Discussion Point: Why Are the Forums So Thinly Populated?

Its no secret that the forums are not representative of the population of SL, in general. As the population of SecondLife shoots ever higher, the forum population... well.... does not.

Most the poster on here are by now old hat... I recognize 75% of them from when I started visiting the forums on a regular basis.

My question is "Why?". Are we, the forum population too into SL for our own good? Do others simply not know the forums exist? Do they care?

To me, it is a baffling matter.

Anyone else care to comment?

It's actually pretty standard. Outside of professional forums, roughly 5% (optimistically high) of any population is active upon a social forum. Of that 5%, only 1% regularly post. The rest are lurkers.

Most people don't have time, and see no reason to make time for what is, essentially, social interaction online. They can do that at work, in the pub, at other social gatherings.

Others read and post for entertainment purposes, not unlike the manner in which some folks follow celebrity happenings, current events, politics, sports, etc.

Still others use online venues to be someone/something they cannot be in their real world.

The reasons are varied, but generally fall into one of the three listed.

I'm not sure, but most forums are not a good reflection of the population they represent.

A favorite thing of mine to do on the SL Forums is look for whenever Second Life has problems, like login troubles. I'll tend to scour and look for Residents with a post count of 1, asking "Why is Second Life down?", and hope they browse through more of the forums and maybe become more active contributors in the future. It is a perfect example of necessity framing why some people post here.

In addition to the reasons Cienna listed...

I also use the forums at times as a testing ground for personal notes with ideas piggybacked on others that share. I usually reference these with keywords so I can look back to them later and show them, at various stages of a project, perhaps, or the evolution of SL in general.

This forum is dieing.

The interesting/controversial/disruptive/dissenting/disenfranchised/just generally dissed/Anti-FIC posters have all been banished from here. It's OK though. It's all a part of the larger plan.

Well, some people might enjoy the 3D aspect of SL, which is conspicuously absent from the two D forums.

Many folks might be making use of the useful forums, the design, building, scripting, animating, etc. forums for help in creating, or the classifieds for their purposes, and they would scarcely be noticed, or reading the general forums for amusement or the occaissional bit of enlightenment amidst the constant stream of vitriol and bile.

A button or menu bar item for the forums would probably increase traffic here somewhat.
The repeated insistence on the part of many people on behaving as if this was an alt.flame Usenet newsgroup and winning the forums by demonstrating that one is the most intelligent and hateful person in the crowd might drive away some people who thought they were entering something resembling a product discussion forum where users of a software product would discuss things like how the software works or what uses it can be put to.

I might be at the welcome area paying attention now but the conversation is about sex with donkeys, video of people pooping, Hitler, douching, and the smell of vaginas, and the size of certain race's penises. It's so stupid and repellent at the WA at the moment it's making the forums seem sort of civilized by comparison, like the New Yorker magazine or something.

So I'm just glancing at the other monitor every once in a while.

Actually the conversation just got too disgusting to even ignore, time to close the program.

As one of the lurkers, I don't post because of the people that are seemingly quick to jump on anyone with different ideas, and because of the rudeness I have seen directed at newer members. It gets tiresome to watch people berate each other over trivial things, watching members continually bait each other, or are just flat out rude. I am risking being jumped on by even posting this, but oh well.

There is a link on the main program to forums, it is under Help. Most users probably don't think it means it goes to ALL forums, just to Help ones.

Also, a majority of my friends in game don't seem to care about forums or the drama in it. I have found this place to be worse than in-world drama at times, and so have they. But to each their own. If this is what makes you happy, then have at it. But I wouldn't waste time trying to figure out why the majority of SL users don't bother coming into forums. They just don't know or don't care.

"An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff."

-Adlai Stevenson, or Elbert Hubbard, depending on who you ask.

Or a forum is something that separates the wheat from the chaff and keeps the chaff.

Most forums I've been to seem to have this tendency.

The forums are mainly a place for people who like to demonstrate their Einstein like IQ power not even to mention their World Champion Wordsmanship skills. Second Life itself doesn't give medals for this so they hope to gain it here.

Since most Second Life people have no such delusional opinions of themselves they see no reason to post here.

Yup.

I want to add that I was once openly slammed and insulted, in the Welcome Area, by one of the Forum "Gods" due to a disagreement we had in the Forums. Telling new people to stay away from me because I was an idiot was not appreciated.

This particular person clearly demonstrated their lack of morals as well as any sense of self esteem. Sometimes it seems that the Forum Gods actually believe in their own sense of self importance and in their arrogance they are clueless about how idiotic they appear to others.

