Forum Facelift

Awww.... c'mon Nina. *hands her a roasted kangaroo*

ew, that sounds awful

*hands her a glass of white wine*

Take your time with the typing.

close the forums...in world would bring more of us together for everything

Though my actual low-tech suggestion is way back on page 2 of this epic, I have not called to close the forums, I have no personal reason to back that suggestion, I have very rarely come to the forums for anything other then help, or when I cant log in, to see whats broke, and when they believe SL will be back online again.

across the planet I am sure there will be 101 reasons why people come here , Google defines the word 'forum' as : " a public meeting or assembly for open discussion " for that reason alone this should not die. If you stop it here, it will just open somewhere else so why not keep it in house?

(......and for the record Google defines the word 'Havoc' as : violent and needless disturbance... lol... but I digress.. )

My personal experiences tell that Lindens and / or help in world, are not easy to get hold of. When I needed help with scripting I learn't from people here in the forums, when I needed help with sculpties, I found the answers here in the forums. If anything the forums are a much faster technical support team, without having to wait the standard 4.2 years when you submit a ticket.

Second life boasts it has an environment created by its residents to make it what it is today, I say listen to the residents! because without them, I wonder what second life will be tomorrow.....

while the forums can be useful sometimes, i think that limited LL resources might be better spent responding to real/actual problems residents have - in other words, work on cutting down the average response time from 4-6 weeks to something far more reasonable

just a thought

Bring back several closed forums, including "Land & the Economy", "General Discussion" and "Linden Answers".

And do everything that Desmond suggested.

I find that I usually think that's a good idea.

I was laughing about that myself.

I'd like a less cartoony header image {:

Read the blog post more carefully and be sure to read comment #50 from Robin.

It is important to note that not every Linden is a coder. We need folks to do the customer service items, yes, but the forums are a means of customer service. Just because some of you find no utility in it doesn't mean that it should be closed. That is a selfish position to take. Countless people learn things every day in here, and from some people who probably should be getting paid for teaching what they do.

You may not like Resident Answers (there are days when I certainly don't), but the forums serve many important functions that benefit a lot of people.

I suspect they don't understand how many gaps in existing support these forums help to fill. It's a least somewhat likely most of them hadn't been here, even in lurker mode, before the blog post today.

Robin, pls close the forums to Linda Harris, as per her request. Leave them open for the 9 zillion other people who use them :}

By the way, because you're on Robin's thread, none of us did what we usually do when first-time posters show up!

Welcome to the forums, Beth, Pam, and Linda! I'll try to answer your implied question: " Why spend Linden dollars and time on the forums? It would be better spent on customer support."

Answer: Because the forums are the most cost-effective form of customer support the Lindens could ever have. I've been on the forums for over a year, and the Lindens have spent nearly zero time on the forums ... their only expenses have been hosting costs. Meanwhile, free of charge, forum participants answer an unending stream of resident questions, instantly, no support ticket necessary. For example, these threads from today:

Scripting: /54/c5/250033/1.html
New resident: /327/74/249264/1.html
UI Question: /327/46/250211/1.html
Current events about SL: /327/05/250121/1.html

Now that you're here, give it a try. You *might* find the forums helpful. Or fun. Or both.
.

I second what Broccoli Curry, Desmond Shang and Cocoanut Koala said (or did she post as Cocoanut Cookie?).

Also, I'd like to vote to keep the forum archives as they are, all the way back to the beginning. It's a great source of information for newbies, oldbies and researchers, and for me, precious memories live there.

1) BBCode enabled
2) BBCode enabled
3) BBCode enabled
4) BBCode enabled

And you guessed it,

5) BBCode enabled

Many that have been around for awhile knows how bad the forums have become. Do you really think they can be useful again? Yes tehre are some that are wonderful helpers here. But some no a chance. Many it is time to close the forums. Turn it all to read only or post a q and then let the responicble people post replies. I have been a Modertor on a large forum before. its not easy. Because the amount of work and the hard skin people need to be at times.Idon`t play the post onthe forum with a ALT game like many do. I have no reason to do so. But for some its just one big game. I wish all new people all the luck in the world. for one they will needed it. Lets move on and hope all goes well......

Usagi

I've been wandering through this thread and there a lot of great ideas but I want to comment on a few of them.

The rules need to be streamlined, they should numbered and in a list. So the moderator can say "This is your first warning, you have violated rule #5"

We definitely need a general discussion forum and an off-topic forum.

Punishment:
1) Removing the permban as a punishment option is a bad idea as is unbanning some people, it all really depends on the person what is appropriate. Some people no matter how many times they are asked to stop they never do. It's the question "How much delinquent behavior do we put up with before we kick them out? How much pain are they allowed to inflict?"
2) Partial decoupling of forum and SL punishments isn't a bad idea but total decoupling is a bad idea. If you are banned from the world you shouldn't be able to still post on the forums. The tendency of people who are banned is to post on the forums about how unfair the ban was, even if that requires creating a new account.
3) Telling people why they were banned is an excellent idea.

Access:
1) Allowing anyone to read on the forums is a good idea. Everyone to post isn't such a good idea. Currently all that is required to post on the forum is that your account be verified (payment info on file). Extending forum post access to unverified is a good idea but I think there will need to be some limits put in place. Either by requiring a minimum account age to post if unverified or by making it easier for unverifieds to be suspended from the forums. If there isn't some sort of restriction people will register accounts just to post on the forums... and they will be posting spam and complaining about being banned.

Blog:
Integrating the forums with the blog sound a bit like the old announcements forum.

Maybe you troll alts come here to push your agenda (you wouldn;t be here posting otherwise by your own logic) but many of us are here to help and also socialise.
If you don't like the forums, just piss off and stop reading them.

Allow read only access to help newbies, maybe a newbie help forum section where they could post for help, but it would need to be policed well.

Otherwise a new lick of blue paint will be fine.

The one should be looked at in depth...........

Also take off of the muting rights some ( so called monderators )of these other parts of the LLABS webs sites. There are people mod rights but not in the forums heart of the forums. There are a few people that have posting right in llabs sites that have no biusiness with mute prove abilites. Nothing is worse then having these loud month people post junk, but what worse is we have to stand for their pointless selfish posting on the forum without having the right to mute them.

Since the forum is only abused by a handful people they should be closed.
They are useless!

And to answer Tegg right away: This is the first and only time i am here in this forum read and post somthing, i never use it, i only see a chance now to get rid of this crap.

So just because you never use it it should go away? That's rich.

I would keep all the present forums + add one for rants & raves. Maybe a place for flamers would be cool. Give them a plcae to blow off steam & they will leave the rest of us alone. I have been help many times by the different forums. It's nice to be able to to talk with others who may have had the same problem as you. Just knowing that someone else has your problem helps. Anyway tweak them , keep them going. There are many of us who use them. The forums are very cost-efficative for of coumster help that LL has.

Hopefully it's the last time, we won't miss you, next trolling alt/sockpuppet please...........
Sorry even if this forum did close, I'm not going to your 3rd party adfest...........

"There are at this instant 367 residents using the forums."

Move it in-world?
So, at maybe 30 avatars per sim, that's a lot of sims into which
- we can't TP because they are full
- we can TP but it's like molasses
- we can TP but there's nobody there "at this instant"
- we can TP but we just missed a really interesting chat session, and all the other interesting chat sessions going back years.

Maybe do it in-world in Group chat?
I'm not sure which would be worse
1) Missing the good stuff that happened while we were not logged in.
2) Seeing *ALL* the relevant stuff for the multiple groups (of 25 max)