Brainstorm: bringing LL back to the forums

Many of you - I'm sure the wisest of you - have sat out the wrestling matches over getting new resmods. In that discussion, I'm seeing wide agreement that the forums need Linden involvement. At the very least the Lindens should realize the incredible value of the content forums (and support them by enabling BBCcode); and ideally they would take over moderation of RA and other general fora; at least this seems to be the prevailing opinion.

My question: how to get the Lindens to do this?

To those of you who are sure that this is impossible, I respectfully disagree. I have much experience with startups, LL so far has behaved like any other, and its employees are as susceptible to a good rationale and targetted marketing as any other group of people. I assure you that folks in startups have short memories. Even tho stung relatively recently into closing the general fora, I think now might be a decent time to reopen the discussion with LL.

But ... we would have to have our sh*t together. We would have to avoid drowning them in blather and rants. I advanced the modest idea of actively marketing the content fora to the Lindens through the blog and Jira, both of which are read by some of them. Other ideas?

Instead of complaining about LL, we could kiss their butts 100 times daily.


Nah.

That would be the most effective way to bring them back, but far from worth it.

I think the lindens do watch these forums, but they do not moderate

I would rather have them skimming through, getting what they need from it, and work on the grid

than have them digging through here, modding where needed and not working on the grid

Totally agree here. I've seen forum policing get to the point to where just about any thread that challenged something in game, and not even at a whiny point, but even when kept totally constructive, the locks start closing things up left and right.

Skim through keeping things in order, and then go back to the grid.

My guess is they read the forums when they are new, idealistic Lindens.

And after they become Jaded and cynical, they just follow the Tao.

Okay I'll bite and thanks for opening this one here Nika,

First of all I have a feeling the Lindens know the importance of the content forums. But yes, it would be extremely useful if they referred to those forums more often. Any proposal in that direction would have my vote, if only to show my appreciation for the people who tirelessly help others in those forums by answering questions, posting stickies, tutorials etc. Those forums contain far more information that is far more accessible than any other place I've found.

Secondly as for active LL involvement in RA as an example, I personally am note sure of the point. Staying with RA for the moment, if it was used as intended, namely to ask questions and answer them, there would potentially not even be a need for moderators.
But some questions and answers apparently always result in disputes and even ugly pesonal slanging matches, and therefore there is a need for moderation.
I'm just not sure it would make much of a difference whether this were LL or voluntary resident moderation apart from a sort of official stamp.
A bit like the teacher coming by to put a mark on your work.
But we're all adults here so there really should be no need for that.
As long as there is a need for moderation, I'm personally fine with ResMods.
If every resident moderated themselves it would probably already make a difference.

That said, I´m sure the occasional Linden flying by a bit more regularly would be much appreciated as it would also show a bit more involvement in the resident experience and illustrate that these are indeed still the official forums.

Disclaimer: just my 2c, just MHO, YMMV etc.

/me ducks

/me points to an old thread that sorta talked about this, right before Linden Answers got shut down.. /13/bc/161173/1.html


That's the tricky part..

The thing is, they could hire a couple of Lindens whose jobs it would be to actually WORK with and on the forums. Instead, we're dealing with the website Lindens, who frankly, are not suited to dealing with the sometimes explosive temperament of the forum. The fact that they haven't done this tells me they underestimate the value of the forums as a customer service tool.

As you said, a good Linden moderator could skim the forums, find out what the mood of the day is and work with it. People are more likely to post about issues here than on the JIRA, because the JIRA is a bit daunting, so a good moderating Linden could nudge the tech-types onto the issue.. case in point, the transaction history being borked. This shouldn't NEED a JIRA or a support ticket to get it fixed.. just a Linden paying attention!

I'm big on using all your tools to their fullest and Linden Labs keeps playing with the axe, instead of the shovel

On a vaguely related note: anyone else noticed there now seems to be an end-date set in the BBCode message from Torley at the top?

05-22-2007 until 12-22-2007

Actually, it's more than vaguely related, since that change happened as a direct result of Jesse's action in this thread:

/142/cc/221191/1.html

Concrete evidence that the Lindens can respond to pressure from residents, even if only minimally.

