Forum Facelift

Ain't that the truth.

Nika, you make sense there. I'm not sure I agree with you, but it's a good argument.

*places hand on chin, gazes up and ponders.

Hmm well that includes me I guess in the 1.8million griefers, I also play CoH, Total Anhilation, Supreme Commander, Age of Empires, SWG, Matrix, Quakes, Dooms, Duke Nukem, Warcraft 2 with mates online too, so I'm evil incarnate I guess. We all know adults don't play video games.....
If you knew more about WoW you might know that many servers are crammed full of 30-50yo's male and female, avoiding kid players much the way we do here in SL. The kids have their PvP servers to powerlevel against each other on.
I don't know the age stats, but venture to say 80% of the people on servers I played on are over 30.
Your kids / nephews / nieces / friends play WoW? They're probably griefers...........
I suspect a lot of forum/newsgroup users are griefers too

Just teasing Tegg. But you have to admit, WoW players do have a bad rep on most grids they visit. SWG is still up? I gave it 2 months years ago when it first started, but the idiots with giant dung beetles and Rancors in the cantinas drove me away.

Spent two years in CoH, Liberty Server. The Mighty Warbull, when heroes need to be saved, they call Warbull! But Warbull has hung up his cape and spends most of his time in the evil parallel universe with that Dom chick.

I'm not completely sure I agree with me either. I'm a good source of ideas, but they're not all keepers!

Lol, nah I dropped my SWG account and WoW too soon, just got CoH left really, I made it to level 47 so far, but Level 50 seems to be about farming and filling nowdays, no hero work happening, it's like that Legion of Heroes club on The Tick

I posted the following before I saw this thread but here's my input on the website forums issue:

I don't see any mention of website feedback but this seems to be the closest forum to it.

These forums have had their BB code broken for a long, long time. At least a year or two. Yet, the post still has a BB code editor built in, and still automatically BB encodes certain things when you post.

I believe LL took BB code down because of some version bug or hacker hole.

The point is these forums should be part of LL's presentation to it's community and to the world and it seems to be lacking.

The colors and layout are drab in my opinion and the fact LL has failed to upgrade/migrate their PHP code to the latest version, which is secure and safe, is ridiculous. I have my own PHP forum which needed to be upgraded recently. So, I clicked on 'upgrade' and the entire forum was instantly upgraded and migrated.

I think some attention needs to be paid to the forums here, bb code reintegrated so residents can share content with each other better, and the look of it updated as well.

Also, it could do with a General Discussion forum, as it seems more than half the forum is dedicated to advertisements.

For now, other social SL websites seem to dominate over LL's own community forums.
This is the forum that should be the one-stop community website for SL.

Just my 2 cents. Please take it constructively.

*wave* Thank you, as that brings up something I had forgotten.

There is nothing stopping LL from letting an outside party take over Forum support with their blessing as the 'Official' one; In several 'downtime' cases back during my activity, SLU became the de-facto 'winner' in the unofficial group (and from reading the early comments here, still is - someone please forward my congratulations to Cristiano for that coup, and I'd be interested if he still remembers me from IRC).

In fact, when I last spoke to Robin (Dec 2006, during an invited discussion regarding changing support tiers to better assist 'paying' users - and from my father's house in MO) I asked about the forum in passing. She said back then that one plan was to offsource the forum as I mention above. I never forwarded that to anyone, but it would be interesting to know why that idea was eventually dropped. [Robin? Please?]

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Right, on to Part 2 (more detailed comments regarding Off-Topic Discussion, and Moderating)

Should an Off-Topic section be brought back? Heck Yes. But there are caveats that go with the suggestion (some of this will reference my earlier master post):

-> In a publicly-viewable forum (Guests), the OT section should not be available. Again, this is to keep things friendly to the Search Spiders. Verified and above should be able to see it, though I feel that there should be an option to squelch access to it if you're not at all interested.

[I'd like to point out here that getting to Verified status only takes the purchase of US$1 worth of L$ from the LindeX exchange site. I understand that there are barriers to even this, but I just noticed that Verified PayPal users can now link their account (which IMHO may be safer than leaving CC info with LL). Also, anyone who decided to undergo that interesting and amusing 'Age Verification' thing *should* be considered as Verified for the sake of forum access.]

-> The OT section should be either very lightly moderated, or not moderated at all (this assumes my earlier point, which hides the forum to Guests). However, the REST of the forum is strictly moderated (or as close to that as possible). This is going to meld into the Moderation comments, stay with me here.

My reasoning behind this is straightforward - As has been mentioned multiple times here, we're going to have these discussions *regardless* of an OT section occurring or not. Lets put it back, but with controls and clearly defined rules both for regular and OT sections. However, strict moderation will either require more Linden staff or some sort of assistance elsewhere.

An excellent example of a vB forum implementing some of this is the Notebook Forums: http://www.notebookforums.com/index.php?index

Guests will notice that OT is marked Private and not available. I have an account there, and can see OT when I'm in (currently browsing a US economy thread). [Side note - they appear to have gone through an overhaul much like what's discussed here, and is looking the better for it. Their Rules thread/post is VERY strict and is not what I'd recommend here (due to lack of staff), but could be adapted.]

