What is this thing for anyway?!

Yes, I'm sure the Resident Answers forum was suppose to be for support and advice. Although, in the absence of a proper general forum, it seems the community has decided to use this forum for general topics. (It seems they also occasionally use the Current Version Feedback forum for a general forum too.) There actually is a General Topics forum....in the archive section. :/


Wouldn't that mean that person is using every forum he posts to as an advertising forum. (not just the RA forum.) If you don't like the sigs people have well your in luck because none of the signatures seem to be working. (unless there is some setting I don't have correct in my profile. :/

EDIT: Well I'm an idiot, that was exactly why my signature was not working.

I suspect this forum is in part for playing the role of the canary in the coal mine. When the canary starts choking, it's time to start looking for the problem...and clear the area.

The %'s in the poll results page reflect the percentage of total choices picked, not percentage of the people that picked that option. Here's the breakdown by % of people:

82% - support & advice

45% - news & faqs
45% - soapbox & complaints
45% - public opinion polls

42% - debate
42% - open letters
42% - anything else not mentioned here & pie

36% - gossip & stories

12% - free advertising

11% - nothing else except "support & advice"

Interesting distribution. (%'s rounded to nearest whole number).

I suspect "gossips & stories" might have had a better showing if I had phrased the quip more specifically, ie: "OMG! Does this ever happen to you 'In SecondLife' ... " oh well.


Clearly rather few people think RA should be limited to just support & advice, but none of the alternate uses seems to have gotten a majority vote. I wasn't really expected them to place so closely. Free advertising was, to use Har's analogy, a canary to test to see if people were really reading the options. Clearly they were.

Heh. And "nothing else except 'support and advice'" scored slightly lower than the canary.

My crystal ball started working again for just long enough to predict that one of two things will happen:

1) LL decides that Resident Answers has outlived its usefulness and residents should consult the knowledgebase/Chat system or head to third party forums for their needs.

2) LL relents and gives back a "General" type forum with heavy moderation.

I'm not at all surprised by that.

I was expecting "News & FAQs" and "Public Opinion Polls" to be in 2nd place, (honestly I was expected to see a stronger showing for them), I can see the value to the first.... and, obviously, I feel public opinion polls are an acceptable usage of RA.

Personally, I'm with the 65% percent that think that didn't pick "Soapbox and Complaints", I was guessing that 'debate' would score higher than it, and guessed wrong.

Bottom line, I think: Peoople need an agora - a public square available to exchange news, views, advice, whatever. To communicate in a public way.

Treasure it, Lindens. Finestkinda customer feedback.

Your "public square" sounds like being in-world in SecondLife more than being on the forums here, a place where people can meet, chat, etc.

The Forum, in the Roman sense, was a place for an elect few to stand up to be heard by their peers.

I think we have the name "Forums" today because it was hoped this would be an electronic form of the same... but it turned out to be more like the mess of writings nailed to the roman Forum's front doors than anyone expected.

I agree...there should be some sort of platform where a person could log on and have a physical representation...a "character" if you will...and they would have NOT ONLY the ability to speak with other people (or other "characters" but they could also exchange pictures, goods created with basic shapes that start out looking like, oh I don't know, particle board or something, but you could change their textures and connect them to one another.

Then people could be in certain areas...or "simulators"..."'lators" for short...where you could have all types of different areas for different kinds of play.

There would DEFINITELY be a place for an economy to grow out of such an exchange. If LL were to create some sort of currency...maybe called "Lindollars"...which could have an assumed US$ value.

It would be hard to do, but I think they could do it and it would run rather smoothly!