Bye Bye Forums

Are you sure that wasn't to spliff up the place?

Without getting into what changed my mind about this ~ I now think it's more a matter of 'how will the forums change' rather than 'bye bye forums.'

There is a distinct, real chance that it may actually be an improvement, depending how it is done.

We shall see.

for iphone users maybe lol

/me eyes Des assessingly . . .

Hmmmmm.

Well, were I a betting woman -- and of course I am NOT (she said hurriedly) as we know that is strictly verboten and BAD -- I know where I'd be putting my money now on the question of "kill" or "upgrade."

The devil, however, is in the details, isn't it?

No fair!! Is there really a glimmer of hope out there?? Are you really going to leave us hanging like that??

(and I'm still annoyed with LL because they won't just say what's going on. They know people are pissed. They know that Jive crap is crap. They know that saying "forums are changing soon" is going to make us think we're going to be forced into a "use jive or go elsewhere" deal.)

LL has been saying for quite some time that Jive is great and that it's new & improved.

I think there's a disconnect between how they define 'upgrade' and how others might define it.

Yeah, it's exactly how they define "kill" and "upgrade".

I think the odds on favorite is close the forums but keep them around as an archive and tell everyone how great the SLA is. Which is technically not killing the forums, and probably an upgrade in terms of administration.

Yep. Them's the "details" to which I refer . . .


/me looks cautiously over her shoulder . . .

Oh yeah? Care to put some Lindens down on that?

Jive's software is not crap. It is an award-winning, forward-looking platform that LL NEEDS. It is quite possible to configure Jive stuff to provide everything we need from a forum; my beef has always been that LL has seemed unwilling to do so.

Yes, a blog-response format, such as what LL used in setting up the Commerce Forum, makes it impossible to quickly find and track that discussion you were interested in. BUT it is very possible to configure Jive to have navigation similar to VB. According to Jive employees, it's not even hard to do. I've posted examples of forums on other sites that did just that. You just gotta be willing to compromise the 'bloglike' appearance to which LL has clung --- but only in the forums area. Why is that so hard?

I would be completely willing to use new forums IF they provide most of what we have here. I've volunteered time and energy in the past, repeatedly, to help LL figure out what 'usable' means for forum users. It completely makes sense to me that LL would not take me up on that; it ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE! But ... I haven't seen any prototype of a usable forum from them yet.

http://www.jivesoftware.com/
Not crap. A great platform for many uses. You just gotta set it up right.

.

Given my betting skills... no.

Lexie just locked the parallel thread over in SL Answers. (Why it was created there is baffling but oh well)

I think I've said too much already...

I trust you....... You seem to be trying to give us a glimmer of hope here, that these forums will not 'go away' totally and forever, in favor of the blogorums. You seem to actually know this. I will trust you, not beg for info (/me looks desperately around for Brenda who has all the duct tape in the RA forum, Brenda I need some for my mouth, so I don't beg, here, please) and I will go back to wait and see mode........

Thanks for what you did say, I actually feel somewhat reassured.

Sorry.

Jive, as it is set up here, is crap.

The 'Rime' thread on SLA is locked, by Lexxie Linden who referred discussions over here.......

Well it is about the most idiotic garbage for an editor I have ever seen. Obviously whoever wrote it has no clue about UI standards. So it is written by rank amateurs. And it shows.

But by all means do explain the bizarre behavior of pressing the delete key twice or the spell checker that is about as smart as a 3 year old and that moves your caret position around on a random basis resulting in sentences being mangled.

Actually the government needs to close Jive, ban it's products, and deport it's employees to some place with no computers so they can't do anymore damage.

LL doesn't need that garbage. What LL needs is what *WE PAYING CUSTOMERS* need. What else LL needs cannot be written here.

No you haven't!!!

LOL

Well, that kind of says it all, doesn't it?


Do you suppose Lexie sees the superb irony in this?

It IS weird, isn't it? Particularly if you use Firefox. For me, the cursor disappears sometimes when I click to relocate it. Turns out the cursor is set where I intended, it's just invisible.

But I'd be willing to put up with buggy software if LL would just show some willingness to TRY to make it usable, and update it regularly when bug fixes are available. (I occasionally post to a technical forum based on Jive and its editor doesn't exhibit the odd behavior above. But they have it configured for an absolute minimum of bells and whistles - no smilies, little formatting, etc.).
.

Yes. Even if they fixed the navigation and added the missing features to make it behave more like a forum, the editor is still a buggy mess. If this is what wins software awards these days, I'm shifting my bets to the Chinese Google-hackers.

I dunno, maybe Nika just keeps the editor in HTML mode and never presses any dangerous key combinations (like Control-Z), but the introduction of Jive on the blog was the first time I--me personally, not one of my programs--wrote raw HTML since... gawd... had to be pre-2000.

Forward-looking in a back-to-the-future sort of way, maybe.

Not if she, and Des, know the same kinda secrets....no irony at all.....

No.

Even if this Jive thingie is the greatest thing since wine in a box, it is a good bet LL will do it on the cheap and probably maintain in their usual nickel and dime manner. Plus, I'm tired of their empty promises, lies and cryptic announcements. Why can't they be upfront about their intentions, just once? I'm pretty much to the point of I really don't care what they put up out there after this, I'm not interested anymore.

Yep. It's buggy enough that I treat it gingerly.

It hasn't won awards for basics or robustness, more for the overall suite's conceptual design.

*shrugs*

If LL were to merge with a 2D web partner Jive is a very logical choice. Jive is right up the coast from LL, LL's new CFO still seems to spend time in Jive's hometown, their buzz is terrific among the same crowd that loved SL when it first came out. AND Jive's customer base includes a PILE of corporations LL would love to be introduced to.
.

Hm...

/me digs up the comments she sent to M about his "looking forward" blog...

Could it be that they listened? That I, personally, am the cause of my own frustration??