Why Is Linden Shutting Down Forums?

It seems the most active, and quite often valuable forums on SL Forums have been inexplicably shut down. They include:

* The Sandbox - 143,199 posts

* General Topics - 188,610 posts

* Bulletin Board - 24,355 posts

* Linden Answers - counts are gone...

* Land and the Economy - 58,148 posts

So now the only "general" forum is becoming Resident Answers, which is
just silly.

There certainly should be an Open Discussion forum to serve as a catch-all
for anything which doesn't fit in the other forums.

I'm guessing that part of the reason the forums are being shut down is negative
feedback about user's SL experiences.

Anyone else have any comments about this?

-Infrared

I personally find these multiple forums confusing and unneccessary. In fact, of 3 or 4 third party forums I've visited they all seem to have this same labyrynth of sections.
When it gets quiet here I browse some of the others but often find some sections not posted to for a month or more and at least one whole forum that's been unused for a couple of weeks.
I always end up coming back here, but only go to it's sister branches when a post gets moved or references another thread there.
One forum's enough for this hobbit.

LL is shutting down the forums because of repressed hostility toward their customers.

They make software updates for the same reason.

These forums presented an unflattering view of SL to people who might look at them before playing or investing in it.

In the case of the Linden answers forum also was a use of manpower to answer them, if things remained unanswered there then they also fit the above reason.

Bug/abuse reports are not public, thus as far as you know the problem may only be happening to you, or be a problem with your system, either way no one but you and LL know about it.

PR is the thing

I am a "forum beast"

At home on MSN computer (my old computer before I bought the current one) I have at least 8 or 9 forums open all the time (not all SL related).

Morwen.

Ah yes, if you want to have a wide range of correspondence I understand but I'm equating here to say, 20 forums all on SL.

My first ever forum, Starship Titanic, we had three 'classes' to tie in with the three classes of passenger in the game. This was so people trying to find out how to do something in Super Galactic Traveller class wouldn't be reading hints and tips for much later in the game but generally, the 'captains' who staffed these forums (no employees) would kind of loiter in First Class where everyone nearing completion were more au fait with the 'community' of the forum, something we wondered if the late, great Douglas Adams had forseen.
Phew! sorry for the length of that last sentence .. wanted to get it out before I lost momentum

Anyway, my point being as Craig said, some posts put into little read sections could lay dormant for ages .. bad news for all surely?

Has it occurred to any of you that the Lindens are people too, and they are weary of being subjected to the constant abuse and name calling they receive in these forums? How can they be productive when subjected to a barrage of that crap? I've received abuse and been told to shove things up my behind for defending them against an unfortunate angry end user. Can't wait to check later and see what else I've been called! Imagine that multiplied a hundred thousand fold.

I will call you nothing...

But as forum-owner/moderator you have stand above things as name-calling... and use the tools you have to moderate when needed.

Morwen.

The General Topics Forum tended to be a very candid and warts-and-all view of SL with a lot of posters expressing their dissatisfaction with SL bugs and poor LL decisions in often heated terms.

Those weren't the viewpoints LL wanted prospective players, or most importantly, investors to see.

Those are called "having customers", and "working for a living", respectively.

I've had friends who have fantasized about starting their own firm so they "could work for themselves and not have to answer to a boss". In my counsel to them I point out that they will have to answer to a boss named "Customer" and that boss is typically more demanding than any titular boss they may have had.

I have put my all my pity for the LL staff in these parenthesis: (.)

I can't think of any businesses that I've worked for that have allowed customers to verbally abuse their employees. Clearly, Linden Labs thinks that their employee time is better used fixing things on the back end (because we all know there's plenty of fixin' to be done) than being sitting ducks in the forums. Ever notice that some people just get angrier when they don't get an answer they like?

Just to be clear, I do recognize that there are problems in communicating with Linden Labs and getting issues resolved at times. But these people are running a business, and this business has been growing at astounding rates, so I see it as growing pains. Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I think they're trying to work things out as best they can, and they're not going to make everyone happy all the time.

Hmmm... Ever done work in sales? It belongs to that.
(Edit: I don't say all customers are like that, but some are).

And yes, I work in sales. For years already.

Morwen.

Repair companies get the major hostiles too. It's like they blame you for the grilled cheese sandwich that got stuck in their VCR and demand that their VCR gets fixed before anything else is done. Never mind the fact that you have 6 DvD players, some whom have paid the fee in advance to have them fixed or that they've been waiting a week, because of idiots who stick grilled cheese sandwiches in their VCRs

People complain, that's a fact. If they are complaining, they aren't leaving, because they feel an interest in the game. But to not give them an 'official' place to complain? No, I don't think closing those forums was the best idea. It just created splinters and when the game is down, players have no place to go to be social, except 3rd party sites.

