Your Thoughts on Forum Culture

It has been my experience that only a small percentage of SL residents actually read the forums. The ones that do are not representing the views of the masses, they are the minority. They were in favor of the loss of linden support for social events. They are against the clubs in SL. What they don't realize is that SL is a glorfied chat room. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE SL, but without social players it's damn boring place.

I agree with the above thread wholeheartedly.

While SL's already the best of the genre, LL keep making concessions to the techie types instead of the everyday, run-of-the-mill, social user. I'd much prefer stability and a lowering of the system requirements than adding features we don't need.

Yeah, ummm what Torley said.

I personally avoid the forums for the most part, too much drama.

I think an occasional spanking from the lindens would serve well to start moderating the forums and once people see that this stuff is indeed moderated well and often and consistently and posts removed and people banned etc I think the overall tone of the forums will change for the better, people will not continue to do behavior that will remove them from the forum, well most wont I know there are a few exceptions and those exceptions should be summarily banned. If they are that vehement they can make a sign and put it on thier lawn.

And I think that is my longest run on sentence yet.

cheers.

It appears that the primary purpose of forums is to draw the anti-social arrogant element away from SL. Keep them busy posting on the forums.. they don't have time to mess with legitimate SL residents.

(hey... wait... I have over 500 posts here.... WAAAAAAAA.... I HAVE NO LIFE! )

To Hard Case,
Well don't you think that perhaps, some people who do read the forum sometimes feel that some observations/posts indeed deserve no comment => thus making their presence less known.

I would have to agree, mainly because I've seen specific-purpose forums that are conducted in such a manner and they work just fine. The business that runs them sets some rules: no obscenity, no flaming, no attacking others. And those that do, for whatever "reason", are given a warning and on the second abuse lose posting privileges for a time. Third warning, they're out permanently. Amazing what that does to make forum content more useful.

I do agree with LL allowing folks to say what's on their mind (and I've certainly done so a time or two... hopefully to the betterment of the system in general). But the people who post here just to be jerks is another thing entirely. They're antisocial in RL and mess up those real lives... then come here and repeat the same activities. That's just plain sad... because SL has no limitations like RL does. If a person wants to be a hero, or a land baron, or a leader of a large group or a merchant-- they can do so here. For them to treat SL-- or these forums-- like their personal snit ground is really inexcusable and shows that they never really matured as a person. Too bad for them; until they wake up and grow up, not much can be done for them. But certainly setting heavier moderation rules in these forums would without doubt improve the overall quality of information here.

Actually there is not a culture involved at all.

The forums are message boards, made by a corporation to perform three primary functions: to enable staff members to distribute information directly to users of the product, to enable users to ask questions of and express opinions related to the simulation system to staff members, and to allow users to discuss the simulation system with other users.

It's similar to the newsgroups provided by Corel corporation for users of its product.

Edit: Grrr. I did not realize this thread was so old. Oh well, it doesn't change my opinion a bit.



Nearly all of those points sound valid to me (I'd never heard of disemvowelling before).

I would note 7, 8, 9, and 10. I especially see a lot of the egging-on behavior. The effect that has is to encourage the idea that misbehavior is acceptable, and squelch dissent through ganging up on it.



I'd say the difference is fairly obvious. The ability to exchange ideas neither requires nor justifies hostility or overt aggressiveness. Those traits tend to, in fact, hamper the free exchange of ideas, because they lead to verbal abuse and intimidation.

Nobody here has an inability to be calm, rational, or polite in the exchange of their ideas (and if they did, frankly, why would we wish to retain them?) We can all exercise restraint.

On the other hand, a small but nontrivial percentage of the forum population seems to have a distinct lack of INTEREST in behaving, even under the standards that we already have. They would prefer that LL's lax (almost negligent) approach continue. This needs to be dealt with.

Obviously, nobody should be punished for occasionally being upset or whatever ... I'm thinking more of those who are habitually abusive, snarky, insulting, and pay no attention whatsoever to the forum's supposed PG rating.



