Why is there not a "General Discussion" forum?

I think the existance of our little group proves the opposite. To me that is ruling by fear and intimidation.

Ditto- I hate form and control of function - need the anarchy that this instills. If it all goes south I can't see where I would turn - because I seldom post to the other options.

I like bitching here.
And being ignored.

He has said it though.

Isn't "decoupling" something to do with post-coital activity?

Sorry! That's uncoupling!

If the alternative was it becoming a sanitized, kool Aid drinking LL lovefest however, I would prefer to wave a fond farewell to it all. Ig General/OT is not feasable, at the very least make RA open to any discussion that is SL related, not limiting it to questions only.

Well- here is a thought- let's just go elsewhere. I was i a forum where the owner got lazy and did not contribute at all other than to post self-congratulatory posts. The last straw was when she decided to offer the forum or sale!!! So- we hard core enthusiast picked up and left.

I have not really noticed a chaffing here - nothing I have posted has been banned or changed (the ultimate in my opinion and cause for bloodshed - don't screw with my words!) so I do not have a personal beef. And I am truly grateful for all the information I have gathered here and the friends that I have made. But if it really must be so harshly ruled, then I would prefer to seek freedom elsewhere. There is no shortage of free boards although like I said, I see no problems here affecting me- than again I am still fairly new to the Boards and to SL.

There's no need to leave, yet. This being the Official Board, it would be best to keep it here. Perhaps both sides can get together and come up with a plan that will be reasonablt palatable to all.

Would it be helpful for Mal to hold an open inworld meeting or two where we could all talk about this more directly? Maybe Strife would attend.

Fwiw, I haven't heard anything that leads me to think that moderating would be much different in tone than it is now, under Mal's proposal.

It makes no difference here. Large numbers of people dumped this place after General vanished last year, forming groups on different forums. It's inevitable that a number will remain behind .. and others will still check back here occasionally. The main reason though is the forums link at the top of the http://secondlife.com/account page. Thousands of people register for Second Life every day, so it's inevitable they'll discover these forums before any other. Any gap left due to an exodus, is very soon refilled.

There has been a huge shift in these forums over this past year. Before Autumn 2006, it seemed to me that older users dominated the place .. included the odd slebrity like Anshe Chung. The balance has now shifted heavily towards those who registered in 2007 in my opinion (although I could be, and usually am, wrong).

This is almost identical to my first post, with the suggestions of others added. If you've read the thread to here, you can safely ignore this post; if you want to see the addenda, they are all in #2 paragraph 2.

A proposal 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.

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.

Banning decisions should have the concurrence of two resmods, but I expect they'd want that for their own sake anyway. Of course, Linden Lab - being owner of the forum - would always have the power of oversight at any level, but their involvement would be gated by their own desires and should not be required in normal operation. Linden Lab could be the arbiter of inter-resmod disputes, but I think the selection of a "chief" resmod - by LL or the resmods - would more efficiently serve the role.

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.

I have amended the proposal as requested and sent the following PM to Strife.

"Because these forums do provide a useful function that no other venue can"

What purpose is that?

Any sequence of characters that can be produced here can be produced in a third party forum. Avatar identity for third party forums can be made reasonably secure by the use of inworld kiosks as part of the signup process.

They can be operated in such a fashion as to serve Linden Lab's interested in a way that other forums can't, since they are owned by Linden Lab.

The distinctive function that these Linden Lab owned forums need to serve is to increase customer retention, not to provide a place for people to argue, gush over each other, and say pie and panties back and forth ten million billion trillion times in a row.

A ready flow of information, ideas, quearies, and a sense of community.

People using SL find the SL forums because they are promoted through SL. No 3rd party site can maintain that recognition, no matter how well respected the idividual running it. This site alone carries LL's endorsement and copyright and all that other legal mumbo jumbo.

So newbies wind up here asking questions, or jsut quietly reading and learning. Oldies argue, bounce ideas, and help those newbies.

The pie and panties give us a sense of Community. *shrugs* It may seem silly to others, fun to more, and confusing to some, but it's little things like that on which we can laugh and smile and someday say "Do you remember when?"

