Last summer, in an attempt to improve their forums, Blizzard announced people would need to use their real names on the forums, this went down like a lead balloon. Blizzard backed off after many pages of annoyed forum posts.
This week, TechCrunch decided to introduce the new Facebook commenting system, which some believe will help to reduce trolling, unlike Blizzard TechCrunch doesn’t have a link back to an account holder so anonymous trolling there is easier, however like the Blizzard issue, some people will shy away from commenting there because they don’t want their life analysed by some twerp on a forum who will comment on their real life location instead of the issues of the article and anyone who has spent more than ten minutes on Facebook knows that a lot of trolling goes on there, indeed there’s bullying there too, which is why many education organisations have people watching Facebook and other social networks for signs of bullying.
Facebook comments will stifle debate and put people off from commenting, some people aren’t allowed to comment on certain issues due to workplace social networking policies, you can of course still comment on TechCrunch via Yahoo, but this is yet again a sign of Facebook being a lot less of a supplement to a system and more of an egging of people to use Facebook.
This week Linden Lab rolled out their new community platform, one noteable absentee at launch is a General Discussion Forum, some described the old one as a cesspool but the discussions that happened there will find their ways to other areas, to the detriment of the intended purpose of that area, LL really should know this by now and just create a General Discussion area.
When I first joined Second Life in 2007 I found at the forums, a forum called Resident Answers, this was designed to be the area for, well answers to resident questions, instead it had emerged as the general discussion forum. This is what happens when there’s no obvious place to put your questions or comments in. People are also going to get miffed with each other, disagree, post when they’ve had too many pints of Stella, there’s going to be some heads butting, it’s inevitable because it’s part of human nature, sites like TechCrunch and Second Life aren’t going to socially engineer people into being happy fluffy bunnies.
Second Life forums are a hybrid between Blizzard forums, where everyone should be linked back to a paid account and TechCrunch, where nobody is linked to a paid account (as far as I am aware). Some Second Life users do indeed have payment details with Linden Lab, some are anonymous trolls, but the paid members can get just as feisty as the trolls.
A General Discussion forum about Second Life would encourage people to discuss general issues about Second Life in one area, the new platform, which is rather nifty, despite some annoyances, makes it even easier for people to avoid an area they don’t think they’ll enjoy because there are a decent number of other categories around, so if you don’t like General Discussion, don’t post there, just as I’ll almost certainly avoid the off topic forum they’ve recently created.
The new community platform is better thought out and better structured than the old one, but Linden Lab really should stop trying to make everyone play nicely, there’s nothing wrong with healthy or hearty disagreement and with decent moderation, it can flourish, there’s already one big bone of contention with the ranking system, it’s one thing to give people extra priveleges (although as we’ve seen on the Jira, this can be abused), it’s quite another to label people as unofficial helpers and advisors, seemingly given them more authority than other residents when their answers may be less informed than other residents, this will create strife, which is why I voted for Irene Muni’s Jira-WEB-3705 regarding removing ranks on the forums.
There again I’ve also voted on Jira-Web-3668 which is about removing votes on the Jira, removing voting is extremely churlish, I don’t need to watch or vote on an issue to keep an eye on it, the same as I don’t need to subscribe to a forum thread to keep an eye on it, there are some very handy filters on the Jira that allow you to watch issues, telling people to watch instead of vote is an exercise in futility and I’m fully aware that votes don’t mean an issue will be triaged, I’ve had issues addressed on the Jira where I’m the only participant, but again this seems to be part of the attempt to make everyone a fluffy happy bunny, it’s all very silly.
You forgot all about the people who really have nothing better to do then to cruise the forums and comment on everything, usually erroneously or the ones who cruise the forums looking to flame. This has happened everywhere I have been every forum I have been on since the days of Compuserve when we were all numbers.
On the old forum someone sent me a message telling me that someone there reminded him of an old usenet troll, I asked him this week if he could remember the name of that troll and he replied that he couldn’t, because there were so many trolls on Usenet!