Welcome areas....

Maybe this has been brought up by someone else, but...

In the past I loved to hang around at the welcome areas. Mostly nice people there, many new people who could use a helping hand. I made many friends there...

After a long while (after I have been away for health problems) I have been a few times back at the welcome area's.... to leave in disgust.

"PG" seems to mean nothing anymore. Behavior way below the line.... I think it is time that the Lindens have a good cleaning there.
Me? Maybe against better knowing... I start to report people....

Yuck.

Morwen.

I know in another thread this was brought up. That here used to be a mentoring program where SL players would help new players learn their way around. This has gone to the wayside. I agree that we need something to help new players not get discouraged by the game and leave. I was one of them. Back when i started in April 2008, I started in an unknown area and left to my own demise to learn the ropes. After awhile and not being able to figure out how leave, i logged out and didn't try again until some friends told me they would help me out.

I feel bad for new players because the instruction isn't very good anymore. There needs to be either a real tutorial in place or actual people around to answer questions.

Yeah... the new people. The first impression of SL they get is (in my opinion) a bad one. I long back to the days that I had to explain what a "tp" was and what a friendlist was... to mention some things.

Mor

Ya, this has come up in a few threads. I *hope* this is part of the "first hour" stuff that M talked about in his letter yesterday, but I dunno.

Mari
(Who suspects this thread will end badly)

I still consider the Hanja welcome area to be my old home. It's where I go when I'm most lonely and some of the first people I met in SL are still there now. When I go there, I'm helper and griefer alike, depending on how people approach me. (^_^)

If anything, the problem with the welcome areas, HIP, and such is human nature. People who come into SL with little intent on enjoying the 'big picture' will pretty much stagnate there and find their own flavour of fun by being bullies and hazing the upstarts. Yea, it is fun at the expense of others... But, that's what people are like. To each his/her own and surely we'll come out of this alive. (^_^)y

I feel sorry for anyone trying SL for the first time on their own who has to deal with the "Welcome Area". It's no wonder the mass media thinks SL is all about "t3h s3xx0rz" when you see what kind of vultures are lurking around the welcome area, spamming newbies with come ons. It's akin to being a lone teenager getting off the Greyhound bus in a seedy part of NYC. I make sure any RL friends that I bring into SL know what a "TP" is before they even log in, and how to accept the one I send after the tutorial has dropped them in the "Welcome Area."

I have resumed my old habit of hanging out at Ahern while eating lunch. If any newbs ask questions I will talk to them. I've helped folks with clothes and tp'ing and such. One gal was struggling with trying to change her clothes in the appearance editor. I guided her to try on the clothes in her library and mix and match stuff from all the new avatars outfits. She was soooo happy. I invite all of you concerned folks to spend 20 minutes at Ahern when you have some free time, mute the trolls, and wait for newb questions to appear in general chat. They will.

Yes this has been brought up many times in the past. My advice to new residents is to avoid welcome areas unless they enjoy gesture spam, open mics, people spewing filth and other sorts of newbish type behavior. The Lindens have given up on welcome areas and I have no idea why they still exist except maybe as training grounds for junior griefers.

ok just for the heck of it the other day I created an alt and landed at a welcome spot.

Now I have been here a year but I tell you that if I was totally new I would not want to be here!

The griefing and such was well not good. Even for a person of one year.

Bec

The quality of the conversation at the welcome areas varies greatly with time. Muting and reporting are your best options.

That's not true. The Welcome Areas are also popular conversation spots in part because there are plenty of new people as well as helpful regulars. Quite a few mentors, and many more who aren't can almost always be found at the welcome areas helping get new users to where they can find information to help them get started.

My experience in Ahern is that the people spamming folks with come-ons are themselves first-day newbies with clearly no idea what the place is about. Fortunately, these dorks usually either get a clue from the locals or disappear after enough people get tired of 'em and refer 'em into the G-team.

Data and Rodney are regulars at Ahern and Hidden Lakes-Waterhead respectively. I regularly see other Lindens at the Hidden Lakes Telehub in Waterhead, likely having to do with the fact that Linden Lab is located next door on Waterhead Drive on the cul-de-sac.

Then maybe they should be looking over the fence to see what is going on.

Since I first started in SL, I've been seeing 'we care about new registrants' first hour in Second Life'. Over and over and over.

Yet they don't seem to be willing to do the one thing that could guarantee that a newbie's first hour won't be spoiled by trolls and griefers: invest in enough paid personnel to shoo the griefers away and actually make that first hour an interesting and annoyance-free one.

