Forums

The shiny new forums are in danger of completely going off the rails and becoming a cesspit of despair. This is another case of Linden Lab ignoring resident feedback and taking a "Mother knows best" attitude, we've seen this before on the adult content policy and it pains me to have to point out the obvious, the forums are failing and "Mother doesn't know best".

Sometimes you just despair, in the greater scheme of things this isn't that important an issue, but the forums are already a pale shadow of what they once were and some felt they were on the road to nowhere. Throw into the equation Linden Lab's removal of the highly useful classified section of the forums and we have confusion, complaints about moderation, teens and adults freely mixing and a whole lot of angst, add in a sprinkling of the software not really being fit for purpose and it's whole fail pie slowly cooking.

Let's take the commerce forum, and with their current state, please take them. They were already a pale shadow of the old XStreet forum, there's your first danger sign of the not fit for purpose issue. However people persevered, there was some interesting discussion to be had, until the rest of the forums were "Upgraded". Then confusion reigned, people didn't know where to post full transfer sims, new products, new stores or general classifieds and assumed that the commerce forums were the place for these sort of posts. They're not, but there's no other obvious section, some people haven't realised that Linden Lab have removed those avenues of advertising.
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Just when you thought the forum saga was over, along comes a spider, well that's unfair to spiders, the forums suck, it's official. I thought part of the reason for wanting to rid the place of the old forums was because it was a tad embarrassing to have your customers criticising you, there's no need to even read the posts to see this abomination in action, it's bad, if you don't believe me click here.

I did intend to post a piece about social engineering, Lindens trying to achieve the impossible and not recognising human nature, give examples of people moaning on the Adobe and ebay forums and have a rant about there not being a classified section. I was going to post about how the Linden behaviour in the forum dispute has been hostile, how they've not been interested in meeting residents half way, I came home from work fully intending to do this but thought I'd pop into the forums first and take a shufty.....two minutes in and I'm overwhelmed by how bad it is! I mean seriously, is this some sort of joke? Are they taking revenge on us for complaining about closing the old forums down, they'll be inaccessible for around a month, which is another shocker, you can't even get hold of the recently posted good info.
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"Upgrading the forums" shouts the blog headline, as Linden Lab announce that they're, well upgrading the forums, as you can read here. However having used the new forum software for some time, both inside and outside of the Second Life experience I have to say, the technology may be considered an upgrade but the experience often isn't.

When the Xstreet forums closed people complained that they were losing a community, the commerce forums are a very pale shadow of the old Xstreet forums. People do not find the clearspace platform as user friendly and this isn't just a complaint from Second Life users, I saw the same complaints when Frontrange closed their old forums and moved the platform to clearspace, some people who used to post on the old forum never migrated across and the same will happen here.

The warning signs are there that Linden Lab aren't interested in the current community who use the forums, it's exemplified in comments like this:

"More Focus: As part of the transition, we're removing some redundant forums and streamlining others, so you can more easily find the information you're looking for. We want the forums to be about conversations with a purpose; to that end, we're paring down to some of the most focused forums, and letting other conversations continue off-site, or even better: inworld. The forums have become jammed with cruft over the years, and we'll be paring down to a smaller number of top-level forums to make it easier to find the conversations you're looking for."
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The announcement of the Xstreet forum migration has so far gone down like a lead balloon with the Xstreet community. So much so that the usually talkative and enthusiastic Pink Linden is conspicuous by her absence from the discussion. The complaints over at Xstreet revolve around a feeling that the community spirit will be lost, as well as concerns over images not being allowed in signatures, no general discussion (which ties in with the community feeling) and the fact that many don't feel that the Jive software platform is suitable for a forum, it's not that popular amongst residents as being suitable for a blog but hey it's new, give them time to tweak it.

Then there's the Second Life forums, what appear to be the redheaded stepchild of the family. There's no announcement regarding migration of the official forums but that's going to happen. Again people will be concerned about the community being destroyed and most definitely concerns over use of the Jive platform for a forum, this complaint was made at office hours and in the forum discussion on this issue.
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In a move designed to cause the maximum amount of storm in one teacup, Linden Lab have announced that the Xstreet forums will be migrated to the second life website. Outrage and anger have been expressed by at least five people and one of those may actually be serious about the outrage.

Threads quickly appeared on both the official Second Life forum (The good guys) and the Xstreet forum (the bad guys). As we all know on the official forum, people on the Xstreet forum worship the devil, have webbed feet, fly around on brooms, quite possibly eat babies and are responsible for everything from the state of the economy to the crap weather we're having in the UK right now, in short, they smell.

Meanwhile under the radar Linden Lab are planning the coup d'etat of moving both forums to the new jive software that has proved extremely unpopular for any sort of lengthy discussion, and seriously people on both forums are quite capable of lengthy discussion and then some more lengthy discussion, indeed if the moderators didn't step in at times they could make an Entmoot seem like a quick meeting.

As people pack up their things, say farewells and vow never to darken the doorstep of the new forum platform because they don't like the other lot, we should spare a thought for Blue, because he's behind this all! Effigies may well be on sale on Xstreet any day now.

The plan on the official forum is to archive them for posterity,they've already done this once, have you ever read those old forum { Read more }