What Belongs in This Forum?

freedom is just another word for
nothing left to lose. . . .

what do you mean by that?

It's a snippet of lyrics from 'Me and Bobby McGee' written by Kris Kristofferson, performed by himself, Janis Joplin and others including Gordon Lightfoot.

yes, with apologies to Tom Hobbes and Leviathan. Freedom without principles is both poverty and oppression.

The question is whos principles. Extorting freedom and *your* principles over other's, can quickly turn into oppression in the name of *your* freedom. What about the freedom of others?

Is your freedom to not be protected from inflammitory posts trampling on the freedom of others to vent their frustrations or to make complete asses out of themselves?

would that "freedom" worked in real or second life. unfortunately humans flesh&blood or pixellated inflict violence and drama on each other in the name of personal principles. as you say. to have minimal safety, security, and productivity, one must give up certain "freedoms" to abide by common principles.

there are no hard and fast common principles. it's a matter of defining the community standard. which is why using words like "freedom" often contribute little to discussion. they are too broad to have any consensus of meaning. the real question is exactly: what principles can be used that all or most can tolerate? and what should be done about those who violate our common principles?

true freedom is a tolerable balance between choice and rules.

which is why, hank, the thrust of your first post contradicts your second. no offense.

I speak of the freedom to speak one's mind. Several people have either said or alluded to not wanting to hear people speak poorly of one another, or poorly of Linden Labs and Second Life. They don't want to hear it as it makes them feel bad. They only want good things to be said in the forums.

However, making a rule that only nice things can be said, is in my opinion, trampling on my and other's freedom of expression. It's like in the Real World where people want to impose their religious beliefs on others because they think that's what the community wants.

My first point was a simple statement that I prefer freedom over restriction. How that is contradictory is beyond me.

Edited to add...
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength

now you're trying to define what you mean by "freedom". so you recognize, instinctively perhaps, that the term doesn't mean much without precision. that's good. the contradiction lay in using the word as though there was some consensus of meaning, and then trying to define it, as though there wasn't.

unfortunately, you don't have freedom to speak your mind. you never have and neither have i. you may express yourself without consquences you won't like in limited ways, and you don't know precisely what those ways are.

the lindens have changed the rules and we don't know what those rules or the consequences are. it's likely that they don't know, exactly. they're reacting to various situations in various ways. that's the real problem: we're all struggling to set the rules and define where power is located and how it is used.

let's be precise and careful. i don't know what forum posters mean by "freedom" or "restrictions", or by obscure references to "1984" or "religious beliefs". (whose? where? in what context? how exactly does religion relate here?) and i don't why lindens should trot out de Tocqueville when people are expressing legitimate concerns and asking for practical information.

Mmm, interesting comment. Do we not have inalienable rights to freedom of speech and all actions? Or do we not have any freedom at all, and must be given or metered freedoms as the community sees fit?

It's an interesting distinction that many people misunderstand/confuse in RL and SL. My interpretation of SL and RL (USA) is that we have inalienable rights to everything. We have the right to freedom of speech, though, destiny, yelling, killing, etc. Rules and laws are only layered on to guarantee those rights and the rights of others (i.e. not killing others because it denies them the right to live).

Some people feel that our rights are not inalienable, but are given to us by the government or LL in this particular case. I disagree whole heartedly.

This was posted yesterday in another thread, but thought I'd put it here too as it's germaine to this conversation...

Changes to the forum structure have prompted a lot of debate about the merits of the re-organization in this and other threads.

I know it will be helpful to add more explanation of why the most recent changes were implemented. Second Life, by its nature, is evolutionary and just as change, development, increasing complexity and, hopefully, progress, is integral to the world, so by extension we see the same goals applying to the forums.

Our latest changes are an attempt to allow the formation of discussion areas that don't become so big that they are essentially anonymous. By fostering the growth of forum "neighborhoods", we hope to encourage communities that are familiar, cooperative and self-regulating. Great theory.

In practice this theory led us to delete the larger, less defined general, off-topic, and rant forums, and to create more narrowly focused boards. However, as many of you have pointed out, there were a lot of interesting and provocative discussions on the general boards which we'd hate to lose. So as a stop-gap, we added the "new in SL" forum. Clearly that hasn't been a very good, or acceptable solution.

There have been a lot of suggestions as to what the next step should be. I hope to have some ideas for you to respond to within the next few days. We won't just change it this time, but will give you a chance to let us know what you think. I can't promise we'll implement all your suggestions, but you will be heard. Ultimately the forum is an important communication tool for all of you and us, so I want to continue to discuss how to make it useful for us all.

Thank you very much, Robin, for explaining what thoughts went into the changes and your prospective look to improvement. This is encouraging.

Excellent!

We await with baited breath, sharpened quills, and good hearts.

(apologies to de Tocqueville, Kandahar! )

My suggestion is simple.

Bring back at least general and off topic and if you are really smart bring back rants. Because if you delete rants general becomes rants and if you delete general whatever is left becomes rants. The only way to keep conflict off the boards is to delete the boards. So you might as well carve out a place for the social friction.

Robin,

thank you. even if no changes were made to the forums, many SLers faith will be renewed by this comment, this knowledge.
i am extremely grateful that there will be an open discussion about this between LL and SLers. this is the main thing we've asked for. any time a problem has arisen, there is most often at least one person who asks for the opportunity to be heard before these types of decisions are made. now it's actually happening and that is no small step, but a giant leap.

thank you.

Robin,

It seems to me that when you say 'narrowly-focused' you mean 'bland'.

I agree completely with Kasandra. The only thing I would add is that if you are concerned with the friction tarnishing the image of sl, you could make the General, the Off-Topic and the Rants forum accessible to account-holders only.

It is great news that the process will be shared with us in the future. Thanks for keeping us informed!

Waking up to a surprise is so world rattling when the world is in the ether - as it is in SL.

does this system of thread locking and deletions only work if people use the report to moderator feature?

nevermind

As a first step, yes His.

Robin has stated that LL does not have the resources to read/mod every thread/message and that they are taking steps to re-design the Forums in an effort to improve.

When someone reports abuse then Lindens are alerted to the situation, which is a first step.

Nothing the least bit controversial or inflammatory evidentally. This cencorship is disgusting.

this post exists just because.

When there's a forum redesign, we should create an anything-goes forum (which is basically what this forum currently is).

~Ulrika~

In summary, the lindens used the old "divide and conquer" on us
Except that its not really working.
The New in SL forum is far more popular than all the group forums put together.
We should really move to slashcode or scoop or something.

Slashcode would be brilliant! I've never seen a site more in need of metamoderation. In addition to the slashdot ratings we should add a special "personal attack" rating.

~Ulrika~