Should we bother trying to keep this forum open?

but not listening.

The time for small fishes (we) is over. We have to become "pragmatics" now (hahaha), because frontiers time is over, says this video, says even Philip plus Mark and Blondin and Jack - not loud, but between the lines. And if I have seen right at the end of the video, we can throw our beloved avatars into the trashcan in near future. (If this 100$ wondercam becomes an obligation, lol)

But reading or hearing between the lines gave me the impression that we can forget listening (like before). Board plus management says where the music plays and how. Not we. Never. We are not allowed to change the composition.

Nothing will help: no protest, no feedback, no suggestions, no effort, no time we donate, nothing.

I had my first training lesson about LL this year, while I started playing in 2006. Other people learned the lessons about LL earlier and more of them, while they started earlier.

LL is throwing a prefab thing on us, if we want or not. I am sure it is conceptional and in parts technical ready made and stored in background and they drive now a constantly salami-tactic to hold us ingame until our money and creativity is not longer necessarily needed (or only if we build what they want us to build). They just started to dictate the content and where and under which conditions content has to be located (even the content of postings) What Mitch said is halfway clear: SL will become a school, a workplace and organized holidays for tourists - so to speak.

Spontaneity is: out! Critique is: out! Individuality is: out! (Paying is still in...) Ah si - and since he talked in the beginning that we will lose freedom...this is what we experience now. The whole package is changing into something bureaucratic, systematic, since he talked also about much more governance. And the new system will not listen. It is a system in which we have to listen or to leave. They burn the bridges behind them and if we don't follow, we are burned too. (And the forum frozen) ...

Well, look:

http://www.blip.tv/file/1058830
http://www.blip.tv/file/1058830

For pure q & a, the flog will probably be adequate, once it's got a few more features.

For fun and games and off-topic the likes of SLU will probably be a far better place.

But for stuff like in-depth scripting discussion, which should be an LL supported thing, I dont think the flog will be very useful. And right now, that sort of stuff is pretty thin at SLU. I don't know the others, though. And maybe that'll change with time.

And i have been involved in a couple of threads today that veered way off-topic, but were really good fun.

And that sort of thing does help build community.

But I don't see it surviving on the flog. I think that'll be a dull and proper place. But useful for pure q & a like I said.

I don't thonk LL will see much value in building communities.

Agreed.

I'd think if LL gives any weight to web traffic hits, that actually using their borums to voice concerns about it would be counterproductive. You'd be padding their site hit metrics, giving them a big woodie in the process, even IF one's only there to complain about how they screwed it all up. I'm voting with my feet and hope their new ugly gets cobwebs.

Oh!! The ironing!!

Your post can be distilled down to...A More Predictable Experience (tm)

Last I checked, LL collects a commission on all currency sold via the website(s), people go premium via the website, the land store is on the website, and XStreet was an ecommerce site. Obviously LL would like to increase the volume of all these transactions, as well as add more - none of which will involve either the Blogs or other Discussion areas. There are only so many web developers to go around.Why should the new ways be inferior to the old? Like it or not, the new Xstreet Commerce site simply has fewer features than this ancient broken software does to support discussing topics that require more than 3 posts to resolve. Its search capabilities are incorrectly scoped, and largely useless. I could go on.

I am not arguing to keep these forums open - I think that ship has sailed, unless LL runs out of time/energy to carry their project through. I am arguing that a switchover should not occur until the new platform can decently support this community.
.

That would work for me.

Closing this forum makes baby Cthulhu cry.

I've said this before... I'll say it one last time. These forums, or something like them, will come back. Given a bit of time.

Sure, it's out of vogue now, and they are likely to be wiped or whatever. But... think about it. Residents expect forums. I remember when there.com became uncommunicative. There too, I said: just wait. They didn't ditch their forums per se, they had a worse problem: nobody was talking to the userbase. Fast forward a bit, and now their CEO is a regular on their forums.


Predictions:

a) decent forum software here,

b) regular Linden Research involvement,

c) 24 to 36 month timeframe,

d) reason: need for competitive edge.


In the meantime:

a) Cristiano's SLUniverse gets a massive windfall in terms of value

b) SLUniverse owes SL nothing in particular, watch it expand into an even more general portal not necessarily friendly to the core here

c) Strong chance of SLUniverse becoming "GOM'ed" like gamingopenmarket and xstreet, except: I place my odds on Cristiano saying "No."

