Is the General Discussion sub-forum Forum a special breed of animal? Discuss and banter!

[Seicher Rae]

ETA: I apologize to those using the Dark Mode here. I did a cut/paste of the original and so far I cannot get rid of the white background for you all. I'm working on it!  Meanwhile, Rowan kindly did a repost that is readable for those of you using the Dark mode   here

ETA: Font size! 

ETA: Comic sans!

 

This post, including its title is a typical “Seicher” post, in that it is both deadly serious and goofy, tongue-in-cheek. I hope you will: Discuss. 

The serious bit: 

Is the General Discussion sub-forum Forum, different than the rest of the SL sponsored Forums? If so, how, in your opinion? 

My experience drives my opinion for this. I’ve been posting off and on in the GD Forum for over 12 years, almost as long as I’ve been in SL. I’ve dipped toes into other sub-forums, but when I post, it is usually here. There are others who have been here longer, but, 12 years has been long enough to go through a myriad of iterations. There have been educated trolls we’ve loved to hate and grudgingly hated to love at times. There have been crazy what-the-??? trolls, since... ever. We’ve had virtually no moderation, absent moderation, sporadic moderation, iron-fisted... There have been AR wars. There have been Great Alt Hunts, complete with forensic scrutiny of vocabulary. There has been more drama than you can shake a stick at. There have been epically long and torturous threads, the stuff of legends. There has been political speak from all corners of the weirdness. People riding in to save others, others saying “we don’t need no stinkin’ saving.” There has been warm camaraderie where people consoled others in need of a hug. In short, it has been a vibrant, weird, obnoxious, fun, entertaining, educational... community. 

I think in other parts of the Forum you will find community, in the photo threads for example, but in my experience, the rest of the place is for where you have questions about specific things in SL, they get talked about. Done. In the GDF, you get a group of people united by the strangeness that is SL, and you interact with the individuals and their quirks—both their RL and SL experiences. 

So, while I think that moderation is super important, believe me, having lived through some of the worst of this place, I’m a firm believer in “enough is enough” I think some special considerations need to be given to this sub-forum, based on what it is: A community to talk and banter and become friends (or hated enemies). That’s what this place has been to me. Granted, I’ve been gone for 2 years, only recently returned, but I returned for that. I’m seeing that threatened. 

The goofy side: 

Is the GDF its own special breed of “animal”? If so, what animal would it be? Photos! Why! Should we banter? Banter about banter! On topic general discussion banter! Does community banter include bounce? "

Edited August 4, 2022 by Seicher Rae
ETA "leaving out words of sentences for 12+ years"

[Ceka Cianci]

Honestly, I felt this crack down coming on for awhile now. I think every version of the forums other than the first version I was in back when they still had the old RA.. There has been a crack down on the GD.

One was a total 10 day shut down.

Hey does anyone know what happened to the Feeds they used to have? I remember there was only a few of us in the GD when the Feeds were going..

Some reason that just popped into my head.

[Seicher Rae]

7 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Hey does anyone know what happened to the Feeds they used to have? I remember there was only a few of us in the GD when the Feeds were going..

Some reason that just popped into my head.

I used to post THERE frequently too. Then they got super glitchy, and it was tough to upload screenshots, which is what a lot of folks used them for. Yes, a lot of oldbies were there for a while. I stopped posting there, too, after the migration to the cloud several of us lost EVERYthing that we'd posted there and it was really borked. I was one of those. Years of photos gone. (Luckily I saved some before the crash.) It used to be under mysecondlife.com but I just typed that and all you get is a splash screen. So I assume: Gone. I could be wrong.

[Paul Hexem]

No.

[Rowan Amore]

It's a platypus.

[Seicher Rae]

My OP threads tend to last about 1-page worth.  (The infamous (now) cat thread being an outlier.) It bodes well when the answers are now one word and/or monosyllabic. ♥

[Ceka Cianci]

6 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

I used to post THERE frequently too. Then they got super glitchy, and it was tough to upload screenshots, which is what a lot of folks used them for. Yes, a lot of oldbies were there for a while. I stopped posting there, too, after the migration to the cloud several of us lost EVERYthing that we'd posted there and it was really borked. I was one of those. Years of photos gone. (Luckily I saved some before the crash.) It used to be under mysecondlife.com but I just typed that and all you get is a splash screen. So I assume: Gone. I could be wrong.

Ya, I never went to those because it felt like social networkish to me.. I remember saying to myself back then that I'm not gonna touch any social network things..

No facebooks or what ever that other one was  that was like it and the feeds and any others around.

I'm kinda glad I did that now.. hehehe

[Seicher Rae]

12 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

It's a platypus.

You know what? I think you're right. And I'm being weirdly serious. A platypus is obviously an animal, but such a strange one! It looks like a mixture of several things, kind of "all of those and none of those." It is also endangered.

[Rowan Amore]

2 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

You know what? I think you're right. And I'm being weirdly serious. A platypus is obviously an animal, but such a strange one! It looks like a mixture of several things, kind of "all of those and none of those." It is also endangered.

It has no idea what it's supposed to be.  An egg-laying mammal?  Is it a duck, a beaver, an otter?

Pretty much sums up GD to me.  A hodgepodge of whatnots from a hodgepodge of people.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Whatever animal it is, it apparently requires a LOT of care and feeding.

So much so that Farmer Linden is probanly looking at his shotgun and wondering if maybe he shouldn't just take it out back and be done with it.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra
Autocorrect

[Seicher Rae]

8 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Whatever animal it is, it apparently requires a LOT of care and feeding.

