An example of a great newbie faq

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Unofficial Second Life Mini-FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
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Note: This notecard was up-to-date as of SL version 1.6.2. If this seems notably out of date, please check for the latest version, distributed at [‡ ], or send me an IM. Thanks! -- Kex


### Frequently Asked Questions ###

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Q> "What do I do here?"

Second Life is like a Massively Multiplayer 3D Playground (or a 3D MUSH if you are familiar with that term).

It's a 3D canvas where people can create things in a shared space with other people.

SL is not exactly a game, as there is nothing here to win, and there are no specific tasks that you are expected to do. The only goals here are the ones you make for yourself.

If you're not sure what to do first, try these suggestions:
- Fly around and explore the world to see what other people have created.
- Check out the events list by pressing the ( Events ) button at the bottom of your screen.
- Start building in a sandbox (i.e. in regions Morris, Cordova, Goguen, and others).
- Make friends with people in the Welcome Area and ask them where to find good places to visit.

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Q> "How do I make money?"

The most common ways to make money include:
- creating content and selling it to other residents (i.e. objects, clothes, scripts, animations, textures, etc)
- winning a cash prize at an event (i.e.: bingo, trivia, Tringo, etc)
- doing contract work for another resident
- hosting an educational event which educates other residents about how to use Second Life

Additionally, your weekly stipend is given every Tuesday. Your stipend will be at least L$50 for an active Basic account, or L$500 for Premium accounts. You may also recieve a bonus with this depending on your ratings.

If all else fails, you can purchase L$ with US$ from third party currency exchange sites, listed under the menu: Help > Purchase L$...

Note that there are no 'missions' or 'loot' you can gather extra money from like in MMORPGs. Your only sources for money are from other residents or from your weekly stipend.

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Q> "Why is my display so slow?"

SL is a very complex 3d application which will consume a large chunk (if not all) of your computer's CPU, memory, video, and network resources, more so even than nearly all other 3d programs.

Most games have pre-compiled maps, which is why they run so much faster. SL is too dynamic to be able to use these shortcuts, so it will run a bit slower than those games.

Fortunately, you don't need a high framerate to enjoy SL. 10-15 FPS is typical and quite usable here.

If you are suffering from unbearable lag or instability, or are curious how to tune your performance, please read the following attached notecard:
[† ]

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Q> "How do I detach something from my head?" (or other body part)

Your avatar can have up to 30 objects attached to it's skeleton. This is a great way to customize your look, but sometimes you attach things by accident.

To remove an attachment, try each of these steps in order, until you manage to detach the object:
- right click on the object (make sure the point on your mouse is right on the specific object surface), choose "Detach"
- go to the Edit menu, select "Detach Object", then pick the highlighted skeletal region where the object is attached
- right click on your avatar, select "Take Off>" then "Detach All" (this will remove all attachments)

If all else fails, try relogging. It may just be "ghosted".

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Q> "Where do I shop for new clothes?" (or other things)

- Click the ( Find ) button at the bottom of your screen
- Select the "Places" tab
- In the search box, type a keyword for what you're searching for (ie clothes)

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Q> "How do I buy something?"

Typically, you just right click the object and choose "Buy" from the pie menu.

If "Buy" is not available, but "Pay" is, then you are probably dealing with a scripted vendor. See next question =)

Some things to keep in mind when purchasing things:
- Be careful of spending too much money when you first arrive in SL
- Sold objects are usually copyable or transferrable, but rarely both.
- If you are buying something as a gift, make sure you will have transfer permissions
- BUYER BEWARE! Some less-than-honest people like to find free items that other people have made and sell them to unsuspecting new residents. You can always check who the creator is by looking at the object's properties. If you have doubts, IM the creator.

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Q> "How do I use a vending machine?"

Usually most vending machines have an arrow or two, which lets you navigate forward or back through the list of items it is offering for sale.

Some may not have arrows, but will go to the next item when you left-click on the picture.

In most situations, to make a vending machine purchase:
- right click on the picture of the item you want
- select "Pay" from the pie menu
- type in the amount you want to pay
- This is your last chance to change your mind. Click the "Pay" button if you are sure you want to buy.
- accept the item from the blue dialog box

Be sure to accept the object when prompted. If you do not, you will not get the item, and you will not be refunded by the vendor!

