Feelings on the ResMod program

That is the thing though, they are not our parents. We are equal paying customers for a service. The only people performing this task should be an employee of Linden Lab. No other resident should have a say in disciplinary matters, period, nor should they have the ability to moderate our speech. As Katykiwi and others have pointed out, there are several people on that list who just should not be there.

I don't understand why the alternative is either have res mods or close the forums. How about the Linden Lab employee(s) who moderate this forum actually doing that job? Compared to many forums, these are a dream. Yes, people get into fights, make personal attacks, and cause drama. The ResMod program is just causing even more - and a rift in the community that this is supposed to be about - a community in the end made up of customers of Linden Lab.

Don't strain your brain. My comment is formulated from my own humble opinion based on my personal observations.

If I were responsible to maintain Second Life forums for Linden Lab, this installation would be limited to the Linden sponsored forums and the post only classifieds. The honourable general and off-topic posters I'd respectfully refer to SLUniverse and any other resident operated forum that bothered to submit a link and of which I approved. Prokofy would have a cow; but that's my solution in a nutshell.

You aren't the first person to say the alternative is to close the forums. I've actually felt it was coming for awhile myself - I just don't understand why it would be necessary. In the past 6 months, the forums have made a dramatic improvement. Perhaps they are still more of a free for all than LL would like, and I suppose that is not necessarily a good thing in a corporate sponsored forum, but it is not like these forums are just a complete and total mess.

I think the ResMod program sucks, to be quite frank. And I'm already sick and tired of seeing every thread about it filled up with the same paid and volunteer(ed) cheerleaders. "It's great!! Give it a chance! Goooooooo LL and/or ResMods" How about, No! If I want some broken record Pollyanna to spill their saccharine sweetness all over me, I'll go hang out in The Disney Store. Only a week into it and people are just making me sick.

short-sightedness, penny-pinching, and indecisiveness on ll's part. they can't seem to determine if the forums are a good idea, and until they decide that, they keep doing a half-assed job on the forums.

if the general forums are a good thing for sl, then ll needs to invest time/money/people/effort on them to make them run as smoothly as possible.

if the general forums are not a good thing for sl, then ll needs to shut them down and go with khamon's model.

in the meantime you get a system that often comes across as arbitrary and inconsistent. i've followed these forums for a while and i still can't tell which threads will get locked/deleted/moved and which ones will stay open - except in the most glaring cases. but for most cases of lockage/deletion/moving i'm not sure why some threads get it, and other don't.

and/or you get a resmod system that is poorly implemented. i reviewed the post history for some of the resident moderators. given some of the imflammatory things some of these people have said, i have no idea why ll chose them. and making people resmods when they didn't ask to be resmods... good lord. and then not preparing them?

the tweaks are good, but just another sign that ll didn't think this through.

just from the half-assed job that's been done to run the forums to date, i'd have to say that ll doesn't actually think the forums are important.

I don't either. If you use the concept, as others have, that the forums serve a Marketing/PR function for SL, why would they bother to even leave the technical and help sections open? It should just be some hand selected residents posting neato stuff. Is the purpose to serve the customers or the company, or a mesh of both? The forums as marketing is a disservice to current customers if it means they have to be formulated in a way to con new customers into seeing what the world should be, not what it is.

Perhaps third party forums are the only way to go, but I dread the loss of a central forum as users split across the Internet in search of niche forums that pander only to their world view.

I don't find the OT and General to be of such a concern, such that a user who finds them distasteful can't avoid them and therefor the only recourse is to shut them down. Are we really all so incensed over words?

If it's a matter of resources or corporate strategy, well, I don't see that either, but would at least be able to see those as viable choices.

You, katykiwi Moonflower, and several others have indicated that one or more of the selected Resident Moderators have a posting history that should disqualify them. Yet everybody seems too scared to start a public review. Even Torley's reply to katykiwi was "I'll e-mail you." This gives me several concerns:

1. Should the issue of a peer review be hush hush and forbidden?

2. If attention to disqualifying factors is this lax now, how will it be in six months when the newness is over and the program subject to a fraction of the scrutiny?

