Forum Guidelines: Discussion with Katt Linden

As our newest topic for discussion, I'd like to share the new draft Forum Guidelines with you.

I hope I can expect plenty of debate. I do want to hear your ideas and thoughts, but please do understand that, realistically, I can't promise to make changes, and of course I don't expect to be able to take all your suggestions. But I will read all comments, and will seriously consider what you have to say.

I'll participate in the discussion as I can, answering questions and talking about ideas, but it will be off and on as I also take care of my regular work, so I'll appreciate your patience.

I plan to join the conversation in this thread, off and on, for five days, until Tuesday August 12th. After that point the thread will remain open, but I won't be able to monitor what's being said.

PS, I'd appreciate it if y'all don't make me do too much moderation in this thread! Thank you!

-- Katt Linden

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Draft Forum Guidelines
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Respect others. Try to be helpful. You are advised to bring your sense of humor

Community Building, Supported by the Forums
Linden Lab offers the Second Life Forums to promote conversation and shared ideas, in the service of developing a strong, well informed community. Second Life Residents are invited to use the Second Life Forums for constructive discussion about Second Life and the Second Life Community, education about Second Life, and for the honest and open exchange of ideas.

Share useful information. Participate! Have fun! Learn and teach!
• Be constructive, respect each other and the rules, and you will be a welcome participant.
• Post it once. Do not copy the same post into multiple threads.
• Look for threads on topics that interest you, including Linden inworld events, public issues, the Second Life viewers, the Beta grid and new features.
• Enjoy the forums for discussion of topics related to Second Life and the Second Life Community.
• Please, keep it "safe for work". Links, including to images or video, must not be to "NSFW" material or images that show the "naughty bits."
• Ads for your Second Life goods, land or services may be posted in the appropriate classifieds section.
• No RL advertisements, ads may only be for Second Life related goods, land or services.
• No spam. No trolls, no flaming, no personal attacks. Don't break the CS or TOS. Forum suspensions and bans could affect your entire account, including inworld access. [*Read the fine print, below.]


Explore the Second Life Resident Forums
• Visit the Resident Conversation forums to discuss inworld education with SL Instructors and Educators, to arrange Real Life Meetups & Events, and much more.
• Interested in Content Creation? Participate in the discussions about animation, building, texturing, event management, gallery, movies and machinima, scripting and SL games.
• Post in the Classifieds sections of the Forums when you have a new product, updated store, land to sell or rent, or to post special attractions, help wanteds, or offer services.
• Discuss technical issues, including topics about the Mac and Linux clients.
• Use the International forum threads to talk about Second Life in German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese or Korean.
• For private discussions, use private messaging, IM or voice in SL. Please keep the forums for public conversation.

Help keep the forums constructive and useful
• If you see a post that you think violates the Community Standards, is posted in the wrong forum, or in some way requires review, please help out by reporting it by clicking on the /!\ icon to the left of the post. We’ll take a look at it and will take any action necessary.
• To ignore all forum posts by one person, click on their name, and select "add to ignore list" at the bottom of the menu.
• We recommend that you understand and follow general "Netiquette." A good primer is at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netiquette].

*The Fine Print. Read Carefully
Maintain your good reputation in the forums. 1. Multiple posts or cross-posting of the same content is unwelcome. 2. No RL ads for content unrelated to Second Life, no spam. 3. No trolls, no flaming. No personal attacks. Refrain from making posts that are intended to upset or hurt, and don't encourage others to do so, either. 4. Keep it "Safe for Work". [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSFW]Cover "naughty bits" in images and video. Don't use, or link to, content not suitable for a PG rating, including pornographic, nude or adult content. For instances such as avatar skins, this includes any web page or image directly linked to. 5. You may not post Chat logs. Posting them anywhere without permission is an inappropriate violation of community trust, and therefore may make you unwelcome in these forums. If an abuse report is filed by the individual you quote, disclaiming permission, you should be prepared to show you have permission or take down the content. Note, misuse of Abuse Reports is a serious offense. 6. Your posts may not violate or link to content that violates the CS (Second Life Community Standards) [http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php] or TOS (Terms of Service) [http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php], including gambling or casino-related content. This also includes illegal content, and content that is misleading, defamatory, infringing, libelous, obscene or otherwise objectionable, at Linden Lab's sole opinion. Posting such content or links is grounds for suspension or removal from the forums and from Second Life.

