We’re back!
Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 8:43 PM by: Jeff LindenYou might notice a few things appear to be missing on the right sidebar- most notably the list of authors and the event calendar. We are investigating our options, but the blog is otherwise at its new host.
Yes, we have moved over to WordPress.com’s VIP program, which is basically “we’ll run your blog for you and do some custom work, in return, you pay us some money.” To me, that’s exactly what we’re looking for, as our business does not precisely revolve around making the blog stay up, but it sure as hell depends on it.
So, just for the record, so far the WordPress.com guys have been rockin’- I’ve talked to Matt himself, and the WP folks that I do get to talk to are both competent and fast- which is more than I can say for myself sometimes.
Bear with us if you notice anything else out of the ordinary, and please do feel to make comments again.
October 5th, 2006 at 6:14 PM
Su-weet!
Forget about my previous posting in the other blog, seems like you guys were already on your way to migrating to a different server prior to my suggestion!
October 5th, 2006 at 6:20 PM
MUHAHAHAHAHA. First Comment >
You going to get the domain mapping fixed so the links say blog.secondlife.com instead of lindenlab.wordpress.com ?
Break out the Blogroll/Links widget and you can have the authors back.
Or break out a text widget and code in the XHTML yourself
October 5th, 2006 at 6:21 PM
No more manually filling in the comment form ^_^
October 5th, 2006 at 7:03 PM
We’ll just have to wait and see what happens when you update SL 2 weeks from Wednesday. I hope you will be able to keep the comments open.
October 5th, 2006 at 8:15 PM
I hope so too, and am optimistic about it.
October 5th, 2006 at 11:58 PM
Interesting.
You pay a third party site to run a blog for you - but wouldn’t do that with the forums.
The problem is the same - you don’t have the time or the inclination to do either properly - so why didn’t you just save the forums - as many wanted, indicated by prop 1781 which was ignored, and the various other threads on the subject?
I’m still waiting for Philips response after the recent Town Hall on this subject too.
Lewis
October 6th, 2006 at 12:48 AM
Lewis, from my experience with other companies a corporate blog is a much easier way to get information out to customers and potential new customers. One of the main reason this is true is because current relevant news and press releases can be displayed directly on the frontpage. Within a web forum users would have to dig for the same information. This can be troublesome, especially if you are not familiar with the forum layout or how to locate the news.
Taking the blog off of Linden’s server and putting it on wordpress.com is a wise move. Everytime SecondLife is offline the website inadvertently suffers from a type of DOS attack that isn’t intentional. Too many users trying to use the website and then the web forums to find out information caused them to go down. What makes wordpress.com different? I’m not sure about their servers and structure - but I’m pretty sure they have the resources to keep the page open and probably have the ability to reallocate bandwidth during the heavy usage times.
I was under the impression that the reason Linden started closing the forums was because they felt that the residents could do a much better job self governing and operating their own sites. Users started to migrate to other locations even prior to the announcement. While I agree that it was wonderful to have a single location to go to, I could understand why Linden would want to downplay the forums and allow Liaisons and Helpers to spend more time answering questions in the SL world and less time making sure people are following forum rules. Since the switchover I’ve encountered more Lindens in world - perhaps its just a coincidence, or maybe it’s something more.
October 6th, 2006 at 12:53 AM
[...] Lewis Nerd wrote regarding Linden migrating their corporate blog to WordPress.com: Interesting. [...]
October 6th, 2006 at 2:54 AM
smart move. the wordpress.com ppl generally know what they are doing and should be able to keep this thing working through some traffic storms. They are used to it with their own blogs by now
October 6th, 2006 at 3:21 AM
Should I re-direct my RSS pull to the new one (I notice it moved to feedburner)?
–T. S. Kimball
sungak.net
October 6th, 2006 at 4:01 AM
Lewis: There’s a diffrence between paying for hosting and paying for moderators. As for prop 1781, noone wants to talk to you about it, and I doubt they ever will, judging from that Linden Answers reply…
October 6th, 2006 at 5:01 AM
It is not an issue that I will let go away.