I work for the government. I'm used to being the bad guy. But there's a difference between people who are willing to work with you on a solution and people who just want to spout off because they're angry and frustrated, which is so often what I see on the forums.

Linden Labs is an odd entity. On one hand they are a business, but on the other hand, since they allow residents so much control, they are like a government too.

The problem with the 3rd party forums, from my limited experience, is that they seem to be 'controlled' by a few people with an agenda and if you're not part of their in crowd, you better get out of the way.

One forum to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

Sorry couldn't resist

\Yes, the Lindens are people. However Linden Labs is a business and must deal with its customers and all their issues and frustrations. The way a business can deals with its dissatisfied customers is with with good communications and customer service, a concept that LL does not seem to grasp.

I don't think you can read these forums unless you have already created a character in Second Life, right?

I further don't think you can read these forums unless you have a Premium account, or maybe a verified one, or something.

There is something like that, anybody know?

Philip Linden has said they closed down the forums because they failed at them and weren't good at them, and because they were depressing his employees.

coco

Yes, exactly. This is why I don't post on any 3rd party forums. General was closed down because it had degenerated into nothing but bitching, moaning, and outright hostility; I'm sure there were others like me who never felt comfortable posting at all. I rarely did because most of the time I'd receive a hostile answer. In Resident Answers, I see discussions and debates, but I haven't seen hostility at the level of the old General forum, and I think that's great.

Yep. The closing of Linden Answers was easy to see coming, weeks before it happened, as it increasingly became a whinefest.

I suspect the blog will also see changes before long - every post seems to have the same old people, spamming the same old stuff.

Ha ha - reminds me of a game I used to play called SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) when the developers thought things were getting too "hawt" or giving the game a bad name, they would lock threads, delete posts, dole out forum bans a etc etc etc. Just made everyone all the more mad, caused mega spam and unrest. I understand though, that they must get pretty fed up with people asking the same questions over and over again. Maybe they should make their "known issues" threads a bit easier to navigate - or has that one been deleted too? /wink

The forums distill emotion, not the nice ones, only the mean & nasty. Hatred. Anger. Spite.

People come to the forums for one reason or another, they post their questions & complaints, they reach out or attack each other. The social dynamics much like a school yard at recess but it is different because it isn't a group of children. Children aren't as smart as adults, adults know what the game is, they know how to work it, they know that there really isn't anything that can be done to them, being sent to the principals office is not a threat that works on adults. Get a group of children who have no respect for their teacher and all you have is utter chaos. The only thing that keeps a community from chaos is respect. Children wear their emotions; adults learn to bury and hide them from view, to that end a text medium like a forum helps. Emotions are hard to put into words, and words can be interpreted in different ways. When we read words we impart a bit of our own emotion & understanding onto them. How else are to know what the emotion they are to express?

The point is, if you are reading something when you are angry, chances are you will read it in an angry tone. If the topic is unresolved, you stay angry. The next time you read posts on the topic or by the same author you remember the anger. It feeds on itself.

The people who cause the most trouble are those who are careless with their words and those who walk the line just inside the rules. They provoke responses that reinforce and cause the situation to snowball. Anger and hatred grows. Those who provoke the responses often become the targets of people asking "Why hasn't anything been done about them?" But what can be done about them? There will always be people who walk just inside the line; no matter where the line is drawn. But the anger and hatred is still there.

People post their problems to the forums with to no satisfaction or personal attention. The bugs or issues or hiccups they come across are forgotten without a nod from the powers that be. With their prayers unacknowledged they despair.

At this point we have quite a large group of discontent users. What can you do for them? Nothing, they need to find their own happiness, LL cannot provide it. Happiness isn't something you find laying on the street. Sure that 20$ bill is nice but happiness is knowing what you could do with it (i can get a beer after work, or the IRS isn't getting any of this); otherwise it's just a piece of green paper.

Closing the forums which lead to the greatest pain is the only sane solution LL can undertake, because anything they could try to do to make people happy again would fall short. Sure people need a place to express themselves, to bond, grow and relax; to live. But those hurt as a result of the flaws in the system need to be cared for. The system needs to change drastically for such pains to be allowed to fade. Sometimes it's best to knock things down and start again from scratch. Sure it sucks in the short term but in the long term it is the right thing to do.

The pendulum will swing back in the other direction sooner or later, just wait and see.

I had to log on to view the forums.

Although I have a Premium account, my husband doesn't, but he can view them too.

Forums are "par for the course" for MMO's.

They allow players to exchange information. In most MMO's I've played, you can do that in game. But it can be annoying sometimes when done on public channels, so Forums are a nice alternative. The same issues crop up that occur in game, like people asking the same questions over and over again, but at least in a Forum, they don't interrupt your game play.

Forums also provide important feedback to the devs.

I've been playing MMO's for over 8 years. I've learned to be wary of devs who can't tolerate public feedback from their players. It sends a signal "we don't care what you think". Public feedback is useful, because it allows other players to override what I might say. When we're all saying the same thing, and they're tired of hearing it, that's bad news.

Of course, they should not tolerate abusive behavior/language, no one should. The usual method is to hire moderators, and it appears to me that the moderators are doing a good job here.

The shutting down of forums does create a negative impression at first. However, I have posted several negative posts which have not been censored, so I doubt if censorship is the reason.

So my guess is that they are trying to reduce the number of forums to a manageble level that they can moderate, which seems reasonable to me, and if you do a search on my name, I think you'll find I'm not their biggest fan.

And if I'm wrong, I'll be out of here in a heartbeat, and I suggest you do the same.

while there are many valid points to why these forums have been getting cut left and right, i have a different view altogether.

Second Life isn't a game, it's more akin to a 3D webverse of sorts.. like an early version of the Metaverse.. i've even referred to it as The Betaverse.

with this in mind, let me ask this.. is there a forum for the internet? one official all-encompassing forum to talk about the entire online world?

i certainly know of no such thing.. the internet is a world unto itself, huge and ever-expanding. imagine if there was one company responsible for ALL of it and they had a set of forums to run. not a job anyone would envy.. nor would it be feasible.

the same goes with SL.

we've seen this world grow and grow and become more and more diversified. Linden Lab has been steadily creeping towards a world that's truly created by its users.. much like the internet of today. we all know how recently LL made SL Open Sourced. (mabye not wholly, but certainly a huge chunk is now available to the residents) they have also talked about people being to eventually own their own servers/worlds that are branches off of SL.

this is not a world that will support a singular, official forum forever. it may have looked that way back when the total residents signed up were less than the amount we see logged in at any given point these days, but now we can clearly see that our world will expand to a point where almost everythign will be decentralized.


while i'm right with everyone else in lamenting the loss of General, Off-Topic (The Sandbox), etc., i've also dreamt of what the far-flung future would hold ever since my early days. so, while i may not be happy about the loss of some of the official forums, i'm also looking ahead as far as i can all the time.. and everything that's been going on with the forum closures is just par for the course in my eyes.

If I understand you correctly Cybin what you are saying is that Linden Labs is developing a new "internet"..........a virtual 3D, interactive one. That's a vast undertaking and I'm not sure they will succeed as long as they are headed in the direction they appear to be headed. The popularity of the internet came about for many reasons but a couple of businesses were very much responsible for helping that popularity come about..........Anyone remember from history an internet service called "Compuserve"? As far I remember and have heard it was very much like Second Life in concept (yeah I know it was not nearly as suffisticated (hehehhehe.......that ain't spelled right ). They wanted a closed network of users for interaction and to make some money too. Then along came an upstart company with the same idea..........America Online. AOL has it's problems everyone knows that. But their ideas on how to go about creating that closed world were different. Instead of complete anarchy like Compuserve they went in the direction of becoming a real ISP and more or less turned their world over to the real world. And Compuserve is gone for all practical purposes. But AOL is not a new internet...........in fact they are really nothing more than an ISP with a very poor reputation. They failed..........they were doomed to fail from the start because they both started out as a closed network. In my opinion Linden Labs and Second Life should abandon that pipe dream of the "new and improved internet" (metaverse?) and stay what they started out to be...........a closed network or game that is cutting edge in technology and develop the ground work for a real metaverse. Prehaps sell the Second Life to another dreamer and then continue with their dream with the knowledge of what works and what doesn't work. I don't think Linden Labs can change horses in the middle of the stream as it appears they are attempting.......you need to keep your lines of communications open (no matter how painful or frustrating those communication lines may be) to learn. Eventually get out of Second Life game and move forward with your developing a new "internet".

The internet and Second Life are about as alike as Compuserve or AOL are to the internet. Neither are the internet and niether can compete with the internet..........and Linden Labs won't be able to compete either with the direction they are headed at the present. Sure use SL for research and development............but cutting off your communications to your "testers" would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. Critical and even abusive communication does provide vital information about your product or ideas. Closing all (or even some) of your lines of communications because they are too much to handle or inconvenient or painful destroys your chances of being successful.

It might be best for Linden Labs to team up with many people in every section of the world and actually start a new internet (metaverse)...........they aren't going to compete like they are now. They will fail........but they have a chance to set the pace for another venture that just may succeed. Their mistake was made in the beginning...........and has progressed too far to change courses. Accept that and start over using what you have learned on a path more apt to succeed. Second Life will never be the next generation internet..........never.