I changed my mind, closing down the forums is a good thing.

Well i changed my mind, i thought it was going to be a bad thing closing down the forums, but in another way, its a good thing, this is just a test to see if we would create our own communities with out LL's help. Many new sites dealing with sl problems and new products third party sites are going to come up and everyone will start making blogs and connecting each site as a community, in a way this would be better since we dont have to deal with stupid resmods closing threads we can be our own resmods and we dont have to deal with lindens giving shitty responses, we can connect and link sites we like and our friends site and form a large chain of the SL community. We are a strong community, instead of going into panic, we should start looking ahead, at the future.

agreed

I see what you mean, and I half-agree with you...

It is always better having a community not associated with the main product but this forum is still the main communication hub of SL, which links everything else to SL. What would be the linker when the forums close?

It may be too heavy for Linden Lab to monitor this forum as the population gets larger, but it's been suggested that they can easily create a page that can serve as a portal to all the resident-created forums. They can still be the hub.

As I was typing this I now understand exactly why LL has to close the forum despite our population being smaller than, say, WoW. With typical MMOGs there is more focus in the discussion because content is relatively static. SL on the other hand has so much diversity that in terms of idea-flow it will quickly outgrow a centralized forum. It's not happening now but if there is even a brief period of exponential growth, we will see everything become unmanageable.

In a past forum I frequented the concurrent players in a single server was as much as SL's typical concurrent. There were 8 servers total. There were also more people on the boards. However, the SL forum generates more than 3x as many topics over the same period of time. There were even times that a very active sub-forum did not generate any new topics for 3 or 4 days. Just posts, no new topic.

It's not our numbers ... it's the rate at which new topics are generated.

Well I'm Just going to live with any dicision that LL makes towards the forum. It is part of the ToS that the user accepts that LL can ceise to offer any part of the service or all of the service...

Basically, they do, we live with

I couldn't agree with you more Wuvme.

while i lament the loss of these forums, there is a good point in what it can produce elsewise.

reminds me of this thread that i started a couple days ago.

It is true. Closing the forums that they're closing is a reasonble decision. It's only the timing that's off. They should've remained closed months ago when LL first did away with General, Off Topic et al. For some as yet undetermined reason they let us bully them back into this mess.

It's good to see them finally begin to treat us like customers and run the company like professionals offering a service.

I'm really on the fence about this whole forum closure thing and haven't decided ultimately how I feel about this decision by LL. I do know that it's going to be really weird not having the LL-run forums to peruse; even as my time in-world has decreased over the past year and a half, I am still regularly drawn to the SL forums by some almost magnetic (and perhaps perverse) attraction. I have always liked SLUniverse.com, though, and anticipate spending my time there once these forums are dead and buried.

The SL Forums are dead. Long live the SL Forums!

Were you being sarcastic?

A company doesn't silence it's customers. Typically, unless they have a monopoly or are looking for potential buyers, they listen to them. And in a virtual-world that parrots real-life in many ways, taking a hand in building a sense of community might be a good customer relation thing too....

As for the professional part. I'm eager to see that happen. When is it supposed to start?

Hopefully people will start creating better discussion enviroments. There is a big lack of that in game and usually if it's a discussion it's something boring. I want to see people get together and have debates, real conversations instead of yawn worthy topics. Plus I'm sick of clubs. There isn't much interraction except for small words like Oh I like this song..no meaningful conversation, nothing thought provoking.

Plus, we all have more fun in the game but once we speak on the forum it gets out of hand and psychotic.

I kind of agree with this. When I am just hanging around people sometimes ask me where I am from and how old I am. That is just the ultimate in boring because they can see from my profile that I am from Susieland and am almost 2 years old.

As far as clubs go it seems that many people think howlz and cackle cackle is the thing to say.

If someone can create a nice forum without all of the petty little oneupmanship I will gladly go there.

Oh not just a forum but a place in SL to chat...maybe even a whole sim dedicated to conversation. I have ideas but I'm tired of sharing ideas due to people being mean about it in the end and I can't afford these ideas. If someone would like to create this sim out of their own ideas do it. If someone would like to create this sim with my ideas, send me a PM because I have some good ones. I won't claim myself as God of your sim however I just want to be apart of your group as a reward rather than money.

I do like to help and share concepts but only to trustworthy people that wont just toss me out after sharing ideas and implementation.

I agree I have thought in the back of my mind that maybe LL's plan all alone was to get the crap on somebody else's servers and then bring back the valuable boards. Yet I also think they are trying to be techie with the blogs. I am resisting the blog movement but I guess I will have to give in at some time and create one that I actually write in haha!

