Thoughts on "Signal to noise ratio" in the forums

I posted this reply in Robin Linden's blog on the closing of these forums. I am reposting it here so people will see it and be able to comment specificly on this topic, if anyone wishes to.

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Some thoughts on the “Signal to noise ratio” complaints that Linden Labs has with the Forums.

If you’re running a shopping mall, and you take all the doors and windows away from the mall, including those protecting the stores in the mall, you should not be surprised to see an increase in looting and vandalism. Even if you hire lots of security guards, they can’t stop the flow of new thieves and vandals. The mall becomes unmanagable, and worthless. Who is to blame for that?

A forum will always have some irrelevant posts, some trolls who are there until the moderators ban them. But when Linden Labs opened SL to unverified, unlimited registration, they effectively removed any sense that misbehavior in the Forums would be punished. They ‘removed the doors and windows’, in that it creates a perception that any troll who wants to cause trouble or otherwise misbehave can do as they please. If that account gets banned, they can just go make another one. Who can stop them? And eventually even your otherwise stable, reasonable forum participants won’t see the need to hold back, as they see time and time again people who get away with all sorts of bad behavior.

So, is it the forum that is to blame for that? Or, just possibly, is it the direct result of a flawed management decision that no one seems willing to admit to?

A forum does NOT have to resemble an open cesspit. It doesn’t take armies of moderators to successfully run a forum that is pleasant to participate in and which has a very low level of trolls, and which has a very good signal to noise ratio. I have been a forum admin on a volunteer-run forum that has over 4000 members, 13 forum sections, and hundreds of thousands of posts. It’s run by two primary admins for the whole forum, plus one participant volunteer per forum section, entirely in the ’spare time’ of the participants. Posts are easy to search and to read through. The site allows one to create new accounts at will, as many as you want. Yet you won’t find a single troublesome troll that lasts more than a couple of posts, anywhere other than the entry forum, and few of them even there.

How can that be, you might ask? Well, for one thing, the forum is serious about their TOS and content policies. A troll who insists on causing trouble repeatedly loses their account. Period. But more importantly, newly-created accounts on the forums are only approved to post in an ‘Enter’ forum. They can post on any relevant topic that meets the TOS for the site. To post in the rest of the site, they have to create at least 30 posts in the Enter area that demonstrate that they can behave in a manner consistent with the forum’s guidelines, and then they have to be ’sponsored’, by an existing member or admin. Misbehave in the Enter forum, and the admins gently (or not so gently, as needed) inform you that such behavior is inappropriate. Continue to be a troll, and your account is banned. You never get in the door. The forum admins, including their version of ResMods, the volunteers for forum sections, can edit and delete inappropriate posts as required, and can lock threads.

I could go into further detail, but I think this illustrates my point sufficently. The problem is not that we have forums. The problem is not that there are trolls out there. The problem is that the vandals were given free run of the mall, with the *perception* that nothing would be done to them if they misbehave.

The problem of signal to noise ratio *could* be resolved by making the policies on accepted behavior clear, and ENFORCING appropriate behavior. If you don’t do that, the same problems that made the fourms useless to you will destroy the usefulness of these blogs, or any other viable method of community feedback that you attempt to use.

It's too late for reasonable reform and moderation of these forums. Too long have a number of modpets been allowed to belittle and insult others with unquestionable impunity while nonpets were locked, suspended and banned for similar offenses. Yes, LL fostered this envinronment to it's ruin; but no, not because they opened the floodgate. The problem seeded, festered and grew far beyond their control in 2004, all due to their own inequitable practices.

Please allow me to qualify this by saying that the forums have always belonged to LL, just as the grid does, and they are perfectly right to do whatever they please with it all. We've no more right to slam them for allowing a few residents to cheerfully destroy the forums' atmosphere than we have to slam them for closing selected ones.

All Hail the Lindens and Thier Wora'uld ~ They that are Gods can do no wrong ~ Their Minions shall reign forever!