Hazing Newbies

...and here's me from almost two years ago, mocking me from my first week, almost three years ago.

I just remembered something from when I first started out. I shied away from asking people for help; it seemed like everyone else was a newbie too or couldn't answer my questions in any case...

But somewhere I came upon a box that was a newbie orientation kit. I can't remember the name or many details, but I had the impression it was prepared by a furry because there was SO MUCH about furries in there. It had some very useful explanations of things, separated into notecards, organized very well...

... and for a long time I used a furry female shape from that box, but you would never guess that that was what it was.

This is me, not *right* off the boat, but not long after, still wearing the furry shape and standing in Stargate Command:



(I know it looks better than my avatar picture, but that's cause it's the avatar picture is crappy.)

There were shapes and skins and a flight attachment...

I wish I could find that box again. It would be good to give to newbies, but I'm a compulsive deleter, and as soon as I'd read each notecard or decide I'd never use something, I'd blow it away. I really felt like I'd arrived when I finally deleted the folder itself.

If it rings a bell with anyone, would you let me know?

My first self-portrait:

While LL does not really orient new folks very well, if someone had tried to make me choose an area of interest and push me in that direction for learning, I probably would have never logged back in. When I first came to SL, it was for a fantasy world escape - I did not want to "learn" anything other than how to move around and explore the world.

I don't (thank God) have a full-face snapshot of my original default avatar. I chose the male goth option that was available back then, and I think I actually *screamed* when I finally figured out camera controls and got a look at my face. Talk about eyes like p*ssholes in the snow.

This is a composite of the first look I put together (good old 'Shun' hair; where would we guys be without it? ) and me in August last year:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skelldagger/2732460343/in/set-72157606438046486/

Current look is this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skelldagger/3188437975/

Now you've got me wanting to dig out my old backup external drive for the pics I *did* take (back view only, again thank God!) of my old default avi.

And regarding the OP, although I created Skell a couple of days before Daros created himself, my old laptop just couldn't handle SL at all, I could log on and crawl around like a snail through molasses, but I had to shut down every other task going in order to just do that. When I finally got a decent PC, it was Daros that held my hand, took me around to get rid of Mr Pasty Goth, and taught me the ropes.

I do remember Orientation Island, although probably because I've taken a couple of alts through there in more recent times. But the only time I've ever visited an infohub is when I've had the 'last location not available, you have been moved to a nearby location' message on logging in. When I left OI it was via a direct TP offer from Daros.

I posted this in another thread a while back,my first experience with sl when i joined was a city block,just a square block with buildings and roads,no info whatsoever,no avys anywhere,i was all alone.
I wandered around and around,saw some cars there and figured out how to drive them,learned how to sit and fly,
My first impression was that they left you there to figure this stuff out for yourself.
When i did eventually come across another avy she walked up to me and said "you're ugly" and walked off.
I seemed to stay there for a long time and was beginning to wonder what sl was all about,is this all there is.
I had no idea you were sent to an orientation island then to a help island.
I did eventually get a message saying i was ready to go to help island,when i got there i came across a mentor and she was very helpful.
No new person should ever be sent somewhere to be alone with no info,as i understand it that city block does'nt exist anymore.

Ditto to that. I couldn't even figure out how to get off OI but some other newbie thankfully was able to TP me off and I landed in some empty shopping mall with a bunch of either bots or people camping for money by washing windows and floors (not sure which they were). Flew around abit, walked about and was BORED BORED BORED. Wondered where are all the people? Why is it so empty? What's the big freaking deal about this "game"?

I'm surprised I ever came back. But I found the Forums a couple of week later, thankfully and life changed because of it. People started giving me advise how to improve my appearance which was sorely lacking. Geez I couldn't even get off the attachments of the Goth Female for like a week until some nice women told me how to "detach" them lol.

