Nobody goes to the Community Exhibition in WelcomeHub.

[Qie Niangao]

8 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

The first time you enter a region with an Experience, such as any Linden Game, you get this popup.

Yeah, this is all pretty strange. I checked my list of Experiences and they include a bunch "enabled for all residents" including "Experience Squeaky Mole", "Horizons", "Linden Homes", "Linden Realms", "New User Experience", "SL15B", "Social Casino", "Social Island 2013-10", "Styngr" all grid-scope, and the land-scope "London City". For PaleoQuest, though, they're using an ordinary experience, "PQ2015", not enabled for all residents. Hence the scary dialog for portal access, I guess. Maybe this is all still part of what Quartz meant by the "fix… in QA at the moment" so maybe the WelcomeHub portals eventually won't need the scary permissions dialog.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

I think those sims are a bit overwhelming for new people. When I joined in 2004 Orientation island was a path that you followed that took you to different scripted learning stations. It was effective in the sense that it was self guided and easy. 

I find the current set up to be too much. It's too big, people are too spread too far apart from each other and there's a lot of stuff there that makes not much sense to a newbie. I think they need to simplify simplify simplify the new user experience. 

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 2/23/2024 at 7:05 AM, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Why does the Hub still have those perpetually empty and unused Motown and Cinema sims as part of the "New Resident" experience?

I doubt very much that the average New Resident wants to spend their first few minutes or hours in SL by sitting alone in an empty cinema watching videos, or walking around a deserted ghost town that has no live Motown music being performed in it.

This is what I'm talking about

 

[Sid Nagy]

48 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I think those sims are a bit overwhelming for new people. When I joined in 2004 Orientation island was a path that you followed that took you to different scripted learning stations. It was effective in the sense that it was self guided and easy. 

I find the current set up to be too much. It's too big, people are too spread too far apart from each other and there's a lot of stuff there that makes not much sense to a newbie. I think they need to simplify simplify simplify the new user experience. 

When I joined in 2007 people thought the learning curve for SL was (too) steep.
Now have a look at our wonderful world. Newbies have to learn everything we had to learn but also about system avatars, mesh bodies, mesh heads, appliers, BOM, skins, skin tones, tattoo layers, different browsers, hair bases, make up, wrinkles, eyebrows, eyes, ears, HUDS, marketplace, why clothes don't always fit, basic, basic plus, premium, premium plus, EEP, eeks and all the things I forgot or still don't know about.

Not the welcome space is too complicated, SL in itself is.

Edited February 25 by Sid Nagy

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

When I joined in 2007 people thought the learning curve for SL was (too) steep.
Now have a look at our wonderful world. Newbies have to learn everything we had to learn but also about system avatars, mesh bodies, mesh heads, appliers, BOM, skins, skin tones, tattoo layers, different browsers, hair bases, make up, wrinkles, eyebrows, eyes, ears, basic, basic plus, premium, premium plus, EEP, eeks and all the things I still don't know about.

Not the welcome space is to complicated, SL in itself is.

Yep! Little simpler things like Senra bodies and Bellisseria homes should help offset that.

Edited February 25 by Love Zhaoying

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

8 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Not the welcome space is to complicated, SL in itself is.

no,. the welcome space is also too complicated. And it turns people off i think. 

[Sid Nagy]

5 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

no,. the welcome space is also too complicated. And it turns people off i think. 

Yes, I agree, the welcome islands are complicated, but really nothing compared to the rest of SL.
People who can't even handle the welcome area will never succeed in SL IMHO.

Edited February 25 by Sid Nagy

[Alazarin Mondrian]

Quote

People who can't even handle the welcome area will never succeed in SL IMHO.

I've been failing at SL ever since I joined

[Jaylinbridges]

6 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

For PaleoQuest, though, they're using an ordinary experience, "PQ2015", not enabled for all residents. Hence the scary dialog for portal access, I guess. Maybe this is all still part of what Quartz meant by the "fix… in QA at the moment" so maybe the WelcomeHub portals eventually won't need the scary permissions dialog.

It's not clear who or why some Experiences are added automatically, and some are like PaleoQuest, that gives you the scary popup.  Smaller groups often have the popup , but larger ones do not.  Firestorm Experience is automatic, but BoysTown gives out the popup permission before entering.  Has nothing to do with region Maturity Rating, or Group ownership, or anything consistent.  The ones with the popup allow you to Forget or Block the Experience, and auto perm ones have those options greyed out. 

