Brainstorm: bringing LL back to the forums

How childish you are lol. MOMMY WAAAAH THEY DID IT TOO SO IT'S ALRIGHT FOR ME. FYI, I had not seen the post in question and edited it down to an except when I did. Wow, that was complicated. Nice try. This is about your behavior, which is appalling and quite frankly, you are making yourself look worse with each post. Also, I would honor a request by the author to remove the post, as I am sure Steve would, instead of being a stubborn child. Believe me, it is no threat or game. I will continue to pursue having it removed.

i know your having fun with this continue to do so.. i asked you to like leave me alone or whatever but you have t post threats and stuff fine

your users do the same thing and likely had i not pointed it out it would not have been edited...(which is why i was really tempted to say nothing)

this is just a tug of war .. i declare you the winner of the tug of war now i wil go back to ignoring this ludicrous insanity.

you guys get off on it.

The thing is ever since this started you never just asked only threatened and demanded
Not once did anyone approach me quietly or say something from the very first foot stomping to the end of it was a wall of threats, demands and insults. Its not the way to elicit someones cooperation.

This is LL's board they will edit it out too in the meantime leave it be as i have asked but you cant can you? must threaten more bump the thread with more threats and garbage. As i said its enough already....

you post all kinds of copyrighted stuff to that site daily. As I said its enough for whatever reason you have a bee in your bonnet over this and its not the first time people have quoted slu here either BUT its special somehow this time.

Get over it move on do whatever LL owns the board its theirs now to do with what they please.. threatening me continuously calling me names wont help the situation and certainly not make me want to help you.

Why yes, that's right. I own the publication rights to my words even though my column is published and my words freely accessible by the public on www.anncoulter.com. And by the way, please drop the e; my name is spelled Ann.

Publication without my permission is forbidden. I can't be bothered to read all of Wilhelm's post, they are too lengthy and boring, but Cocoanut Koala got it right with this one.

This thread must surely have the entire Linden crew filled with an intense desire to read and post in this forum, don't you think?

Who wouldn't want to post in a forum filled with such friendly and useful questions and answers as the ones in this thread?

Wow, so we break copyright law every time we quote someone else's post? Oops, I've just done it too.

Perhaps you missed that lesson in school. Quotation in part, and permission to republish in whole, are handy concepts.

You just republished my post in its entirety. And you didn't ask for permission. Oddly enough, we didn't have lessons on copyright law in school.

Wow. THE Ann Coulter. Way to go cousin.

It is a shame that just a handful of people are doing whatever they can to bring about the early demise of something so many people use everyday. To the few of you who have nothing bettter to do in life except troll the forums and wait for someone to fight with: You have already stated that you wished the forums would die, well why don't you just leave instead and let us get back to helping others. Look at the last 20 posts you have made here and if at least one of them isn't answering a question to help a noob then you are not here for the right reason.

It won't do any good to reply because I won't be back to read any more of the garbage in this thread. I'll be back where I can keep doing some good instead.

Absolute nonsence Jesse, and you are no better for jumping into a thread, attacking others and saying "don't respond" because I'll just cover my eyes and go "wah wah wah". How is that going to help a thread you don't like that was already fading?

As it happens, there are some very good suggestions in here for getting the Lindens to return to the forums. That is what this thread is about. Nobody really wants the forums to be shut down. Indeed many of us (not just you) have contributed enormously to helping people here and continue to do so on a daily basis, but we think the balance of power should be distributed more evenly. Ie. It shouldn't ALL be in the hands of one resident. Whoever that resident may be.

Also, the Lindens are reading this thread, they are listening, and have approached some of us for our views because they are doing "forensics", in order to reach a satisfactory conclusion. I'm happy to be a part of that process, and I'm confident the forums *do* have a future.

New noobs, brand new ones, aren't able to use these forums, I supect, because it takes a while for folks to become payment info verified.

Wow, we got Ann Coulter chiming in on this thread. I no longer want it locked. Who's next to join in the fray? John Edwards?

I want Imus...or Opie and Anthony. Or the Car Talk Guys.

We forget how long people stay nooblike, though, I think. Here's a gem from last January:



The problem was that the hair was avatar hair, not prim, and I wasn't quite clear on the difference yet. I had joined at the end of November.

The forums have a lot to offer new folks. In that thread I met Namssor and Kyrah.

Is Strife just on vacation or has he taken his padlock and gone home?

He's probably playing EverWorldOfWarCraftQuest....

Why do we need Lindens moderating the forums? If there is something broken, or perceived to be broken, with the Resmod program, why not fix it? Personally, I think the "problems" are mostly just issues of perception.

As a community, particularly those of us who use this resource, isn't it incumbent upon us to be good stewards of the resource?

Frankly, if we all made an effort to act like mature adults, and held up our end of the bargain, the Resmod job would be easy, and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Resident Answers has been allowed to stray far from its original intent and purpose - and it is my opinion that Linden Lab should not be expected to come back here and clean up this mess. We made it, not them - and we should be the ones to clean it up. How do we do that? Well, it's pretty simple actually:

Zaphod's back! How the hell are you? How are things in fire country?

