Tag: vBulletin

Right, on to Part 2 (more detailed comments regarding Off-Topic Discussion, and Moderating) as posted in their forum. Not much discussion occurred between my first post and now, so will give it a few more days before summarizing.

Should an Off-Topic section be brought back? Heck Yes. But there are caveats that go with the suggestion (some of this will reference my earlier master post):

-> In a publicly-viewable forum (Guests), the OT section should not be available. Again, this is to keep things friendly to the Search Spiders. Verified and above should be able to see it, though I feel that there should be an option to squelch access to it if you’re not at all interested.

[I’d like to point out here that getting to Verified status only takes the purchase of US$1 worth of L$ from the LindeX exchange site. I understand that there are barriers to even this, but I just noticed that Verified PayPal users can now link their account (which IMHO may be safer than leaving CC info with LL). Also, anyone who decided to undergo that interesting and amusing ‘Age Verification’ thing *should* be considered as Verified for the sake of forum access.]

-> The OT section should be either very lightly moderated, or not moderated at all (this assumes my earlier point, which hides the forum to Guests). However, the REST of the forum is strictly moderated (or as close to that as possible). This is going to meld into the Moderation comments, stay with me here.

My reasoning behind this is straightforward – As has been mentioned multiple times here, we’re going to have these discussions *regardless* of an OT section occurring or not. Lets put it back, but with controls and clearly defined rules both for regular and OT sections. However, strict moderation will either require more Linden staff or some sort of assistance elsewhere.

An excellent example of a vB forum implementing some of this is the Notebook Forums: [url]http://www.notebookforums.com/index.php?index[/url]

Guests will notice that OT is marked Private and not available. I have an account there, and can see OT when I’m in (currently browsing a US economy thread). [Side note – they appear to have gone through an overhaul much like what’s discussed here, and is looking the better for it. Their Rules thread/post is VERY strict and is not what I’d recommend here (due to lack of staff), but could be adapted.]

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OK, my feelings on Moderation (please don’t shoot me ).

I do think external moderation can work; Y’all did not have an issue with some of us ResMods during the initial couple months (I will make no comment as to my own success; Go look at my post history and decide for yourself – and it would be nice to hear counter-feedback from those who were not around back then). However, there will be a bit of give-and-take in order to allow this:

-> External Mods should preferably be *external* (i.e. outside contractors) with no SL accounts at all. This may not be possible due to the way this forum integrates, so alternatively hand out Linden accounts with no SL login capability or create a new ‘last name’ for this purpose that still has no SL login possible. If they did have accounts prior to this, they would need to submit to temp or permanent ban during their tenure as mod.

-> Barring that, an existing ‘Resi’ *waves to Torley if still watching* can be nominated to help. However, he/she will need to submit full RL data including address, etc (like what is submitted for the Age Verification) and possibly accept whatever additional vetting is required for a MG person to interact on the TG.

[I originally had the option for your avatar (and any of those linked to your IPs) both banned and deleted from the database; Discussing it with a friend of mine (who some may remember as Racer Plisskin, also retired) made me remove this based on issues with creating problems in the Asset DB. I include it here for completeness and expansion/discussion on keeping the Mod from ‘conflicts of interest’ with the world being discussed around them. Also, if its not blatently obvious, I’m quite willing to submit to this despite the sacrifices involved and my deep ties here.]

-> Oh, one last thing – we’ve unofficially had Moderation by Residents as far back as Beta. After all, who’s ‘Nada Epoch’ in the Scripting Library forum? And the old Groups forums had the ‘creator’ of that group also be the Mod for it. We know its possible, and it did work well in those instances, so it should not be an issue to re-work it when done carefully.

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Though I did not intend to discuss banning, I touched on some of it above, so my thoughts:

-> I will not – and cannot – discuss existing bans in place due to certain ‘conflicts of interest’ created from an early (and possibly ongoing) program around the permaban system. You’ll need to poke Robin or perhaps Andrew for more info – ask about ‘Resident Review.’

-> I agree with the earlier mention of having a forum ban not mean an SL ban – but an SL ban should include the forums (though the read-only sections would still be available as a ‘Guest’ if that’s enabled). I also agree that it should be tiered into via multiple suspensions – perhaps two weeks, then 4, then 8, then permanent.

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OK, that’s pretty much the remainder of my overall comments on this subject. From here on I will answer questions (If I can) and otherwise probably fade back onto my weblog until I hear anything different over here.

Robin and Kat – Again, best of luck to both of you, and forward my thanks again to Torley for keeping me sane during the ResMod attempt.

Linden Research’s Robin Harper posted on their official weblog that it’s time to re-work their internal forum. Link on the *weblog* here.

