I don’t use the Second Life Forums as much as I once did, many reasons for that, the first being that the forums lost their charm when Linden Lab decided to ditch Resident Answers and move from real forum software to an all singing, all dancing, more than a forum software. Since then they’ve moved onto a second version of all singing, all dancing, more than a forum software and it’s still rather cack to me, but these things happen. People who used the really old forums didn’t like the transition to the version of the forums I enjoyed.
The creation forums are generally good and full of helpful advice. The merchants area is an area of healthy and vibrant discussion with some spiky threads and healthy disagreement. The technology forums are full of good information and whereas people can disagree, there’s good participation from Lindens there, which make it more useful. General discussion is an area where you’d think you’d gone back in time to the days when you were at school, with obvious cliques, trolling, flame bait and what seems to be bullying. I refrain from calling it outright bullying because I don’t know if there’s some sort of forum cartel at play feigning injury in order to whip up discussion.
The really sad thing though is that some of the participants in these playground antics have forum ranks of Helper or Advisor, they are supposedly responsible residents and yet they are fully engaged in these silly antics, which quite frankly they should be embarrassed about.
Second Life has traditionally attracted an older user base than the average MMO, so I’d wager that many of the participants are well past their teenage years. However in General Discussion we see threads on people being bullied, with evidence of harassment in the https://my.secondlife.com/ stream to boot and then threads created in General Discussion which clearly link to childish squabbles in said stream and they sit there, with the moderators apparently happy to let them sit there.
Generally I’m in the sticks and stones camp, if we had a younger audience it would be different as you get into safeguarding territory, which is one of the reasons I wasn’t happy about the teens coming in but they are few and far between. I do think some people should grow thicker skins and ignore the trolling, there are far more important things in life.
What would be useful however would be for someone like former Lindens, Lexie or Amanda, to bang some heads together in General Discussion and tell people, especially those with an Advisor or Helper rank, to behave themselves and stop acting so childishly. Unfortunately we don’t have a Lexie or Amanda anymore, more’s the pity.
Healthy disagreement is good, bullying, griefing and trolling really isn’t. Having to get an event organiser to apologise for events beyond their control and they weren’t part of, also isn’t good. Linden Lab should not have to deal with these issues, however they can deal with them and really, for the sake of the General Discussion forum, they should. I may not be a fan of the forums anymore, but I do believe a General Discussion area can serve a useful purpose, but it needs some community loving from Linden Lab.
I couldn’t help but notice one of the nastiest clique participants is already posting links to this page in the SL feeds – apparently as if to shame his enemies. What a cesspool SL is.
It’s disappointing that the feeds seem to be being used for people to have a go, I’m not sure exactly what is at the centre of these issues but really, people should be able to disagree with each other and not make their spats so public or vindictive.
tbf was only one thread where that happened in GDF. havent seen a dwama llama like that in there in ages
apart from about a whole 10 people who post in GDF section regularly then only other people who show up to post with any kind of regularity are them who dont know yet what other sections to post their query in
and them who a bit upset about Something Linden and want to have a bit of a moan
and students who have to do their assignments in a hurry bc they need to hand it in tomorrow. lots of students. like lots and lots
+
and in my own case. i just write stuff off the top of my head in there. and reply to others off the top as well. like what about this. what about that. what if this. what if that. same the others really. like not try to find/give any definitive answers. is just a place to say whatever you happen to be thinking about at the time
GDF the dumpster orphan child of SL forums. same like RA ended up on the old forums
on GDF the mods pretty good. is a more light hand in there than other sections. same like all GD sections on most forums. bc of the dumpster and boxcars
No it was more than one thread and I have to disagree with the moderators doing a good job, the thread that highlighted the issues has been deleted but the thread created to flame the OP in that thread remains, albeit that many people didn’t realise it was a flaming thread and it has morphed into something else because people didn’t realise it was flaming the OP of the the deleted thread, that’s not good moderation at all.
ps
was Melita who coined the boxcars
derailment without any engine. like no steam/power and not going anywhere much (: