Second Life Answers Hits a Milestone. Forums death watch predictions

There's all this jive talkin' in the official blogs about the milestones Second Life Answers has hit and how great it is. https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/volunteers/blog/2010/01/08/second-life-answers-hits-a-milestone

Uhm, not. I kinda hate it. I realize that things can take some getting used to when change occurs but I've really tried and just find SL Answers not particularly intuitive to navigate and crap is hard to search for. Sure these forums look kinda ugly and don't quite match up with the prettified web site but for the most part, it works and is functional.

I'm a little concerned that after this cheerful SL Answers blog post, a few weeks later we'll see a post saying something along the lines of "Due to the overwhelming success of Second Life Answers and the positive feedback we've received from our residents, we'll be closing down the old forums and migrating everything into one easy and pretty place to get the answers to all your needs because WE LISTENED AND WE CARE ABOUT YOU!"

So, do you like Second Life Answers? We've all been predicting the demise of these forums for quite some time now but shall we start the death clock ticking after this post? Give us your predictions for when this place gets shut down.

SL Answers is Cack.

I don't want to think about it.

I don't know, but I'm going to keep posting until they pull the

I don't use the new system (I had a look and I didn't like it at all) or other forums, so I'll be out of it all if they close this one down - except SL, of course.

I suspect one would get more mileage out of any complaints one might have posting them on a site that is search engine accessible, unlike these forums.

It is physically possible to use that jive software to make something closely resembling a normal forum like this vBulletin forum. If they'd do that the site would be a lot better.

If they'd make the "More Options" search into a page you can go to instead of having to go to the basic search and then click on the "More Options" link that would be a distinct improvement.

Second Life Answers is apparently not intended to be used for ongoing discussions, but for relatively short threads that stop when the questioner marks a question as answered.

Make it look and work more like a normal forum and eliminate the "Mark as answered" stuff and the getting of points and then it would be tolerable.

However, I don't think LL has any concern with making a forum to suit people who enjoy discussing things. That want a place where people can get user provided individualized customer service help without having to pay workers to answer the questions. So I doubt there's any concern with providing a pleasant place for forum lovers.

No.

I haven't looked at it yet. I probably won't.

Funny thing is, half the time I decide to look at it, I have a hard time even finding where it is on the new and improved website.

Maybe you could ask on SL Answers how to find SL Answers.

My comment on the blog (thanks Josh for pointing this posting out):

Congratulations! A lot of effort has gone into SL Answers, and it's good that it's paying off. I think it's wonderful that SL Answers is multilingual, and the community does seem to be responding to the several weeks of MOTD messaging about SL Answers by visiting the site more often.

I note, however, that there are currently 180 users logged into the previous SL Forums site ( /invalid_link.html ) as I type this, despite LL's best efforts to hide it. There have been 276,085 threads there, over 2.25 million posts. The volume and quality of information in the content forums there is incredible, and easily searchable, unlike SL Answers. There is no ratings system, which is often used destructively within forum communities.

Despite the fact that LL has told no-one that they exist, new members gravitate to the old forums daily, and get their questions answered in minutes. Despite LL's refusal to clean up the ancient fora structure (the work of approximately 3 hours), the site is still more navigable than the Discussions area, being a simple and familiar hierarchical VB structure.

SL Answers is a good resource. But please do not use its success to justify whacking the much MORE successful Forums. They're not pretty, and they're shamefully neglected, but they still serve up boatloads of resident-resident help every day, and harbor an irreplaceable living knowlege base.

Nice work, Nika.

I was just over there looking for a thread I was reading yesterday and it was gone. I don't even remember what category it was in. There must be a way to search over there but I sure couldn't find it, not even the basic search you mention. I came running back here.

1st: Someone specifically requested some stats on the SL Answers thing so LL presented them. In about 48 hours of the request.

2nd: Lexie Linden is closing blog forum threads after they reach a certain number of pages with a statement directing people to this forum for long discussions. So I doubt LL is planning to kill this forum off anytime soon.

3rd: There are hundreds if not thousands of experts here. There are only 3 experts over there: http://bit.ly/slexperts

OK so number 3 is a joke

I'm confused. Why did they launch Second Life Answers when these forums already exist and quite successfully answer user questions every day? I don't get it.

Brilliant Nika. I knew I put up that billboard for ya for a reason.

No. Not even a little.

This is not because I fear change or because there's so much history here that should be preserved or because I feel the need to complain about everything LL does.

I do not like it because it does not work correctly. 8 months into beta, search STILL does not work. Threaded view does not render correctly on my XP/IE8 system, which is probably the most common setup around. Flat view even has problems putting buttons in the right places, though it's not nearly as bad a threaded view. There are no polls. Navigation is, at best, frustrating.

I really do appreciate the enthusiam Lexie and company show for it but that's doesn't make SL Answers a thing of progress. Can anybody point out ANYTHING that they've fixed since the initial launch? Didn't they ask for and get tons of feedback last summer? Where's the fixes? If they still don't have search working right after all this time, I find I hard to believe it will ever really be a step forward from what we have here.

SL Answers is largely useless. I suppose it's fine if one has a question and needs and answer, but insofar as having a worthy discussion... it's a terrible format for this. And the less said about the value and search capabilities, the better.

It's a shame LL will close this forum, but it seems keeping with their other ill conceived ideas.

I do have to wonder though... if maintaining both is the same amount of work, let people choose which they prefer to haunt and keep both.

When this forum closes, I'll look to other places like SC for information, news and socializing outside of SL.

Yes, but I think that is the whole point -- LL does not want us to actually have discussions.

Sadly, this, I think, is very true.

This is one of the points I made in my post on the Answers Blog to "M. Linden"'s thread:


Kingdon didn't address my point about a forum directly, but suggested that they needed to find a better means of consultation about policy changes. Meade had a nice response, however.

going by this page, there has been only 8 posts in the last week. EIGHT!
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community
I don't know if that's all of them but that can't make it a success, surely.

Well, I'm sure LL looks at Resident Answers and sees what a puke fest it is here, so I guess they wanted a place for people to go to actually get answers to questions without having to sift through thousands of "LL sucks" messages. (like this one).

If you don't like it, then don't go there, it's that simple. Stay here in the forums and rip on LL.

I think those are actually only the community blog postings. Take a look here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/answers/general_questions?view=overview

It is being used and quite frequently but I have issues with its functionality and how things are organized. Searching for previously answered questions is quite difficult and even though they would archive this place should it be closed down, I would greatly miss the ongoing collective knowledge found in the content creation sections here.

They could just close the Resident Conversation section and leave the content creation forums open. But they would still need to take 3 hours to upgrade the bbs software, to make it more functional.

For a bullet point in a progress report.