3. What is the Linden policy if disqualifying factors are revealed about a sitting ResMod?

4. And again, there is an issue of community morale here. When qualified, interested persons are passed up in favor of disinterested persons with a questionable posting history and a disqualifying level of involvement with the forums, it can be hurtful.

Several points:

1. This is NOT us policing ourselves. This is Lindens' hand-picked residents policing all the other residents.

2. The forums have NOT made a dramatic improvement over the last six months. The only difference is the roles are now occupied by other people, and not all of us enjoy occupying them.

3. The forums should be moderated by Lindens, who are paid to moderate them. Either assign enough funds - or stop having the forums. Even having a resmod staff won't work if the resmods themselves can't get enough attention from the Lindens to do their job with sufficient training, guidelines, and Linden input and oversight.

4. The forums should be moderated according to CLEAR rules, that people have a chance to even try to follow (the so-called profanity rule, for instance). And - most importantly - the rules should be enforced.

The forums should not be moderated according to who is making the ARs, how many ARs have been made, who is most popular and who are pariahs, and/or who is easiest to shut up so as to make ten other people happy. The Lindens need to remember that we are all SL residents and should be treated equally under the law.

5. And most important - more important now than ever - there should be no rule that makes a suspension or ban from these forums automatically result in a suspension or ban from SL itself.

------

Now - having said all that, I didn't vote on this poll. And the reason is surprising.

There has been one resmod who contacted me, who has been very pleasant to me, who actually wished to discuss some of the problems faced in a particular thread. Another resmod contacted me also, about that same thread, in a friendly and helpful and non-adversarial way.

This leads me to think there might be some hope.

As you know, several months ago, I went from very much wanting the forums to be a decent place for decent people to post without getting piled on and called horrible names - in other words, like every other forum I have ever posted to - to agreeing they should be closed. Something in Editorial Hare's posts finally convinced me that it was hopeless, and they should be shut down.

Then there would be no "official" forums, where I had to post, just to continue my right to be an actual SL resident and have access to the official forums as every SL resident should. Without official forums, I could just go to one of several other SL forums where I can and do post, as one normally would, with no difficulty.

But since they haven't been closed down, I have kept posting my opinions for a year now, because I would rather be banned from the game than ever, EVER be bullied into being silent. There are many others who have simply gone away.

Now, for the first time, it doesn't feel like I'm almost completely alone here, with grossly inadequate protection under forum law.

If the forums were run by anything other than various bullies operating with arrogance and impunity; if every resident has protection from this; and if there are resmods who are concerned with it and would like to develop an environment where all residents can state their opinions without fear and intimidation, then I say,

. . . that is a good thing.

coco

This is the single best idea I've heard in this forum, ever.

When I said the same thing people acted like allowing threadstarters to moderate their own threads was a very bad idea. To me this seems like an excellent idea.

The objections I received were that allowing someone to moderate their own threads would allow people to say anything and silence all who disagreed. My response to that is that people would stop posting to and stop reading threads started by people who's moderation styles they didn't like.

I don't think a threadstarting moderator should be able to edit a response, though, keep it from displaying entirely, yes, but you shouldn't be able to put words into other people's mouths.

This idea begins to resemble personal blogs with forums controlled by the blogwriter.

Well, it's not gonna happen, though, so need need to bother thinking about it. The closest to this idea coming true would be to close the forums entirely, at least the general and off topic forums. Then people with the urge to discuss could use all the means available on the internet to discuss things in whatever way they choose.

--- this post is not an actual suggestion for how the Second Life forums should work, just an idle thought. and i might have just been agreeing with someone else's idea, i don't remember.

I REALLY like this idea actually. So much so, about 8 or so months ago when I was proposing forum reforms I suggested this as an option. People were fiercely against the idea in the name of protecting their free speech.

