Should Linden Lab close the Forums?

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the Forum bands which have connected them with Linden Lab and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The history of the present Kings of forums.secondlife.com is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Forums. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his ResMods to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has called together Town Halls at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing Customers into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Forums and Threads repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the Customers.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made ResMods dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

For cutting off our Trade with third-party websites in all parts of the world.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Jefferson is a good source for plagiarism, no?

Linden Lab has declared that they are no good at running forums. They have also emasculated the forums they do run by declaring them an improper venue for discussion of any sort.

Unfortunately, as long as the “official forums” at forums.secondlife.com exist, no third-party site can overcome the barrier of not being the “forum of record” and will not be able to draw nearly the traffic that they could in the absence of the “official forums”.

As Linden Lab's current conception of the forums seems wildly unaligned with their customers desires, LL should close forums.secondlife.com and give the third-party sites the ability to regain the written community that LL has quashed.

Robert Trivers posited that the rabbit will always run a little faster than the fox because the rabbit is running for his life and the fox is merely running for his dinner.

Although an evolutionary argument, the principle is applicable to many human conflicts of interest. For example, some states have a department of alcoholic beverages. These organizations periodically come up for review to see if they are serving the public interest. These reviews never call for the dissolution of the department. This is, in large part, a life-dinner issue. The people who work for the liquor board are petitioning the legislatures for their very livelihood (jobs). Although more numerous, those who would benefit from dissolution are usually motivated by cost or convenience; these factors are usually not sufficient to cause the customers to even write to their legislators.

Is there any firm or individual that risks its “life” should the LL forums close? Linden Lab could lose the hammerlock they have upon the subjects that can be discussed. The ResMods could lose the positions of power that some of them seem to enjoy. Both of these, together or separately could cause the continuance of forums.secondlife.com because LL has a vested interest in controlling dialog regarding their product and the RedMods have a higher degree of LL policy influence than the average customer.

Are these sufficient grounds for retaining the LL forums? Will they be sufficient grounds? Should they be? Are the current LL forums properly serving the general customer good?

they could hire a service that is good at running forums like many companies do?

i dunno it seems to work for them why not Linden labs?

the two that come to mind are the ones that mmorpg companies use
alchemic dream and jolt

i'm sure there are others but those are the ones that popped into my head
that is what they do customer service the run forums, answer emails etc blahblah blah.. blah

Here's an idea, Malachi -

Instead of closing down the forums, which you seem to think are completely ineffective, why don't you just stop reading and participating in them? That would solve your problem, without imposing upon the vast majority of the rest of us, who do see value in these forums.

You may as well have said something like "I don't like these forums. They don't suit ME, therefore I suggest that they be done away with."

Seriously, go out and get some fresh air.

You couldn't have missed my point more deftly.

The forums don't serve the community, they impede the growth of third-party sites, therefore they are bad for the commonweal and should be closed.

"Me" was no part of my point at all.

Let's not confuse satire with plagiarism.

I disagree entirely. The forums here are full of meaningful conversation among residents, and they are hugely beneficial to those just starting out and those who have been 'round a while.

They absolutely do serve the community. The breakdown is when they are abused. They do not impede the growth of third party sites in the least. That's pure rubbish. (prove this, by the way) The abuse of them, and the license people take to use them for purposes they were not intended for.. impedes that.

zk

Excellent.

Thanks for the foil. Now, if you could write another paragraph explaining why the quoted passage should be set in Bitstream 703, I could kill two birds with one stone. Feel free to use multiple parargraphs.

The forums are my crack. Look at my post count. NO! DO NOT WANT! Ok i'm done. But seeing that 1 person already said LL should do it i'm sure they will.

its my bet she or he, has a third party site.

Ya think? LOL

'ceptin you'd lose that bet. Nice try though.

The idea that closure of the forums, starting but not limited to general, sandbox, etc. would assist in creating a wealth of popular resident sites is what Linden Lab said a while back. Then they didn't close the remaining forums, and opened Resident Answers in response to public demand.

One way to strengthen resident web sites is to make them accessible from within the client, in a mozilla browser.

This thread, by the way, is a feature suggestion, and should be moved to the feature suggestion forum.

Even in their current form, the official forums are extremely valuable to someone who wants to get started with content creation. They are also useful to new premium members who are trying to peer under the hood and see how everything works.

In other words, they are a kind of very interactive library or classroom, and I do not know of any other format that could accomplish this. All the alternatives, that I have seen, would put too much of a burden on the would-be participants to get off the ground.

Any replacement would have to be:

1. Asynchronous, content creators are busy
   
2. Low bandwidth, because people often participate in scraps of found time
   
3. Optional, again because people are busy
   
4. Good at putting oldbies and newbies in the same place, permitting mentoring
   
5. Recognition enhancing and self-regulating by way of reputation exposure
   
6. Able to verify the person speaking is actually the holder of that avatar name
   
7. Free
   
8. Does not require learning or installing new software
   
9. By attracting diverse segments of the residents, can serve as a barometer of same, both to other residents and the Lindens
   

I don't know of anything else that can do this as well as an official forum.

