On Information

I have a few observations I'd like to share with Linden Lab. I am only one voice, so this might not mean much, but being me, I have to voice it.

Linden Lab has announced the end of the forums. Reasons are the "clutter" there and the overload on the Linden Lab staff. Both valid reasons, imo. Futher talks have given the impression that the forums will not be so much as "closed" as "trimmed". Certain catagories will be removed, or archived, while some will remain active. (Lots of speculation on this. I've, personally, not seen a difinitive answer on what is going to happen to what. Leading me to believe Linden Lab is still deciding.)

Along with this announcement was that the Official Linden Blog was to "take over" as the information center. This was met with mixed feelings through the community, as most things are. Since this announcement, the Blog has seen an increase in blogs entered by Linden Lab staff and replies by Residents. Concerns of the "one way" nature of the communication ahve been voiced with no real reply given. The latest concerns of "censorship" have given a very bad impression of communication by Linden Lab.

My personal opinion is that the forums do need trimmed down. Some catagories have no, or little, use while others need a more strict lockdown on what is posted within them. I feel Linden Lab would be foolish to dismiss the benifit of the "two way" communication within the forums, not only between Linden Lab and the Residents, but between Residents themselves. The forums allow for mass communication by anyone to the community as a whole, and for the community to speak back. The largest benifit is the ability to ask questions of the cumminity and to be able to use that immense pool of knowledge.

As for the Blog; I don't like blogs. I find the imformation poorly laid out in any of them. They read like diaries, not information centers. Aside from this point, information the community is intrested in is not being communitcated via the Blog. Mainly because there is no way for the community to begin a discussion there. All the Blog contains is just an Announcement forum that allows postings by Residents. Linden Lab would be better served to save the bandwidth, cancle the Blog and open Announcements to allow Residents to Reply to posts. It's the same thing.

This, http://secondlife.com/community/ actually has more information than the Blog. Tight, concise exerps of information to the community. Not drawn out "bloggy" pages of text, but short pieces of information to advise Residents of pertanent information.

I'm not part of Linden Lab, but if I were, I would kill the Blog, enhance the Community page, tighten the forums (probably by allowing Live Help/Mentors to moderate the Answer forums to aleaviate staffing issues), and hire 2-3 persons to have the sole job of communitcating with the Residents.

The current missmash of systems just isn't working.

~Jessy

We're going to continue to streamline.

I'm also learning to write terser. It all works out.

As for forum updates, I posted one yesterday here:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/09/05/several-forums-will-be-closed-on-sept-8/

There'll be more.

As I've written before too, with much humility, Linden Lab is actually very late to the blogging table. Numerous successful companies have already used blogs to supply info to their valued customers. Microsoft and Apple being two big names.

What's on http://secondlife.com/community/ is just a feed from the Announcements & News forum, which in many cases is a duplicate of the blog postings. So, same content. As we transition, we'll switch that over.