Before Strife does find his padlock, let me just summarize my takeaways from this thread, which has had some very positive contributions.

The thread, and the similar one at SLU cited with such unfortunate results here, brought together the entire spectrum of resident opinion on the value of the forums. The resentments re: current moderation were fully expressed. And some common ground between NEARLY all - not all but the majority - of stakeholders has emerged:

1. The forums have value. Many feel passionately about this. Note: The Lindens may be ambivalent about the forums, but they do list them in the knowledge base as a source of support for users. People who question this, beware. I can cite specific cases of new content creators whose learning was visibly accelerated here.

2. Widespread bad feeling has been caused by this extended period with only one resmod. The forums desperately need more even-handed moderation than any one person/resident can deliver.

3. Some will not be happy unless the Lindens to take over thread moderation completely.

4. The community has been traumatized in the past over incidents where forum banning had drastic inworld consequences - banning, loss of accounts and monetary assets. Though this happened extremely rarely, worry about this dogs some people. Policy about this needs to be clarified - I could provide a list of specific issues to be addressed -- and the resmod role in this process needs to be stated. Again, fear over this has translated into resentment of perceived 'power' that Strife wields, being the only resmod and thus THE person who could recommend such actions.

Some personal observations:

A. I'd be astonished if the Lindens took over thread moderation. If they did, I seriously doubt that this would result in more even-handed moderation. I think it is likely that we would actually have less well-informed moderation.

B. Personally, I think much of the resentment focused on Strife has its roots in the fact that he is the only visible authority in the forums, not that he is/is not in himself dictatorial. We need more moderators, and most of us are fine with moderators being residents.

C. If we the forum residents really had our act together, we would recommend new forum moderation policies to the new community manager - pull it together now and put it on their desk when they arrive. As well as a set of recommendations for Linden policies re: the forums. Essentially, rewrite the stickies and (tiny) policy manual. The bulk of the community appears to me to be not far from agreement with each other.

D. I'm intrigued by Kitty's thought about putting Linden oversight of the forum under the Volunteer Team oversight. Resmods are, after all, volunteers who deliver support to the community. They need advocacy, training and perspective from LL.

E. The forums could benefit by more positive visibility within LL -- forum users should cite specific threads in JIRA comments, blog posts, and conversations with Lindens as appropriate. The content forums in particular, but also RA, generously provide users with swift and specific expertise that greatly shorten learning curves for new residents and content providers. In this way, the forums contribute directly to LL's value proposition.

I'm really perplexed. I'm trying to look for the huge problem that everyone else sees.

There recently were some really nasty threads about VAT that led to a lot of country based mud slinging and some singed feelings.

That carried over to other threads, true. Thats unfortunate.

But I don't see this supposed forums peril crashing under its own evilness that so many claim to see.


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It just looks like an internet forums.

Less active than many, more active than some.

Less negative than many, more negative than some.

Less helpful than many, more helpful than some.

Id say its a middle of the pack forums.

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What shining beacon of wonderous forumitude are we trying to construct here?

And how the heck are we going to construct it if there are people involved?

There have been periods where the forums have been considerably MORE negative during the times when actual Lindens not only participated but also moderated the forums.

I do not think much of the negative feelings are caused by moderation. I just think its a convienent focal point.

I think some of the negative feelings are being caused by the sharp downturn in forum participants' SL revenues. Thus the VAT being such an annoyance.

People who's businesses have failed or have sharply declined tend to take on a glass half empty attitude without even realizing it.

There really is not much difference. I've been looking at a few others and the same things appear. Good information, silly humor, fighting, all that nonsense. All that is different is that most of the other places have places for all that while we don't. Give us a place to do as humans do and then RA can be put in order.

I dont think the forums are "broken" either. I think its a perception and I think that because only one person is visible doing the work he is blamed for whatever happens. I find it unfair. If there were 3 or 4 mods this would not happen and for lack of a better way to put it they would be equally hated. Lindens present on this forum were criticized for the same thing in fact worse things happened. What people remember and what actualy was were two different things. I remember forums that were pretty much at most times unusable. I could never use them anyhow.

I spoke with someone last night who never posts to this forum actualy a couple of people and asked them what they would do if the forums went away. They said that they would have no resource because even though they dont say anything they use the resources here often.

One needs to remember that most people who use forums say very little if anything. They come and look for their information follow a few links to a resource, read a tutorial and leave.

I know some people think these forums need saving, but in fact they do not. I would be really nice though if strife had a few people to share the burden with because it must get really tiresome to be in the line of fire 100% of the time. I personally am surprised he has not burnt out by now. He didn't choose to be the last man standing it just happened.

Well yeah. The "Oh RA is so corrupted" is dumb basically. People on forums talk about what people on forums talk about. There will always be a general SL related discussion area no matter what name they give it.

So they might as well do some research (read some internet forums sites), and realize that.

The sheer number of "I'm not sure where to post this but .." threads should clue people in.