Banned, yet still holds an almost hypnotic control over the denizens of SL

I must say, all of you are crazy

I don’t see any point in discussing, debating, holding a conversation about anyone who can no longer defend their point of view or actions. To do so within the forums seems like a waste of time and energy. It's disturbing to see ppl engaging this kind of behavior. These forums are becoming hyper critical; from “psycho” analyzing ppl down to being petty about spelling errors. I enjoyed them much more when we could just talk about SL. If you talk long enough to anyone, everyone has an interesting story to tell you. Just my 2 lindens.

I've never understood this argument, although I hear it from players and Lindens alike.

If this argument were valid, it would mean that we could only talk about someone where through a medium where they had access and a chance to reply to our discussion, otherwise we'd have to be silent. How would we talk about George Bush's five week (25 days) vacation and compare it to the two weeks (12 days) of vacation a typical U.S. citizen gets? How would we talk about Schwarzeneggar's recent attack on unions and worker rights in California. How would we share emails about concerns about family members?

My guess is that the Lindens have settled upon this illogic simply to discourage threads about a specific character, threads that always require editing or locking.

~Ulrika~

Just to throw fat on the fire, I'm south of the Mason-Dixon line (just barely) and yet I use "you" as a plural and "they/their/they're" as a gender-inspecific singular.

To a group: "Would you please take your seats?"

About an unknown individual: "Someone posted a trollish message to the forum, but I don't know who they are or what they're trying to prove with their nonsense."

The more readily that you realize that Linden "justice" is a mockery of the term, the more sense it shall make.

I got a one week forum suspension for telling Prok that he was a jerk. That was bad. However Linden Lab making an April Fool's joke in-game, all day of Prok was ok. Banning Prok from some forums was okay, but, don't mention his name, or you risk bannination. So he was a jerk, but I wasn't allowed to say so, but enough of a jerk to earn a slap on the wrist forum mini-ban.

It's okay for Philip to flame me in these forums (guess you can't ban him, and he did apologize), but we recently saw Jesse Linden tell a bunch of people that their broadcast credentials were meaningless because he took some classes and that people were just "misunderstanding what he was requesting" for SLTV.

Their inconsistent application of their control looks more like King Lear and much less like Judge Wapner. But Their Website, Their Imagination, I guess. I have to daily determine why I continue to work for them, for free, on Live Help in order that they not hire more support personnel. I risk banning for this post, despite having helped scads of players through mentor, live-help, and individually. I dropped mentor when I got tired of the requests from Char Linden that effectively meant "would you please hold a class, to benefit LL, in order that you can be shot off-world by an event griefer who is just back from suspension even though shooting your class will get him at best a stern talking to?"

As it is, I'm skating on thin ice because I have the temerity to say that SL is buggy in open forum. "Capricious and arbitrary" doesn't begin to describe their "policies". And they cautiously decline to document the policies so that they one has no idea what the rules are. That blaze and Cat appear to have not been sanctioned for their recent antics, is hilarious from a firm that purports to want civility here.

Yes, I named names; into the oubilette for me. At least it is Sunday so I might not be banned until tomorrow. This is not martyrdom, it is saying that the judge is wearing no robes.

Wow.

That was a very well written post highlighting the inequities of our oligarchy's justice system from the viewpoint of a long-time player.

~Ulrika~

I bet LL hate these forums. I wouldn’t be surprised if the forums are the root of a lot of problems, problems that take much needed overworked human resources away from where they are really required. But I don’t think that’s the biggest problem. I think the biggest problem is the message they unwittingly send out to the residents. If LL as a company do not stop sitting on the fence, if LL do not stop saying one thing to one, and the opposite to another, they run the risk of not being taken seriously. LL needs to be more vocal, and they need to visibly follow up on their vocal ness (word?). At the moment I can’t help feel that certain issues are ignored in the hope they will just go away.

That’s just my humble take.

The impression I have gotten from some informal discussions I have had regarding these forums with LL over the past year or so is that we are a lot closer to having them closed than most people realize. Very few companies would be as tolerant they have been of the relentless criticism that is on display - both of individuals and of their company. Forums are in no way a profit center for them, just a money sink that they have to keep adding staff to in order to moderate - or just put up their hands and let things run wild. I don't see them doing either option long term.

I think what will ultimately happen is that the content and classified forums will stay open, and the discussion forums will either be closed or severely curtailed. I would hate to see that happen, but it does seem that this train wreck is happening in slow motion.

I often wondered why I was helping EA so much by helping all the newcomers to TSO and also providing much-needed and long-running entertainment there, especially when they wouldn't do much for us. Here, I still help newcomers, but I draw the line at spending my own money to provide entertainment. (I didn't have to spend money to provide entertainment in TSO.) So I understand exactly how you feel.

Your suggestion that they make policies more specific and out loud is something I would prefer as well. This business of helping some people get their land back and not others, and of seizing land from some, is awful. Now for all we know, it is being done in the absolute fairest and most just way we could imagine, but since we never hear of the details, it doesn't look any good to us.

