Forum Facelift

I say just close Second Life. Then LL will have more resources to dedicate to the Forum.

Most people here seem to be on the same page, at least the ones that want to see the forums continue. I have nothing to suggest beyond what has been offered. At least LL had the good sense to make this announcement BEFORE April 1st, that dampens some skepticism on their sincerity. The announcement says all the right things, we'll have to see if it is for once, more than lip service. At the very least there should be a place for all the knowledge the residents have amassed to be disseminated . They do an infinitely better job of supporting the product than the developers have to this point.

I would like to know what would replace the communications medium of a forum system in world before I cast an opinion. How can the functionality of this system be reproduced in world? Are we talking a new feature in the client? I.e.; instead of being out of world we have the same written long term form of knowledge sharing and interchange medium?

It could not, as others point out, be in the form of in person interactions in world because one sim cannot handle the load. Not to mention the cacophony of people screaming to be heard first, attempting to lord over others by bullying, griefing, etc., including intellectual snottery (non word but its the only way i can describe what i have seen at certain events in world).

In world is not "threaded" and there is no concept of persistence needed for phrasing and rephrasing a comment or reply. Oh and if in world then where is the spell checker? mine is built into Firefox.

Besides, the concept of "in world" doesn't work when "in world" is not an option due to downtime. Nor does "in world" help anyone unable to connect for whatever reason.

I think a combination of both concepts with maybe more ideas might be nice.
what if we had a forum hud in world? wouldn't that be nice when standing there with a pressing question and you don't want to let go of what your working on? pop on the hud and look for an answer or post a need for some immediate assistance etc. etc. and if we can interact with a website forum from in world? that would be cool. can html on a prim allow typing? if not then it needs to. little mini web browser huds, classrooms, etc....

anyway I would love to know what would replace the forums if they were closed. I saw nothing mentioned in respect to a replacement of this functionality.

If the forums will be closed in the future then at least give us time to grab a personal use copy of all the knowledge before the door is closed.

Fix BBCODE
Allow no payment on file to at least be able to READ them
If fact, let the world be able to read them -- Allow the googlebots to index them.
REMOVE the restriction that search words be uncommon and greater then 4 letters long.
General Discussion

Just to put in my 2cents on a few ideas brought up here:

---- Amnesty ----
On looking in the archives at posts from some of the banned individuals, it seems obvious that some bannings resulted from character traits that are unlikely to have changed. However, people's life circumstances do sometimes change, so perhaps giving them another chance is a good idea.

Please, do not do amnesties until AFTER you have new moderators in place and they have gotten to know the current, largely peacable, forum community -- maybe a month or two. The best tool a moderator has when confronted with posters who are manipulative or who routinely lie and/or slander is their own judgment as to the truth of a post. It would be impossible to have such judgment unless the moderator knows at least some of the parties concerned.

---- General Discussion and Off-Topic fora -----
I've been convinced over the last few weeks that we need these. Their absence makes the RA forum impossibly difficult to moderate ... there is and always will be a constant stream of well-meant GD posts. However, GD and OT need to be lightweight to moderate -- they are not central to LL's mission and thus LL cannot devote a lot of employee time to them. Robin and company refer to this staffing problem as "scalability" in the forums.

I have one suggestion: for these subfora, reserve the right for moderators to be arbitrary. That way, a moderator who knows that they won't be back to GD for a while can take a quick spin thru it and lock threads that appear to be headed south, threads that on another day, when the moderators knows s/he can drop by again later, they would let run. Embrace unfairness in GD and OT ... even with spotty moderation like this, people will be able to post their links to ballet videos and pictures of their cat with pleasure to all.

---- Transparency ----
Please operate the forum in partnership with the community; there will be much less suspicion and fear. When setting new forum standards, solicit feedback ... not endlessly, but a single thread on each policy is not asking for much. Also, please be sure that moderators are required to post reasons for actions. Please use the Incident Report (perhaps with a new location, "forum" or some other mechanism to let people know when suspensions/bannings occcur. Please be clear and open.
.

