But WHY are the forums being changed?

There has been a lot of talk about the forum's forthcoming change, to be 'blog'style', but what has not been discussed in any depth is WHY we think LL are making this change.

Is it to save money on the vbulletin software that LL are currently using? Well no, for vbulletin there is a one-off fee for the software (there is an on-going fee for software upgrades etc, which is optional).

Is it to give a more universal 'look' and 'feel' to the blog and forum?

Is it to stifle debate and discussion, and get back to the purely Residents Answers format that LL introduced when they abolished the General and Off-Topic categories in the forum back in 2006?

Why do you think thay have made this move?

Rock

This.

In other words, they want to provide people with a more Predictable Experience by hiding away the stuff they find awkward. Sound familiar?

Because they are idiots.

I wish you wouldn't get to the conclusion at the start of a discussion!

So let's turn our attention the present economic crisis in Zimbabwe.

Rock

How does the change in software accomplish this?

You can post discussions there and responses can follow indefinitely. Granted, the exceeding bad interface, slow performance, frequent inability to load the pages without having to clear your browser cookies, poor search options, and so on, will greatly reduce participation, but that will apply to plain Q&A stuff as well as the sort of exchanges that are said to be trying to be squashed.

I suspect one reason for LL to want the change is to have one unified system for the company blogs and user input.

I wished they'd have just put the entire website, excluding wiki and jira, into an updated vBulletin forum. Unfortunately vBulletin seems to be a lot nicer for users than it is for the operators. Pretty awkward for moderating.

This would be a really good question to ask Blue this Wednesday. The topic of his office hour (4-5 SL time) will be: "The Future of the Forums".

His office is at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Grasmere/67/156/23.

Does anyone have an anim for holding a sign? Would be nice if the sign moved up and down a bit ... *looks innocent and makes some protest textures"

By reducing participation, period:

And why would they care?

Probably because they fired the last person who knew how this software works.

I think the idea is that efficient, polite, to the point answers to routine questions about such things as "how do i get this box of my hand", "my avatar looks like a cloud, what do I do?", etc., will increase retention and lead to increased profit as a result.

The Lindens should realize there needs to be a moderated general discussion forum somewhere. The in world chat experience is fun and the interaction is like nothing I've ever experienced before, yes. But not one of us would be able to comfortably key any of the posts in this thread in world - and even if we could it would annoy other residents by filling up the screen with paragraphs no one has time to read.

The best and deeper social interactions come from a combination of the forum threads, like the undying one, with the simpler chat available in SL.

I for one would be willing to make it a premium perk, or a perk for a different payment level entirely.

There are a couple of forums outside of this web site. One has great promise - the other one is bit sniping sometimes even more so than this one.

They could have done that with one good FAQ.

Rock

Has anybody spent enough time on this thing to witness instances of moderation/post removal? If there's something about the new software that facilitates keeping things sharply on topic and removing comments the Lindens might not be happy about, I think it would be quite telling.

Providing efficient, polite, and to the point answers to those questions is what the knowledge base should be for.

At one point they actually had it in mind to populate the Knowledge Base with answers supplied in the forums (for some value of "forums"--I forget which promised reincarnation that was to be). Maybe now they hope to do that with Answers--although so far it's been the other direction: feeding in questions with ready-made KB answers, just so Answers doesn't look abandoned before it even gets started.

Now they seem to be finally giving up on that Parachure crap they spent god-only-knows how much time and money getting to run, and porting the whole mess to the wiki. Finally KB articles will be reasonably linkable (if not all that searchable ).

Oh, right, the thread topic. Brenda got it right. Just to amplify: They'll change the forums because LL wouldn't know a successful social software application if it bit them on the ass. This is the lot that limits us to 25 groups, remember.

My guess is that the forum software is going to be changed because doing that is easier that tackling some of the projects that actually need to be done.

The Knowledge Base is a static document, not a "ask a question, get an answer" system. The Knowledge Base is not at all where you input a question, someone reads your question, then someone composes a unique answer to the question that you just composed. You are aware of this.

The built-in hold_r_handgun works pretty well for stuff like that. Arcadia Asylum's generic protest sign is all set up with a little holding script, just slap your own texture on.

No, it's a "search for your question, get an answer" system.

Like "will you take my survey"?

The reason that people are in the forums and prepared to answer questions is because the forums allow all the messy stuff that makes it into a community. Take that out, and what you will end up with is the KB plus sarcasm.

You seem to think I'm trying to make some kind of a point that I'm not trying to make.

They will link the new blog with Wolfram Alpha where all questions are answered.

Just kidding... Seriously.

I guess so, I can't make it out at all.

What will happen to the classifieds forums when this shuts down?

I suppose xstreet will take over that role.

This.

Honest answer: a lot of residents have asked for forum improvements, and have complained about this one.

So of course they are looking to do something.

Prediction: a forum pretty much like this one used to be, will come along again someday. You know, with a general discussion area and so forth, and fairly free speech.

Why do I think this? Because it will make them the most money in the long run.

Just watch.

Why then not just update this vBulletin forum and unshackle the search?