To AR Is Human . . .

[Coffee Pancake]

7 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

those involving "social justice issues," because they are contentious, can get out of hand

Social justice issues aren't contentious. They're easily trolled.

Don't be a dick to other people leading different lives.

But Mooooom that's my right !!

(then the forum erupts to shut down the dickery and we're the bad guys for causing a ruckus)

[Rowan Amore]

6 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Or does this change anything for you at all in terms of your approach to reporting forum content?

I'll actually be less inclined to report anything at all.  Since they have chosen to more narrowly define what goes in GD,  let them police it themselves and see how that goes.   It would be interesting to see if they're actually monitoring the GD forum or moderate specifically from ARs.

[Rolig Loon]

8 hours ago, Istelathis said:

From my own experience with social mediums online, and in the real world, there needs to be some kind of opponent to fight, some cause to join, without it people seem to lose interest, at least that is what I have observed.

I think that's far from being universal. I suspect that there are a lot of people -- regular forum participants -- who do not lose interest unless there's an opponent to fight or a cause to join.  Personally, I often find myself tuning out of threads that are dominated by a few loud voices shouting predictable putdowns at each other. I enjoy and participate in discussions where we can explore differences of opinion, but I'm not attracted to conversations where the goal is to win points.

[Luna Bliss]

26 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

where we can explore differences of opinion

I've had varied experiences during my time in Social Work and with friends who stayed in the profession and vented about their challenging days , and during my time as a teenage runaway.
I saw a baby living in poverty, asleep on a cold floor with a plastic bag inches from its head.  I can't unsee that.
I saw a big burly black man cry because women grabbed their purses tighter when he approached, assuming he was a criminal.
I saw study after study after study verifying that we have hate in our hearts for those who are different from ourselves.

Social Justice is what love looks like in public, someone much wiser than myself said.
How the hell did 'social justice' ever become something to fight over, or just a "difference of opinion"?

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

9 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But it's also going to kill, or at least severely hobble, what has been a really vital and engaged SL community.

I suppose I am a little worried about this.  The forums are a community for me.  I prefer to communicate through posts here than in real-time inworld. I get to have conversations with people in other time zones who I would never run across otherwise.  The views are more diverse.  This is not available anywhere inworld.  I can, also, take the forums with me on my phone.  My computer and internet connection don't fit in my pocket.

If they are scoured clean of everything fun and thought provoking, it would be a shame and a loss of connection for me.

If everyone bails in a few weeks, someone shoot me a message on where you went as an alternative.  I will never see most of you inworld.

I'd even try discord.

/me re-reads.  Yup, related to SL (and RL)

[Love Zhaoying]

On 7/27/2022 at 6:47 PM, Rat Luv said:

I know people aren't being serious about doing it here, but I thought AR parties could get the reporters banned if LL looked into it and it turned out to be a lie? 🤔 Which I think is fair enough!

Hmm...not sure if I brought this up earlier, but what if an "AR Party" was just one user and their Alts?

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Social justice issues aren't contentious. They're easily trolled.

Sorry, guess this is really what I meant when I said "why" I could see Social Justice issues being a no-no.  I think, from now on when I say "contentious" I will remember this. Trolls are *ducks.

Usually I don't say things like "Trolls are *ducks".  Even if it walks like a duck and stuffs.

Because I tend to give people the benefit of a doubt / too much rope!

But yeah, I see it like this:

Troll thinks, "ZOMG I don't like this issue and disagree with it, so I'ma blow it up! Because RIGHTS!'1!!1!"

 

Edited July 30, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Madelaine McMasters]

9 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

If i walk into those hot zones it's usually to try and lower the temperature .. hehehehe

...sets you on fire

[Madelaine McMasters]

7 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

So, to get this thread back on track (although none of this is irrelevant to the OP, I'd argue) -- now that there's a much wider range of content that one can justify reports -- and that one can reasonably expect concrete action on -- will you be reporting more, or less?

Or does this change anything for you at all in terms of your approach to reporting forum content?

LL's rules will not change my reporting behavior

I AR based on my rules, not theirs.

[Nalates Urriah]

So is anyone going to ask the mods what "related" to SL means? And who decides what is "related"?

Are rolling blackouts that keep people from logging into SL "related"?

I think basically the rule change in other words means, if the company doesn't like a subject they can consider it NOT directly related to SL and cancel it.

