Closing the Forums will make...

more forums obviously. Nows your chance to pimp those new alternative forums boys!

Here's mine: The Second Life Furry Forums , SL forums for the furries and furry friendly residents of SL. (currently waiting on my domain address, till then I'm using TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/hpl9r to make it easier to remember the address).

Having 20 different forums all specialized to one particular group in sl totally defeats the purpose.

Check out this site put up by Clubside Granville. He replicated the SL forums to a T. I think it holds a lot of promise, as he's already pledged a lot of resources to the project (as discussed here )

Plus, there's already a kitty photo in the sandbox. How can you go wrong?

Here's mine! A special group forum, for all you Liberal Bling Wearing Furry Gorean AgePlay Griefers out there!

I honestly though you were going to say, closing the forums will make more furries. lol

I have been reading the forums too long. gosh.

Troy

welcome to the 3d web.

??? But ... that's how the web IS. It has thousands, maybe millions, of forums gathering together people of similar interests so they can discuss matters common to their individual groups.

Having forums specialized per group is actually beneficial. By controlling the memberships they can reduce inter-group conflicts.

We need those specialized forums.

What we also need is a public meeting place where issues common to all groups can be discussed.

The internet is about connected decentralization. Decentralize where people are different and centralize only common ground.

I'm beginning to see some very exciting things in decentralization.

Among them, forums by group means you can set up decorative themes, text, organization that better cater to the needs of your group. Roleplayers can set up stories and since they are their own moderators they can better manage their RP threads. Also, group-oriented products are marketed better since the audience is known. Things will be easier to find.

It will mean more participation since, for example, furries won't have to fear anti-furries ... they know they have an accepting audience listening.

If groups want public and private spaces, they can do that too. As groups administer their own forums they have power to set viewing and access permissions.

On the flipside it will mean that those who concern themselves with "global" SL matters have to make the effort to not stay completely cloistered in their group forum.


For the sake of tradition: Closing the forums will bring out more furries! (and Goreans and robots, and elves, and ...)

I think many of us were hoping for a world.




Good luck with that.






I used to concern myself with "global" sl matters. But I don't have time to follow 654 blogs, websites and forums. SL for me now will be about cloistering myself on my island, and making money. yay! Welcome to Second Web.

*giggles* And I for one shall welcome our new overlords.. as long as they promise to overthrow the current regime. Yep, while we're into the whole early de-centralization process, might as well remove the Lindens too! j/k

Building a world doesn't mean that we all have to be at one place all the time. In some ways that's counterproductive because crowding people in one place tends to cause more conflict. You need groups so that there is harmony, and you need overlaps with other groups so that there is collaboration.

Right now it's a real pain everytime I see inter-ideological conflict on these forums. I skip those threads but I can still feel the tension. If this decentralization would minimize that tension to allow people to have more sober discussions, then perhaps for that alone it will be worth it.



There will be maybe 4 or 5 forums taking care of that.



Hoping for a world eh?

WAS being the operative word. I think you're missing my cynicism. I'm just going to go along with the plan now.

Hmm ....

I just realized an excellent strategy for LL. Closing the forums will force new forums to open. Individual groups will gain administrative power over thier groups which leads to increased flexibility, and off topic material will be forced to migrate.

Then after some time, maybe a year, the Lindens can open a new official forum where only global community matters will be discussed. The moderators can adopt stricter guidelines on posting (e.g. no off-topic posts). It can also have a newbie help area where an army of selected volunteers can field newbie questions.

The Lindens can create a portal page that leads to all these group forums.

If the above were done what we will have is a scaled version of the forum. It will have distributed (and scaled) moderation and administration. The physical structure of the forum is replicated where all the resident-run forums are like sub-forums with their own moderators.

This means we can still have all our fun, just elsewhere, and we can still get a common discussion ground where the Lindens will have an easier time tracking and controlling the tone of the discussion.

They could do that now if they were at all interested. They're not.

Do yourself a favour... go get an island and don't worry about "the world". It's what LL wants you to do.

No they can't.

Unless the community successfully migrates and re-establishes itself outside the forums they can't just reopen the forums with those new rules. They will be forced to put everyone on moderation initially and that's something you definitely don't want.

To preserve the community you have to give time for everyone to settle down into the new places. This might take several months to happen, weeks if we're lucky.

The inertia of this community stems from:

1. The wide breadth of topics in SL

2. The mistake made early on of allowing off-topic discussions on the forum.

If LL was interested in keeping the forums, they could have thrown more money at it and moderated it properly. But they don't, and the reason is because discussions about ageplay, downtime, slavery and other contentious topics are not good PR for the product.

From a PR point of view, closing the forums is a very good move. Investors will have a harder time finding 3rd party forums than they would an official forum to get the dirt on SL. I can't say I blame them for protecting the business at all. But an unfortunate side effect of closing the forums is splintering whatever sense of global community some of us were trying to hold on to.



WHEEEEE!!!!
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[1] PR notwithstanding, its not a good idea to have such topics on an official forum in the first place.

[2] Nope. The third party forums will be listed on the official site. As is, the press needs to login to use this forum. Info about SL will be even more accessible now.

[3] Precisely the reason we need to work on this aspect. If you ask me, we're doing a pretty good job of splintering the community all by our lonesome with all the topics we have on ideological conflict. I like being able to discuss on a centralized forum, but how do you keep your peace with all those explosions happening all over the place?

Hey age-players (pedo's) already have their forums, I bet the FBI is all over those. Not to mention those damn Gorean slavers...

They (Investors) will find the alternative forums fast as... IF they want..

Use this and you wil find.... --->>> Google.

IF I shall invest (I have not millions so it cant be me). I let a company, a bank, a.. any to check up the company, the board, the borads family, the ... al.. above the carpet and under it.. and I am sure that any serious investors will do it..

BUT I agree with you.. Ingrid.. The truth are prob not the most fun for LL. BUT I am not sure that close the forum will help...

/Tina

Jeff Bezo, one of them investors... he is supposed to be a Gorean age-playing furry. Not to mention, you all know that this guy invested in "IT". Hah!

http://sl.stratics.com - enter the forums by scrolling down a bit on the left to "Forum Index", then click the "Sign up" link at the top to join for free.

Avatar pictures optional.

Lewis

What is his ava name in SL?

)

/Tina - NO! I am EXAKT engaged in SL! (Single IRL BTW)

HawtTeengrllooking4sex0r Wellhung

Not quite right: Keep in mind that the forums here were PRIVATE to some degree. People had to register (easy, yes, but it limits it a bit) to get access.

That's not the case now. Somebody walks over to www.sldrama.com and posts about horribletechnosexact#21839 and it get's scooped by google. Slightly worse than it hapening here, behind closed dooes, aye?

I'm sure it was tough for the Lindens seeing those kinds of threads in the forums, but it's what's on people's minds though. Free speech.. blah blah. The discussions needed far more moderation though at times.



Nothing has changed. You don't need to login to get to the resident sites page. Hit the community button and you'll see a link to the page on the left hand side.



Their solution is to just shuffle us all off. Ideological conflicts can often get ugly. Best to hide it! Like I said, I can understand why they would want to. If it was my company, I'd probably do the same. But as a resident, it really does change the way you feel about SL.




Better moderation I think. Not volunteers. Proper, hard-ass moderators.

I hope you're right, I hope closing the forums is a good thing for residents as well as LL. I guess we'll know in 6 months time. At the moment though, I can't see it being a big plus for the people who pay the bills.

Are "Tinys" allowed in this forum, assuming they meet all the other criteria?