What Belongs in This Forum?

While this Forum is titled “New in Second Life” and is designated as the place to discuss current events in Second Life, it has instead become a home for rumors, feuds, and personal attacks.

There are a many aspects of the former General Discussion forums that we want to preserve and provide space for in the Second Life Forums, but there are certain kinds of discussions are inappropriate in this venue and that diminish the community by their presence. The following types of threads and posts do not belong anywhere in the Second Life Forums, and will be removed without warning.

• Personal attacks on the character or reputation of another Second Life Resident
• Content that is well off topic or otherwise not germane to the topic in which it is posted
• Accusing a specific Resident or Residents of Second Life Community Standards and Terms of Service violations or real-world crimes
• Inviting or encouraging other Residents to target a specific Resident or Residents in a manner objectionable to the targeted Resident
• Inviting or encouraging other Residents to violate Second Life Community Standards and Terms of Service or real-world laws
• Revealing personal or real-world information about a Resident beyond that contained in the Resident's First Life Profile
• Using hateful or derogatory language to describe a specific Resident or Residents.
• Linking to third-party content that violates the Second Life Community Standards and Terms of Service

Thank you, sincerely. this is an absolutely wonderful resource to have available in this forum.

rules. clear and crisp. and they encourage the community to be civil, thoughtful, creative as well. to be the community we had become known for being.. a tightly-knit and intelligent community.

Thank you Daniel, i hope this helps to bolster the pride in our community for what we have been in the past and can be even more of in the future. it is enriching for SL as a whole.

Hear hear. You're my hero, Daniel

*standing ovation*

(can one person give a standing ovation?)

To take three recent threads -
The first life picture thread
Is Philip wrong about privacy?
The official three word thread

Are these now officially banned? They don't pertain to current events or any other forum SL has. I can see arguments either way but would like clarification.

Why just those 3?

There are many threads that have been both positive and active that are not NEW TO SL.

Well yeah, that was my point. I decided to list three.

An off topic forum is still really needed. The same standards that Daniel has outlined for posting need to apply.

It is important to have an outlet to talk about the real world. We need a place to just relax and talk about the tour de france, saddam going on trial, the US presidential race, cool new movies or music, or the rash of stop sign grafitti in my neighborhood.

As a community, we need an outlet to reveal our personalities, if we so choose. The forums are voluntary, but its important to be able to bond and have friendships in this forum setting. Off topic is vital to a healthy community and it can be conducted in civil terms.

If people break the rules, the posts need to be deleted. That applies to any forum, not just an off topic or technical forums, all of them. We just need a place to talk about stuff that has nothing to do with SL.

It is no surprise that this has happened to this forum. You take away the forums that were for specific things, such as off topic, ranting, etc.. and then you are surprised that this forum is filled with * shock * off topic posts and rants. If your forum changes weren't so short sighted in the first place, and threads could be put in the appropriate place, maybe you could be spending more time bug fixing and dealing with in world discipline problems than policing the forums.

Well, I looked at daniel's list and I was gonna issue a general invitation to the Leftists and Liberals Group Forum. On second glance, let me put it this way: it's hard to be off-topic in our forum.

The rest of that stuff on the list, however, would be against even the few meager rules we have :-/

So, bring your off-topic chat over to our place

Yes, but it makes you look silly good job daniel!

we really need an off topic forum

Thanks Daniel.

While I do appreciate you posting this, I have to wonder why it wasn't done at the onset of the forum restructure.

Please give us some type of off topic forum. Using the group forums for such dialogue will just negate the purpose of group forums, which as I understand it are intended as a place for groups to discuss group issues, both RL and SL, which pertain to interests concerning said groups, not general, off topic debate. Thanks again, NN

My understanding is that the Group Forums were for subjects of interest to the group members.

Perhaps we can have a big argum....

Uh..a Linden Rulin.....

Oh forget it.

I think we'll just talk about what we want to talk about.

In the Leftists, Liberals and Lunatics Group Forum, there are no restrictions on discussion, save the few rules specified - and the Community Standards.

Our topic = discussion. So, any thoughtful discussion is always on-topic.

/clap.

And yes...how about an off-topic under the same rules?

I have zero issue with using a groups forum to discuss off topic subjects if that what the group is for, such as what Daemioth is suggesting. I just wish that LL would provide us with a catch all, so we don't have to be subject to the possibility of other players whims, who bear the moderator title. Not one of us that regularly post here are as unbiased as LL.

Personally, I would rather have place that is just *off topic* that does not bear the moniker of one groups in world interests, nationality, skills or political idealogy. Just a preference, nothing more.

My fear is that otherwise we will have groups of people entering a group forum bent on trashing opposing views versus rational, open dialogue.

What I am requesting is off topic rather than on topic. When I see a group forum for scripting, fashion, Vertu, Canadians, or leftists, liberals, and lunatics, I am a bit remiss to post and or discuss off topic subjects there, as the titles themselves indicate to me they were formed for other purposes.

I am not trolling for an argument or asking for a Linden ruling on proper use of group forums. That, as has been previously stated, is up to the group and/or it's moderators. I simply want an open, off topic section where one doesn't have to concern themselves with the interests or ideologies of a particular group.

