IRC as alternative to General Forums?

I can understand the restructuring. The signal to noise ratio for the forums has gotten pretty bad.

On the other hand I think a lot of people use the forums for time when they can't be in SL for one reason or another. The General Discusion forums (and variants) were a nice way to hear about what was on people's minds. I hated to see the waste of "3 word threads" or threads where people were just typing number sequences. From experience I know though that this is just something that SOME people do. Starved for attention, addled brained or whatever. Give people a way to post, no matter what you call it and there will be nonsensical uses made of it.

I think the IM interfaces, whatever it turns out to be, and whenever it turns out to be will help this, maybe. But in the mean time it would be nice for SL users who aren't, or can't be in-world to have a place to blow off steam. So....

How about an officially sanctioned IRC server? I know there is an unofficial one somewhere, and that might do just as well, but I'd much rather have one that I could sign onto with my SL name, and be assured that the other users had done likewise and were all indeed SL users. So that means some sort of LL authentication. IRC servers aren't too troublesome to run I don't think (at least not on the scale that would be needed right now for SL), there wouldn't need to be any formal moderation (maybe a few volunteer moderators who could watch out for flooders etc.

And if nothing else was going on and someone wanted to practice their counting skills... 768, 769, 771, ooops. then so what, no harm done. Most importantly it all scrolls off the page, no log needed, no worry about new users, or potential users, forming the wrong conclusion about the average IQ of the SL citizen. Or something. heh heh, heh heh, heh heh.

heheheh

yeah it's us attention starved number counters and 3 words threaders and 1,000 THings I Love about SL'ers, and on and on that are the problem.


But oh no, not the flamers, the drama king and queens, or the nasty posters...

It would be nice to be able to use our SL names. Someone could easily setup their own IRC server, theres free IRC server software floating around, just need a dedicated server.

I don't think LL has time to do this theirselves.

Maybe I am obtuse...worse things have been said of me...but I do not see any "problem" with the manner in which the forums have been used in the past. Every post had it's place...whether blowing off steam or being silly after a long and regimented day on the grindstone. This is the creation of community of online civilization. This is not a game...the avatars are real people in pixel form. Now SL has decided to take the human dynamic off of the forum. What is next guild pages...ohhh I suppose that is what the groups forum is supposed to cover. People get angry in a community, neighbors fight and gossip to neighbors and realize that the truth lies between the two of them, apologize or agree to disagree and move on...but the fact that it happened created a new dynamic in the community....We need the fights, we need the drama, we need the insight into the humanity behind the avatar.

example:

I saw avatar x's towers and thought hm nice build...then flew on by...I read his posts and felt like then I understood a bit more about avatar x the person and where his passions stemmed from positive rated him and now look forward to his posts and builds. It is no longer just a build...I have seen that there is a human behind it.

This world is more than a bunch of buildings....it is more than a bunch of avatars...We are creating the history of the online world and if linden labs is willing to begin that history with censorship and constraint of thoughts well that is rather forboding to put it mildly...Let us decide what we want to read. Let us decide where we want to submit our thoughts. Trust us to be intelligent enough to create our own culture.

Many of the best ideas have spawned from the oddest of forum posts. This is a resourceful and intelligent community. Do not take away our town square.

okay ... I'll be the first to do it:

Taun Patel says: A/S/L ?

Sorry. It had to be done.

I loved IRC, it would be great to get it in SL. Can XML/RPC/ABS/EKG/XYZ/ETC (lol) be used to tie an IRC server into SL? Someone could make a Stage 4 sorta area that runs an inworld version of the IRC server and allows posts out to the real world IRC server via a room bot.

Heh, not really. You should check the IRC channel, which has had a pretty good cross-section of the SL creative community since at least v1.2, and is not filled with 13-year-olds (as we theoretically don't have any).



Old news. Been done. Hank Ramos set up a two way IRC<->SL gateway some time ago.

Sweet! Chromal, do you have the details for the IRC server? Sorry I didn't know it already existed, I was out of touch with SL for two months, and frankly, the search engine on this forum bites.

*edit: Search doesn't just bite. It reeks. It can't find "IRC" because it's only 3 letters? pfft.*

Thanks

I imagine alot of the trouble w. the off topic forums was people contacting LL and being upset or offended by the content of some posts. Its alot like RL in that a little tolerance and some self control can go a long way.

If something bothers you then why not skip on to the next topic if you can't express your opinion and move on. I wonder how much (if any) of the change came about due to adolescent type "tattling". LOL



Taun - Thats an awesome idea! With so many of the community in IT this should be a relatively simple thing to pull off if someone has some extra bandwidth and an old box. Worst case scenario we could always just use a pub server.

*runs to dust off his IRC client.*

*edit Even better news still Chromal.

We're in #secondlife on EFnet (because I am too lazy to connect to another network).

There's a post somewhere around here that has more, but it's probably been "cleansed".

Hey Cinna!

Is there a naming convention y'all are using? I'd like to use my SL name if I can. TaunPatel or Taun.Patel or something along those lines? I'll try it out today Thanks for the info from you both!