The SL Knowledgebase is of no help:

Quote

Most experiences automatically prompt you to join the experience the first time you interact with them. When this happens you receive a notification informing you of the permissions you will be granting to the experience, and four possible responses:

But "most" do not auto prompt.  

Edited February 26 by Jaylinbridges

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

I honestly think Welcome island was nice. But it was too much of a hang out, as opposed to paths that took you from activity to activity. I think the pop up windows were really effective for teaching.

 

[Rowan Amore]

It would certainly help if there were a Mole available when needed at the Hub.  Stopped by today and there was a man standing in the landing zone, totally naked with attachment.  I'm sure the 2 mentors asked him to dress or move but he's just standing there with brand new folks landing on him.  NOT the best intro to SL.

Edited February 26 by Rowan Amore

[Love Zhaoying]

13 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

It would certainly help if there were a Mole available when needed at the Hub. 

I'm reminded of the old days. When I was a cub, you could page a Linden to deal with Griefers, right then and there!

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

36 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

It would certainly help if there were a Mole available when needed at the Hub.  Stopped by today and there was a man standing in the landing zone, totally naked with attachment.  I'm sure the 2 mentors asked him to dress or move but he's just standing there with brand new folks landing on him.  NOT the best intro to SL.

Ironic...

Sid says "no music = no party" and gets reported to the Motown PD, and outlawed pretty damn quick, some d*ckwalker loiters at the noob welcome area, and... *sound of crickets*.

 

[Persephone Emerald]

27 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Ironic...

Sid says "no music = no party" and gets reported to the Motown PD, and outlawed pretty damn quick, some d*ckwalker loiters at the noob welcome area, and... *sound of crickets*.

What sound does a noob make in the forest if there are no Lindens or Moles to hear him?  

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

On 2/23/2024 at 4:05 AM, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Why does the Hub still have those perpetually empty and unused Motown and Cinema sims as part of the "New Resident" experience?

I doubt very much that the average New Resident wants to spend their first few minutes or hours in SL by sitting alone in an empty cinema watching videos, or walking around a deserted ghost town that has no live Motown music being performed in it.

(And even if Motown sim were actually busy, is it really a suitable place that a New Resident wants to be trapped inside,  suffering crippling lag because of crowds of high complexity avatars?)

They should just hand that off to a 'sign up here to be DJ this location' thing.

Don't know if it's still around, but there used to be a 'dance island' or something venue that had 24/7 DJs and all the welcome hubs would send me to it so I had always assumed it was linden or mole ran. There's also the "Shelter" club in Isabel (that I think is mostly dead now) - it was a venue that ran music and was themed as a 'place for newbies to meet helpful oldbies and vice versa.'

The Motown region could just let any DJ show up, and be tuned to some basic online radio stations any time a DJ wasn't there - then have assorted dance balls and signs 'over here in this spot' to other G and M rated clubs.

 

Edited February 26 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Adorarose Trueheart]

Scavenger hunt for each booth as they did have hunt at The Motown during the last few months.  Play ground for grown ups. 

Edited February 26 by Adorarose Trueheart

[Love Zhaoying]

29 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

What sound does a noob make in the forest if there are no Lindens or Moles to hear him?  

Depends on what they're using for "gesture bait"!

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

It would certainly help if there were a Mole available when needed at the Hub.  Stopped by today and there was a man standing in the landing zone, totally naked with attachment.  I'm sure the 2 mentors asked him to dress or move but he's just standing there with brand new folks landing on him.  NOT the best intro to SL.

Ironic...

Sid says "no music = no party" and gets reported to the Motown PD, and outlawed pretty damn quick, some d*ckwalker loiters at the noob welcome area, and... *sound of crickets*.

Ohh! Until I saw the quote, I wondered what a "duckwalker" is.  

[Adorarose Trueheart]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Ohh! Until I saw the quote, I wondered what a "duckwalker" is.  

We need more cute ducks. Isn't thier a script that detects if they have nothing on I thought some sims had that it sends them some were they can't come back til have clothes on.  

Edited February 26 by Adorarose Trueheart

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Ohh! Until I saw the quote, I wondered what a "duckwalker" is.  

Copied to add: I figured out the connection between a "duckwalker" and a "d*ckwalker".

Wait for it..

A "d*ckwalker" is "going full Donald"!!!

(This is a Donald Duck reference used in comedy - did not lookup the origin, because Donald Duck never wears pants.)