By the look of the polls, I should have suggested resident moderators

Me too, I agree with this as well.

I think its far to soon to say whether or not the ResMods experiment has been a success or a failure. The forums have gotten better over the past few months, as Cristiano has said. Still, I'm for closing them down (eventually) and allowing resident run forums take over. Linden Lab are software developers and community builders, not baby sitters. Things like forum moderation and events list moderation, in my opinion, waste time and distract from the things LL should be focusing on. I'd eventually see SL's find options become more flexible and offer choice and configurability to allow residents to run things like this on their own. Then I could set my "forums" tab in find to be SLUniverse.com/forums/

Just my two cents!

Regards,

-Flip

Suppose the local neo-Nazi posts a thread promoting euthanasia for eveyone not part of the master race. They get to keep the thread up since they are moderating it?

A dimwitted foulmouth with a third grader's sense of humor posts a thread with pictures of animals having sex, people having sex, people having sex with animals, and each response includes at least on of every single "taboo word" that has ever been, Second Life is supposed to let it's new customers wander into this sort of thing?

A person starts a thread revealing the real life address of a user along with a suggestion that the world would be a better place without them in it. The thread stays up till the thread starter can be persuaded to take it down voluntarily?

Threadstarter edits a response, deleting the word not, as in changing "I am not guiilty" to "I am guilty". This is ok?

While your examples are beyond extreme, I agree that self-moderation of a thread=a bad idea. While it is definitely possible (I learned great restraint with the SLU forums by allowing horrible things to be said about me and resisting the urge to moderate any of it), I definitely think given the nature of the relationships in these forums, you would have situations where someone would not participate in someone else's thread for fear of being moderated. It's a good idea that would not probably work so well in practice.

If that's the case, then it would be in everyone's best interest to keep them open, if as you say, they are community builders.

If they see the forums as merely another venue for PR, then our bizarre little forum community will have to be muzzled and shuffled out the door, as we are not always pretty.

I don't know what LL's intentions are. It seems they use the forums to get feedback for ideas and maybe some insights as to what's going on in the big bad grid. And perhaps they even come up with a few ideas of their own after reading some of the more constructive threads.

Even though a small segment of sl residents frequent the forums, it's far easier to "communicate" with players here rather than inworld, where Linden meetings and events are often missed and go unoticed.

I thought third party sites were where you go to do things you can't do here without recrimination, i.e. name names, post chats, pass off rumors as fact, get ugly, ....

My examples are not beyond extreme. They are mainstream, middle of the road, garden variety extreme.

The description of a someone posting animal sex pictures and constantly using foul language is not a hypothetical example, it is a description of specific posts , some of which are are from the general forum in the last week or so, and which are representative of the person's long term posting behavior. The person who posts has stated how ineffective the moderation has been because they have never received so much as a warning.

I didn't say I opposed the idea of threads being moderated by the threadstarter. I think it is a great idea, though not likely to be implemented in these forums. We can't even get upgraded to the latest version of vBulletin, much less do some kind of newish method of forum handling.

A forum run by a company like LL would still have to exercise control of their forums even if they tried to let them be moderated by threadstarters or moderated by "fully empowered" resident moderators.

And the example about editing out the "nots" is to show that it might be ok to delete a person's response entirely, but mucking around with what they say is just not cool, whether it is by a threadstarter moderator or a resident moderator or by a Linden moderator.

If there was a way to have threads moderated by threadstarters, it would be real neat to be able to mark the threads as "On Topic", "Off Topic" and some more categories I haven't had time to think of yet.

Then people who wanted an on target, focused, efficient discussion would follow the "Next On Topic" link, those who are looking for jokes, off the wall comments, etc. could follow the Next Off Topic link. or if they all displayed in chronological order, a filter could be applied to narrow or broaden what's seen.

As for people being afraid to post in someone's threads because of fear of ill treatment, they would just start their own thread to express their ideas in.