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Q> "Where do I go for lots of free stuff?"

- the "Library" folder of your inventory
- the Bazaar in Stillman: [ƒ ]

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Q> "I purchased something, but all I have is a box (or bag)?"

In SL, every prim has it's own inventory which can contain other objects. Sometimes people use this as a way to sell items.

To get the stuff out of it's container:
- go to a place where you can build
- drag the container from your inventory to the ground
- right click the container
- choose "Edit" from the pie menu
- in the Edit window, click on the ( More >> ) button (unless it already says "<< Less"
- click on the "Content" tab
- drag each item in the list from the item's contents to your inventory's clothing folder

Here are detailed instructions: [? ]

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Q> "I just teleported, but I'm not where I should be"

SL doesn't let you teleport directly to your destination. Instead, you will arrive at the "Telehub" nearest your destination, and then you will have to fly or walk toward the red beacon which marks where you intended to go.

If you have a friend who is already at the place you're going to, ask them to offer you a teleport. These teleports *will* take you directly to your friend.

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Q> "How do I build?"

Building is a bit of an art, but to get started down your path to master 3D builder, you need to know some basics. In Second Life, we build with primitive 3D shapes, usually we just call them 'prims'. Some of the primitive shapes you can build with include: cube, sphere, cylinder, and torus. Arranging these shapes and then scaling, cutting, and twisting them into modified shapes will give you a great deal of flexibility even though you're starting from these very basic shapes.

To begin building:
- go to an area where you are permitted to build (i.e. a sandbox)
- right-click on the ground
- select "Create" from the pie menu; this opens the Edit window in create mode
- pick a prim shape you would like to create from the top of the Edit window
- left-click on the ground to 'rez' the shape
- your Edit window will then change to editing mode
- open up the edit window completely by clicking on the ( More >> ) button if you haven't done so already

The General tab is where you set object name, description, permissions, and the details for selling the object if you are putting it up for sale.

The Object tab is where you will edit the numbers associated with the object's shape, position, size, etc.

The Content tab displays a list of objects which are contained inside this object. This is where you will add scripts, sounds, animations, and other assets which you usually use in combination with a script, or for when you are using this object to sell it's contents.

The Texture tab lets you set and adjust the texture and color of the object.

Some basic things to try while editing:
- Move the object back and forth with the red, blue, and green arrows.
- Holding down Shift while moving the object makes a copy.
- Holding down Ctrl will shortcut you to rotating the object.
- Holding down Shift+Ctrl will shortcut you to resizing the object.
- To combine two or more prims into one solid object, you "link" them under the menu Tools > Link.
- Once you've linked objects together, if you want to edit just one prim while still linked, check "Edit linked parts' in the edit menu.
- When you are done and want to keep the object, right click it and choose "Take" from the pie menu; it will then be placed in your inventory in the Objects folder.
- Pressing the Del key will delete the currently selected object(s).
- If you are building in a sandbox, please remember to take or delete everything when you are done.

For a more thorough introduction to building, attend a building class (check events), or visit the
[‚ ] for a self-guided tutorial.

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Q> "How do I become a landowner?"

You must have a Premium subscription to own land. If you have a Basic account, you can change it to Premium at:
http://secondlife.com/account

If you're looking for land in-world, use the Find panel to search for a good deal on a parcel.

You can also bid on newly released land from a land auctioning system at:
http://secondlife.com/auctions

Once you have found a plot you want to buy:
- Go to the land you intend to buy.
- Enable parcel border display with the 'P' key.
- Right click the ground inside the parcel you want to buy.
- Choose 'About Land' from the pie menu.
- Click the 'Buy Land' button.

Note: If you have never owned land before, you will probably want to check out the "First Land" program, where you can get 512m for a very cheap price of L$512. Once you own land, you will never be able to enjoy the "First Land" offer again.

Caution: Be wary of land speculators who want to buy your First Land and exploit your newness to the world to make a profit. Check out the current average land prices at the URL below before negotiating any land sales.