Whether this is an example of cancel culture seeping into people's minds or an over worked moderation team looking to reduce the work load or management looking to handle day-to-today operations with a smaller work force or avoid having to hire more people... hard to know.

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

So is anyone going to ask the mods what "related" to SL means? And who decides what is "related"?

Are rolling blackouts that keep people from logging into SL "related"?

I think basically the rule change in other words means, if the company doesn't like a subject they can consider it NOT directly related to SL and cancel it.

Whether this is an example of cancel culture seeping into people's minds or an over worked moderation team looking to reduce the work load or management looking to handle day-to-today operations with a smaller work force or avoid having to hire more people... hard to know.

Our asking questions wouldn't reduce their workload. I expect the contours of the new rules will be revealed indirectly, via their actions.

I have never understood why LL hosts the forums. That hasn't changed.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

So is anyone going to ask the mods what "related" to SL means? And who decides what is "related"?

Are rolling blackouts that keep people from logging into SL "related"?

I think basically the rule change in other words means, if the company doesn't like a subject they can consider it NOT directly related to SL and cancel it.

Whether this is an example of cancel culture seeping into people's minds or an over worked moderation team looking to reduce the work load or management looking to handle day-to-today operations with a smaller work force or avoid having to hire more people... hard to know.

I suspect they will reply something about "obvious", or "common sense". I just stop reading / listening when that happens.

[Persephone Emerald]

8 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

So, to get this thread back on track (although none of this is irrelevant to the OP, I'd argue) -- now that there's a much wider range of content that one can justify reports -- and that one can reasonably expect concrete action on -- will you be reporting more, or less?

Or does this change anything for you at all in terms of your approach to reporting forum content?

The changes will not change my AR behavior right now. Right now I'm focused on how to post within the rules, but in a way that calls attention to how silly the "Don't mention non SL stuff" one is. I'd also like us to show our disagreement with this change in totally allowed and respectful ways. 

In the future, I might AR posts and threads that are against the rules just to prove how much work this could add for the Moles. I don't think the Moles are behind this change and don't want to make their work harder for them, but we customers for this platform (and most of us paying customers) need to find ways to make our feelings known to the higher ups at Linden Lab.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Rat Luv]

58 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Hmm...not sure if I brought this up earlier, but what if an "AR Party" was just one user and their Alts?

I don't know....I think if LL could link the alts together, they'd definitely ban the reporter? But somebody's probably done it...

[PheebyKatz]

Mods never really get the appreciation they deserve. It's like herding cats just to keep up with threads and whether or not someone is crapflooding the place, let alone users telling on each other because they don't like what someone said.

Believe it or not, I've been mod staff on "adult" forums before, and if you think it gets bad here, LOL. No idea just how awful a job it can be, plus you NEVER really get to enjoy the forums the way anyone else does.

As for Abuse Reporting, I can remember a time when forum software didn't have that function yet, and people had to PM whatever mod was online, or the admin (and wait a week for a response), or if nobody on staff was there, the forum would simply be trashed until staff woke up and started deleting things, and sometimes banning people.

This is (mock me if you will, but I mean it) the BEST-kept pile of forums I have ever participated in. For this many users to be this active, and for the forums to only be THIS bad, is a gargantuan triumph of moderation (and occasional actual userbase self-discipline, lol).

I've never filed an AR on the forums. Would I? If I felt it was genuinely necessary. I've been here for years and so far haven't had to do it once, so hey. Says a lot right there, if you know me at all.

Inworld, I've filed maybe... two? And both situations were immediately resolved. I know, I know, not everyone has had this experience, but I have. These guys actually do try to keep this pile of crazy habitable, as ubelievable as it might sound. I'm normally a bit cynical about such things too, it's why it stands out so glaringly to me that I had to mention it.

I could probably type more, but lack of coffee is dangerous and my text might get all over everywhere and I can't wipe it all up right now, because I haven't had coffee yet.

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

...sets you on fire

Oh now you went an dun it!

I stayed hidden all these years, now ya gunna has ta feel  duh wrath of mah ice queen powahs!

Freezes you shoe laces to you shoes.. you won't be untying those for a couple of hours!

 

 

hehehehe

[PheebyKatz]

I'm not afraid to be in the crossfire, I got my Wonder Woman Underoos on~!

