Should they just go ahead and open the General Forum back up?

for those who suggest going to a different forum... sorry but I'm not going to hop back and forth between the official forums and some other website for off topic discussion with people of the same game unless its a forum I'm already registered for and post at consitantly (such as the Vault Network boards)

I have enough websites that I'm required to visit on a daily basis, let alone the ones I visit just for fun. I'm not really looking to add another website and message board just to make stupid jokes with people from a game. I'd rather make them here on this board system.

Well if you hope for strict moderation I can see your position.

Still with the lax moderation I'm sure we will soon see the end of the "why is this forum so much general discussion and off topic?" threads that are clogging it up ..

Since people will give up trying.


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I'm a bit perplexed though -

Surely its less labor to moderate a general discussion forum than a Resident Answers forum.

The fact that it takes strict moderation to limit the amount of General Discussions that go on in this forum should give us pause, no?

It might be less labor intensive Moderator wise to have both and moderate the general discussion forum.

I was here for the old General Forum too. I remember a lot of the moderation woes came from the mods acting like their hands were tied all the time. Those days are long gone.

Well basically, most of the people who leave to 3rd party boards for generalized SL discussion end up leaving these boards period. Only a few make a concerted effort to discuss general topics on one forum and come here to answer questions (or even just to make the odd comment).

So telling people to go to a 3rd party site is doing is tantamount to saying "If you want General Discussion, you should leave"

I am sure many who suggest this don't think that through (or don't agree) - But I could rattle off a *LONG* list of names of regular posters who have made the transition.

It was full of people complaining about SL. This is full of people complaining about SL. I can't see that there isn't a general forum here anyway as the general one also had people asking and answering questions. Big deal - I'd be more pleased if the focus was on healing the Group IM problem than worrying about this particular part of their business getting a cosmetic change.

Which, if you remember, is bluntly exactly what LL told us back in 2006 when they closed GD and Off Topic.

Resident Answers came about from the old Linden Answers forum where actual Lindens would answer questions. Then they stopped answering questions and lot of people on the sidelines were going "I KNOW! I KNOW!" and raising their hands because they knew the answers. We asked LL for a Resident Answers forum so we could help all the people out who weren't getting responses in Linden Answers.

Take a good look at who is still here from 2006 and earlier. The helpful people were the ones who stayed here on the official forums to assist with questions: Chip Midnight, Chosen Few, Travis Lambert, Desmond Shang, etc... You see them crop up on 3rd party forums occasionally, but they hang here mostly because they enjoy teaching.

When I first joined sl last August, I looked for places to read about it and find out more. I started with the SL Herald but the inane articles and the comments that generally consist of "MOAR LULZ" and "FAIL" wore thin quickly. I kept branching out finding new sites. I even read "Second Thoughts" once or twice a week. Even when I agree with Prok, I found his vicious attacks on people that disagreed to be to much.

When I found the RA section of the forums, I was drawn to it because not only were alot of questions being answered that were useful to me, but there seemed to be alot of good natured people posting here that also wanted to have a good time.

I realize almost all of my posts have been totally stupid, but in the meantime, I have learned so many things about sl that has saved me L$ by recovering inventory that I thought I had lost for good and in general made my sl experience much better. I have also learned enough that I have been able to help a couple of people with questions myself recently. I now think some of my opinions might have merit and be worthy of posting.

There are alot of times the threads annoy me also, but the overall worth of this forum for both education and entertainment has been invaluable to me.

Ohh no, it isn't that simple ... If I remember correctly ...

They sold it with a song and dance of how it would allow them to serve us the Residents better. I believe they may have tried to diplomatically suggest 3rd party forums as an alternative. But I do not remember them being blunt about *anything*

I would have preferred it if they had, I never liked doublespeak.

There were a lot who agreed with the decision who said those words bluntly though.

/me would have liked a Pie option. I don't think RA would be any less spammy if a General/Off Topic forum opened back up.

