SLSF Community Bulletins

Linden Lab announced this morning that the SLSF group forum will be shut down within three months.

They're unclear on exactly which "better asynchronous communication options" will be available in SL 1.12, but given the scope of SLSF community dialog, we'll likely need to investigate hosting our own website, forum, or something similar. The division between in-world and external communication has remained a long-standing valid critique of our current setup, so barring HTML-on-a-prim someday issuing from the bowels of Linden Lab, this is a prime opportunity to open the floor to suggestions.

Ideas?

Giant Parrots.

Each SLSF forum participant shall aquire a giant parrot with oversize lungs, and place said parrot on the rooftop of their house, apartment, or crow's nest of their boat. They shall be trained to scream any message we want to communicate to other SLSF forum participants, so that we all can understand the messages we want to give to each other.

Until the giant parrot breeding program has been completed, perhaps a Yahoo! group would be appropriate?

I just logged on to yahoo and made a group, if y'all wish to use it.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SLSF

--Faykin

I could make my fish breed until they conquer SL and make them pass messages around for us?



I'm rather partial to email lists myself, but a yahoo group would work well (supports both online viewing/posting as well as email read/post.)

Personally, I'm not fond of Yahoo! groups. They feature a burdensome registration process and are generally not accessible to casual readers. I'd rather use an open protocol or host our own forum. Either way doesn't solve the issue of alienation from in-world communications...

I know Kanker had an old neglected and disused SLSF bulletin system set on his docks in Gray - perhaps we should investigate something like that? Some sort of in-world network which automatically updates notecards, one per post, at each vendor and summarises major headlines upon its texture for instantaneous review-at-a-glace?

I'm sure there are several similar networks already coded in SL.

I have space and bandwith I'm currently not using (and likely not going to use on my own) with my shared hoster. All its holding now are two small-traffic weblogs and two years of SL pics - and there's still 14.5 Gig left...

Anything needed - mailing list, domain, forum - let me know. The only thing I think will need to stay with me would be shell access; ftp is configurable for subdomains / extra domains.

EDIT - Note also, if you've looked at the 1.12 preview, there is a way to send notices through the new group facility. It even takes an attached asset, and are saved for later reading. The downside to that is we don't know when it's going to finally go 'live.'

--Alan

No wait, thats not right (different kind of "alternate" reality).

FREEBOARDS!!!

Not up on all the forums available these days, but the staff at Holly Kai Golf Club communicates through our staff forum on Freeboards.

wwww.freeboards.net

I'd like to wait and see how the new group functions will work before figuring out another method of communication outside of SL.

I like the idea of a bulletin board that's in-world. Ones that are possibly linked to other boards, so that if it's updated at one place, it gets updated on all of them? That would take a scripter to puzzle over, I suppose.

As for outside the game, my preference would be either for using a resident-run SL forum (which I'm sure ones like SLuniverse will be growing to accomodate the official forum closures) or for a resident-run SLSF-specific forum (as Alan offered). I'm no fan of Yahoo and I can see some residents balking at relinquishing email addresses.

Another alternative is perhaps a blog? However, that has limitations as well, such as who gets access to post entries to the blogs.

I have a feeling that some kind of group communications thing in world.. will be years behind from usability of web forums. These are easy to read, post and reply .. i have doubts on SL flexibility to host something as easy to use as a simple web based forum.

I think best option if someone has webspace with php/mysql enabled, would be phpBB.

Good alternative for those who don't have their own webspace is ezboard.

Yahoo has worked fine over the years for the half-dozen RL groups to which I belong. It's easy to create a new SL email address, which I did for the HK board to which Mark refers, thus protecting RL identity. The only downside I can think of w/Yahoo is that it does not save attachements to posts; however, that can be resolved with uploading them to the site directly.

Oh, and Static -- your proposal wouldn't work at all. With all those chocolate filled fish swimming around, the sharks would go CRAZY and the SL waters would be infested w/sharks and nolonger safe for wenches being tossed overboard.
Kitty

(holds lighter up over her head)

I think Pacifien's approach is best. We appear to have up to three months before LL forces our hand, and I'm sure this infrastructre shift will breed a lot of new solutions, both in-world and out on the 'web. Let's keep these ideas simmering, but in the short-term maintain this forum as our home until we get a feel for what pragmatic implications new versions of SL and newly de-facto third-party forums may bode.

Of the initial proposals, I favor the SLSF hosting its own domain and forum for the reasons Suzanne noted. It's also much easier to direct someone to slsf.org than it is to communicate heiroglyphics along the lines of http://forums.secondlife.com/forumdisplay.php?f=273 in-world. We've already received at least three offers to host an SLSF forum, both in-world and in this thread, so an independent SLSF site should be simple to implement if we elect to pursue this route.

My second choice would be to set up a board at whichever third-party community site may inherit the de-facto SL forum torch, for the sake of visibility. Regardless of where we end up, Pacifien's been working with me to create a standardised SLSF promotion board which all the clubs can set up in-world, with a brief introduction and landmarks to all the major sailing venues. It'd be simple enough to include a pointer to wherever we end up therein.