To find out more about land, visit:
http://secondlife.com/land

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Q> "How far away can people hear what I say in local chat?"

- 20 meters for normal chat
- 100 meters for shouts

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Q> "Why is some chat text white and some grey?"

The darker text is from people chatting who are further away from you than the lighter shaded text.

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Q> "How do I see what someone said earlier in local chat?"

Press Ctrl+H to open your chat history window. From there you can also scroll back and select text to copy/paste.

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Q> "What are some of the basic social rules here?"

Second Life is an online community of adults (you must be 18 or older to participate). Due to this standard, it is expected that people will behave maturely and respectfully to their fellow residents. Here are some guidelines for standard etiquette in Second Life:

- Regions are indicated as either (M) or (PG) at the top of the screen. In PG regions, you should refrain from speech, behavior, sounds, or images which would not be acceptable to a general audience (similar to broadcast television or a PG rated movie). In Mature regions, mostly anything goes except the most extremely offensive content.

- Don't push other people around. Apologize if you do.

- Don't shoot at people unless they are voluntarily participating in a game with you. If you're looking for people to gunfight with, go to the Jessie or Rausch regions.

- Don't sell stuff that's already Free to Copy.

- If you are building in a sandbox, share the space and prims. Clean up after yourself when you leave. Do not sell anything in the sandboxes. Do not "test" your scripts on other people without asking them first.

- Playing sounds is fun, but try to limit playing the same sounds over and over again. Keep in mind that sounds also apply to the PG/M content rating rule.

For the exact rules, read the Terms of Service and Community Standards pages on the official website at:
https://secondlife.com/tos.php
https://secondlife.com/comstandards.php

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Q> "How do I script something?"

If you are familiar with programming, the Linden Scripting Language should be easy to pick up in a short time. LSL is a compiled language which relies on events to trigger behaviors, with over 300 API functions to allow you to interact with the environment and the people in it.

The absolutely best reference for LSL is the LSL Wiki at:
http://secondlife.com/badgeo/

If you are not familiar with programming, LSL is a great language to start with; however, you may want to pick up a book to learn some of the basics of all programming languages (i.e. variables, functions, boolean logic, conditionals, loops, etc.) to help build a foundation.

Sometimes the best way to learn is to find example scripts, and jump in and just start changing them around to see what happens.

You can find a bunch of free scripts on the Second Life "Scripting Library" forum at:
/15/1.html

If you have any questions with scripting, try asking Live Help, or post them to the "Scripting Tips" forum at:
/54/1.html

Included with this FAQ is my scripting tutorial [… ], which I've composed from my lecture notes from back when I taught official scripting classes. This guide (like the class) was designed to be informative to both programmers and non-programmers alike, and should hopefully help you get started if you are new to scripting LSL =)

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Q> "What does that abbreviation mean?"

Here are some common abbreviations that are mostly unique to Second Life:

SL - Second Life
LL - Linden Lab; the company who made SL
RL - Real Life; the meta-place where you need food, restroom breaks, etc
FL - same as RL (unless they mean Florida)
L$ - Linden Dollars; the virtual currency
AV - Avatar, your second life "body"
LH - Live Help; a group of volunteer residents who help people with questions
LSL - Linden Scripting Language; the language used to program objects in SL
GOM - Gaming Open Market; a currency exchange site

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Q> "I joined a group, and now I have a title in front of my name, how do I remove it?"

- Open the "Edit" menu
- Select "Groups..."
- Scroll to the top
- Select "none"
- Click the "Activate" button

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Q> How do I set my profile picture?

- Upload an image under the File menu, this will cost L$10
- Locate the image you uploaded in your inventory. It should be in the "Textures" folder.
- Open up your profile window by selecting "Profile..." from the Edit menu
- Drag and drop the image from your inventory's textures folder to the profile picture slot in your profile window

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Q> "How should I set my Preferences?" / "What does this Preferences setting do?"

To open the preferences panel, press Ctrl+P or choose 'Preferences' under the Edit menu.

You can get an overview of all of the various Preferences settings in this separate guide:
[„ ]

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Q> "What if my question isn't answered in this FAQ?"