So much so that Farmer Linden is probanly looking at his shotgun and wondering of maybe he shouldn't just take it out back and be done with it.

Well, that's dark. And I'm suspecting accurate.

And so I write a couple of paragraphs of serious, a couple of lines of quip and everyone wants to answer the quip.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

50 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Hey does anyone know what happened to the Feeds they used to have? I remember there was only a few of us in the GD when the Feeds were going..

The feeds had a lot of potential -- and, as I understood it, were the reason LL bought Avatars United.

But they were never properly integrated into the in-world experience, and lacked functionality, such as better image posting options, and group chats.

It's too bad. It might have obviated the need for Discord, and maybe even Flickr.

[MoiraKathleen]

Platypus can be tricky - in Phineas and Ferb as soon as someone asks "Where's Perry?" (the platypus) it turns out Perry is off on an espionage mission.  I think this fits the GD Forum - when you call (view) it you never know where it's gone since the last time you saw it, in terms of threads that it nows deems important. 

[Love Zhaoying]

I'm sorry, but another Forum discussion thread about discussing discussion Forum threads on the discussion Forum?

I'll pass this time, on discussing discussion  threads on a discussion thread on the discussion Forum. 

[Persephone Emerald]

55 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

It's a platypus.

Agrees

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Seicher Rae said:

This post, including its title is a typical “Seicher” post, in that it is both deadly serious and goofy, tongue-in-cheek. I hope you will: Discuss. 

The serious bit: 

Is the General Discussion sub-forum Forum, different than the rest of the SL sponsored Forums? If so, how, in your opinion? 

My experience drives my opinion for this. I’ve been posting off and on in the GD Forum for over 12 years, almost as long as I’ve been in SL. I’ve dipped toes into other sub-forums, but when I post, it is usually here. There are others who have been here longer, but, 12 years has been long enough to go through a myriad of iterations. There have been educated trolls we’ve loved to hate and grudgingly hated to love at times. There have been crazy what-the-??? trolls, since... ever. We’ve had virtually no moderation, absent moderation, sporadic moderation, iron-fisted... There have been AR wars. Ther have been Great Alt Hunts, complete with forensic scrutiny of vocabulary. There has been more drama than you can shake a stick at. There have been epically long and torturous threads, the stuff of legends. There has been political speak from all corners of the weirdness. People riding in to save others, others saying “we don’t need no stinkin’ saving.” There has been warm camaraderie where people consoled others in need of a hug. In short, it has been a vibrant, weird, obnoxious, fun, entertaining, educational... community. 

I think in other parts of the Forum you will find community, in the photo threads for example, but in my experience, the rest of the place is for where you have questions about specific things in SL, they get talked about. Done. In the GDF, you get a group of people united by the strangeness that is SL, and you interact with the individuals and their quirks—both their RL and SL experiences. 

So, while I think that moderation is super important, believe me, having lived through some of the worst of this place, I’m a firm believer in “enough is enough” I think some special considerations need to be given to this sub-forum, based on what it is: A community to talk and banter and become friends (or hated enemies). That’s what this place has been to me. Granted, I’ve been gone for 2 years, only recently returned, but I returned for that. I’m seeing that threatened. 

The goofy side: 

Is the GDF its own special breed of “animal”? If so, what animal would it be? Photos! Why! Should we banter? Banter about banter! On topic general discussion banter! Does community banter include bounce?  

 

In Dark Theme, this is blinding.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Agrees

Mr. Rogers did it better, in 1970.

https://www.misterrogers.org/videos/anas-first-appearance-on-the-show/

[Rolig Loon]

14 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'll pass this time, on discussing discussion  threads on a discussion thread on the discussion Forum. 

I'd say that's all very meta, but that would be talking about a different platform. 

[Kathlen Onyx]

14 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm sorry, but another Forum discussion thread about discussing discussion Forum threads on the discussion Forum?

I'll pass this time, on discussing discussion  threads on a discussion thread on the discussion Forum. 

Totally agree. How many of these do we need? or are people just seeing how far they can go and get away with. It sure feels like it. To have more than one thread discussing forum changes is too many.

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Rolig Loon said:

I'd say that's all very meta, but that would be talking about a different platform. 

Only a leetle beet recursive.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

18 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm sorry, but another Forum discussion thread about discussing discussion Forum threads on the discussion Forum?

I'll pass this time, on discussing discussion  threads on a discussion thread on the discussion Forum. 

Just to change it up a bit, how about a thread discussing why we shouldn't have discussions about discussing things in General Discussion?

[Lindal Kidd]

I think Seicher has hit the nail squarely on the head. General Discussion is a community.

As I said in another thread, and in an email to Keira Linden, I think that a forum community, as hard as it may be to moderate, is an asset to any complex product, and none more so than SL. We have lots of forums to discuss SL topics. But a vibrant community needs to be able to discuss...well, pretty much anything. And so, I think that SL needs its General Discussion forum, and that forum needs to continue to have the freedom for anything from silly word games to cat pictures to discussing RL news, problems, and triumphs.

Moderate it, sure. Strangle it, no.

And, if I may suggest a competitor to the very apt platypus, how about:

The Pushmepullyou

[Arielle Popstar]

Still though, it is amazing how much mileage we can get out of going in circles. And the border crossings are quite smooth.

[Seicher Rae]

23 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

In Dark Theme, this is blinding.

What do you mean? I'm just typing at the standard settings, so doesn't it just revert like normal to Dark? I'm confused.  In light mode this is just white background with black type...

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Do we really need yet another thread on the platypus?