Very reasonable.

Though I suspect this is exactly the kind of forum Linden Lab least loves. Instead of the forums being a marketing tool for inworld, they've turned into a major product in their own right. An off topic forum would be large exposure with very little marketing return for the game itself.

The forums need an off topic board, but I don't think the Lindens think Second Life needs an off topic board.

Thanks Kathy.

Phillip did state in a post at SLUniverse that maybe we do need some type of off topic forum. I truly hope that happens. I really believe we need a place to siphon off some of the steam that builds up here and in world, thereby ensuring that the other sections are used for their intended purposes, and that we don't have ugliness as the first thing new SLers encounter when perusing these boards. NN

Edited to remove redundancy.

Daniel,

I am astonished at your posting. You are surprised that this forum contains off-topic postings when you have arbitrarily removed the forum where this type of posting would fit?

Removing the useful forums and replacing them with categories which are unclear and pretty useless anyway is going to mean that you get off-topic postings. You must see that.

Talking about the forum reorganisation here, and not the categories in your posting above, trying to dictate the content of what people post is (a) arrogant and (b) impossible to achieve.

A suggestion I had hoped you would take up would be to have a Rants forum, and if necessary, an Off-Topics forum that only account-holders could access. Surely that wouldn't be difficult to achieve, and would correct all the mistakes you have made up until now.

Interesting to note that this 'clarification' of what should be in this forum takes place the week Philip is away, the week after he said on the SLUniverse forums that they were probably being too hard when censoring posts.

And again, interesting to note the inconsistency with which censorship is being made. Notice the threads that have already been deleted in line with this sudden 'clarification', versus the ones that are still here?

I predict that by the end of Saturday this will be the only thread in this forum after a Linden with a big tub of whitewash blunders through.

The plan is obviously to gloss over reality and paint a picture of smiling little avatars all holding hands while gambolling through the fields.

Oh well. There's always the SLUniverse forums if you want to see the truth of Second Life and not what our glorious leaders deign to let your see. After all, that's what the Lindens obviously want... us to all go away and talk about stuff somewhere else.

I'm confused on why the "Is Philip wrong about privacy" thread would be off-topic? LL puts out a lot of content on their theories about the future of SL, particularly through Cory's white papers. Why would discussing these assertions as they are made public and whether or not, as residents, we think they're playing out in SL be off topic?

One of my favorite things about SL is all the deep thinking coming from LL, and watching how these theories play out. (And trying to guess what's going to happen next based on Corys white papers.) Heck, I wish we had more and livelier discussions about these things!

Wouldn't each new white paper or interview in which Philip or Robin discusses how they see the future of SL count as a "current event" in SL?

A confused Bhodi

I will be relieved to see all the visciousness removed.

Some people are just sick on the inside, almost like they have gastroenteritis of the soul. When they have to hurl and s***, they'll hurl and s*** on whoever is nearby. You can't stop people from needing to spew, but you can get out of their way. So yeah...I agree with taking that kind of personal dumping out of the forums.

I do, however, enjoy some of the off-topic threads, but I can live without them if they go.

my two cents.

It is off topic because it doesn't fit into any of the topics that LL has provided. Spefically this forum is supposed to be about current events. OK, if you want to stretch the definition a little you could say it was a new paper thus a current event. But for the sake of discussion let's suppose it was not a new paper, but a long standing view of his everyone knew. I was asking if it would then be a permissible thread. and if so where.

If you mean exposure to the outside world they can easily make that forum require a login just like the old off topic forum.

While I applaud Daniel and LL for realising that this forum became the defacto "General" forum, where all off-topic, rant, and general stuff has now been "dumped", what did they expect? They want to squelch anything in the forums that they don't want to see or hear.

Obviously, bringing back the general, rant, and off-topic forums would funnel those particular posts into those appropriate forums. But, by forcibly removing those forums, I find it interesting that after a few weeks, they now are trying to enforce that this forum, which was previously the general forum, is now "New in Second Life". That there are "appropriate" things to say.

What do we do now? Where do we go from here? Obviously, the heat will be turned up and applauded by others who wish to not hear off-topic, real-world, or the occasional rant about SL or somebody in SL. We all need to vent, to get wild sometimes. As the pressure is turned up by the Lindens and others(bannings, threats, attacks that "you're offtopic", bring the pitchforks!), I wonder is this merely the beginnings of the Metaverse, a true world/country, a police state where we have to go "underground" to say what others don't want to hear, or just simply a game packed with children with the Lindens acting as the occasional enforcer.

This is supposed to be a world, with good and bad elements. If you didn't like rants, then you should never have read the rants forum. What's next? Were going to ban sex or nudity in the mature areas because, gasp, you might see sex or nudity when you try to sneak into someone's house? If you don't like mature content, or can't handle mature stuff, don't go into a mature area! If your ears can't handle hearing about the Real World out there, don't go into the real-world forum. And, *gasp*, if you can't handle some fun or offtopic thread (like the three-word thread, the 0-word thred, etc.), then I hope you're happy when the forums and SL are sanitized to your liking.

Just my thoughts. Waiting for the angry mob who cries: "Your offtopic!

Edit: corrected typos from my ramblings