Created by Pam Ribble
(this guide does not necessarily reflect any polices or opinions of the Second Life Library 2.0)
There are many articles online explaining SL and several web/inworld newspapers which will give you the flavour of it, but it will take a while to set up a character and control it in SL. Don't pay $10 USD to set up a premium account, there is no initial advantage, you only need one if you want to buy land from Linden Lab.
If you want a book to read then I highly recommend Second Life: the official guide Rymaszewski, M
Firstly there is the lingo to consider
AV/Avatar - your in-world character, who may not need food but will need a skin and nice clothing to look good!
Chat – Anything typed here will be visible to all people in the vicinity (within 20 metres), there is also an option to ‘shout’ and your message will then be heard across the current sim.
Griefer – a vandal/attacker. They may push, cage or otherwise impede your AV or blast your screen with images and/or sound. Most common in newbie or heavily populated areas, their main attacks can be negated by seating your AV or by teleporting to another location. Set a ‘Home’ location (via the World tab at the top of the screen) as soon as possible. This will give you an escape route via the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+H
IM/Instant message, sent to a specific person who need not be at your current location. Some messages are stored when people are offline, but they can be ‘capped’ which means that later messages may force earlier ones from the list. There is an option to have these messages forwarded to your email from the Preferences screen.
L$/Lindens - Linden dollars, these have a real fluctuating exchange rate like any other currency.
LL - Linden lab who control & host SL, all their staff have the inworld second name Linden.
LM/Landmark - which gives you the required co-ordinates in a clickable link.
Prims - Linden lab provides the platform where anyone can build, but every object, houses, furniture, cars, plants etc are created by the people who use SL. All these items are based on 'prims' or 'primitives,' the basic building blocks of several shapes from which everything is formed. Each area can only support a certain number of prims so they are usually quoted on all items. For example a 512sq.m plot of land will only allow you 117 prims, so you need a very basic house if you want any furniture.
RL - Real life
SL - Second Life
SLT – Second Life time (LL is in California so this is also PST)
TP - Teleport - the main method for getting around, instant transport from one set of co-ordinates to another.
There are also common shortforms:
KK – OK
NP – No problem
YW - You’re welcome
YVW - You’re very welcome
Gamers frequently get confused because they are used to computer generated characters, but every avatar you meet in world is controlled by a real person tens of thousands are inworld all the time.
You can learn a great deal about SL from the web:
Linden Labs' explanation of SL
http://secondlife.com/whatis/
SL Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
SL weekly newspapers
Some of the best of the really stunning places to visit, are listed here in the famous Second Seeker 'no-sleaze' guide:
If you have time to look at just one review or visit one place inworld other than Info Island then make it Svarga. You can get a taste of it in a flying guided tour inworld that takes about 5 mins.
SL items for sale via the web - great for getting a flavour of what it's like inworld.
Links specifically to InfoIsland and Cybrary where most of the information providers lurk.
http://www.talis.com/tdn/node/1506 (Talis network competition entry based on SL resource centre).
Several universities have outposts in SL too.