Penalties
1. First offense. Linden Lab may give an informal, one-time warning via private communication with the offender explaining the offense and what (s)he can do to correct it. 2. Second offense or severe first offense. If an offense is severe or an informal warning has already been issued, Linden Lab may issue a formal warning. Formal warnings become a permanent part of the Resident’s record. Repeat offenders are subject to suspension. 3. If a third offense is committed, the penalty is a three-day suspension, both in-world and from the forums. 4. A fourth offense may earn a thirty-day suspension, both in-world and from the forums. 5. In the case of a fifth offense, after a second suspension, if violations continue, the violator may be banned from the Forums. A ban is the permanent deactivation of the violator’s account with the Second Life Forums and for the most serious or repeat offenders, could include a ban from inworld activities as well. 6. While Residents may have several accounts, at a time when one such account has been suspended from the SL Forums, logging in to the Forums using an alternate account and committing an offense will result in suspension of all known accounts from the Second Life Forums for thirty days, in addition to any other penalty earned. 7. Violations are evaluated on a case-by-case basis depending on the severity of the offense and past history of violations. Every effort will be made to take into consideration the feeling of the forum community. However, Linden Lab will make the final decision.

On Forum Moderation
1. After moderator warning in a thread, if offenses continue or an overall thread is destructive rather than constructive, threads may be closed and locked. 2. Inappropriate posts may be disemvoweled, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disemvoweling] 3. Generally moderators will not delete whole threads, other than for serious violations, but offensive posts may be removed. 4. In order to make our decisions as transparent to Residents as possible, any editing or locking of threads will be explained in a note from the moderator. 5. If a moderator removes or edits your post, please do not repost it elsewhere, including a "Why did my post get removed" post. 6. Appeals If Linden Lab takes disciplinary action against you that you believe was unfair or inconsistent, you may appeal the decision by sending an email to [an email address to be announced.] In the e-mail explain your situation and why you believe you should not have been disciplined. You must follow this appeals procedure, or your appeal will not be considered. You may submit only one appeal per disciplinary action.

first


always wanted to do that


thanks katt

My pleasure, Crunch.

Darn it, I missed being first.

Seriously Katt, sometimes bad threads get derailed into fun threads. The Resident Answers seems to have been running pretty well w/out supervision. Often the important info gets handled very early on, but the thread keeps going as derailment and mirth ensue.

As long as it does not violate the community standards I say "what the heck".

I get more converation with fellow residents in the forums than I ever do inworld. I know that LL would prefer the opposite, but due to the platform this is not a posibility.

Please don't nerf the forums.

Katt like it so far but I think that a statement should be made in the section about punishments that depending on the type and severity of the offense these steps may not apply (some things will of course get you banned faster than that I'm sure)

A few issues:

1) Don't repeat the same thing in multiple sections. Besides lengthening what people have to read, it tends to make people skip over the rest of the section, thinking it is simply a reiteration or copy error, and they will mistakenly skip over the rest, where there could be other items of import which are not duplicates.

2) "5. You may not post Chat logs. Posting them anywhere without permission is an inappropriate violation of community trust, and therefore may make you unwelcome in these forums." -- This needs to be clarified to say "posting them anywhere in any Second Life (or Linden Lab) venue". Too many folks will think it is not ok to post a public chatlog on their blog or in a private disciplinary forum.

3) Disemvoweling is a really dumb practice. I can't believe people actually think it has a place in modern community management. All it does is inflame the situation even further. If the post is offensive, delete it. If you use forum software which allows for user-resubmission, do that instead (basically, you return the post to the user with reasons why it was pulled and will allow it back into the thread in its original position after the user rewords to your satisfaction).

4) Allow for more avenues for communication for appeals. Email for many people is a pain in the tail. The forum has a private messaging facility, and a web-based appeal form would be ideal.

A structure suggestion:

Bring back a General forum so that the "chatty" posts can happen there, rather than forcing that behavior into other forums, like Resident Answers.

I can live with that.

But darn it, sometimes resident answer questions just beg for the treatment.

There's a couple (sometimes contentious) forum policies that aren't addressed in the proposed guidelines above:

Has the policy on 'Naming Names' changed? What is the policy today?

What about threads posted in the wrong forum (intentionally or un-intentionally). Such as SL advertising outside of classifieds, or having a social debate in the script library. How will those be handled, or are the rules relaxed?