[Jaylinbridges]

6 hours ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

Don't know if it's still around, but there used to be a 'dance island' or something venue that had 24/7 DJs and all the welcome hubs would send me to it so I had always assumed it was linden or mole ran

Dance Island is still there, and mostly dead.  It is not owned or run by Lindens or Moles.  No successful club has been run by Lindens, they are not in the music business.  Dance Island flies flags from Italy and the Netherlands.  It is euro based and only has DJ sets in the US morning hours. No DJ's are signed up for any sets after noon SLT, until about 8am SLT.  There is always a good reason why clubs have no takers for prime time hours in the Americas.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1szENjWmJK33-qudX6kvaKFxiUZleJdtXcOYcN2KQshE/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&hl=en_US&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Most DJ's are not interested in playing at a venue where the crowd does not tip.  That would apply to the newbie crowd at MoTown too.  LL will not stream web stations.  They don't want to pay the web music streaming fees for using a legal web station.

Edited February 27 by Jaylinbridges

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Dance Island is still there, and mostly dead.  It is not owned or run by Lindens or Moles.  No successful club has been run by Lindens, they are not in the music business.  Dance Island flies flags from Italy and the Netherlands.  It is euro based and only has DJ sets in the US morning hours. No DJ's are signed up for any sets after noon SLT, until about 8am SLT.  There is always a good reason why clubs have no takers for prime time hours in the Americas.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1szENjWmJK33-qudX6kvaKFxiUZleJdtXcOYcN2KQshE/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&hl=en_US&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Most DJ's are not interested in playing at a venue where the crowd does not tip.  That would apply to the newbie crowd at MoTown too.  LL will not stream web stations.  They don't want to pay the web music streaming fees for using a legal web station.

I really wouldn't expect them to pay DJs or pay to stream music but there is a ton of royalty free music out there.  They could compile various genre playlist to play throughout the day.  It's nice.that they have the dancing section of the social area but come.on!  They've been playing the same SL birthday crap.since day one.  Doesn't make a good impression that LL maintains the Hub very well.

[Drayke Newall]

On 2/24/2024 at 1:35 AM, Persephone Emerald said:

The Motown region is there because it's sponsored. I'm sure LL has a legal agreement to keep it there for a specified period of time. They probably would like other companies to pay for such regions too, so it's advertising for those that might be interested. There are 3 big problems with the Motown region however. 1st, that they're trying to sell something to residents (music) that they can already get for free in SL or through their computer. 2nd, that their service only works for people in the US (and maybe Canada?), and even when their demo version works for the rest of us, it's slow to load up. (It does help show how experiences can work though.) 3rd, that there have been no events there since the region first opened, so it's dead. "Oh look, and empty city region" is not a great marketing tool.

I am sure the Motown region can be used by Linden Lab for other things other than just adding a temp attach hud for US residents only to play music.

I said it before when it first opened in these forums that the easiest way for it to be populated at least some of the time and to help user retention etc. is for each new resident from that week be sent an invite to attend a 'welcome concert party' event at the end of the week offering music, fun, freebies, etc.

This would make the region and stage at least used once a week and provide a meaning for it to be there whilst also showing new users how Second Life can be used and how it can be fun.

But yeah...

On 2/24/2024 at 9:31 AM, Persephone Emerald said:

Oooo, maybe it can look like a paper clip?

I know you said this maybe in jest but, why hasn't a helper been added to the viewer UI? There is no need for some laggy NPC companion. Someone mentioned earlier that no new person sees the new IM from a mentor or doesn't know how to use it. This is where such a system would shine.

For example:

• Firstly, the UI helper is togglable off and on and if left on is only there for 30days and auto turns off unless turned on.
• Secondly, it helps the user dynamically based on what happens in the viewer UI itself. I.e, taking the IM issue mentioned above; as soon as the new user receives their first IM the UI helper pops up saying "I see you have received your first IM (Instant Message) in world! This is a private chat between you and someone else only. To answer do blah, blah, blah...
• It would easily guide people into how to use the most complicated thing of SL - the viewer of which is also the hardest thing for mentors to explain.

You said a paper clip, I have always proposed the system should be Megellan Linden and that the Welcome Hub should be themed on the famous Second Life explorer (the new user exploring how to use SL through the actual story of an Explorer Linden and his adventures in discovering the Second Life Continent - main land).