If you have any questions which aren't answered here, try the following:

- Select the menu "Help" > "Live Help" to query a group of volunteer residents

- Teleport to the [€] and ask your question in local chat

- Search through the forums, or create a new post with your question at:
http://forums.secondlife.com

- Check for a new version of this FAQ. Click the FAQ dispenser at:
[‰ ].

- If you are familiar with IRC, try asking on efnet #secondlife

- Send an email to Second Life's official support address:
[email]support@secondlife.com[/email]

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### Acknowledgements ###

Thank you to the following people for helping me with corrections and additions:
Chage McCoy
Essence Lumin
Torley Torgeson

Please let me know if you see anything that needs correcting =)

### License ###

This text document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

You are welcome and encouraged to share this notecard with others, but only in an unmodified state. If you would like to contribute additions, or suggest a change please send me an IM. This way we will only have one most up-to-date version =)

Thanks for reading !

-- Kex Godel

Yep Blaze, Awakening Avatars Group has, with Kex's permission, used her FAQ in our Newbie info packet since I first stumbled on it many virtual months ago.

It was thoughtful of you to post it here as I'm some folks don't know about it.

And Kex thank you for you on-going updates to your Excellent! FAQ!

Kex is and always has been one of my SL hero(ine)s.

I swear I thought the subject line said "An example of a great newbie fag"

Damn fonts!!

heh heh

"selling your ass" is one of the most common ways to make money you forgot unless that's considered "content" or "contract work".

also i made the same mistake as Pendari. capitalize acronyms!!!!!

Sorry, but I don't think much at all of this FAQ. It is too long (geez, you think I write too long??), poorly arranged, with no topic headers, and it is not broken up into really tiny baby steps.

It says "fly around" without telling people the 6 things they need to do to fly.

It says "create content" without telling them that "create content" is a buzz word, lingo, part of a tekkie language which is a kind of jaded tekkie jargonistic term, or a jaded editors' term, meaning "the output of the mechanism or machine". Everything is just "content". It's not "my home" or "my clothes" or "my special stuff" (although tekkies sometimes put those terms artificially into their applications for you like you're a dumbie and need to be told what's yours on your own computer LOL.

It doesn't tell you how to rez prims step by step.

I could tell you a hundred other things not on there, from my own direct experience, and my experience helping others.

The card also adopts this hectoring town, instructing and pontificating before the new person has even landed. "This isn't a game," the voice comes in, stentorian, disapproving. Well, what if it is? What if the person wants to make it a game? Aren't they supposed to be accessing the WWW of all worlds here? Why can't it be a game? And can't they treat it as a game if they want?

In fact, every 7-day newbie learns it sure *is* a game -- a game called "whoever buys the most land wins" or "whoever builds the coolest most expensive animation or vehicle wins" or "whoever gets the most posrates" wins. So it's just a disservice to anyone new to hector and shape them in this fashion. Let them figure it out...or not.

It was like what I was trying to tell someone who was at the town hall this evening. They said "Sl is about my imagination, I can be anything I want and do anything I imagine."

"Great, I say," "I want a way of parking my av and getting paid." To which the scornful answer comes "But you have to adapt, this world isn't like that world, it doesn't have a goal" To which I can only reply -- if MY imagination was that it DID have that goal: "well, how come it's about YOUR IMAGINATION, BUT MY ADAPTATION??"

That about sums up the problem for me with the whole tekkie thing. YOUR IMAGINATION but not MY IMAGINATION, only MY ADAPTION TO YOUR IMAGINATION. Feh, who needs it.

That's true, it doesn't tackle the problem from the perspective of the user, which is a sorely needed skillset around here.

My thoughts are though it does (mostly) avoid trying to feed new users into culdesacs of their own chosing with the philosophy that they are doing it from a moral high ground and therefore it's completely acceptable.

So, I think it's a relatively good FAQ and should be studied by those who are thinking of making complimentary materials.

it is a great faq. Ive been handing out the many helps Kex has made over the last 6 months or so. tankee tankee Kex

Then you write a better one.

