I am new to Second Life ...

... What do I do now? I have genuinely lost count of the number of times I have heard this and similar questions. I always try my best to help people new to Second Life particularly if they have stumbled onto us at OneFinalDarkness; both Babs and I remember being new to Second Life although in fairness that is now over a year ago and we are both very comfortable in our second lives.

The way we look at new residents arriving on our Sim is as an opportunity to help them avoid some of the stumbling blocks of the early days of Second Life and maybe give them a chance to enjoy some safe relaxation in a friendly environment. We always encourage them to come along to our regular events and we often find that when they have been introduced to some of our friends they rapidly start to enjoy Second Life to it's fullest extent.

We are very lucky to have a wide range of friends and some of them enjoy producing music events for us such as: DJ Than and his hostess Shelly (they are US based) or perhaps Meri or Sean they are UK based. With this quite broad range of times we cover and provide events during there is usually something that people can find to look forward to (see calendar here).

In addition to the events we also provide a camping system for people who have demonstrated that they are regularly at events and around the sim. The camping is not for huge amounts of money but for someone just starting up it is a very approachable way to start exploring Second Life with no risk to pocket to be concerned about.

One of the great joys is to see people starting to branch out in Second Life and on more than one occasion we have been able to give them a flying start at the commercail side of Second Life by providing either very cheap or even sometimes Free Rental Shop Space. There really are some superb ideas out there from new residents and unlike us rather more 'jaded' residents the enthusiasm can be infectious!!!

I won't pretend that there haven't been some heated moments with new residents ... In reality we all know it is a virtual world ... we also know that rezzing a full size replica of a B52 in the middle of someones bar isn't exactly going to kill anyone ... LOLOLOL; but of course words have to be exchanged over such incidents and although the vast majority of new residents say 'Oooo I am soooo sorry!!' there are those that take the attitude 'So what ... why shouldn't I do that!!! '. There are different approaches but the one Babs and I find most positive is to be as firm as possible and ask that there are no further instances or polite persuasion will probably have to escalate. We haven't had any real issues so far which is a credit to the general maturity of the people we see attracted to Second Life.

As a summary and an answer to the question ... I would suggest people use common sense and if they don't understand something they find someone to ask rather that blunder on ... we all would prefer to answer questions than pick up the dust of a broken Sim or have to dust off the cobwebs from a banned list.

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