Perhaps... but why not simply give the forums over to a third party site to host 'officially' on behalf of Linden Lab, as has already been pointed out LL's lack of interest in these forums is damaging to everyone who either is posting here, or trying to run a third party site.

Yes, I'm involved in one, one of the few that I believe has the capacity to handle 'official' forums, and we would be more than happy to do so ... yet Linden Lab seem to have no interest in giving someone else the chance to make a success of something they have dismally failed at and have no interest in, by their own admission.

Broccoli

If you are allowed to construct a pseudo-intellectual rebuttal of the existence of the medium you use to post your pseudo-intellecutal rebuttal, then I think people are valid when they use a pseudo-psychological method to review your motivations.

It seems to me that SL is a classically Friedmanesque capitalist fishtank - that is, LL restrict the "money" supply (land is money too). It would be extremely odd to take something that free-market oriented, and suddenly apply Soviet style controls to communications - like shutting down Pravda when it starts publishing the NASDAQ, or something.

If other forums gain enough traffic, by being worth reading, then they shall prevail. personally, I've looked at as many other forums on SL topics as I can find; they seem to me full of armchair experts, so stoked on re-discovering the leading edge that they never stoop to communicate in any meaningful way with anyone outside their charmed circle. If avoiding the state in which "LOL" is posted along with a 250k animated GIF of a copulating japanese cartoon character, fifty times a day, in 20 topics, is all that LL achieve with this forum, then they will have my continuing support and eternal thanks...

(go set up your own forum. It's called Free Market Economics...)

What a delight to have a string expounded in such literary terms. Thank you Malachi. As for the arguments, well, perhaps as solution is to rid ourselves of our jailors and censors, the moderators. I say to the guillotine with them, off with their heads! Workers of all Sims unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

There. Three revolutions in one thread. Wonderful!

Im new to SL... well not really, a couple months old, but ive only started an interest in designing stuff now, and i must say that without this forum i would be nowhere.

everything ive learned so far has been in these forums...EVERYTHING.

Hey, i dont even know what is meant by '3rd pary sites' Naive, maybe, but ill prove a point, if someone can explain that to me..... point proven, i would never have known without this forum.... LOL.

s

I also have learned much more in these official forums than I would have otherwise. Third party forums are ones that are run by people other than Linden Labs - other residents like you and I, although most of them have been around for much, much longer, and some of them appear to be know-it-alls.

There is some helpful information on some of those as well. However, you have to weed through the numerous insider jokes and the shameless ripping on other individuals to get to it. One of the most popular established third-party forums I was directed to turned me off when I found a thread devoted to bashing a resident who had been gleefully banned from that forum for being difficult.

I'm not easily intimidated - but I think that those of you who 'rule' these other forums need to take a serious look in the mirror and consider that perhaps you may not appear very welcoming to new participants.

After the first big shut-down of the various forums here I went and checked out every 3rd party forum I could find. I was startlingly disappointed.

A) There's too freakin many of them. You get a little knowledge 'here', but need to go 'there' to find out anything else on the topic... or there and there and there.

B) Primarily from what I've seen of 3rd party forums, they are circle jerks for the small little core of folks who started them to pat each other on the backs and tell each other how witty and wonderful they are while providing no real content for the confused newbie.

C) When new residents need answers, this is where they come... the OFFICIAL Second Life website. Too bad there's no one here offically from Linden Labs to help them, and they have to rely on other residents.

D) You can't be the OFFICIAL Second Life Forum without being an employee of Linden Labs. Otherwise you are just another outsider speculating on what the great and powerful Linden Gods are up to.

The irony of such limited communications with the company blazing new trails into ways people can communicate with each other is astounding. About as ironic as the company founding new avenues of digital communication thru the developement of Web2.0 ( or 2.765, whatever) using a printed book as their solution to providing an official "Guide".

Given that these forums exist, wouldn't it make sense to let unverified accounts created after August 28th, 2006 be able to at least have read access to them?

The resident forums that one should consider in evaluating what it would be like if these forums didn't exist are not "the existing resident forums just as they are right now" but rather the resident forums as they might be given that these forums closed and the users chose how to spend their time in these forums' absence.

In order to evaluate the merits of courses of actions one has to weigh the desirability of conditions that don't actually exist currently, conditions that come into being only after a decision is made and implemented, as a consequence of the action having been taken, for which the taking of the action being considered is a necessary and essential prerequisite.

Over at Stratics we certainly wouldn't tolerate such 'bashing' threads, and certainly do our best to be welcoming.

I'm also not aware of any other third party forum that has such a large presence in-world.

Broccoli

Pretty much, LL has shut down forums because people were causing some problems on the main forums. I had tons of times where something came up that noone knew how to fix that I would post on the boards. Now, I have to come and ask other people about stuff that I'm guessing noone else may know the answer to.

Now, while I agree that LL either needs better moderators or needs to bring in a third-party to run the forums, shutting down the forums because of a few people disregarding what it's there for would be like completely shutting down Second Life because there are griefers in the game.

However, using the same idea, a forum without moderators is like a sim without admins...while there may be those that come about to cause problems, most times someone comes along that fixes it and gets rid of them. Why not here? What's so difficult with getting a person or two, set them as nothing but forum monitor, pay them, and get it going.