Umm. Those displeased by the role Forums posters may have had in the recent adfarm ban, for example, should bear well in mind that only in these forums is naming names and outing alts forbidden. Closing these forums and moving everyone to a third party forum would have results other than what some posters may intend.

If someone never used the forum, how could they know how bad or good it is?

Well thats true

While Personally I don't think anyone should ever be banned in world for what they say on the forums,

Being banned in world should lead to a complete ban on the forums as well. You should have to have an active Second Life Account to post.


-------------
As far as Payment info accounts ..

I'm a bit puzzled by how posting will work in the future -

Will payment info on file status still even exist with Age/ID verification coming out?

If not, surely requiring people to verify to post on the forums does *NOT* make sense.

Precisely the point.

Handful? That's a lie. There are over 1.5 MILLION posts. That's approximately 1300 posts A DAY, assuming the forums are as old as I think they are (3 years; 4 years is 1000 posts a day, and even at 8 years, that's 513 posts a day).

Well, to be fair, he did say 'abused' by a handful of people. That may or may not be true, either way, it's still not a reason to shut anything down. Why, using that argument, they would have to shut down all of SL.

Yep, might as well start packing.....hell, by that logic, shut down the internets o.o (Yeah I know LL has no say in that.. but still!)

My suggestions :

(1) Enable BBCode and larger avatars. More generally, upgrade to 3.6.9 (or whatever the current stable version is) and enable the features that users expect forums to have. If you're going to run a forum, make sure it is well maintained.

(2) Re-enable the General forum. If you don't, Resident Answers will become the new General forum if you don't. Consider adding a "SoapBox" forum for people to let off steam in. This forum should NOT be accessible to guests or search engines, so that peoples' rants do not come back to haunt them later.

(3) Allow all SL users (and possibly guests as well) to read the forums. Limit posting to people with payment info on file, however. This is necessary to provide *some* benefit to having payment info on file, and to limit the possibility that troublemakers will evade suspensions/bans by using alts.

(4) Encourage Lindens, particularly developers, to read the forums and respond to suggestions made there. Without Lindens responding to threads, the forum system looks like nobody cares about it. This point is very important. The forums really need more Lindens reading them and being unafraid to respond to points made in them. This is necessary both from a moderation point of view, and also to address issues that Residents have in a way which prevents them festering and spoiling that resident's faith in LL.

(5) Anyone getting a forum suspension/ban should always be told what it is they are getting the suspension/ban for. Without knowing what they did wrong, how do they know what they must do to improve? Moderators should also contact the individual concerned to give an informal warning before they take official action. SL users are strong-willed and when dealing with strong-willed people, a minimal force approach works best. Where possible, solve issues informally. On the other hand, moderators should feel free to hand out suspensions to people who repeatedly behave badly towards other forum users despite a warning, and should be entitled to ban after one or two suspensions. There are only two situations where a forum suspension/ban should translate into a suspension/ban of the associated SL account. The first is where someone is being deliberately malicious - say, intentionally starting fights and causing drama. The second is where someone is using an alt to evade a previous forum suspension or ban. In both of those cases, the guilty party should face a suspension or ban of their SL account as well as their ability to use the forums. People who deliberately seek to cause trouble should be dealt with fairly harshly, but people who act out of ignorance, stupidity, not understanding the rules, or even temporary insanity brought on by strong emotion should get the minimal force approach.

(6) Existing forum bans should be repealed only if the individual banned is now capable of "playing nice". If they have always been a troublemaker up till now, and show no signs of being sorry for their actions, the forum is probably better off without them. On the other hand, if they are willing to apologize for their conduct, they might well deserve a second chance. Each ban would have to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

(7) More moderators. Preferably with responsibility for specific sections. Leadership. Organization. For that matter, review the organization of the forums themselves.

