Bye Bye Forums

I have spoken with Blue several times on it myself and he is so keen for the new Jive SW, which is a real shame really imho

This forum has become a major part of my "SL experience." It will hurt -- a lot -- to see it close. And I think that the hints from Blue and Wallace suggest that this time they mean it: it WILL close.

What will interest me is if they end up offering an alternative. LL loves good spin: it's hard to believe that they will use a blog post to simply close the forums down without offering a new shiny in its stead. Were they planning to merely turn off the lights here, I think they would do it more quietly.

hmmmm....I hope you're right Scylla

Notecard sent.

Although I have absolutely no faith that it will make any difference. I'm sure that for every message LL gets from someone who wants to see the official forums stay, there are millions of invisible users who think the SL Answers/Blog thing is the best thing since weasel on a stick.



Lindens hear only what they want to hear.

Hmmm. The notecard idea is a good one. Why didn't we think of this months ago? We could bury poor old Blue . . .

Blue has said that these forums will be replaced with the Jive blogrums its just when and they already migrated the xstreet forums to the blogrums so this will follow suit I am sure of that. Maybe they will change the format around abit as other sites use the Jive SW and have a better layout than LL has atm.

I agree with you that these forums have been an integral part of my SL experience since the day I started back in SL as well and for many others its the same. I have had some great dialogues over the years on so many different and diverse subjects, but as ever things change and LL has changed, its how they will deal with the change that matters most and based on the last couple of years it doesn't bode well imho.

But lets hope I am totally wrong

LOL

The left side of our brain knows they don't care.

LMAO we did when he said only 10 people objected to the adult changes ..... don't think he will make statements like that again in a hurry

Yep, and it didn't change anything, did it?

I would expect LL will be chagrined if they do shut this forum down to find that Second Life Answers becomes are replacement and is used in a way they hadn't expected. The interface and usability may change, but the people will move to whatever official channel is left open and everything LL thinks they are getting rid of by closing this forum will move right onto SL Answers.

LL caters for the vocal minorities....those that shout loudest!

Nope and thats the sad part, whilst some Lindens do seem to care I think the corporate machine generally doesn't really give a stuff as I think they are looking towards Meta Lindens millions http://slapt.me/wiki/index.php?title=Comments_from_other_Linden_Staff rather than the existing customer base.

Sadly, I agree with you

Interesting thought. The problem is that the format of SL Answers is so horrible that I suspect most of us want to have nothing to do with it.

It might be kind of cool to collectively swarm the SL Answers, though, on the day that they close this down, and try to put our imprint on it. Get Jig to post a couple of her characteristic threads, and the entire machine might grind to a screeching halt, and come crashing down.

In all seriousness, though . . . I think that it's a worthwhile thought. Opening a large "protest" thread on SL Answers when this is shut down . . .

I think it will happen naturally. Some people will just focus their time on third-party forums that they already belong to like SLU and Second Citizen, but humans are a social species. All it will take is a few "regulars" posting someplace and the rest of the herd will gravitate to the new grazing field. The way the space is used will change because SL Answers is less conducive to ongoing conversations, but if LL thinks they will be getting rid of Jig's inane threads and round #47,582 of "is it cheating?" they should think again.

That's interesting.

If M follows through with an invite to some sort of office hour in Feb, would you mind me dropping a reference to that into the mix? I was going to skip it, but that might just make it interesting.

^^

Alternative forums will be just like alternative Mentor groups. Too many to choose from and no cohesive center. All created and ran by well meaning citizens with good intentions but each with their own agenda and limited participation. I often direct new residents to these forums because here I know there will be a rich pool of talented residents who can respond to any question. And as mentioned so often … its entertaining

Maybe. I think the community here will become badly fragmented, though. I've seen the same reasoning applied to in-world communities when a home sim closes down: invariably, an en masse immigration doesn't transpire.


Oh thank god, I'd hate to lose those. I'm still pretty undecided on the whole issue.

A friend said she bugged Blue about it.. sometime last summer I think.. and he said that he hasn't really seen much call to keep this place around.

/me would be very unhappy to see Desmond go.

Well, I use what happened in 2006 as a guide. Forum denizens of the time had a choice of close to a dozen third-party forums. Only two of them survived and thrived in the long run, because (again) people tend to clump around familiar names and faces. SLU and SC received the bulk of the refugees, but a whole lot of people just moved right over into Resident Answers and life continued pretty much as before - only there was more of an emphasis on answering questions and helping people rather than infighting and social commentary. Today's RA is split fairly evenly between the three, which certainly was an improvement from the tone of the old General Discussion. You just aren't going to get rid of the social commentary and infighting when dealing with people. It goes with the territory. Working with human behavior is really much more rewarding than working against it.

This.

.

Oh, I shouldn't worry about that . . . there's still Prok's blog . . .

/me nods.

The difference, maybe, is that the format of RA was like that of General Discussion? So it seemed more familiar?

I think you are right about human behaviour's little quirks surfacing regardless of the format, though. You can see some of that now on the SL Answers -- albeit with the difference that the mods there seem to have very little tolerance for the quirkier stuff.

We tried that already. Back during the ramp up to Zindra, Blue said he "was not aware of any significant opposition" to the coming Adult Content policies. He said this even though there were already thousands of posts in the various forum threads on the topic.

Thousands of people sent him notecards and IMs in response.

A month or so later, after being literally inundated with messages, the bastich had the nerve to say the same thing.

I guess if you don't acknowledge protests publicly, you can make them cease to exist.