Should Linden Lab close the Forums?

I am also one of the many who needed these forums during my time of learning to use SL's features. I mean i may be a old resident now, but i still use it to this day. I have made use of the learning sections, general section, answers sections, and the ones designed for beta/FL/tech issues. If not for this forum i would lack the scripting knowledge to have made the items i have available today, such as my menu access doors.

Sure we know the fate of this forum is inevitable and that LL is locking each section as it becomes too much for them to handle, but lets not try to speed up the end ok? I would like this forum to last as long as it possibly can so all new residents will have a place to seek a understanding of what they can do in SL. As posted above, not all people know what a 3rd party forum is, or where to find them.

It's best we at least keep whats left of this one active. Also i am not particularly fond of any of the 3rd party forums. their not easy to find, and they don't have as much information as this forum does. Even if they copy every single script tip/library, building/animation topic from this forum it will not be as developed. About the only 3rd party forum i really post on would have to be second citizen, yet i barely do that. I do read them though.

I have to agree with many of the posters, the usefulness of the forums outweighs the bickering and complaints. Shutting the Official forums down would only serve to fragment the community to a point where to the average forum user, it wouldnt' be worth it to even bother. I know if the Official forums do close, I'll simply quit reading forums altogether. I don't have the time to try to keep up with multiple small communities scattered over the internet.

I've been to some of the third-party sites and found them noisy, crass, uncivil, not entirely helpful, and sometimes obscene. If they can't be moderated such that adults can be comfortable there, how can they expect to achieve critical mass?

These forums are still the best place to learn stuff.

ahh - the good old days =)

Sorry thought you meant the old official forums.

I miss them *sniff*

I hope they don't close the official forums.
I have found great 3rd party forums with many great features but they aren't easy to use and if you run into problems there isn't much help either.
If you're new you don't even know who to get help with and its often hard to keep track of those forums if you can access them more then once.
Also very few people use even good one's where you can post images,etc.
If you lose your password you're basic out of luck to regain access to the accounts.
I don't have energy memory or ablity to remember every single password for every 3rd party forum out there personally especially when they aren't user friendly to begin with.

I kinda wish these forums had a survey at the end of each thread - "did you find these answers helpful - rate 1..10".. Then we'd have some data to prove what most people already know - that despite the occasional spiral into mad lunacy, the forums here are tremendously valuable. I spend alot more time reading than I do posting, and I can't count the number of times questions have been answered politely, completely and in most cases from a number of different, insightful perspectives.

Closing them down would be a huge mistake.

The way I see it these forums should be about questions, answers, announcements and relevant dicussions. A knowledge base rather than a social space.

For those who want to socialise and/or bicker... why not do so in-world?

This is a very cogent reply and addresses what I'd seen as cart-before-the-horse arguments. It was my contention that third-party sites could not flourish in the shadow of the "official forums", but it was my (unstated) belief that without the official forums that one third-party site would eventually become the dominant one and ultimately superior to the current ones. What you clearly point out is that closing the forums could be a ruinous way to disprove my guess. Thanks.

Amen.

Huh?