Community

"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."
{ Read more }

So there I am minding my own business on Monday when I get a whisper, "Psssst, there's a meeting going on in The Tavern at Dee". Hmmm thinks I, just what is going on in my Tavern.

So I arrive, pitchfork in hand, ready to eject rowdy conspirators:



What do I find? An Elf, a cat, another couple of people, all sitting down in conspiracy, upto no good. They invite me to take a seat. Wait a minute, this is my tavern!!!!



However they're merely talking about what to do to help the sim, they want to arrange events, create some roleplay, create some history and generally they're all just trying to orgnise between themselves some fun. Which I thought was wonderful.

Can we do this Ciaran? Can we do that Ciaran? Wow this is fabulous I think. To be fair The Elf is extremely proactive, but now she's formed a team of residents who want to do more. Although I did get scared when they talked of challenging some people on Caledon to a game of En Garde!


{ Read more }

It is with much regret and sadness that I bring this to you....Garth Fairchang, lost his battle this morning with pancreatic cancer.  


Fairchang Estate Members have put together a memorial in Garths honor. All are welcome. If you wish to find where to send condolences, donations, or when/if services will be held, you can contact FASHIONISTA Cyberstar .

I will also be posting it here.

Jez

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.
{ Read more }

I just wanted to write a brief explanation on the spam and how it is being handled. First, I must issue my own apology to everyone. It's my fault that things got so far out of hand and I won't offer any excuse other than I've been busy. But everyone's busy, so that's not an excuse. And to make it worse, I didn't plan for folks to be able to handle spammergencies without me around.

Having read a few thousand comments this afternoon/evening and having gotten a fair amount of spam off the site (we're sending it to Prokofy Neva; I hear she's a big fan), I read a few comments on the spam itself. One being - and surprising me - that the Arabic comment spam was showing up in the RSS feeds. And that meant that someone had been using the RSS feed for entries that they were interested in - the first that I'd heard of it. 

Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Educators ever done for us? Oh hold on that's The Romans isn't it!

The Educators aren't currently flavour of the month at the moment in some circles, being blamed as a driving force behind the adult continent move (with no evidence whatsoever) and some of the bad publicity regarding SLCC when they announced they were pulling out (which did have evidence and was extremely churlish of them).

However educators aren't bad people, there's much going on within the world of education. Virtual Worlds are in fashion. However where educators need to take stock is with regard to the community, all of us within the community should be seen as part of their reach. They shouldn't be so immersed within their own project that they don't look outside the front door, in RL of course community relations are key to the success of education.

What do they do however? This is the big question. I briefly popped along to look at the University of Essex International Academy and found myself dumped into the sea. I was greeted with a notecard and when I finally surfaced I discovered huge banlines preventing me from exploration. Not a great start but I decide to carry on regardless.

Next up I went to Princeton, now this was more like it, nice and welcoming but not so much going on. There's a very nice art gallery there though displaying paintings and drawings by Dr Bernd Heinrich. There are quite a few Princeton sims. { Read more }

Jack's office hour was refreshingly pleasant. Unlike the office hours that followed the ad farm policy, we didn't have an influx of land cutters. There were no heated debates and no infamous twinkie moments.

However there were other issues, at a very tentative stage, that were raised. One involved Linden encouraged community groups and the other involves business needs, especially when the owner of a sim goes awol.

First of all the community issue. Community should be at the heart of Second Life, indeed it's probably easy to point to a lack of community spirit leading to issues such as ad farms and land cutting. Now interestingly there are moves from residents in Bay City, and to a lesser extent Nautilus (apparently Bay City has a better community group but don't quote me on that) to work in partnership with Linden Lab within their own areas.

Now this should come as no surprise after the USS partnership, many people will be looking at ways and means of getting the backing of Linden Lab in their projects.

Bay City and Nautilus are showcase sims, however I can see any moves to give more self governance to resident groups in Bay City and Nautilus being met with cries of "FIC".

I beg to differ somewhat as I've previously stated that I believe more should be going in those areas, especially in Bay City where I always felt Linden involvement would be part of the package. People paid a lot of money for those parcels.

If communities really can provide self governance should we object? Well it depends doesn't it, a lot depends upon how it pans out and a lot depends on how many powers the residents receive. { Read more }