The people who want to have a good, exciting "battle of ideas" would have an incentive to confine their comments to the ideas, not the people, because they can't have a good battle of ideas if the people who disagree with them won't post in their threads because they get treated badly.

What puzzles me about the OP moderating their own thread is the time factor. Some of these threads go on for days and are posted to around the clock. In some instances, by the time they get back to overseeing it, enough time and posts may have passed that to do so would be ineffective if not pointless.

Yes, this is a problem. It would be a big problem if the original poster was the sole moderator. The problem of "bad replies" staying around because the OP doesn't moderate could be solved by having the replies not appear till they are approved by the OP.

At this point the OP is more like an editor, and the thread is sort of like a magazine.

The group forums might allow a solution to this, if the group forum moderators have full moderators powers like the Linden moderators do. A group forum could have a lot of moderators, thus dealing with problems like a single lazy moderator, or a user who would moderate but is in the hospital, etc. It is a shame that we have to tie the group forums in to in-world forums, it doesn't make much sense, and there is the problem of maxing out one's group slots, which even a hermit with no business can do quite easily. People would post in the group forum that get's them the audience they want, and different forums could have different moderation styles to attract different segment of the forum consumption market.

Original Posters moderating their own threads? Sounds like a weblog to me! If you dare and look into the blogsphere for a bit, you will see that this produces some really nasty results - which are fine, because most readers are aware that a weblog is a personal turf.

On a forum that is hosted by a company with some serious monetary and communication interests, there has to be a central oversight with consistent rules for regulation. And of course the company has the right to change these rules anytime and employ people of its own choice to enforce them.

This is not to say that in the past the central oversight has ruled consistently. But thats human and the intention to do it consistently was clearly there. It would not be there with "self moderation".

The Resident Moderator Program is a great idea to handle a greater volume in a cost effective way and enforce the rules in a more consistent way - in the long run. It's execution was a bit hasty and leaves something to be desired. The idea is not bad, though, and the results will improve.

One keyword I'll repeat is time. And speaking of which, I can't think of this as a "roll back", because what happens happens. People are changed, and as the reactions have been, we wouldn't have had the opportunity to talk about this if there was no ResMod programme.

Insofar as "concessions" go, it is very important that Linden Lab does listen to the community complaints and responds with active adjustments like Jeska's recent post to show this. It need not be an extreme 0% or 100%, nor a dull mishmash of gray which is no good and apathetic. However, again, I emphasize time. We're still on the first round of new ResMods, not two weeks into it yet.

As Jeska said:



Can we please give it that? =^_^=



Exactly! I couldn't have said it better. Which is why I'm still an active forum poster. Doesn't do me good to leave and do some sort of lame "community by proxy" thing. I have to be at the heart of it all. (Isn't that a Nine Inch Nails song?)

I'm advocating and supporting the ResMod program for several reasons. One is because it's trying something new, and in history, great ideas coming to fruition have often faced a lot of challenges. I come from a hellish place of repetition and isolation. SL has opened me up. And as I've mentioned before, I'd be worried if there weren't reactions to this. Another more important one is because I recognize the guiding light the ResMods can shine, especially for Resis who are new here and looking to be pointed in the right direction. ResMods are actively helping positivity here. And yet another is because... I had a crazy dream a few months back, that I'd awaken into circumstances like this.

As for "the customer", that's precisely what's happened and is happening. What occurred in the past led up to the ResMods today. Without sounding like the Architect on causality, there were a lot of positive ideas here in the SL Forums that were getting lost or locked. Is it ironic that's what happened to this discussion thread? A most fundamental thing for a ResMod to do is point those out to LL, so we can learn and benefit the community. I like to admire the good here and cheer on the fun times, hehehe. This is what attracted me to SL in the first place. There's been a lopsided call of attention towards the negative, but no--that would simply be heading in the opposite direction of what the ResMod program is all about.