Bartender, I'll have what he's having.

Nitpicking flaws and usability issues is an easy way to create more noise than substance. Perhaps that's why they didn't listen.

I've submitted one specific Jira on the new site, referencing objective standards. I don't know whether it will be fixed, but my past experience in other jobs tells me that it's much easier to get designers to listen to usability arguments if you can point to something that isn't a matter of opinion.

I also did a long post on the navigation issues. I'm not sure if anyone will pay attention to it. It's not my best work (but then, they didn't pay me for my best work). Most of what's objective (the menu moved from the right side to the left) isn't compelling. Basic design principles (like menus shouldn't look like headers) are difficult to prove objectively. Arguing about gratuitous terminology changes is virtually impossible, but I keep trying. Because the note is so long, it may come across as nitpicking, but it would be three times as long if I'd really wanted to pick nits. Hopefully the post may give others a more concrete handle on the navigation issues, but I'd be surprised if anyone on their web design team reads it.

But with all due respect to the many others who complained in the last week about the usability, I haven't seen much in the way of useful criticism. Or perhaps it's just that the useful stuff is buried under "confusing, can't use it, can't find anything, I hate it, etc." - sentiments with which I sympathize, but which simply aren't useful.

Instead of nitpicking the design, a better approach is to identify the important tasks that people are finding difficult. Getting to the forum listing is one, finding the list of forums is another, finding how to quote is another. There are more, but start with the top three, and present those as problems to be solved. It's much easier to make progress by asking for something tractable than by asking for a miracle.

Even if they fix all these tactical issues, there remains a basic management issue. Is anyone on their development team familiar with WCAG? If not, then why didn't management build a development team that's familiar with current design standards? If there was someone, how come they couldn't stop the site from being released when it doesn't meet the standard? Ultimately the problem isn't that the navigation or the color scheme is bad; the problem is not having a usability expert on the team with sufficient influence to prevent these issues from arising in the first place.

That would be lovely, and you are probably right. But in the meantime the community here will have died.

It takes a long time to build a community and a culture. And the flick of switch to destroy it.

Unfortunately, not all of us are Web Designers or developers. We don't know all the minutae as to why the site looks like crap. It just does and we don't like it. That's th only way we can say iy.

I understand that, and I don't have any easy solutions. I'm just pointing out that saying that it "looks like crap" won't do accomplish anything. I wish it would, because I agree.

I do encourage you to be as specific as possible. Don't say "I can't figure out how to use it". Say "I wanted to do X, because I need .... I looked for Y, but couldn't find it, I tried doing Z, but it didn't do what I want, etc."

As for the visual appeal, somehow I missed getting a sense of art when the gay genes were being handed out. I understand the color wheel and the golden ratio, but I don't understand what I don't like about the way the new stuff looks. So I don't mention that part.

Geez. Can't you just get over the format problems until they get them tweaked....go bust in over there, and make some new friends? It's words (thoughts) on a computer screen. Your words (thoughts) are going to show up over there....just like they show up here.....just a wee bit smaller....(maybe not in the right place, the first few times).....and the spell checker is built in, as opposed to ......%!@$!$#!......... what we have here.

How do you know it's not working if you're not using it?

So, like with everything else LL does, I'm expected to just keep showing up and hoping it will someday work? I was there yesterday and it wasn't working as well as these forums do.

We're talking about forums here, not rocket science. Please explain why in this economy, with this unemployment rate, in the area LL is in, they still don't have this stuff working well after so many months. Really. Help me understand how setting up a new forum to the point that it's as good as these old hobbled forums could possibly take so long.

This "lets just pretend it's good and all think happy thoughts" crap is BS.

Oh....ok.

Agree totally! These "business" types don't understand or care to understand us "creative" types. All they want to hear from us is how much money our efforts will put in their pockets. Since this forum puts zero in their pockets, from their point of view this forum is useless. Besides, who honestly believes LL wants to provide a vehicle where residents can come together and organize against their inane corporate policies? My suggestion is everyone who enjoys posting or reading the posts here come to a condenses about where to move to and totally abandon this and every LL sponsored forum. Let them have their new and improved corporate crap and choke to death on it. As long as residents have a place to gather and organize protests why care... LL has never listened to us and never will since we’re not major share holders. So why care about being on their forum in the first place? I’m waiting and biding my time until some new virtual world comes along and offers a similar product, then I’m out of here! I came to that decision 2 years ago. It might happen, it might not happen but I’m not be giving LL once cent more than I absolutely have to give them to get want I want, and if ever a viable option comes along they’ll get zero from me from that day on. They burned their bridges as far as I’m concerned so I’m in wait mode.