XD

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 minute ago, PheebyKatz said:

I'm not afraid to be in the crossfire, I got my Wonder Woman Underoos on~!

XD

...glares at Ceka, through you

[PheebyKatz]

2 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

...glares at Ceka, through you

*ducks*

[Coffee Pancake]

I help mod the SecondLife subreddit.

We do keep the place more strictly about SL simply because the rest of reddit is right there, we will even remove posts about ex lindens or competing worlds. Metaverse and blockchain stuff is just blacklisted.

That doesn't really work so well here as a self contained community, clamping down here just encourages people to move on to other places, and it will be the most committed and minorities that go first, it always is. It wont have the desired effect of making this into an "SL is awesome echo chamber", if anything .. the tone will get significantly more salty. Killing time and giving LL space is most of the discussion here, take that away and we're not social anymore, we're here with a purpose .. and that purpose might as well be "why is this all junk and why do you hate your customers?".

This isn't some new death spiral, we've all been here before, probably many times with many companies who start struggling and trying to micro manage the community as though that's the problem.

 

The one thing we do also mod very strictly (as in, shoot first and ask questions later) is trolls who explicitly use personal insults, attack minorities and LGBTQ folk, homophobia, transphobia, racism, PMing posters to attack them, shouting about freeze peach, JAQing off, sealioning, aggressive and constant negging of female posters, and so on and so on. This is very much not the case here because of some fox news notion of "both sides".

Reddit posts are threaded and do not get bumped (unlike this forum) , so there is pressure to be relevant and be quick about it. Things can get nasty and overheat quickly, angry haters silence meaningful participation.

Much in the same way discussion of LGBTQ issues in SL is silenced here, no one wants to start those threads only to have 2 people and an alt come in and nicely imply they shouldn't exist at all. Funny, the new rules explicitly prohibit arguing against those positions, and because the posters here don't explicitly say what they actually mean (and we all know) veiled hate speech is now permitted.

 

We've been extremely pro LL to this point and routinely remove rants, not wanting the sub to descend into the enormous lake of festering anti LL bile that exists. LL are one of the only companies I know that manages to not only make their customers hate them, but hate them for life - people will seriously show up having not used SL for a decade just to unload about how much they hate SL and LL for not being dead yet - This includes most of the industry media.

I'm not saying we or I am going to change that stance, but if thinly veiled hate speech starts to show up and be allowed to stand, I'm not going to be too willing to defend LL and will be seriously reconsidering my participation on these forums, which will undoubtedly have a knock on effect to my participation and contributions to the platform.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Kathlen Onyx]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

We've been extremely pro LL to this point and routinely remove rants, not wanting the sub to descend into the enormous lake of festering anti LL bile that exists. LL are one of the only companies I know that manages to not only make their customers hate them, but hate them for life - people will seriously show up having not used SL for a decade just to unload about how much they hate SL and LL for not being dead yet - This includes most of the industry media.

I'm not saying we or I am going to change that stance, but if thinly veiled hate speech starts to show up and be allowed to stand, I'm not going to be too willing to defend LL and will be seriously reconsidering my participation on these forums, which will undoubtedly have a knock on effect to my participation and contributions to the platform.

That sounds like a threat because you feel your voice is being limited. Most companies don't take threats well and will just double down to a more ridged stance.  

[Luna Bliss]

1 minute ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

That sounds like a threat because you feel your voice is being limited. Most companies don't take threats well and will just double down to a more ridged stance.  

ikr, I bet the whole staff is watching now, tremblin' and a shakin'. They prolly called in Philip to determine the best course of action.  That coffee is one powerful woman... 😉

[Coffee Pancake]

43 minutes ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

That sounds like a threat because you feel your voice is being limited. Most companies don't take threats well and will just double down to a more ridged stance.  

If that's how you think what I said was intended, then I guess you know what to do.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Love Zhaoying]

42 minutes ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

That sounds like a threat because you feel your voice is being limited. Most companies don't take threats well and will just double down to a more ridged stance.  

So..hinting that she will NOT be removing "rants" is a threat? Cool!

I threaten to "not do my unpaid job" too!

[Kathlen Onyx]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

So..hinting that she will NOT be removing "rants" is a threat? Cool!

 

Don't act obtuse. You know what she meant.