Somewhere other than where it is, that's for sure.

I continue to come here in the hopes of finding something interesting, but that is very definitely in spite of the tone here, not because of it. The tone has done a lot more to make me look at a topic I have an opinion on, even entire replies that I've already written, then decide "eh, not worth the trouble" and walk away.

I think that the forum standards need to be a little more formalized and a LOT more enforced.

But there also needs to be a change in the manner of enforcement, because the current system is a bit too much of a heavy-handed, one-solution-fits-all thing. Locking an entire thread because someone derailed it chills discussion and frustrates people who can play nicely, especially when it isn't always clear whether starting a new thread to continue on the topic would be welcome.

Editing and removing individual posts do not seem to be used here at all, but these are better solutions than locking a thread outright, when a few posts are threatening to derail a valid conversation.

What I generally see happen on other forums is that a thread initially (when a mod gets to it before it's completely out of hand) gets a warning to get back on track. If that doesn't work, the thread is locked and/or moved "backstage" to a hidden forum that only moderators can access, until it can be reviewed. After that, you decide what solution to apply to it...

* Edit a post if it is largely ok, but contains something clearly against the TOS that can be removed without affecting the rest too much. Leave a comment in the removed material's place, like "[Edited by Bob because the forum is PG.]" for transparency ... no post should be "silently altered". I don't know if vBulletin can lock individual posts to prevent re-editing by the author, but that might be good too, since there's no time limit on edits here that I've seen, and expecting mods to remoderate something they've already dealt with isn't practical or desirable.

* If the entire post is unacceptable or the post would need to be edited in several different places to make it acceptable, delete it (or edit it out of existence, leaving a moderator's comment in its place, whatever).

* Threads that can be cleaned, but seem prone to provoke further violations, should get restored to visibility, but remain locked.

* Threads that are totally unsalvagable get moved to a hidden archive of removed threads (so you will retain a record of the violations for future moderator reference). It's a last resort for a thread that starts out OK. For a thread that is in violation from the very first post, it should be employed enthusiastically.

* When lockings are not followed up with warnings and such to the posters responsible, they produce absolutely no modification of behavior. People who use threads as a venue to be snarky and insulting do not care which threads they are dragging down ... close one, they'll just pop up again elsewhere later. WARN/MUTE/BAN people if they are repeat violators. There are a lot more people who can't or won't play nice on the forums than there are people to moderate them, so letting them stay time after time after time is not making your job any easier.

The last bit of moderation on forums.sluniverse.com occurred some months ago. It is a very long way from being a flamer/griefer board. In fact the only real difference between that and here is that over there disagreements are either resolved or peter out in their own good time.

... and as this thread seems to be continuing, let me add a final thought.

If you are going to moderate, then the number one rule is:-

be consistent!

I've done moderation in places before, and though there should be some clear rules laid out, I have never worked in black-and-white "lines" for enforcing them. I try to judge things on a case by case basis when possible, and take as many factors into account as I can - which sometimes includes a little reading between the lines and making inferences based on what I know about typical phrasings and language usage (I'm no psychology expert or anything, but I've been told I have a decent intuition - but I do have to have enough info to go on, so I will often err on the side of caution in being polite but strict). Maybe not an easy way to go about things on such a big community, though, as part of that involves being able to get to know your regular posters. There are... well... a lot of those here.

Jeska:

Thanks for starting this thread.

I have my own forum (using vBulletin) that has nothing to do with SL or virtual worlds. The key to maintaining a healthy forum community is clearly stating your rules of conduct and then actively moderating the forum--using LL employees and non-LL volunteers. Each forum and subforum needs to have an assigned moderator or group of moderators, just as happens in SL. The rules do not have to be strict, but must be clear and enforced. The moderators will offer flexibility in interpreting the rules so the "black and white" issue is not a problem.

Please visit a forum I participate in regularly (it is not my forum) at http://www.dvinfo.net/network/policy.php to see what their rules are. Not all should apply, but many could be appropriate to the SL forum community.

Good luck!