

Maybe they'll find other virtual environments to do it in.

Makes me wonder just where a newbie's HOME will be set to, though. On the new island? Probably not a good idea. The current WA? More likely. I guess it will keep the aforementioned occupied well enough, in which case.

Why for the love of FSM can't we have a little more choice about where the home spot for the landless is?

Would it bring down divine retribution to have a choice of home spots that would include a Mature rated Linden owned area for people to call home?

At least a small selection of other spots would be nice. I can 'see' the code changes that would be involved, though. Right now, the code lets you set anywhere you own, or that your group does. I'm pretty sure LL wouldn't want people setting their home on just any parcel owned by Governor Linden...So, that would mean making a list somewhere in the code of places that are acceptable (or a writing a seperate lookup from a database somewhere).

That said, I think it'd be a nifty idea to have a half a dozen spots. Maybe at telehubs? I dunno.

Umm... isn't there a checkbox on the land properties named something like "Create Landmark / Set Home"
If checked, anyone will be able to create a landmark to your place or set their home to it. Right?

I am a new resident and sometimes I teleport back to the WA to see whats going on. Or sometimes if I crash I end up back there. The problem I have is that when I teleport back in, I end up ON TOP of the depot building. Not a problem really, except that the Pavilion roof is NOT TALL ENOUGH and I have trouble navigating off of it. I see people get stuck on it all the time and I do too, sometimes. Can someone see about maybe getting the roof raised or maybe creating another Teleport pad somewhere else in the pavilion. It is really inconvenient the way it is. I mention this because it seems most people have land and wouldn't teleport back to the WA to experience this. Other than that the WA is really well done and the people have been, in general, very helpful and friendly. Mitchell