Having both the Welcome Hub themed on him and having a UI helper being him is a no brainer. Newbs are exploring SL for the first time and learning... Megellan is an explorer. Paleio Quest and Linden Realms are based on Megellen and can be part of the entire Welcome Hub story. There are places in old SL that can be updated that can be explored that are based on Megellan. He has an an entire history and story to go by and his own blog (though not updated anymore).

As MS eventually admitted to, Clippy was optimised for people using Word for the first time. And for a first time user of Word it was good. The problem it saw was that he never went away... ever and it was this continuous pestering that people hated and saw him removed. So long as the above UI companion/assistant expires after a period of 'newb' or can turn off I believe it would be a great addition.

Not to mention a dedicated new user chat only visible and useable to new users, mentors, moles and Lindens.

But yeah...

ETA:

I also remember a very long time (going back to Win95 now lol) where Compton's Encyclopaedia had an interactive UI helper whereby certain features and help was voiced with video of Patrick Stewart the actor. Helpful UI assistants are not new and when done right can be fun and very helpful.

On 2/26/2024 at 3:18 AM, Persephone Emerald said:

I wish the Linden Realms gem collecting game were an easier way to earn lindens. I know regular players gamed it so much that LL had to make it harder, but it used to be a great way for newbies to earn a little money. Paleoquest is for the more serious gamers, but I agree that it's too strict about jumping too high or sitting too long. It even scares me, though I think it looks great.

Can Linden Lab please figure out some way for newbies to earn a few lindens? I think the rest of us pay enough now in transaction fees that they should be able to afford to give the newbies an incentive to stay and spend money too.

As much as I detest the idea of the Social Casino, it's fun to play the games there, even if the payout is not spendable on anything. The Skills Games region is not for me, but it usually has a few avatars in it, so that's a win for LL.

There are plenty of ways to earn good money in SL for free (some allow you to earn 100's of lindens a day not the measly 50 a week Linden Realm offers) but, because Linden Lab dont own them or aren't getting paid by some sponsor for it, they dont mention or use them.

I remember Linden Money Trees being everywhere back in the early hype years of SL and of course we also all remember L$ camping stuff. Both which many new users were able to earn decent Lindens to subsidise the items they couldn't get at the gazillion freebie places around.

Now those ways to earn lindens are gone (or banned), the new ways are not advertised by LL like the old ones were and the gazillion freebie places (also once advertised at old welcome hubs and was a key reason why people stayed - they didn't need to spend money) have reduced to one or two of which haven't seen quality or comparable modern items for free added in near 15 years.

This means that it is left to new users either blindly searching or by chance discovering them or by pure luck meeting someone that knows those ways to earn cash or how to get good freebie things that cant be found in one place.

Edited February 27 by Drayke Newall

[Jaylinbridges]

6 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

There are plenty of ways to earn good money in SL for free (some allow you to earn 100's of lindens a day not the measly 50 a week Linden Realm offers) but, because Linden Lab dont own them or aren't getting paid by some sponsor for it, they dont mention or use them.

A few years ago, LL cut the Quest payout to 25 $L per week.  They also cut the number of identical 12 regions Realms from six to one, and cut the number of crystals that rezzed per hour, meaning more players chasing fewer crystals.  This was done to make the Realms less attractive to "cheaters", they said.  But just adding the Payment Info Used requirement to cash in actually removed most of the multiple alt "cheaters" with no PIOF.  Now there are no cheaters, and barely a reason to play because of the pitiful low returns for your time.

It takes about 5 hours of continuous running and dodging the hazards to collect about 75 $L.  Add the 25 $L Quest time, which is about 30 mins for an average player. So you can make 250 lindens, by playing for 15 hours, plus of course any breaks your body might require.  All for $1 USD.!  A newbie also must pay the $1.95 Buy Fee once, before he can play, to satisfy the PIU rule.  So, to break even, you would need to play for 30 hours, over several weeks.  After that if you have 5 hrs/week (more like 6 hrs with health breaks) you can earn 100 $L/week, or 430 $L / month. Assuming you always play every week - no time off for you. Is 40 cents/week for 5 hrs of work a good deal for the SL economy?   SL needs to find a realistic way for new residents to earn lindens.  Right now their answer is Just Buy Lindens with your dollars - SL has no use for residents that cannot add US dollars to the LL balance sheet.

 

 

 

Edited February 27 by Jaylinbridges

[Love Zhaoying]

Have you noticed? "Nobody goes to the Community Exhibition in WelcomeHub", but people sure like to talk about it!

I think by the Forum standards, that means it is a rousing success!