Resident Answers: Is it still limited to residents answering resident questions, or is it acceptable now as the defacto general conversation forum? If its the latter, why not a name change to something more appropriate?

The actual question (if not a troll) is answered right quick. Some of SL's best and brightest scan this forum.

What happens after that could be considered payment for the very good free advice.

I don't know if Forum reorganisation is an option, but you might:

1 - Remove the subforums from "SL Volunteers & Education" unless the ResMods need their own forum. The Live Help and Greeter forums apply to long expired volunteer programs and are sometimes mistaken by new users as help forums.

2 - Create a General Chat forum, but keep Resident Answers for real Resident Answers.

3 - Reopen the Linden Feedback forum ( /20/1.html ) for these threads!

4 - Remove or archive the Group Life forums. Most of them are dead (and do PG forums need a board called "Black Thong Mistresses"?) Of the alive ones, several are essentially giving free hosting to a few private businesses in SL.

5 - Clarify whether Feature Suggestions should be in the Feature Suggestion forum or on JIRA.

6 - Add libraries for textures and builds, as well as scripts.

And on the policy issue: is it intentional that the rules now state that you may not repost a message ".. if a moderator removes or edits your post" - but you CAN do so if they lock the thread (which is not the same as removing or editing a post)? This could be a good change in many ways, but could also be a loophole..

Also, ditto the question on "naming names", and - why the policy on "disemvoweling"? This seems a bit gimmicky to me, if the post is to be removed, why not remove it? Plus, y cn wrt txt 2 b rdbl w/t vwls.

I think the last sentence in the first section, "Second Life Residents are invited to use the Second Life Forums for constructive discussion about Second Life and the Second Life Community, education about Second Life, and for the honest and open exchange of ideas" should have " about Second Life." added to it.

The phrase "Forum suspensions and bans" suggests that there are forum suspensions and bans that don't affect inworld access. This should be made clear one way or another. The last word from LL that I am aware of is that forum suspensions and bans always affect inworld access.

Does this include chat logs where the other person's name is obfuscated? A kind of post that comes up once in a while is where somebody asks if they handled a situation properly. They'll post a chat log where their name is visible, but the other party's name has been changed. I think that should be ok to do.

--Hugsy

About the posting of chat logs: Your rule states that posting them anywhere is a violation.

It's been gone over again and again that the rules on the forum here do not cover the rest of the real world and do not cover other forums, therefore I suggest that you change the wording of the rule to only include posting them in these forums and any other Linden lab areas including in-world.

Does this proposal say anything substantively different from the current guidelines? I honestly couldn't tell.

/invalid_link.html

Ok, Jannae, No forum nerfing, not wholesale anyhow! Some renaming for clarity, that sort of thing.



Makes sense Gordon. That's the spirit of it, for sure.

As far as inworld bans for forum violations, wouldn't this open Linden lab up to legal trouble for taking someone's money (in the case of paid accounts) and then willfully denying a service that has been paid for?

"Every effort will be made to take into consideration the feeling of the forum community. However, Linden Lab will make the final decision" could just be deleted.

i am glad to see LL taking steps in so many different directions to make SL a better place for its residents.

good show, LL. thanks Katt, et al.

There have been cases in which a poster named someone and described a conflict in such a way that most of us would not consider it a "personal attack." The consensus seemed to be that naming someone with whom a poster has a conflict is against the forum policy, even when the poster focuses on the circumstances and does not attack the named person. If we should avoid naming names in those cases, then it probably needs to be stated in the guidelines.

Make it clear that PG advertising in signatures is acceptable but not in separate threads outside of classifieds.

I also support name-redacted chat logs, with the realization that full chat logs may be posted on non-LL-owned sites.

I also support a general discussion forum so people can be chatty if they want, and others can get quick answers in RA. However, I reiterate that the order in which the forums are presented matters. Content creation first, then helpful forums such as RA and Technical Tips, and then the GD forum. This will head off new people whose eyes will stop at the first forum that looks moderately relevant.

I agree.

Maybe could find something if you went over both with a fine toothed comb, but it doesn't appear on the surface like the intent has changed at all.

Keep the group forums, please, two of them are mine. Keep those two at least.

Remove the headers at the top for inactive Linden forums.

Either ditch the group forums or give everyone with a group the ability to add there own forum.

As it stands now theres just a few there, how did they even get those forums? I don't think many people know.

It needs to be open to everyone or not at all.