See photo below for lolz, one of the first I took and very representative of how I appeared for the first few weeks:

I think when some people join,learning is not their first choice,it is something new and they can't wait to explore,
I was over at an orientation island not long ago,i like to pop over once in a while,,,,, while there a new bee asked me how to get to las vegas,that's what was on his mind and i don't think learning was i big priority

I don't have a photo of me until I uploaded my first textures and made my first shirt. I do have my original shape and hair which I hated. I wanted corn rows which I eventually made and then I wanted short hair and discovered texture hair has a bald spot in the back.

Well here I am on day 8.

http://tacheiru.us/flyingfrogs/iyobainpolkadots.jpg

This is my first successful shirt. The pants are just paint and no texture and the same is true for the shoes. I was obviously having trouble with the camera. I probably shot this picture on one of the NMC Islands.

This is me about ten days ago.

http://tacheiru.us/flyingfrogs/opposangle1.jpg

Yes, I was using a free modeling pose for that picture, and I made the dress and hair. This picture was shot somewhere near the CNK Mall which has an excellent campatorium and dance floor.

Thanks Lindal! This is a great idea. I'm frequently helping out new ppl. I'll go and wander through this area myself later today.

Zena

Same here. I found Sl totally by accident, never played any games or online stuff. I spent about a half hour on the old orientation island the first day, logged off and came back the next day, and after about another half hour just hit the streets. i just picked it up s i went along and did fine. I read what was available on the forum and knowledg base and that's about it. I've always felt the so called "Learning Curve" is over hyped, at least as far as basic functionality. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to learn how to rez a box, walk and fly. The fact that peop;e have problems with those things speaks mpre about them than anything else, in my opinion.

Count me as one of the "Didn't come to SL to learn" people. It's still strictly escapist entertainment for me. A theme park of sorts

Your fustration is shared by most people here.

I'm sorry about your experience. If you had walked a different direction, you would have run into NCI/New Citizens Incorporated's South campus in Hamnida on the border of that big green empty space. But--we can't advertise that at the Hansa "Welcome Area", so it is pretty much luck and personal recommendations who makes it over there.

Thank you very much Lindal. That's high praise coming from you.

Desmond and I worked hard on that campus. We were also fortunate to get a wide selection of free Victorian/Steampunk style avatars from residents of Caledon and allied communities, plus some really nice furniture and landscaping contributions, as well.

It is not open only in that LL has not turned on the newbie spawning there and added it to the community gateway page in the web sign-up system. We've been ready since September, and welcome people to sent newbies there. We've already begun to get some good word-of-mouth traffic.

Additionally, directly adjacent to the Caledon Oxbridge, in the Caledon Oxbridge Village sim, is NCI's Caledon campus, with lots of good "next step" information for new residents.

Oh--in case anyone wants to tour Caledon Oxbridge for themselves, here's the SLURL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Oxbridge/98/178/27/

Thanks for that slurl. I got guided around by a friend of mine who eventually got me to get into SL, and I didn't go into any of the newbie areas. I'll definitely check it out.

I'd love you even if you were just text. <3

I was a "polite newbie" and me two friends who asked me what I wanted, and a third person who friended me so that she could try to sell me very expensive land in Clemence. This turned out to be fortuitous since she gave me access to Gaeta via her landmark which enabled me to go land shopping in Gaeta a few weeks later.

The two friends who helped me asked me what I wanted. I was a couple of weeks old at the time and wanted to learn to build and to swim when I fell in the water which seemed to happen a lot.

I got a free swimmer which made me much happier and three boxes of sculpties.

Like nearly everyone else in this thread, I'm at the right end of the curve as far as working with the SL interface. Every time I hear someone say "there is no learning curve," I laugh and say "there wasn't one for me either." I knew how to get started and the rest just worked.

The other valuable piece of human capital I brought with me is that I'm a librarian in real life which means I have positively off the charts searching skills. I could make the Second Life search engine do whatever I wanted. When I saw that a PG rating meant nothing (Some of the most respectful environments are mature) and wanted to find more conservative environments, I knew to search Christian in the likelihood that bornagain Christians would have set up conservative areas.