( Look into addons like vBBlog. If you allowed your users to set up blogs about Second Life easily and quickly, linked to their SL names, it *could* get you good publicity.

(9) Look into ways of helping newbies find the content/FAQs/tutorial/etc threads in the forums. Possibly re-order them?

(10) Keep vBulletin. Whatever you do, DO NOT switch to phpBB or another similar forum. Those things are a disaster waiting to happen!

(11) Think about enabling something like vBulletin's reputation system, and using it to encourage forum users to self-moderate. Replacing the default "I approve" and "I disapprove" phrases with "This post is helpful / good for the forum" and "This post is not good for the forum", would enable your users to use reputation to self-moderate. When combined with Linden moderators, this could be a very efficient way of reviewing the forum. It could also shift the emphasis from top-down control to community standards, which might make moderation a lot more acceptable to strong-willed residents. If you do this, however, you should trial it for a month at first, and disable the system if it turns out people vote more based on their agreement with or liking for the poster than the actual quality of the post.

(12) If you don't use suggestion #11, then you will need RezMods. These RMs should be given 'official' names (like "SoandSo Rezmod"... so that their actions as a RezMod are separated from their normal resident lives. This is necessary because the drama of being a RezMod will deter many good candidates otherwise. Further, the RezMods should work closely with the Linden mods, being both helped and supervised by them. Lastly, there needs to be coherent plan as to which areas of the forum are moderated by the Lindens, and which by the RMs... and what each is responsible for doing. In summary : you need to create an efficient plan which uses both in a way combining the strengths of each.

I agree with this, and it is basically what I meant.

If a person is banned from SL itself, no need to allow them to post here!

Then again, people who aren't in SL can't post here anyway.

The most they could do is read here, assuming everyone were allowed to read here (not necessarily to post), which I think is a good idea.

But it doesn't necessarily work well the other direction, or logically have to work that way.

Having it work that way means that if someone gets carried away on the forums, they lose their entire SL business (if they have one), and LL loses the income from that person's membership and tier fees - unnecessarily, imo. And LL could use the money!

If they act up in game, then yes, ban them from there eventually.

If they act up on forums, ban them from forums.

Actually, I don't know of anyone who was ever banned from SL as a result of being banned here (though there may have been some), and I do know several who continue to be productive people in SL, despite not being able to post on the forums.

So the rule really just serves as a rather hollow threat (fortunately!), just to strike fear into people's hearts, and I don't think that sets a good tone.

Being banned from the forums is sufficient punishment enough for incurring infractions due to forum behavior.

coco

Angel - I liked all yoursuggestions, but especially liked #3. I likethe idea of a more open (readable) forum like t his, while also restricting posting access to info on file. I think it would encourage folks to read it, as well as encourage folks -- just a little -- to get payment info.

Mari

Wel, maybe a more modern one. Those avvies look a bit dated and very pre-windlight.

Mari

Dearest Robin:

It's us again. The Lindens. We got wind of your plan to rework the forums and thought we would chime in and let you know that we quit. It was bad enough that you took away Taco Tuesdays, Wet T-shirt Wednesdays and Hawaiian Shirt Fridays. Now you want us to moderate forums full of (and we shudder when we say this), "residents". Really? We're professionals. Most of us are so technologically savvy that we were able to obtain our degrees right off of the internet, along with R0lexx watches, winning Spanish lottery tickets and a few "pharmaceuticals" guaranteed to help enhance our maleness. Some of us are females, and these herbal miracles appear to do nothing for our femaleness. God knows we've been eating them like Skittles, at least ever since we ran out of Skittles in the break room.

At any rate, this seems like a remarkable amount of (and we shudder when we say this) "work". To put it mildly, we are already working our fingers to the bone trying to keep the code tanks on the servers topped off. We originally thought that code was a bunch of ones and zeroes, but it turns out that it's a clear, oily liquid that smells like nutmeg and shame. If we don't keep pouring it into the servers, they run dry and then the(and we shudder when we say this) "residents" start heaving things at us, like complaints, jiras, support tickets and muddy boots.