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OK, my feelings on Moderation (please don't shoot me ).

I do think external moderation can work; Y'all did not have an issue with some of us ResMods during the initial couple months (I will make no comment as to my own success; Go look at my post history and decide for yourself - and it would be nice to hear counter-feedback from those who were not around back then). However, there will be a bit of give-and-take in order to allow this:

-> External Mods should preferably be *external* (i.e. outside contractors) with no SL accounts at all. This may not be possible due to the way this forum integrates, so alternatively hand out Linden accounts with no SL login capability or create a new 'last name' for this purpose that still has no SL login possible. If they did have accounts prior to this, they would need to submit to temp or permanent ban during their tenure as mod.

-> Barring that, an existing 'Resi' *waves to Torley if still watching* can be nominated to help. However, he/she will need to submit full RL data including address, etc (like what is submitted for the Age Verification) and possibly accept whatever additional vetting is required for a MG person to interact on the TG.

[I originally had the option for your avatar (and any of those linked to your IPs) both banned and deleted from the database; Discussing it with a friend of mine (who some may remember as Racer Plisskin, also retired) made me remove this based on issues with creating problems in the Asset DB. I include it here for completeness and expansion/discussion on keeping the Mod from 'conflicts of interest' with the world being discussed around them. Also, if its not blatently obvious, I'm quite willing to submit to this despite the sacrifices involved and my deep ties here.]

-> Oh, one last thing - we've unofficially had Moderation by Residents as far back as Beta. After all, who's 'Nada Epoch' in the Scripting Library forum? And the old Groups forums had the 'creator' of that group also be the Mod for it. We know its possible, and it did work well in those instances, so it should not be an issue to re-work it when done carefully.

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Though I did not intend to discuss banning, I touched on some of it above, so my thoughts:

-> I will not - and cannot - discuss existing bans in place due to certain 'conflicts of interest' created from an early (and possibly ongoing) program around the permaban system. You'll need to poke Robin or perhaps Andrew for more info - ask about 'Resident Review.'

-> I agree with the earlier mention of having a forum ban not mean an SL ban - but an SL ban should include the forums (though the read-only sections would still be available as a 'Guest' if that's enabled). I also agree that it should be tiered into via multiple suspensions - perhaps two weeks, then 4, then 8, then permanent.

-----=====-----

OK, that's pretty much the remainder of my overall comments on this subject. From here on I will answer questions (If I can) and otherwise probably fade back onto my weblog until I hear anything different over here.

Robin and Kat - Again, best of luck to both of you, and forward my thanks again to Torley for keeping me sane during the ResMod attempt.

/salute
--TSK

Well, unless it's an oversight, I haven't been banned yet. Thanks, Robin!

There have been some great ideas in this thread. Is there any sort of ETA on when we can expect to see some changes? Also, is it ok to ask how important these forums are to LL? They are very important to a lot of us who post here, and they give us a feeling of community when we can't be in-world. They are also a great resource for newer members who are fighting the infamous SL learning curve. I wouldn't still be in SL if it weren't for help I received in the forums from more experienced residents.

I second Trouts request for this. I know as part of your job you're suppose to tell us that we're very important, etc. but, seriously, does LL feel that there is a need for the forums or do they possibly believe that it can all be handled by 3rd party forums?

Many of us are very comfortable here and learn a lot and it's disconcerting when we feel like it may all be pulled out from under us.

Lastly, if it hasn't been mentioned. I would like to see a thread for people new to the forums introduce themselves.

I, for one, am much impressed that all the legthy comments here have been duly noted. More awesome still is the amount of Linden input in this thread.

I agree. It definitely is a good sign.

I wonder if the new forum etc. person would be willing to create some sub-forums in the "SuezanneC Baskerville" forum.

Says it all 4 me.

#5 sounded a lil perverted but thats just my dirty brain.



Not a bad idea @ all.

* Bring back BBCode

* A General Discussion section

* Let "free" accounts have access to certain sections- RA, Technical and the like. Sections that would be considered helpful to new or free accounts.

Enable Avatars

Notably they exist, but yes, enabled by default would be +1 in my book.

what dont u idiot lindens understand about , we dont want want fancy facelifts, like makeup on a hooker. we want what works like a stove that comes on when we want it. or a tv that changes channels efficiently, we do not care that ur programmers got money and lapsed into cocaine and got stupid, with hallucinations, go back to what actually worked thats what we want

Helpful, this.

Outsource the Forums and the all the Web development. It really makes no sense financially to pay San Francisco salaries for work that can be done elsewhere at a fraction of the cost. With the savings you can pay some real DBA's and programmers.

Had time to finalize those "recommendations/decisions" yet?

Thanks!!

One of the reasons I don't use some of the third party forums much is the overactive flashy animated smileys. I hope we don't get them here.

And signatures that take up 1/2 the screen..

/me really wanted to smack FD last week.

seriously, did any of you really expect this to be anything other than the usual linden lip-service?

It's not the despair; I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.

While the content of the post you quoted is inane ..

read the last edited by bit ...

Interesting.