Why is there not a "General Discussion" forum?

:yeah, that:

Frankly, I think it is a brilliant strategy. It is very easy to cut off problems here in RA with the handy excuse of being against the spirit of the forum. In a General Discussion forum there isn't any excuse beyond, "ok, you're all being a**holes, everybody outta the pool."

I will also add that as someone who is a few weeks shy of their 3rd SL rezday and a forum participant for almost that long as well, I am against putting a General discussion forum back here. I've watched what happens on these forums, survived the Prokofy wars, and decided that this current set up works best for all involved.

There is a very welcoming forum over at http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/ that fills this need very well and Cris provides a non-invasive amount of moderation. Many of the oldest and most famous of the SL FIC hang out there and it is a far less contentious place that Second Citizen was.

No. It's just you they are coming to take away. Ha ha, he he.

We'd discussed the prospects for the forums in-game. I'd made what I though a somewhat draconian proposal (at least according to current policy) which seemed like a good way to un-mire the forums with less work for everyone yielding a higher level of discourse, greater signal to noise density, and more useful information for all. I was going to write up a treatise for Strife to consider but got lazy so we have this post instead.

1. Get more resmods - there is no shortage of applicants, as well demonstrated in the "so you want to be a resmod?" thread.

2. Grant the resmods unilateral, real power - skip the tedious linden review, they haven't the bandwidth for it. If a resmod deigns a thread or post or poster to be problematic allow them to act on the post (edit/delete/lock) or poster (suspend/ban). This is the part that people will likely find hardest to swallow. I disagree with Strife's actions often, but actually consider him well reasoned, thoughtful and principled. I expect other resmods would bring their own point of view to the matter, which I may or may not agree with. Any checks and balances for a "bad" resmod, should be decided amongst the resmods who are best informed on such jugements. If the bureaucracy is the problem, remove the bureaucracy.

3. Transparent, unappealable justice - we have never known what is acceptable and what is not partly because LL has never wanted to draw a bright line, partly because we never get to see what is punishable and what is not. How do you best train your posters in the mores of the forum? Show them what is an infraction and what the punishment is. This is counter to LL's policies of "confidentiality" but we're all avatars anyway with no privacy rights at all. I would love to see "Malachi Petunia suspended for three days for flaming Strife Onizuka" as the amount of guidance to the perpetrator and the community would be astounding. These decisions need to be unappealable or every decision would get mired in faux legalese. Questioning such judgements would be grounds for immediate suspension. A pattern of repeat suspension should result in a banning.

It is no accident that the framers of the US constitution decided to make justice an open system, for it both increases the sense that justice is being done and guides the population toward rule abiding. Along with this justice should be the decoupling of forum bans with game bans as there appears to be no correlation at all between conduct in the two realms. If you want to police the forums, police the forums. I believe the original intent was that forum suspension wasn't "toothy" enough punishment. If you add back in the component of social shame that LL stripped out of forum justice, it will more than compensate; it is also more just.

4. Reopen general and off-topic - the community needs these, closing them just pushed the grievances out into the blog. Note that the blog is RSS syndicated to anyone while the forums are closed to all but paying customers. Re-instating these areas could take considerable ill-will out of the blog (why LL doesn't moderate the blog comments for at least topicality puzzles me).

Do these grant unprecedented power to the resmod? Sure. Why should we allow this at all? Because we are participating in a dialog on someone else's dime and we have absolutely no expectation of "free expression". If you want to participate in the dialog, you have to conform to the social norms. Okay, so why don't we all move to another site? Because these forums do provide a useful function that no other venue can. Will picking and choosing parts of this proposal as desired work? I don't think so, the components are too interdependent to yield a working system if one of the pillars is removed.

Would this be a Good Thing in the final analysis? I think so, but don't know for certain; I do know that it is a rather inexpensive test. Will it raise forums.secondlife.com into something better appreciated and respected by all? I fervently believe so.

ARing you for calling me an insane ax murderer. Oh wait, you are just calling me crazy. Nevermind. *hides ax

The old General Discussion got way out of hand from what I heard. Actually you can see it for yourself in the archives at the bottom of this forum.