While we applaud your desire to drag Linden Lab (pat. pending, a registered trademark of the Secret Cabal of Code Monkeys) into the late 1990's by actually having a well thought out, professional forum that would help develop a web presence and sense of community, especially among those who can't log into SL from (and we shudder when we say this) "work". However, anything that might detract from Toga Mondays and Call In Sick Thursdays creates a real problem for us. One suggestion, of course, would be to actually do something the residents want. Try opening up a General Discussion Forum. We didn't come up with this idea ourselves unless it actually works, in which it was all our idea. ALL US, Baby!! Was that to forward? Sorry. Another would be to turn on BBC code. Our research, which consisted primarily of looking for cool stuff on ebay and checking our WoW accounts indicates that every single forum on the entire internet does this. martha Stewart's forum calls it "Good Thing (tm)" Code. The forums at the Snoophizzy Refers to it as BizBizzyCeeeeeezy Code. We don't know what that means, but this Snoop character seems pretty cool.

While we're talking, we would like to address a few issues. We noticed that our health plan doesn't cover faith healing surgery. A few of us like to go to a witch doctor who chants a lot and then pretends to pull chicken guts out of imaginary holes in our bodies. It helps with our glaucoma - well, that and the pot. Also, we are out of toilet paper in the men's room on the third floor. Can you send someone up to take care of that? ktnksbai. Did you hear Mike is retiring? You know which one he is, right? The skinny one with the thing on his face? Just turned 73 and bought a Winnebago. We bought him a R0lexx off of the internet and charged it to LL. That's ok, right? If not, we'll pay it back when we get that money from the Nigerian Finance Minister who is funneling national reserves through our personal bank account right now.

Thanks for listening. We love you dearly. Please don't fire us. As a token of our undying appreciation and a sacrifice to your Godessliness (right next to your cleanessliness), we obtained the following rating for you as a gift. This is the only rating Mr. Recreant has ever done without being asked to and without receiving naughty pictures. OK, we sent him some naughty pictures. Remember the non-denominational Christmas party? You don't? We're not surprised. You were pretty hammered. Anyway, these ratings are highly treasured in the forums you are trying to destroy...whoops...we mean revamp. We suggest you print it out and hang it on your wall.

Love,

Your adoring and terrified minions,

The Lindens

Attachment:

Hellllllooooooooo Robin! Thanks for having your loyal and adoring minions submit these pictures for your rating. Do they always cringe and whimper like that when they hear your name? I hesitated at first, but they assured me you are a kind and merciful Godess, plus, people dared me to rate you, and I'm no good at turning down dares. Lessee what we have here (riffles through imaginary pictures). Hot. Wowsers. OK, I like a woman who exudes an air of passion and power. You are in charge, but not afraid to be a little vulnerable behind closed doors when you let your guard down. You are the kind of woman who we fantasize about when we imagine walking into your office, sweeping everything off of your desk and taking you right there. Of course, we (and by that I mean "me" are terrified of being banned right about now, so we probably won't try it. At any rate, I'm giving you a 6.2 on the Official Trout Rating Scale (tm). You are stunningly beautiful, unattainable, yet somehow approachable. The kind of woman we would be proud to have on our arm at virtually any sort of event, although we would probably just embarass you at the more formal ones. I'm going to need to see more pics before I call you a slut, so for now, Congratulations on your 6.2, you are not a slut.

My monitor did not appreciate that, Mr. Recreant!

Isablan and Cristalle,

Didn't we, a while back, hammer out an actual format for where what threads should go? Like, collecting all the "help" forums (Technical Talk, Texturing Tips, Scripting, RA, etc) all together at the top, so that people could see THOSE FIRST, and sending all the hard core techie geek stuff like Linux, Mac, OpenSource, etc, down to the bottom, so that people don't get confused when they want to ask more basic questions?