The issue there is BBCode being turned back on, the bug for which is:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-156

They could just outsource the forums like they do with the blog or the support portal. That way someone else takes care of keeping it all functioning and making sure vB is up-to-date.

Lindens just do not want to deal with babysitting or monitoring residents and that's been obvious in almost everything that's happened in the past year so making a third-party company responsible for handling the day-to-day maintenance makes sense.

One thing learned from Second Citizen was the total amount of people on the forum at any given time. It was 80-90% lurkers. I suspect the same of the Lindens here.

It is a shame they don't participate any more. Some of the most insightful comments I've read were on here (especially Andrew Linden; check out some of his old gems!), as well as some of the most humorous.

Jeska was the only person who ever handled moderating these forums very well.

Regards,

-Flip

They are completely, absolutely, unequivocatively NOT interested in anything discussed here, other than cheerleading.

Those People are momumentally uninterested in ANY negative feedback from their paying customer base.

NOTHING we do can possibly change this. They...don't...care...period.

Its a lovely idea, but futily still born.

Sooz

I'd take Lindens lurking if there were at least some evidence they were seeing what's being said and at least considering it. There are so many times a question is asked, or a discussion has started and has grown toxic because we are all just speculating when a clear response from someone in the know would put the matter to rest.

I'll tell you who IS probably reading the forums - the competition. If they are smart, they wil take notice of the myriad issues that bother the paying customers and when they hit the market have THOSE issues resolved.

Sooz

Mind if I bring Willhelm's post over here so I can get us out of Strife's latest resmod recruitment agency thread? That thread did spawn this one after all.

That's right.

Actually, I think moderators from the community are fine provided they are monitored (and checked) daily by Linden Lab. It is quite clear that Strife has been left to his own devices here, to the point he is now giving the impression he's involved in at least one stage of the resmod application and approval process.

As for third-party forums, *of course* they're controlled by a certain individual or group of people. The difference is, they're not officially sanctioned by Linden Lab, and you're not going to get in-world bans based on anything that happens there.

That is why it is particularly dangerous to allow a single resident (just like you or I, or that guy dropping Hippy Pay machines on Cordova) to not only moderate unchecked, but also cherry pick his favourites for moderation positions on the official forum.

Whatever your personal feelings about Strife might be, we have no evidence that Lindens read the forums often enough to have any idea of what someone's behaviour on the forums is like.

So you're left with:
Strife - knows the people who post here to some extent from their posts, or at least enough to give an opinion. May or may not be prone to picking favourites (or discriminate against some).

Random Linden - has no clue what happens on the forums or if the applicant even participates, but will know some of them from in-world making them more favourable candidates (natural thing, doesn't imply favouritism).

No matter how you turn or twist things, you end up with *someone* favouring one person over another. I'd rather have someone who at least knows the forums pick then a random Linden who never heard of them before they were assigned to deal with resmods.

Since you are asking for constructive suggestions, here's mine: Just about every one of us knows a Linden. IM the one or two you know and let them know we would like to see them care about the forums again. Or at the very least give us the bbcoding.

Again, my personal feelings about Strife don't enter the equation. (I don't really have many feelings about him incidentally.) This is not an and/or situation.

Either the moderator(s) is/are monitored and checked daily by the company officially sanctioning these forums, or we stop pretending these forums are anything *but* resident controlled, and link other resident controlled forums into the secondlife.com/account sidebar too.

This would be cool.

Id love a niche virtual world that doesn't have delusions of grandeur.

I'll settle for C+ technical competence and C- managerial competence.

Sooz

well part of the problem is thinking they are bigger then mere virtual world mantainence from either a business or a technical standpoint.

That and growing beyond their ability to handle.

No, I didn't notice that. You'd think Torley would elaborate, or at least draw attention to it by putting it in an edit on the thread that nobody is going to notice. (Well, almost nobody. Are you sure it's new, or maybe just none of us noticed it before?)

coco

I agree totally with Walker.

coco