I like this... can we ask LL if they could mention this on Newbie island sometime...

or better, you know how Microsoft products have the pop-up help? It'd be cool to have these types FAQs pop up ... maybe with a checkbox "disable these FAQs" for when newbies get sick of them

No, Hiro, we should not be asking LL to advertise players, by letting just one player, or a group of players, have at making the FAQ FOR NEWBIES CARD and having it handed out in the WA to newbies. Advertising is not allowed there, and giving one very special set of players the access to luster their reputation and get their traffic by positioning themselves firmly astride the newbie stream should not be encouraged.

If the Lindens do that, I'm going to campaign tirelessly to have *my own* FAQS FOR NEWBIES distributed TOO which has a completely different user perspective and completely different set of ideas of what is important and what needs to be conveyed.

Then you start to see how wrong it is, because then a third person could demand the same thing.

Let the Lindens put up a bulletin board that rotates the ads (like the telehubs are supposed to and still don't).

This FAQs, under the guise of being "neutral" and "helpful" merely helps spread the tekkie class's hatred of the landowning class with this vicious disclaimer:



There's nothing wrong with people who want to buy first land from others -- they help newbies way more than the people who made this card and forget to tell the newbies how to fly. And there aren't going to be any newbies who sell their land for under $512 LOL -- they aren't THAT stupid, so even in your rapacious caricatuer, the *newbie has made a profit, too, even from a bad sale where the land dealer profited from his newsness*.

A more reasonable piece of advice would be:

Note: You will likely be able to sell your first land at a good price, to get yourself some spending money for the game. Don't be in a hurry to give in to the first offer. Take a careful look at the prices in the "land for sale" list at the top of your menu to make sure that you are getting the best price you can for the area your land is in. It is often the case if you are willing to wait a few days or weeks you might be able to get a better price for your land.

My advice puts the control into the hands of the newbie by empowering them -- because after all they are adults, and only they can decide what price they want to put on their land. It makes them aware they are in a risky climate where people may indeed pounce on them and gives them the awareness that they don't have to give in to that first pounce .

The other advice sets up a wall of hatred and doom in which rapacious forces "out there" are given credence and empowered further (instead of empowering the newbie)

There are 100 other things I can say about this FAQ and the worldview behind it. It should not be allowed to take root in our world.

Great idea, Hiro. New players should have a comprehensive FAQ to help them. The one Kex has put together is the best I've seen at speaking to baseline functionality and how to accomplish things without getting into all the preachy/ideology crap that some see as 'necessary'.

I'd vote to include this at the welcome area. It would have been wonderful help to me as a new player!

Had you said the above in the first place, Prokofy, I think your suggestion would have been better received. I suspect both your text and the similar passage from Kex's FAQ attempt to achieve the same goal -- instilling a "buyer beware" mindset in new residents. They simply do so from very different initial viewpoints.

I would be very interested in seeing your suggestions and contributions to a new resident FAQ, suitable for giving out to people in the Welcome Area. Just keep in mind your own admonishments. Maintaining a neutral voice in an orientation document is a laudable goal, but a difficult one to acheive in an environment like this.

Newbies are already suffering from information overload as they step into the Welcome Area for the first time. They don't need to be overwhelmed with proselytizing. They just want to know how to do things and enjoy their first few hours and days in Second Life.

Thanks Blaze for posting this and thanks Kex for the FAQ and all its great revisions through the ages!

Kex Faq Works! A great resource for me from the early months and I still use it today. One of the Must-Haves for intrepid noobie helper - excellent!

I oppose handing out anybody's FAQs, including my own, in the Welcome Area. If the Lindens adapt Kex's FAQs at the behest of the adulating community, I will fight it hammer and tong.

I hand out my cards to my tenants after the come into the system so as not to overwhelm them. I don't bombard them in the WA.

But let's take a close look at this here: the Lindens didn't sanction this yet. It didn't happen yet. It didn't happen like Schwanson's newbie island freeway from the Welcome Area didn't get built yet.

So I'll save my energy and my indignation for when the Lindens really start doing this kind of stupid idea, feting one player at the expense of others, and providing one player a newbie freeway at the expense of the others.

I'm betting on the Lindens not being that stupid and one-sided. I bet they will work on their own FAQs a bit harder, using whatever input they get from players.

