Forum Discussion

Thanks for all the great feedback on the forums and how to improve them. Following is a proposed list of boards, and policies for moderation. Please let me know what you think and if you have any significant concerns about this direction. A final proposal will be posted next week, reflecting this last round of feedback.

Linden Forums
- Anouncements
- Reference
- Press
- New World Notes

Community Forums
- Events
- Mature Events
- Classifieds
- Building
- Design and Clothing
- Scripting Tips
- Scripting Library
- Animations
- Gallery

Discussion Forums
- General
- Off-Topic
- Issues
- Feature Suggestions
- Feature Feedback
- Technical Issues

Groups

Forum Archives

Policies
- Hate speech and revelation of real life information are prohibited and are grounds for suspension or removal from the forums and Second Life.
- Self regulation of forum posts is the ideal, although threads will be locked with explanation in extreme cases.

How about "Textures and Clothing" instead? People might want some general texturing / photoshop tips and not know which forum would be appropriate for it.

I love it! It's a lot of furums, but I think it will work much bette than the current structure.

Couple questions though....What is the "Issues" forum for? And does the above quote mean no more thread deletion? Just locking? I hope that's what it means.

Anyway, great job LL for hearing the community and acting upon what you hear.

edited to add: I agree with Eggy's suggestion.

Woohoo! I have a home.



Woohoo! Communication is always good. Even when its bad.

Robin, since this is the forum discussion I figure it should be brought up here, too - In the group forums, if we're moderators, are we supposed to be able to delete posts and threads? (in our forum?) Because I know I cant, and that'd probably be a good thing to have when moderating a forum.

Excellent. I'm so glad to see simplicity restored.

The only one which seems awkward is "Design and Clothing", but I'm at a loss for a better name without getting technical =)

Edit: Textures and Clothing seems good, assuming the primary purpose of that forum is just textures and not general avatar design. =)

Also, please subject SL Press links to prior approval or a heavier moderation than the normal forums. When I go there I expect to find actual press links and not newbie questions

Dude, when you go to the 'New in Second Life' forum, do you expect it to be about things that are new in Second Life?

bwahaha

I think it sounds great, Robin. It'll be good to have the OT forum back. Thanks!

yay for OT

it's very good of you to ask. thank you.

i support the "textures & clothing" title. a texture library will be nice as well. i imagine a lot of people are willing to share textures as freely as the programmers share scripts.

i have no idea why we need press and new world notes forums. there's been very little activity in either historically. it hardly seems worth the effort to maintain them. y'all can put press items in the announcements and everything i've ever seen in new world notes can just as well be posted in the general forum.

having general and off topic again will be very nice and simple. what is issues for? i'd do away with that and have one admin & technical issues forum for all that stuff. again, there's so little posting related to "issues," it will easily fit into one set of threads.

have y'all talked any more about resident moderators?

*edited to say even more because that's what i do

Excellent plan, and thanks for involving us. Maybe add one more - forums and texturing? That would separate nicely from clothing design, and tips can be given on creating and tiling textures, etc.

Thanks again for reaching out to the community. Even Kris cracked a virtual smile!

Regards,

-Flip

How about a category for "Streams and audio"? for swapping good audio URLs and streaming tips?

Oh, one other thing. Please change the classified forum to allow replies. It would be much more useful that way and more people might actually use it.

Yay for bringing back "Off Topic"!!!

I second this! Being able to reply to a classified ad would be helpful.

Before you make any changes to the forums, please back up their contents. The last time the forums were changed the scripting forum was erased entirely, and I'd hate to see that happen again.

Two notes:

1) Put the "Discussion" group of forums at the top. That way, "oh help and bother" threads from people who can't take the time to figure out the right place to post will end up in the "General" forum rather than in a no-reply forum.

2) What is the "Issues" forum for?

I think you should add a dedicated group for Sensual Casanova.

~Ulrika~

woot!

couple questions:



what is this group about?



self disclosure is allowed yes?

ps shouldn't you like be away on vacation or something?

I thought Issues was the replacement forum for Rants. A place where we can complain about LL and each other. Maybe I am mistaken though.

Edit: Forgot to add my opinion. I like the suggested line up and I like changing design to texture. It just flows better.

could you alphabetize the groups forums? it's hard to find groups sometimes.

please please please listen to his grace and alphabetize the group forums please

Robin,

I think this is much closer to what we really want in the forums. I'm glad you are not planning to remove them altogether, because I really feel that would have been a mistake.

Perhaps if you made the Off-Topic and Issues forums accessible to account-holders only, there wouldn't be any need to police them quite so firmly.

The forum policies sound, on the face of it, quite reasonable, although of course there is room for debate on what 'extreme' actually means. I think if you are looking for self-regulation you are going to be disappointed, but I do hope you will allow a much looser rein on the forums than has been the case thus far.

IMO the only reason for removing a post would be if it is likely to cause real world damage, or if it is illegal. You can't expect conversations always to be polite, or indeed even reasonable. But in my view unpleasant flaming is infinitely preferable to censorship.

Thanks for the suggestions, anyway, and I am sure that this time people will be happy with the changes. I know I am.

Update

Still working on a relaunch plan for the forums.

The list of boards at the beginning of this thread seems locked, with two changes:
- Design and Clothing becomes Textures and Clothing
- Issues becomes Soap Box (looking for a positive approach to rants!).

We're still discussing the best way to approach moderation of the boards to make sure the policies are clear and the actions we take are consistent and timely.

Stay tuned!