On a touch of variety, I'd like to say I hope for many more 3rd-party SL Forums. I really do. My first posting EVAR about SL was on Cristiano Midnight's SLUniverse.com--since the official forums are only accessible by current Resis--and I wouldn't be here today were it not for that. It's fitting he started this thread too, yup!



But the baby's already come to term and is being born!

As the last post on this thread was yesterday, maybe I should let it die...but I have been finding some of the ResMods a bit...intrusive. In one of the threads I read today there were no less than three postings from a ResMod which gave a sort of cheerleading thread on the thoughts of the Resmod about locking or not the thread.

I originally went on to comment on this at length...bit it has been drawn to my attention that the original instructions for Resmods did actually call for the cheerleading, praising and criticising where appropriate.

I hate it.

This calls for Residents who may be lovely, caring, giving people to appear holier-than-thou, patronising, and boring if they interject too much.

I suggest that in place of this you have ratings for the forums, and a whole new set.

My suggestion is that there should be a system of X ratings....

XXXX: extremely unpleasant, bring a flack jacket and your tin hat. Anyone who starts a personal fight in any other forum gets banished here. Anyone who posts inappropriate pictures of avatar nipples should similarly find themselves in the twilight world of the XXXX forum. Swearing, personal insults and calling you the son of a inebriated pot swiller all allowed. Continued infractions of the forum rules inevitably lead to a lifetime banishment to TSO or There...or both.

XXX: fairly unpleasant, wear your flameproof knickers. Anyone who posts a picture which is wider than a 17 inch monitor gets sent here. Avatar man-nipples, anything with bling also gets sent here. Trolls and flamers sent here. Bitching about other people's builds lives here.

XX: moderately unpleasant...no fighting, just general bitching about a)anything Linden Lab does b)anything Linden Lab says c)Any form of change to the software. A slightly but not wholly negative vibe...three negative postings without saying anyting nice and you go HERE. Mentioning "Bush" in your post unless of a horticultural nature. Any discussion on griefers.

X: mildly unpleasant...anything boring goes here. Announcements, explanations, banging newbies over the head with the alpha explanation goes HERE. Polls and discussion of polls. Animal pictures.

then we will have the positive forums:
- mildly pleasant. Announcements about games or competitions.

- moderately pleasant: Praise and appreciation for anyone. Birthday wishes, helper forums. No swearing, trolling, fighting, bitching allowed. The sun is always sunny here....

- extremely pleasant. News that Tringo Bingo and Slingo have been outlawed... Announcement that residents have said "bugger the forum, we are taking control of the grid!" Pictures of any Linden in embarrassing or compromising position goes here...unless authorised, in which case it goes into file W.

- only Torley Linden may apply.

It probably won't work to make the forums any more pleasant, but it will be easier to avoid the unexploded bombs...plus the ResMods could happily sort threads till the cows come home without ever having to insert a comment or refer a thread.
Whaddya think???
Cali

I think the resident moderators are doing a fine job given that they have just started.
They may still need some time to memorize the Community Standards and forum guidelines, and to recognize that failing to do their part to fully enforce the rules serves to deprive those who want to discuss Second Life in a pleasant and cordial manner of a place in which to do so.

Those who want to break the rules, to be hateful and rude to other Second Life users will now find that the old pattern of being able to get away with anyting after Jeska and the other moderators get off work won't hold true quite so much anymore. There will be better coverage during all hours of the day and night as a result of the resident moderators. In cases of particularly offensive behavior in the forums, the resident moderators might be able to bring matters to the attention of a moderator through email or such more rapidly than would have been the case in the past and thus threads can closed and disciplinary actions can be taken promptly instead of waiting till the next business day. To that I say,
Excellent!

Exactly - moderation is supposed to be unobtrusive, but you have ResMods writing multiple paragraph posts on why they may or may not moderate this particular thread. Talk about meta-discussions. At least Jeska is efficient and nearly transparent - her posts don't become part of the thrust of the thread. We don't need 500 words on why the thread is headed in a bad direction. Some of the overly verbose moderators need to learn some discretion.