I can do that.

I'd like to think you are right in this, and - in principle, you are. But this is LL, with a long track record of not listening. You could slap Mark Kingdon in the face with a professionally-written point paper, and he'd still ignore it. He has his own ideas, and nothing else matters except for the corporate suits who have no interest in this platform to begin with.I don't think it's for lack of trying. I think the real problem is, we're all burnt out, demoralized, dejected, defeated. We've expended all of our energy fighting the good fight against Zindra, against ripping established businesses up by their roots, and turning the lives of thousands of residents upside-down all just to pretty-up the grid for the "millions of people clamoring to get onto the grid 'if only there wasn't so much smut!'" We fought against the new blorums, arguing that there was nothing wrong with the existing forums that a simple software update couldn't fix. We even tried to meet them halfway and suggest ways to make the "blorums" more usable. It all fell on deaf ears.

We're too tired to care anymore. We're done. We're quietly picking up our toys and going home. We're using what little voice we have left and voting with our feet. Concurrency on the grid is at the lowest I've seen in a long time. At this very moment, there are only 50,011 residents in-world - a far cry from the 80k+ we were pushing earlier this year. In a few days, perhaps, LL will turn off the lights in these forums and shut the door, locking us all out. A few of us may migrate to the "blorums" and try to make it work; but I suspect the vast majority of us will scatter to the winds, finding our way to different forums. No longer unified under one roof, the community will be forever shattered.

To be honest, I can not even figure out how to post on their new one.... the one at the bottom of the homepage.

I really dont understand why LL believes that taking away from its residents things that they want, love and frankly keep them in SL is profitable for them. They are making poor decisions and frankly it will be their downfall.

It is sad. I really enjoy second life however, if you keep taking away my toys I will gather up all my money, the money I spend each month on my sims and additional money I give to musicians and venues and buy from content creators and go back to RL.

Honestly 2 years is a good run in SL so I suppose it would not be to bad.. I cant compete with the big name content creators as my little shop is so far off the radar no one knows about it. "sigh"

This forum is where i have found ALL the answers i ever had about second life and how to make it a better place for me. There has never been a time when my answers were not answered and in a way that I could understand. Yes we go off on each other once in a while here but the banter is actually kinda cool sometimes....


ANyway.. I sure hope they dont take it away cause i will be lost.

I'm not sure if this is going to end up a question or just a "jig-saw" but I realize that unless we do something (like Raymond said) a valuable resource could be lost. The Rez Ans may be gone forever.

With them will be gone the thoughts and feelings about sl from its earliest days, from the pioneers of this web. These are NOT just valid for this world, but may, in the centuries ahead be a record of how humans first viewed the metaverse, a place where we are venturing today. Destroying the forum is akin to washing down cave paintings with Mr. Clean.

And our voices will be lost. Raymond's pleasant tone, Brenda's twangy laugh(?), Rhaorth's neverending thread, Pep's dyspeptic Welsh whine ("it's their not thier" and so many others. Not the least, yours truly - The Jig, the Lady herself, her voice drifting into the stars like raindrops of brillliance.

In the words of that great Englishman, Winston Churchill, "This is not teh end, this is not even teh beginning of teh end, but it is perhaps teh end of teh beginning!"
Let's make threads that will cry out to be heard!
Save our Forum! Save this resoruce of knowledge that we have created! Save the wit and camaraderie of the Friday threads! Save those classic moments when Jig came online!
Seriously, SAVE OUR FORUM.

Actually, I think there's probably more concentrated knowledge here in terms of how to use SL, script, build texture and anything else you can think of, than pretty much anywhere else.. We may not generate revenue directly but we're a big enabler.

When 50% of the people responding say "it looks like crap" I think that is indeed good feedback. It tells you you need to find somebody who's better at web design. Or that's what it'd tell most people - what it seems to tell LL is "resounding success!"