It is to the benefit of any company that they make decisions based on the needs and desires of their customers - and it is quite clear that more people prefer the forums and the blogs - in fact even less people post here than on the forums, by the looks of it.
Philip said to me he wanted to be included in the discussion and hear what I have to say. That invitation required my response, now I require his. I have every reason to expect him to keep his word.
I do understand, however, that he does have other things to be thinking about, which is why I have not sent a follow-up communication yet. The sad thing is that there is an obvious option sitting, waiting, ready, and up to the task, if only they are prepared to accept the offer. It needn’t cost much, or tie up any more Lindens than required, and most certainly would not need the dreadful ‘resmod’ system of previous, as there are existing structures and training procedures already in place to handle busy forums.
The old forums were out of control because there wasn’t the time and effort put into enforcing the rules, or training the staff.
Going back to the issue of scaleability, that was never the reason, because handling a forum of maybe 2000 posters is nothing compared to maintaining a world of a million residents- and I’m quite sure it takes more time for Lindens to be writing blog posts to start discussions, rather than allowing the players to decide what they wish to talk about.
Lewis
October 6th, 2006 at 5:04 AM
… and come to think of it (I hate not being able to go back and edit previous posts), the cost of outsourcing the forums to a quality third party site would probably not have even required the blog to have been put over (with the associated costs) to a third party either - if, in fact, the blog was even really necessary in the first place.
Lewis
October 6th, 2006 at 7:10 AM
Lewis.
Its not all the time I support Linden Labs on various issues. To me they are (or should be) what is known as a common carrier, and they should not really interfere with both the forums or for that matter the running of the world at all, except in cases of grid attack.
In effect they are similar to that of a network. After all does BT monitor normal peoples telephones?
Indeed - going forward into the future one way of looking at the entire Second Life platform is not dis similar to that of a high end operating system, perhaps a bit like very early versions of Netscape in the 1990s, with an inbuilt financial transaction system. In the future (and if sl takes off) could Linden Labs monitor 10 if not 100 million users?
But that is not the case at present. I heard your comments to Gov Linden via pod cast and his reply. How disheartening must it be to devote Linden employees’ time to monitoring the 80% of pure trash on the BBs. That issue is there because on the Linden site they do not take the common carrier view and therefore accept responsibility for content.
Finally if you want to see a un moderated BB take a look at http://www.advfn.com and the free BBs there. Its the best personal financial site on the net bar none, and as it happens I know Clem Chambers and the other co-founders personally. I had to use this site and the BBs to make some sense of the financial mess in the markets following on from the dot.com bust and of course 9/11. I agree there are gems in dross on BBs for users, but the main reason for a BB is to drive site hits for the owners/shareholders that in turn pays advertising. Therefore currently the Linden Labs BBs cost money to run rather than add money as a profit centre as there is no ad content.
I think you need to accept commercial reality sorry to be unkind
October 6th, 2006 at 7:27 AM
I just don’t understand why Linden Lab are pushing the blog, which is unpopular, to the detriment of the forums, which are popular.
I also don’t understand why they’re outsourcing the blog, when they won’t do the same to the forums, and would rather let them die totally instead of accepting the offer of outside help, that would cost a fraction of the price, and tie up a lot less Linden time, as they would be run by volunteers for the community.
I tried to look at your financial site - it doesn’t make much sense to me as I’m not ‘financially minded’, also I couldn’t access the forums without signing up.
I’m just curious why the blog outsourcing is considered so great - at a setup cost of $500 and maintenance of $250 a month (figures from the link provided about the VIP service) - when a far, far cheaper equivalent has been offered from a third party forum, possibly the only one capable of handling it, with the reputation of being a ‘world leader’ in MMORPG communities, serving over 40 online games at present.
Why pay all that money when the only thing that changes is it’s not hosted on Linden servers? The blog will still need the same amount of moderating, checking, cleaning up, and Linden input to create the subjects we’re allowed to talk about.