When I got shot at by blue stuff in a sandbox while trying to chase around a hair piece or a bit of stray quonset hut or a half made animal-mobile, I ran the sandbox search again and this time went five or six pages back. (The best results are not always on top since I wanted a quieter less popular place to build that was not someone's badly guarded back yard.) I have four or five excellent private sandbox links.

What I did not get even as a person at the right end of the curve is a kind of socialization that might be useful. I probably did not get the most out of my two new friends and even a third friend because I fear imposing on them with IM's. No one taught me what is enough. Brasilian culture (I found my way to Ilha Bella Gomorra and yes there's a Sodom too. I cammed through the ban lines to take a picture of it. I friended any one who offered and still do which means more networking to busy spots and lots of dancing at Brasilian clubs) is far more tolerant of repeated IM's and teleport requests.

When my nose got stuck in the dance floor at a now defunct club that used to remind me of the smell of stale peanut shells, I came here for advice not sure if someone had played a trick on me. I arrived at my assigned infohub sure I'd be ridiculed and hazed. I made a nuiscence of myself sticking my two newly made shirts (which are decent blouses and actually quite a scarce commodity) into other women's inventories and summarily getting them refused. Not long ago, I got knocked on the head with a cardboard wine bottle in a club and chewed out the careless dancer, I feared I was griefing.

I still have no idea what social groups/lifestyles are available for a female who does not want to play the role of newbile young thing and who is very short and a bit plump inworld. I consider myself an artist and designer. Conventional builders though are far more into scripting and conventional clothing designers all use a different method of making clothes.

I think we can learn a lot from looking at what happens to people like us who are obvious success stories.

Then we have those like the colleague I went to join in NMC who just did not make it. I showed her the basics of movement and how to touch and sit on things. We played with our appearances. She was very dissatisfied with the clothes. "How come I can't get a shirt to cover my belly?" she asked. I've since learned to use the undershirt layer or jacket layer to get that effect. She did not want to look like she was twenty years old either.

My colleague just got baffled by the interface. It was clearly a usability issue. I've run into this other places. Multi-box searching works blazingly well with a very large proportion of the population. For a significant minority it is absolutley painful and incomprehensible and it does not matter whether that minority is well educated or even if they are librarians. There is no one size fits all and when something works well with some people, it bombs out with others. No one really knows why.

Somewhere in the middle (if usability follows a bell curve and let's assume it does) are those who can master the interface but who probably still need a lot of help. Some of that help is going to need to be social:

What options do I have?

What does this stuff look like?

How do I deal with strangers?

How do I deal with new "friends" who aren't really friends yet?

How do I successfully search and network socially when I've arrived in world alone?

The people questions are much easier to solve than the technical ones since they require social engineering and not messing with a lot of programming. I do have an idea that might work for some of this. It would involve bringing some of the cultural tools we use for educating people in the real world to SL.

Iyoba,

GQ Start is always looking for new teachers who have something to contribute, as are the other SL schools.

I think you should teach a class on social skills. We have one on Profiles, and one on avoiding/dealing with griefing, and my own Sex Ed class. I think something along the lines of what you describe would fill some holes.

IM kelley Griffith to discuss.

If you like to help people, you are welcome at any of the NCI Campuses. We try to maintain a PG environment at all of them (even the campuses that are on Mature land), and work to be welcoming and inclusive to people of all appearances and backgrounds.



We also teach about 50 free classes a week to new people. If you contact me in world, I can put you in touch with our Education Director.

More on NCI at:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/New_Citizens_Incorporated
http://www.nci-sl.org

GQ Start is also a great place.

There is a whole subculture waiting for you in-world.

I have seen shops selling 'real bodies' of 'plump' figures for women, and have seen said avs running around in-world. Checked out their picks pages and groups and there are lots of places and groups oriented toward this preference, socialising or a bit more.

No matter what you or your av are, in SL you are probably not alone.

Thanks for that one, in that college now learning things