Asking LL to create a general forum again would be asking them to reverse what their general course of action has been for the past year.

Many seem to forget the bad and long for only the good. Aint happ
ening hehe. I have to agree with you Isablan. The old General Topic days sucked

Well, there does seem to be some substantial change afoot at LL of late. Those of us discussing the points I enumerated above thought that perhaps LL might see the merit in continuing the forums because they do serve a product support role that nothing else does. We also thought that in this time of flux, things at LL are more likely to be altered for better or for worse.

I've not yet given up hope that LL might start doing things properly for the community and thus themselves.

Wasn't there some kind of evil poster who would make 3 page long posts about how unfair the Lindens were with preferential treatment back in like 2003? Oh, that and the Linden bashing are the reasons I heard of through word of text in SL.

Malachi, that is very well thought out and thank you for writing it. I still have to disagree with #4 strictly on the basis of airing grievances. I, for one, am not interested in reading more "ZOMGWTF Lindens SuXXors Fix SL PLEEZE!!1111 eleventy" threads. Not that some people don't have valid gripes that should be discussed, but I've had enough of barely literate mouth breathers and don't even bother with blog comments anymore for exactly this reason. Unless resmods are going to rule a General Discussion forum with an iron fist, it only descends into an ongoing flame fest. As Travis put it in another thread, the old General forum was a liability and drove off people even with moderation from Lindens. Without somebody moderating full time who has some major cojones and a flame-proof personality, the same thing just happens all over again.

The Iron Fist is exactly what I am proposing. I also think with public admonishment and suspension of the "mouthbreathers" that sort of post will be damped to very rare, very quickly.

Thanks for taking the time to read my missive.

I'm not enjoying this general discussion about general discussions at all.

I read the archived forums, and I don't see what the big deal is. If a thread pisses you off to a certain point, stop reading it.

* closes my eyes *

The problem, Brenda, is that there are a certain breed of personality that LIVES off this kind of thing. Being pissed off, I mean.

I tended towards simply either reading it without responding, responding in a semi-raving manner or simply ignoring the thread all together. Rather like I've been doing now. I wish that the "Ignore User" button didn't require me going to their profile, is all.

considering that a forums ban currently can lead to a in world ban - I couldn't possibly support that Idea.

If the resmods had the power to issue long term forums suspensions (30 days) and delete posts -

With no in world consequences for the suspended-

Then i could see it.

Agreed. Forum behavior should not be tied in game.

Malachi covers that under #3 and it seems like a fair idea.

Mal, I like your proposal. I think it needs some tweaking, for example:

> Banning decisions should apply only to the forum themselves (oops no tweak required, part of Mal's original proposal).
> Banning should require more than one resmod to agree
> Linden Review will probably never go away, but they can be moved out of all thread moderation decisions (LL does need to validate that resmods are not allowing horrendous things to occur)

But those are minor. I particularly like #3, in a forum subsection that does not allow discussion, like the Police Blotter. The resulting discussion threads in General protesting individual decisions would be healthy, and I think would eventually just die down.

I agree completely with those who do not want to see "LL suxxors" threads run amok. Or even the much more literate, but still very damaging, versions that used to characterize the old General forums.

Next step?

I like Mal's proposal, with Nika's changes.

I don't see it as covered by #3 at all. Ill reread it a third time.

The way I read it you still could get banned from SL - but the resmod might look bad.

I don't see that as encouraging people to speak their minds.

It's in the 2nd Paragraph of #3, referred to as "decoupling."

ahh k

My mind must have glazed over when the US Justice system got mentioned.


Its worth noting that our current res mod has stated on several occasions full support for Tying forums bans to in-world bans.

Oops I see I can't read. Apologies, will edit my prev post.

I just see that as a terrible over-reach. If people are bad on the forums, suspend them. If they are recalcitrant, expel them from the forums. But banning in world for what happens on the forums in a platform like SL where people have thousands of RL currency sunk into the game is an obscene idea, in my opinion.