Where is that forum format? As I recall, Isablan's was the one that people liked the most.

[Edit: Trout, you've outdone yourself. Truly. I'm really really glad I'm not at work, otherwise my cubicle mates would be wondering why I was laughing hysterically.]

And now for the re-rail.

Robin, I really do applaud your efforts. We really do need LL sanctioned forums, and it's something that you find for virtually every other major company in existence. Especially for a company like LL, these forums show that you all care about the community that you have worked so hard to form. It's not just about support.

I would chime in and request a general discussion forum. The main problem that people complain about in RA is the number of off-topic posts. I'm as guilty of those as anyone, but again, it comes back to community.

I know there were problems in the past, but let's open them up and try again and see what happens. Also, turning on the code so we can post links would help immensely. Often people with a problem take a screenshot, and the easier it is for us to see that, the easier it is for us to help them.

With regards to moderation, Linden moderation is great. We need to feel like they have Linden support, too. I always sort of felt that Strife was on his/her own without any backup from you guys. That's not fair to the moderators. Moderating is a tough enough job as it is.

Thanks again for showing us you care.

Trout

Edit - Thanks, Bradley. Way to volunteer me to do actual work. I'm pretty sure an official Trout forum isn't in the works, but can you imagine the carnage? Letters From the Lindens (tm), Spotlight on Bollywood, Biplane rides to Hell. All my favorite gags in one place. I love it. I'd drive a hard bargain. they change my last name from that awful Recreant to dang near anything else and I'll work for free.

It was on Qie's thread soliciting a new structure for the forums.

/327/19/234843/1.html

I took Isablan's and massaged it further, then Qie and I passed it on to the Lindens. There were some subsequent suggestions as well. I recommend that whoever is refurbishing the forums take a read through the entire thread, it isn't long. That will give a sense for what people's priorities were.
.

Awesome, Nika, thanks! I knew you and Qie had started the whole discussion but couldn't remember the thread.

Oooh, on THAT note... my suggestion for the Forums is to make the Search function a BIG HUGE BUTTON that people will see, use, and remember.

Unlike yours truly, LOL.

In addition to adding a GD forum and a OT forum, I insist there be a Trouts "Official LL" letters forum. A great place to go when I need a good belly laugh.

thirded.
or fourthed. oh heck i agree.

i also say trout needs his own forum space as well but call it The Fish Files...or something


PS: i also feel, that you should hire OUTSIDE moderator(s), someone who has experiance of course, but does not or has not seen/ read THESE boards. this way the modding is fair, unbiased, and no one can, well basically "bully" anyone they feel treated them "badly"

A masterpiece, Mr. Recreant. I very much enjoyed the letter while descending from orbit (I innocently asked a cluster of campers and an octopus why physics lag was spiked in the sim, and suddenly found myself rising very rapidly to about 45 million meters in altitude. After free-falling for a half hour, my altitude is now, let's see... about 45 million meters.)Interesting suggestion, and I think this could work well for such forums as Resident Answers and General Discussion. And the other, content creation forums where SL knowledge might help with effective moderation, are pretty well-behaved most of the time, so a rotation of residents could be fine for moderating those forums, if moderation were ever to become a workload issue.

For those who may be new to Mr. Recreant's comedic stylings, his Linden letters are a much anticipated feature of the forums

Lindens are like Gods to us, if they didn't exist, we'd have to make them up. So while you've been absent from the forums, Trout did!

His "Trout ratings" are a long-running forum game involving female avatars sending him risque pictures in return for an official paragraph, rating them on a scale of sluttiness, 0-10. The rated lady then often uses an exerpt from his text in her forum signature.

One furry kitten and one guy have also been rated. No clue how that happened.

Robin's is the first unsolicited rating he's ever given ... perhaps it could be regarded as an April Fool's gift!