I have?

I don't know how many of you saw the announcement from Linden Labs, but the forums are closing in about a month.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/08/10/forums-take-a-new-turn/#more-380

The sailing community is growing and flourishing in Second Life and I for one would like to see this continue. I think that we should get our own site to nurture and support this growth. There are already many fans sites connected with Second Life.

There are two hurdles to doing this. One is money and the other is experience. I would be willing to contribute to the establishment and maintenance of a site. But the know how is a whole other story. I looked at some Web hosting sites today and sure wished they talked English.

I'm posting here to get some feedback as to wether this is a good idea or not. I would also love to see someone step forward that knows how to make this happen.

Since we are contemplating moving out of the sl world to continue rl discussion, how about a wiki as well? For newbies (like me), I would find it useful to review what has been written about sl sailboat racing and other important topics.

Wiki's can also be added to and ammended as well. Aren't there some free ones available?

Yes, you have. Details to follow.

With this in mind I've set up
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/secondsandbox/

I welcome feedback, criticism and suggestions for improvement.

It's not accessible to everyone, true, but I've never seen a limit on group size in a Yahoo! group, it's free and low bandwidth, and the reins of management can be handed off at any time to anyone with a valid Yahoo! ID, which means it can outlast its founders.

I do web application development for a living, so I'd be happy to spearhead this effort.

slsf.org is taken by the Sri Lanka Squash Federation.

slsailing.org is available. Does that work for everyone? If so, I'll start the ball rolling on it today.

Well, slsf.info is available, but I think we should hold off rushing out to register anything until we have a firmer idea of our best course of action. Perhaps we should give the general SL community a month or so to develop responses to the impending forum closures?

I don't forsee a land rush for SLSF domains; especially these days, if it's available now odds are it'll still be available a month from now. Still, if someone feels compelled to register a domain on our behalf, I wouldn't object to slsf.info - slsailing.org, while admittedly following the ISaF's lead, seems a little bit too arbitrary for simple recollection by somebody stumbling across the SLSF in-world for the first time.

Oooh, we can do a vote!

Everyone, post your proposed domains to this thread, and next week I'll set up an 'official' forum poll amongst all the proposals, on equal footing. So far our options are:

slsailing.org
slsf.info

I'm a fan of .net myself, at least in this case. My suggestions:

slsail.net
sailingsl.net

As to a nice hoster, mine is Bluehost. The 'Kind Healer' link in my sig is the main weblog that's hosted by them. The other one is specific to Uru.

--Alan

I'm a fan of .org for groups, such as the sailing community in SL. So I second Myrrh's sugestion for SLSailing.org

I've done some research and talked to some people and one hosting company that looks very good is Dot5Hosting. Or take up Alan's offer to host a site. If nothing else it will give us a place to start.

As for a possible structure of the site, I would like to see a general area and specific areas for the SLSF, SL Cup and for each of the yatch clubs. I would also like to see something for the Sail registery. Also. James's excellant idea for a wiki.

Regarding the new group functions coming one day, while they are great and long overdue, they will not replace the need for a long term repository of information or a place for discussions. Just go to the preview grid and see for yourself.

For a thriving community such as the sailing community in SL both the new group tools and a dedicated site are needed.

And one last comment, I would like to see this web site get going as quickly as possible. I know LL says this forum will stay open for 3 months but I don't trust that.

sailingsl.net
slsail.net
slsailing.org
slsf.info

Any other domain suggestions? I'll put out a heads-up pointer to this thread in-world tonight, to be followed by a forum poll later this week in which everyone can make known their first choice. The top two candidates will then be put to an in-world general vote, and we can get moving with registering the domain as early as the middle of next week.

(By the way, slsailing.org was Theodore's suggestion - I don't know where the community picked up this tendency to attribute so many other folks' contributions to me, but it happens awfully frequently...)

I can also provide hosting.

Another thing Static and I had talked about at one point is a web-application integrated with the Starting Line, so regattas could be scored automatically, with long-term tracking, etc. Nothing we'd kick off immediately, but an example of the kind of SL->WebApp things I think would be useful.

Yeah!

Yeah, I've thought of similar things myself, like integrating visitor counters with a central DB and site. I just don't have the time to invest currently (at least if it requires my shell access or other 'backend' maint with the hoster - I can only do 'basic' web access from work [3rd shift EDT], due to restrictions; Can't even bring up cPanel).

As for integrating the Starting Line, I'd suggest having it try and do the external caching on request *after* a race is done (basically a variant on the summary report). That way it only needs to send a single httprequest packet and not hit any caps on the function (it's been reported that repeated requests aren't as predictable as noted - who'd figure? ).

--Alan

These are our options, submitted within this thread as well as in-world.

fs.ls
sailingsl.net
secondlifesailingfederation.org
slsail.net
slsailing.org
slsf.info

Please select your preferred domain name(s) from the poll posted at the top of this thread. The two most popular choices will be put to an in-world runoff vote next weekend.

I'm partial to slsf.info myself. The shorter the URL, the better.