What pulls people in is SL's uniqueness and the ability to do almsot anything. What keeps them here is NOT SL, nor LL, nor any other one of the technical aspects. It's the Residents, the Community, the people, the FRIENDS we make here. Without friends, what a boring place SL would be. A fantastic, awesome, unique, and DEAD world.

LL knew that once. I wonder if they still remember it?

~Jessy

If LL close down Resident Answers, people will just pick another forum that's the best match (probably current version feedback) and turn THAT into the new General Discussion forum. You cannot gag people. Locking threads as soon as they veer away from "How do I clear my cache?" just looks anal.

Either LL close down the ENTIRE forums (and I doubt they wish to do that) or there will be a GD forum, official or not, like it or not. So might as well make it official and save this stupid pantomime of "Oh, oh, you shouldn't be posting this here, this is Resident Answers, you know!".

Quoted for truth,

however - I would like to amend your post with one additional qualifier

...DUH!


Its amazing how many people just don't get it.

If the distinctive function of these forums is to increase customer retention, then maybe some people should stop encouraging the use of, and providing technical support for, competing virtual world platforms.

I'm also not sure Group Forums named after specific individuals are appropriate in fora where general discussion is actively deterred. What purpose do such forums serve for example, beyond providing a platform to the person after whom they're named to discuss absolutely anything of interest to themselves?

I have an in-world group called Walker Moore.
Can I have a Second Life Group Forum called Walker Moore please.
If not, why not?

Glass houses

heh

/me bows to Walker

Oh here's why ..

/3/55/119906/1.html



Assuming these rules still stand, perhaps we've inadvertently stumbled across a solution for the Forum Cartel which doesn't rely upon an external third-party forum?

You've got the group.
You've got the required number of members.
Now write to Torley and demand that group forum.

You can talk about panties and pies.
SuezanneC can talk about HiPiHi and FedEx boxes.
Everybody's happy.

HiPiHi Hooray!

Almost everyone. A topic of discussion around the hangout of late has been whether or not a certain clique causes a chilling effect upon discussion through pile-on attacks.

It has been my contention that such a phenomenon does in fact exist contrary to the protestations of members of that clique.

Above, someone trolled and some people replied with discourse advancing commentary and others flamed back and others got congratulatory towards those engaged in flaming.

Did I want to respond to the troll? Sure did: I had a witheringly clever reply which I decided not to post even though it was so damn clever. Upon reflection, I realized that it wouldn't advance the discussion but would instead turn it into a mud fight.

If you believe in the principles advocated in most of this thread, I think it important to consider the net effect of your words on the discourse. First because it is the right thing to do, secondly, because if this proposal gets implemented I hope like hell it will end the pile-ons. A simple test question to ask yourself is "who will most benefit from this post I am about to submit?". If the answer is "me and my ego" you are implicitly saying that your ego is worth more than the attention of hundreds of readers and the detriment of the discourse.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

EDIT: P.S. For the record; the SL Blog just SUCKS for communication. Nice for notices, but NOT for feedback and true communication between LL and the Residents.[/QUOTE]
Feedback is non-existent whether they have a place for it or not. Just take a look at the games current Blog, nothing there either.

Remember back when they posted a blog for feedback on the then proposed voice chat box? Many sl residents voiced their opinions stating the chat box itself was poorly designed as well as way too big for the screen.

Linden never acknowledged any of that "feedback" and that giant contraption they called chat box remained unchanged 'til this current day.

So what's the use to have a place for feedback if they won't even acknowledge anything said?

That "evil poster" is a friend of mine, and the Lindens do in fact have a long history of preferential treatment.

The general and other forums that tended to become controversial were closed some time after they had already banned my friend from them.

Still, much as I hate the squelching of speech, SOMETHING has gotten better on the forums, because I'm no longer subject to the abuse I received back then (largely, but not totally, due to being a friend of the "evil poster", and I haven't noticed any guy calling women "c**ts" in a very long time.

coco