Bring on the flames for my next statement. I was pissed when I heard they was closing the boards but then 45 minutes later there was 50 or more flame threads directed at LL, for announcing they was going to close the forums. Thats when it sunk in that they are tired of the BS dealt by most of the debators, trolls,comedians,and plain assholes here at the current time. Tho from time to time I did find some information on the forums quite helpful. I also got a response from somebody on a product I was looking for.

I hope in due time LL will bring back the forums to help with certain topics. Once they do away with certain topics it will hamper a lot of residents that search for certain things or need to ask a question that somebody else is also thinking of asking. I know there is going to be some repetativly asked question of Guy and Torley. Hopefully they thought about that when deciding to close.

That is the reason. I think they are making a wise choice though because right now SL is getting publicity from news sources, rockstars, record labels and people that can bring in others into SL and if the press are reading the forums instead of experiencing second life in world then they will have alot of negative press to report as well.

I do think the press should emphasize that second life, the main grid has alot of adult content so that parents can be more aware before they ask their child "Honey, why am I being billed for second life on my credit card?" and child says Oh it's a game that is just like world of warcraft!! Oh okay says the parent, carry on. I know we point so much blame on parents but some parents are gullible and want to give their teen privacy or be their child's friend instead of their parent so the least parents can have is a warning of some sort.

Someone mentioned a "Center Hub" site that residents can send their website links, yes i believe this is a good idea. Kinda like the "Yellow Pages" but with links to residents sites, i know they have one but its very boring and should be a new URL that all the residents know.
This way it would be less on LL and more on the residents to take their community to the next level.

I just want a community where im not watched and i can speak my mind without someone monitoring my words and my moves.

EDIT: on their main site to connecting the rest of the community, they would have "Linden Lab news" where they can post important news about SL. Then on the bottom just links to resident-run sites.

So, who is going to build the grooviest forum inworld?

First, if it happens the way the OP suggests, I'm all for it. We'll see.

Second, And if it works.... GOMmed - which might be ironic.

How can you replace a two way medium like the forums with one way mediums like blogs & websites ?

How can fragmenting an existing community, and removing the only place where SL residents came together in any real numbers be beneficial?

A centralized forum does what it does, just because you don't enjoy certain aspects doesn't mean good that can't come from any other kind of source can't come from it, you just have to accept, or better ignore, the rough with the smooth.

Make no mistake, the forums are being removed for LL's benefit not ours and by definition, it is not a constructive move. If you're happy about having more and more taken away from you, particularly as a paying customer, then fine. I'm not.

It'll be easy won't it, particularly since things as fundemental as text entry and presence have worked so well recently in world !

Ironically, from a technical standpoint, the forums were the one thing LL didn't bork on a regular basis.

If it is technically feasible, an inworld forum tied into its web based counterpart with the ability to post and read from both applications could be popular.

Sure, but you're esentially suggesting building on what we already have, a web based forum, which precludes it's removal doesn't it ?

Your idea may have merit in expanding the forum user base, though I'm not convinced being in-world is best suited to reading them, and LL clearly don't want more people, a louder voice, making their opinions known.

In my case, I would enjoy the ability to read and post in and out of SL.

LL is expanding in other countries. An English forum cannot be the conscience of a global metaverse. It may be beyond LL's means or even desire to provide multi-language forums, translation, and police blotters for the world.

They may have their fingers crossed that third parties get involved and profit in the space.

Specialized forums will satisfy many and efficient, feature rich forums with marketing savvy and bucks will gain patronage and political power.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. Personally, I think splintering the community more than it already is, is a terrible idea. It's hard to find "community" in world and now it'll be harder to find one outside sl to join. It'll be confusing for new players who are trying to find some solid info because there will be umpteen blogs and forums to chose from, each with their own slant, own cliques, own interests and prejudices.

While it has been said that only 10% of SL users read the LL forums, it is still the largest *Two-way* venue for communication. 3rd party forums will only fracture this 10% and there will be no real way to bounce ideas off of as many residents as possible.

It is beacuse the forums are endorsed and maintained by LL that it is so large. Reading the forums lately there have been umpteen "new forums" postings, some of which get nasty cause the person is seen as somehow unqualifed to run them. I see forums breaking down along community group lines: one for content creators, one for furries, one for newbies, etc.

Any Linden solution to mass communication will be in-world, negating the offline communication of the forums so important to those of us who work all day.

In particular the New Products forum stil remains one of the best (if not THE best) ways to launch a product. LL suggests the Classifieds, but those cost L$, and often a whole lot to get noticed.

Blah, blah, blah. All this has been said so many times, in so many ways. We all agree on these facts for the most part. What's the solution? LL is not likely to go back on the decision. Consensus on a new 3rd party forum seems to be congealing around SL Universe and Second Citizen, so that is hopeful. Getting the word out to new players will be tough though.