Yes, the forums were full of crap - but that’s partly a result of the unverified signups, partly due to a lack of interest from Linden Lab in maintaining them, and a poorly operated moderation system that nobody could get any sense out of when you were slapped for doing something you actually had no idea about, or any ability to challenge a decision.
Lewis
October 6th, 2006 at 9:05 AM
Lewis, registering is free on http://www.advfn with no credit card required for basic access. There is loads of free financial information, and can I respectfully suggest it would not be a bad idea for you to have some understanding of matters financial!!
If you hit the “free BB” tab after registering you will see literally 10s of thousands of threaded BBs on all subjects on this earth to your hearts content. And you can create threads and post yourself…….btw the site gets 1/2 a million hits a day min
October 6th, 2006 at 9:39 AM
I keep all my money in a biscuit tin under the bed, investments and stuff aren’t really my thing.
Starting threads on any subject you wish at any time… exactly the point of a forum. Any forum.
Lewis
October 6th, 2006 at 12:27 PM
Lewis Nerd, I like the Blog. I do not support your position or agree with your statements. I appreciate your right to speak your mind but please, for the love of whatever you hold dear, please don’t post about the same thing over and over. I would rather not have to skip everything you write because who knows, one day you might post about something else.
October 6th, 2006 at 1:22 PM
The choice of using WP as the public web hoster likely has to do with WP being a public company, and not an individual. This arrangement is just as good for WP as it is for LL, because both get free advertizing of the other. Win-win business arrangement, and very hard to scream about favoritism.
If they do consider offsourcing the official forum, it will likely be with a business provider such as Invision Power Services. In fact, Invision is perfect for them since there is a code of conduct as part of its license (which for all intents is PG). I’d been pushing for them to switch to Invision anyway, though its a hard sell as its both commercial software and requires a contract to make certain modifications.
The only other safe alternative is that candidate Residents who want the Forum be willing to have all their accounts *deleted* (not just permabanned), and run the site under their RL name(s) (like the Community Linden group, I might add), as the cost of having the keys to ‘Root Admin’ level access. That’s just to start; the NDA/contract involved would be quite interesting too, and probably would include heavy fines. I’d still be willing to do it, even if I was never allowed in anymore.
Why all this extra insanity? Trade Secrets, and User Privacy.
Remember, there is heavy integration of the forum with parts of the SL backend (including databases!), and the safest thing for them to do right now is what they did - Particularly in light of various recent events. This is *not* a problem with a weblog; The big thing they had to do in the move here is to make sure the Linden accounts and the theme moved OK. As they said, there’s some plugin issues but they’re ironing that out.
I can live with things as they are now, and continue to make the occasional suggestion to make things better. Much as I’ve always done…
–Timothy
sungak.net
October 6th, 2006 at 1:29 PM
You don’t have to agree with everything I say - or anything for that matter - but make no mistake in understanding that a lot of people do not like blogs period, not just this one, and it is certainly a very poor replacement for the forums.
I post about many things, and remain within the subject being discussed at all times. I do hope that you will be able to separate the post from the poster, and respond on its merits rather than disregarding things because of the name of the person who posted it.
I choose not to hide behind an alt - like many do - and I am not afraid to say what I believe. My direct style is not everyone’s cup of tea - but it works for me.
Lewis
October 6th, 2006 at 5:07 PM
If you don’t like the blog, don’t read it. Simple enough. The forums weren’t all that popular, and the useful ones stayed, along with Resident Answers, which pretty much is the best of General in terms of informational content.
I *love* the blog. I think that it’s a great method of communication between Lindens and Residents. Really, Resident socialization does need to be handeled by 3rd parties.
October 7th, 2006 at 2:59 PM
Jesse, the forums have been more or less abandoned, and we have no choice except to read the blog if we want to know what’s going on.
The forums got a lot more traffic than this blog, without a doubt.
Lewis
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