What is this about?

What is this post in the Services forum about?
Title: Pathfinder Linden your services are not only required they are demanded


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I'm not that posting in the Services forum is a particularly good way to get Pathfinder's attention.

What is BT in the context?

Not sure, but isn't BT an internet provider in the UK?

Since this is in his public web profile I assume BT refers to BrainTalk. Not that I have any idea what BrainTalk is mind you...

BT in the UK is British Telecom, the national telephone provider and also an ISP in its own right.

Ah, BrainTalk. The British Telecom angle through me off the probably track.

Pathfinder Linden is John Lester, who has been active for a long time with a group called BrainTalk, a "patient support group for neurology".


I can access http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/index.php but I can't access any of the forum links on that page.
I get:

Guess he pulled a Linden way back then to lol

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2007/07/09/braintalk-sold/

https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators/2006-April/000650.html

Read down BT is not an ISP

Based on what can be figured out from 10 minutes of Google... Once upon a time John Lester (aka Pathfinder Linden) created an online forum of some kind for the purpose of community support (eg. informational/emotional patient-to-patient type) of people with neurological disorders. This was when he was at MGH, a very prestigious hospital in Boston. (Boston has lots of prestigious hospitals, most affiliated with Harvard Medical School.) And this Braintalk thing was a big success and was groundbreaking and the users loved it. And then he left MGH, and maybe tried to keep a hand in as a volunteer, but there was nobody else and no more support for it. And so it inevitably crashed and was down for some months. And he was eventually able to get some free time and he fixed it. But now it's crashed again of course. Meanwhile, some other fellow elsewhere set up some other forum site and invited people to move over there, and a lot of them did. And some people are sad that the original site totally expired, and they are uhappy about it, and wish they could somehow retrieve the content that accrued on Braintalk over the years.

Well, you know, these kind of things don't just run themselves! I don't know why people are so shocked, that a system without the necessary minimal support, abandoned by the organization that created it, has gone kaput. It's a shame nobody from the medical community or the user community stepped up with cash and/or time to keep the site going for the last several years. I can't see how John Lester is at fault or why he should be harassed, years and years after he left for a new career elsewhere (Linden Lab). Even though I bet he'll feel guilty about the situation. Seems to me they ought to be thankful for the run they had with it. No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.

Perhaps The Community should build a new system here in Second Life, since it's so whizzy and good for meetings and social networking and education and all that.

Oh, right, I forgot. The Community doesn't ever do anything, except make demands. It's up to individuals to create and maintain things.

Problem might be Feldspar, that people with neurological disorders may not be well enough or have the ability any longer for the huge responsibility and amount of energy such a thing would require.

The letter does sound a bit hostile but the person might be in a very depressing and volatile life situation.