I honestly think one mistake they made is placing this forum inside of "Resident Conversation" in approximately the same place that General used to be.

There are a few other areas of the forums where discussions took place but none are very active, and now that moderation has lapsed, they are nearly dead.

I do not see telling the a large chunk of the current active forums community to hit the road is necessarily a good solution either.

Though I suppose it is *a* solution.

this section of the forum can be very addictive.. i remember becoming addicted to the off topic section in the wow forums for two months lol..then realized ..crap i am paying 14.00 a month to hang out in a forum..everyone on my guild lvled past me and i had to power lvl to catch up so i could get my raid spot back hehehe

thank god there are no levels in sl

ohh. Sorry.

There is nothing wrong with voting "no", of course.

I usually only ever do yes or no questions on polls to avoid massive answer interpretation disparities.


My hope would be if General Discussion were opened that most of the RA activity that wasn't Resident Answer topical would shift.

But you could be right, it might not matter.

Still if General were to reopen it would appear very close if not next to Resident Answers on the List.

We really need a Resident Questions Forum too

In a few short hours it has increased to 8.



It's gone downhill so quickly in 3 months. Some think it's not that bad but I can only imagine how it's going to be in another 3 - 6 months. I've been ridiculed for saying that I think LL is going to eventually shut down the forums, but if no longer serves any purpose than for people to get their jolly's then why would they bother to keep it going?



And we lost some real good ones too. I expect we'll lose a lot more soon.

Well, this one always struck me as "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here..."

/108/d5/136054/1.html

Hmmm.

That was fair amount of time after the announcement though. That was during the password snafu.

How long between the original announcements and that September stuff? 2-3 months?

Although you are right, it is straightforward (not so much blunt).


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I think Pathfinder had *some* blame as to how the old general was (but I wont go into the sordid details here)

Robin's forum closure announcement Aug 10, 2006
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/08/10/forums-take-a-new-turn/

Forums close Sept 11, 2006
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/09/11/5-forums-have-been-closed/

Resident Answers Forum Announced Sept 18, 2006
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/09/18/introducing-the-resident-answers-forum/

Resident Answers Opens Sept 20, 2006
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/09/20/resident-answers-and-linden-answers-continued/

The problem with third-party forums is that forums work better when there is only one. If you have a multitude of forums it is impossible to get any sense of the real mood of the population, because each forum has a self-selected subset of the Second Life population and will give a skewed result.

So yes, I believe it would be better if General Discussion reopened. I don't expect to see it happen, but I still think it would be the right thing.

Moderation isn't really needed, anything really bad can just be AR'd anyway, if you can't handle the heat leave the kitchen, some opeople wouldn't last a minute on a newsgroup if they think what we have here is bad

I think the mood of the population is pretty clear: Cranky.

Yes.

I love this line by Torley from the Septepmber one you list:

I know some of you are concerned RA will turn into “the next General”

General discussion was unfriendly and an absolute mess, without stricter moderation it was better to have it closed rather than for it to remain open. Unless LL has a change of heart about appointing new resmods having a new GD is just asking for trouble and lots of new drama.

(Contrary to what someone - forgot who - pointed out, GD - and related forums - closed first, Linden Answers was fairly responsive towards the end - though people were outright rude - and closed a few months after GD did)

Linden Answers did get rather full of idiotic threads if I recall, either whinges or really obvious stuff that could have been answered in five seconds if posted in Resident Answers, or if a search had been done.

Hi Kitty,

I'm in favour of a GD forum. I guess the idea is that even if it does fall to pieces and get messy, you'll know what to expect if you walk through the door.

One person's idea of fun is another's idea of the exact opposite, but as long as one isn't inflicted on the other, everything is fine.

The other option is for Groups to create new forums outside of secondlife.com, but I sort of agree that seems unfair. We're all residents and the forum structure should probably cater for all our interests (within reason )

Stephen