Have fun!!

Everyone with an ounce of sense knows a thorough new player faq is a good idea and Kex has done an excellent job getting one together.

As for the quote -- Ignore the troll, dear. Life's much more enjoyable without his paranoid fantasies cluttering up the place, trust me.

I've been handing out that myself whenever I deal with newer players. I also tend to hand out landmarks to a few places not mentioned on it, along with a hodgepodge folder I call "Welcome package" full of all sorts of open-source (Or, at least, full perms) stuff to them, if they want it. Mostly free clothing so they don't look like a Generic Newbie Avatar, since that seems to be the first question most of them ask.

I've been pondering writing a few new sections, one covering island sims (When I first joined, the only island was Avalon... I was terrified to go to this strange place off the mainland. Was I supposed to go there?), one covering inbetter detail the various types of lindens and other helper groups (The difference between liasons and pure techie lindens, the difference between Mentors and Live Help, etc), and answers to some of the more common questions I hear ("How do I get the red/green second title above my name", "How do I fly up high", "how do I change how I walk/sit", etc.).

If I get around to it, I'll write it up and send it to Kex.

Excellent! Reitsuki.

So much of what's done in SL is done through interpersonal relations with people. Often I've been at the WC and got talking directly with newbies and they ask for resources - thus I am free to hand out my group's Newbie resources, which include Kex's and soon will include Brace's. And Prok, if you wish me to include yours when someone at the Welcome Center asks, I'd be happy to hand yours out also.

Its so fine being free - free to hand out things when asked, free to sell things, free to buy things, free to speak, free to respond, free to to say no, free to say yes and free to be silence.

Yeah, let freedom ring!

That FAQ is great. Thank you, Kex, for creating it.

The best things in SL are always created by the Residents. Which is why I always have a copy of Kex's FAQ to give to newbies who have quesitons I cannot quickly answer.

And thanks for keeping it updated.

Where official support falls short, volunteers will take up the slack.

It certainly isn't my goal to overwhelm newbies entering the Welcome Area. Far from it -- having joined SL only five weeks ago I still vividly remember my own first experience with the Welcome Area, and I attempt to moderate my attempts to help newcomers appropriately. I don't drop my folder of newbie FAQs on top of everyone I see. I greet newcomers as they arrive and let them ask questions at their own pace, or not at all. If they have many questions, I'll offer some notecards to them, but only then.

Newcomers do not come off the island with full knowledge of how to use SL. Many don't know what they'd like to accomplish within SL, let alone what's even possible. For reasons unknown to me the Lindens don't have staff at the WA helping newbies 24/7, and the information kiosks in the WA aren't always up to the task of answering all the inevitable questions new residents have.

That said, Prokofy, you raise valid concerns about not giving new residents too much information at once. I'll examine the info packet I've assembled and weed out all but the most essential stuff. Kex's notecards and some other additions are an excellent start, but there's always room for improvement and refinement.

I hope so too! It's to everyone's benefit in the long run.

Ugh. Bad call, Pathfinder. You shouldn't be plumping up oldbies FICs like this in the forums, and helping to do a smackdown of a critical newbie. You should just say that you welcome anybody's cards and not feature just one player -- it's favouritism that's not necessary to function in the game.

I can't force you to hand out MY FAQS to Newbies, but I will send it to you anyway.

Kex's FAQS have a number of things wrong in them as we've discussed here. Most troublesome, it contains a paragraph that incites hatred to landowners, fueling fears and hatred of so-called "land speculators". I would urge you to do some editing of that paragraph before you fan the flames of hatred and misunderstanding further by passing out that card.




Well, we've already had a troublesome response from Pathfinder. He keeps this FAQ in his pouch and hands it out everywhere, a habit that is making Kex beam with pride no doubt. But it raises a troublesome precedent, this kind of favourtism and endorsement, especially in the forums.

I guess we can only hope that the Lindens running the WA will be more impartial and careful, especially about not inciting hatred of a class.

Yeah, free to have your SL identity taken from you, free to be shunned by the lords of the realm, free to be smackdowned by Lindens! Free!