Welcome Area

[Claudio Earthboy]

Hello,

I have a question regarding some lands i see there for newcomer's on SL, welcome area's and such...

Do we have to get an authorization to build a land like that for the new residents on SecondLife ?

[Alwin Alcott]

you can build as much welcome area;s as you like, buy sims and go ahead

but i really doubt you will get authorization for a official status for it, it will be just public land.

[Qie Niangao]

Welcome areas (Ahern, Waterhead, etc.) once played a central role in the new user experience. There's a whole long history of their evolution, the introduction of "Infohubs", etc., etc., but long story short: they aren't very important anymore, especially not to new users. They still are significant, however, in their Infohub role as places where avatars rez when their last location is offline at login. I think they're also still among the Linden locations where one can "Set home to here".

At some point, there was an experiment with allowing private groups to offer their regions as new user orientation locations. Presumably these were scrutinized carefully before being activated. IIRC, those locations were required to have staff on-site 24/7, making them a pretty resource-intensive investment. I think there's still an Adult gateway portal like that, and maybe one or more language-specific portals. (It's been a long time since I made a new account myself.)