This post contains two proofs that the above statement isn't true.

This post contains two proofs that the above statement isn't true.

This post contains two proofs that the above statement isn't true.

Yeah, I saw part of that. That one's true.

Can you claify that statement? In other words... WTF?

Proof one: You're still here.
Proof two: So am I.

Oh. I thought you meant you and Che.

The forums have a bad reputation with many people. I get so much really good information from the forums that I can't imagine not spending time here, however I have a friend who won't come here. I pass on information to her and we are both happy. The forum is fine - it's much better than it once was.

We would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling kids!

"Me" and "Che"? You're mistake, comradista, I do not have a disassociated personality.

just adding a quote box, i think we might have a record here

back to the subject at hand i like the forums becuase it gives me a break from best in (insert color here) and SEX MANIA @ (insert club here) ...
since most of the sl population is into this i come here to read bigger words than sex or one of the primary colors, please feel free to flame me now -

so take that statement and reverse it, and maby it would be considered usefull insight for this thread , but knowing myself probally not.

also in said forums, and this is a OLD complaint by me when i first started, if you want to look for something simple you cant find it ...
do a search for lets say wearing an attachment and the un-forum savy are greeted with thousands of post's about how lady A's attachment caused greif, or even better! john c said im attached somewhere in a 15 page thread, its a cluster fk.

On the few seriously populated forums that i run (powerboard and phpbb) i took it on to seperate the forums into their own subforums. You still get a big list at the begining but you goto the help section and search for help with whatever, since its in its own little space you dont get a thousand results from areas you dont need or care about, without forcing the users, that in many cases can bareley use the full potinal of a website, to do advance serches.

lets face it, if your ford operated like a F14 fighter you wouldnt see many cars on the road either.

ive been running flamepots er i mean forums since before the internet and here is some things ive noticed for large project sucess

keep the front end clean... its daunting to a noob to see 2 pages of new post's at once and its hard to filter where you want to be or go. it also sux when your scanning 2 pages worth looking for new post within the areas your actually interested in.

Orginise the stupid thing, does off topic really belong in the same area as tech support?

ANNOUNCEMENTS DO NOT BELONG IN THE FORUMS!!! any decent cms has a news module that keeps that crap seprate, and you can still reply and post within the news module. infact alot areas could be kept off the forums using a news module and proper setup, and still make it seamless and intuitive to the user. keep the forums for jabber, if one really cares about what was news in dec 1999 they can use the news archive, and again its more intuitive. (more orginisation and cleaning)

And most important SUBFORUMS! this makes all the above ez to do. and dont anyone cry about extra database space, its 2005 i pay 4 bucks a month for unlimited db space on a secure server with fast bandwidth

anywho my 1L$

I'm new.

Funny, in-world I'm a complete hermit staying at 700m and building 95% of the time. I wish it to stay that way.

In forums... well, let's say I have no fear of other ideas or words.

It takes only the smallest leap of empathy to realise that a forum attack makes the attacker appear pathetic, so it's a non-issue to me.



Interspersed within the diatribes are phenomenally interesting perspectives and ideas.

I suspect that most people in the first world have no desire to log into SL or forums, preferring instead the soothing, over-the-counter-prescription drama of broadcast television.

The reason is very simple.

As the boss of The Forum Mob™, I have access to usage stats for the forums. Whenever a new user begins regularly posting to the forum, I use an advanced algorithmic analysis tool to determine the FICRank of their posts. The tool, which uses many of the same libraries that form the foundation of the Spinnaker Automatic Contrary Discourse System, then recommends a course of action based upon the FICRank it has given to the post:

FICRank 1 - 3: Poster's ideas and opinions are harmful to the FICStatus Quo™. Recommend coercive action.

FICRank 4 - 6: Poster's ideas and opinions are mostly ignorant and harmless. Send nastygram to discourage further posts.

FICRank 7 - 10: Poster is very likely to support concepts and policies that enhance the FICStatus Quo™. Send private message praising poster.


Interestingly, the distribution of FICRank scores is oddly slanted toward scores 1 - 3, with very few posters scoring in the 7 - 10 range. The result is that most new posters get a visit from The Forum Mob™, which is usually sufficient to ensure an end to their disruptive chatter.

Sure, there are a few who manage to stick around despite prescribed coercive action, but The Forum Mob™ knows how to discredit where discredit is due.

I'm a little surprised this had to be asked publicly, but I guess I'm not doing a good job of spreading the info. Please let me know if I can further inform you about the machinations of The Forum Mob™.

/me passes 'Ano a Scooby Snack.