I don't have the solution for the land situation. It might be worse to have the details out in the open, and better for us to think these land seizures and things are capricious and favor the known players, whether or not that's true. But I tend to think not. To me, the more knowledge is open, the better off everyone is.

As for the forums - your statement , "That blaze and Cat appear to have not been sanctioned for their recent antics, is hilarious from a firm that purports to want civility here," beautifully illustrates the problem. Because as I see it, that simply is NOT the way it is, and those people are NOT the problem. It is others who have done far worse. I, for example, have had two phrases edited, one of which said only for people to get off my back. Yet others ... well, I've listed some of them before, alll of them direct and awful personal attacks, - and absolutely nothing happens to them (and Catherine is often the target of them).

So, as you can see, there are two sides to that coin. In truth, I think what has happened is they have largely left us to police the forums since the very beginning, and what happens then isn't pretty. That's how come we are in the mess we are now, with people telling each other things that NOBODY would put up with ANYWHERE in the real world for FIVE MINUTES. It's appalling.

But - if they are gonna leave the forums for the most part in a kind of laissez-faire policy, without really knowing what all goes on, then we are always going to have this push-pull mentality and this division among ourselves. And the Lindens are going to come along, glance over it all, and pull out the person who seems to be making the most trouble, which would often be the person who is standing out due to clinging to an unpopular position. That is the true danger of this laissez-faire policy: When they do take action, it might well be (and has been) just to swipe the one everybody else is against.

And have we forgotten what happens now when you get banned from the forums? You get banned from the game. This shouldn't happen.

As for the Jesse thing, I didn't see that anywhere the way you did. I thought he was polite, and just was trying to say that he didn't mean for the SLTV to be all as perfect and everything from the get-go as people were saying. As I read it, he had a good idea and was presenting a wonderful opportunity (open to everyone, I might add), and people kept saying all about how it wouldn't work, before anybody even had a chance to make it work.

coco

P.S. I think what Cristiano has said about being closer to losing the forums than we know is right. This is hearsay, but I've been told by a friend of mine that Philip, not long ago, said something on the order of "maybe we should just close the forums."

And it would be a shame, but understandable. I have great admiration for companies and individuals which open themselves up to criticism, but by doing so, the company/individual has to respond and deal with such criticism. I truly believe LL could use these forums to benefit the company (with enough staff) if they had a clear stance/position/direction/answer/policy on anything put before them. If these forums close, everyone would simply migrate to other forums, such as your own, and they would have less control.

That was rather insightful, Hiro. I'd like to therefore replace "caprecious" with "lackadasical" as I think the data show that they don't spend much time moderating the forums and thus when they do, it gives the outward appearance of arbitrary.

I also agree that fence-sitting is a large part of the problem. I once knew a manager who took everything on a "case-by-case" basis. Not because the situation warranted it, but because he lacked the courage of conviction to draw clear lines. As a result, his staff was perpetually trying to second guess him which was ultimately a waste of time as there was no predictability.

If I had to guess based on "politburo watching", Linden Lab wants discourse and community through the forums, they also want people to comport themselves better than one can expect on the net. They also want to give people "mostly free speech" but don't want the headache of people fighting tooth and nail over junk. To note that an area has a culture is not to make a judgement but an observation; that said, their stance reminds me of a decidely San Francisco approach of "we can't jail or persecute the homeless because that would offend our sensibilities, but damn they can be annoying". SanFran has a lot of merits, but they seem torn on issues like this out of a desire to be progressive in social policy and yet maintain order.

Worse still, in some ways they cannot afford to shut the forums down because amidst the dhrama there is a goodly amount of wisdom about the hyper-complexity of SL collected here and only here.

Believe me, I do not envy LL and what they have to deal with her - even with the light moderation policies I have, situations constantly come up that I have to deal with. I respect LL for the way they have allowed very critical discussion of them to flourish. When I opened the SLU forums, I made the decision to do the same thing regarding criticism of me. It is not the easiest thing to let open criticism of you sit there for everyone to see. I decided the best way is to just address it as best I can - either by disputing it when it is unwarranted, or owning up to it when it is valid. Ironically, one of my harshest critics initially recently posted a message thanking me for the forums - which really meant a lot.

I do hope that LL can find the right balance to make these forums what they want them to be - I am just not sure that can honestly happen, and I think focus on actually growing SL itself is mroe important than the endless energy spent on the forums.

Malachi,

One question for you. I know it is difficult to tell with LL's bizarre disciplinary policies, but do you really think you were suspended for a week simply for calling Prokofy a jerk? Or for the culimnation of many comments? Also, i have never seen you simply call someone a jerk - is that really all you said? You tend to say it in such an evocative and eloquent way that the recipient has very clearly just had their ass handed to them. Believe me, I know.

This thread is also about someone who cannot defend themself on the forums. Thread closed.