A volunteer mentor program is a noble ideal and all.

But it just doesn't manage to do the job of expelling the exploiters and malefactors. And it never will.

I was at the Shelter yesterday - I hadn't been there for a while. Someone, possibly a Shelter official, was ensuring, through chat, that good behaviour was maintained. There was one newbie visitor swearing in chat and another doing something inappropriate and they were both politely warned a couple of times, after which they stepped into line.

A few of the new and older *adults* get a bit rowdy at HIP but are easily put back in place. I feel sorry sometimes for the newer people that are plopped into an empty help area with no real guidance.

I'm glad you are feeling better and have returned, Morwen.

As far as WAs - I wonder if having a way to channel new people according to age-range would be at all useful (this is just a half-baked idea, so I'm sure there are many points against it). I can imagine a menu at sign-up saying something like "Choose one: 18-27, 28-37, 38-47, 48-57, 58-67, 68 and above." Well, maybe not.

Before trying Second Life, I had played several MMORPGs. It was very easy for me to learn the basics of Second Life by myself on "newbie island," without needing to talk to anyway.

If I didn't have that prior MMORPG experience, and Second Life were my first experience with a virtual world, I can't see how I possibly would have figured out how to use Second Life, or would want to stay based on what I saw on a newbie island.

The problem with this is that there will be a good number of people in that 18-27 age range who'll be more mature than, say, those 38-47. Consider the middle-aged man having a midlife crisis who thinks it's the height of fun to take his sexxxy newb body and freebie wang and roam inappropriate places showing it off. :/

I know - and there's always the immature person who will want to grief people he thinks he can shock easily. If you are mature and enjoy the company of those older, though, you might choose "up." I'm the first to admit this idea is full of holes, but maybe something will come from the discussion of it.

It might be nice to avoid the twenty-somethings who start the conversation with, "How old are you?" I have taken to answering "73" although I am actually 53.

My youngest friend is 18, just transferred from the teen grid recently. My oldest friend is 66. And my friends list spans the whole gambit. NONE of them are people I would consider mature or immature as much as I simply call them friends. (^_^)

If noobdropping was a more random process, there's a chance that welcome area and infohub cliques won't have their driving force as much anymore. But, people are people. We all have our own flavour of fun. =^-^=

You'll get no argument from me. But although that age idea was just stupid, has it sparked any ideas that might improve things at the WAs?

I get that question a lot in newbie areas. It's always a bit of a minefield for me, too. I like it better when they ask where I am from first.

Besides, SL seems more about attitude, not age. But I would think that, wouldn't I?

On topic...

I'm not sure what can improve things. I think the issue is that welcome areas/infohubs share a dual purpose, and don't necessarily do either all that well.

1. They are the place where new members enter the world. This is great, but what is there when they get there? re the infohubs made more like a stopping point, or like a terminal? Is it made clear where they can go next to start their Second Life, or are they presented as being the be all and end all? I'd say few, architecturally, serve to move people from them to other places (Bear, Ahern, Hanja, Violet, Braunsworth, Ambat, etc.), and those that do have limitations - layout, broken content, etc. that prevent that movement (Waterhead, Nova Albion, Luna). Imagine if there was some method to encourage exploration of surrounding areas and other locations right at the infohubs? Something to get people to showcased" areas or even 'round the block?

2. They are places where a melting pot of members can meet and congregate. Whether or not this was intended, it is the way the spaces operate. Having new people have these spaces as home locations, being able to set home at these locations, and other such things make it clear that there is at least some intent for these to be gathering places. Unfortunately, it seems human nature that many of those who use these places are not always the most "refined" members of the SL community. While some do genuinely want to help, and do a commendable job, there are a lot of WA detritus that tend to be the lowest common denominator of SL users. Thin GTeam and other resources keep that a continuing issue.

What would I propose? That I'm not sure. We should look at ways of dividing this traffic in a logical way. Make a landing point that makes it clear where new folks should go and gives them options, while also providing an alternate path into the wider "melting pot" of SL life at an infohub. We need to continue t improve the level of discourse at those places, understanding too that some SL users really just want to spend their time making fart jokes. I'm sure it's possible, but it will take some technical know-how, an understanding of social engineering, and more than a little background in architecture and design. In other words, this would take some professionals with a background in all these sorts of things, as well as the time and financial resources to really set it right.

Mari