Since their forum currently is for ‘verified’ members only (you have to, at minimum, have credit card info on-file), I will be reposting my major comments here – and summary of responses, if any, as time goes on – for the sake of the Myst/Uru community. My apologies for the length (and I’m not done yet!) but its a bit of a passionate subject of mine.

–TSK

First of all, a hearty ‘Shorah!’ to Robin, Kat, Travis, Desmond, Strife, and the others who know me from as far back as mid/late 2004 and have still stuck it out here.

I am shocked to discover that it’s been horribly long since I was last here; My old sig mentioned that Myst Online was in Beta stage (~ 16 months later and now its shutdown will be in about a week ). Perhaps its more telling that my interest here fell out shortly after my term as RezMod – something that even today I’ve never talked much about, here or on my site (other than getting more cynical than I was before ). The only reason I’m here now is a passing reference to the forums under the LL weblog RSS feed (which is displayed on a sidebar at my site).

However, feedback is being solicited for something that was once very dear to my heart in SL (especially as someone who works late at night). So here goes, warts and all:

-> An update of the software is very long overdue, and allowing more general features (including BBcode or similar) would be a good idea. If you’re going to stay with paid software though, it might be worth it to give Invision a look – they have interesting features that could be useful here (which I’ll touch on shortly). It is used for many in the Myst/Uru community sites, in particular since they integrate so well with outside sources. Then again, a quick look at the Notebook Forums (running vB 3.6.5) looks more like a portal than a forum, so perhaps you can stick with that after all.

It is EXTREMELY important to have someone keep general maintenance of the forum software itself – primarily to keep up-to-date on possible exploits and test as needed before making the appropriate changes. This is *not* a full-time endeavor (I just did two major WordPress site upgrades – one from scratch – in about 5 hours over two nights). However, I have many a horror story of varying public forums being brought down or otherwise corrupted by someone with a malicious agenda. In this case its a matter of When, not If (putting on my UNIX Admin hat briefly).

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-> Enable read/write access to the forums in a more ‘tiered’ manner (I believe its called Access Groups or something similar – I don’t run a forum); This is to give the ‘best foot forward’ to the world while also allowing some flexibility for the individual. To expand further:

–> Guests (and therefore Search Spiders) should be able to read (at minimum) the Content, Conversation, and Technical Issues sections. Probably also International. These sections may need to have certain subsections hidden to Guests, depending on general usage.

–> Verified members should see the whole forum, and be able to post.

–> Premium/paying members should have the ability to ‘Mute’ or ‘Ignore’ whole sections (like General, if it gets brought back). This gives a tangible value to Premium again (many forum-based portals allow extra perks for paying them, you’d not be alone in this).

It would also allow easy view of the ‘high-end’ members like reps from IBM et al or the Concierge members (perhaps groups and hidden forums for them too?). Alternatively, allow a one-time fee of L$1000 or so for this access (thereby generating a small sink). See the forums on Priuschat.com for an example of the paid system – paying and ‘Sponsor’ members are clearly marked and show their pay level next to posts.

–> TG members should be able to use the same forum; However they’ll have their own, greatly reduced list of subfora (which are NOT seen by MG members) and special ‘approve everything’ forums from MG side (in particular the Scripting Archive) should be available to them for reading only. ‘Graduating’ to MG from the forum side is as simple as changing their group membership, and should be easily automated (and this also allows them to contribute to the benefit of their earlier peers indirectly).

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-> Don’t bother with Ratings of any sort in-forum; They got gamed in SL and they’ll get gamed here, in either direction. In fact, replace direct post counts with text or graphical representations (as most sites have done).

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Regarding General/Rants & Moderation (these two kinda go hand-in-hand):

I, like others here, believe that a General-style forum (more accurately termed ‘Off-Topic’ or ‘Off-World’ or ‘First Life’) is required to draw the venting off to where it belongs – other than the Technical Discussions anyway. However, balancing that with moderation abilities is definitely going to be a challenge (Cybin did his best work there I think, and I never wanted any part of it within the first week).

I’m not yet prepared to add further comments to this portion; Maybe later tonight. However I do think outside moderation will work, if done with forethought (an excellent example of this – despite the occasional drama – occurred on the Myst Online forum of all places).

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Yipes, I’ve been writing for well over an hour now and this is getting into a Gwyneth-sized post. As I said, this is something that was dear to me in SL even before the ResMod project, since it was great to be helping people – or generally chat – when I could not get online.

/salute
–Tim Kimball

[Yes, that’s my real name I’m signing to here. Everyone else knows me online as that name, why not y’all? Besides, I still consider myself a retired resident, despite poking my head in from time to time.]