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Keila,
the forum can be used for communication and everyone can use it so. It's basically more for debates. It has evolved so in CDS and people are used to that. I post also this kind of information.
About the freeze, I said before I have asked Rose and she admitted she got the message.
There is, I think, some consensus that group notices are the best way to reach those who are in world. As Kas points out, if individual citizens send IM to email, these will show up in an email box. The trickier question is how to contact those who are not inworld. I worry that when Rose says
. In world notices are the ONLY reliable way to get information to the citizens.
there might be an implicit message that only those who are in world a lot matter.
By the way, the Google calendar automatically generates an RSS feed (and an ICAL feed). The RSS feed is at:
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/cd ... blic/basic
Personally I'm a fan of RSS because it's cross platform and cross device and many systems (GCal, Twitter, and others) generate it automatically. I suspect that the portal can do it, although I don't know enough about the back end to be sure. (Doing some additional research, the Portal CMS does support RSS with the use of extensions. ) I also recognize that's a personal preference.
Since our PIO staff ,when we have them, are volunteers or nominally compensated, I can see some point in not expecting them to do a full spread across half a dozen different services.
And my question was, why did you ask Rose, when Rose didn't do it and I did?
I am sure there are people in CDS to who you can address your reproach, but certainly not me.
And yes, in addition to others, you too , and I could add ignored also. I will repost my comments on that if you like.
Arria Perreault wrote:Keila,
the forum can be used for communication and everyone can use it so. It's basically more for debates. It has evolved so in CDS and people are used to that. I post also this kind of information.
About the freeze, I said before I have asked Rose and she admitted she got the message.
and you also say...
The forum is not a tool for communication, but for debate.
Sounds like a contradiction to me..
Claude,
we are really working on improving communication. RSS belongs to this too. We just need a bit of time.
It has always been my perception that decisions in the CDS are made from behind closed doors and by a select few people. This does not mean it is true but there is the appearance of this being true. I am not the only person who has made this observation. It is the duty of the government to operate in a manner to dispel the appearance of wrongdoing. Thus it is not required for the citizens to prove this is not true but the government to prove it is not true. I challenge the government of the CDS` to communicate and communicate the reasons for there decisions in the light of day.
About the freeze, I said before I have asked Rose and she admitted she got the message.
So, it isn't that you didn't know how to get the texture, or who to get it from, or the fact that the winter events were already planned and executed, OR that the term ended less than two weeks later. It is that ROSE doesn't do enough.
The very last thing i would do is add something to December for a sim that while owned by CDS, is run by you. It was ridiculous and unreasonable for you even to ask at that point! You say you wanted it in LA? you were in charge of the events in LA. Or you could have gone to the committee meeting for the Alpine sims when it was held in November and this event could have been considered in due course. EVERYONE knew that i didn't want to handle events anymore, so we created a mechanism for the citizens to do it themselves. My role was to continue with SIM WIDE events... Oktoberfest, Inuagurations, Feria. You can go look at Jamie's post if you think i'm misrepresenting this. But expecting me to JUMP in the middle of December at the end of the term, when it was clear i wasn't in charge, and didn't even DO the ice... well, what exactly is your motivation here?
If i felt like the work i did in CDS was to be done for people who treated their volunteers like this, i'd have left a long time ago. I don't. MOST people in CDS are wonderful, easy to work with and eager to help make CDS a pleasant place to spend leisure time. I note that you couldn't even post Feria, a MAJOR EVENT OF CDS on the CDS calendar or the portal, even after having been asked many times. Your answer was, Rose, you have the power, you do it! Al Andalus represents more than half the sims in CDS and here you are whining about an opening party for a sim which even YOU admit you weren't ready for until too late in the year for it to be done and OFF SIM AT THAT! Furthermore, you've been in charge since February, and the winter went on and on. Why didn't you do it sometime since then?
Believe it or not, they are ALL CDS sims.
Claude, you are right about the calendar. Every day i get email from it that says "you have no events scheduled today." And no, i do not mean that only in world people should get notices... LL at least gives us the opportunity to send those notes to email so it is OUR choice. CDS doesn't give us that ability, though its simply a matter of a few lines of code.
The portal has been in operation a couple of years now and has proved so full of omissions that it is no longer a viable method of communication. When we tried to find a solution, Arria shut it down. I won't bother going there again.
I've posted a bill to improve CDS communications here.
Rose Springvale wrote:4. How many of our CDS citizens, including AA citizens, actually have been approved for the forums? The reports i get are that unless someone is given special treatment and walked through the process, the application to approval process is about 6-1. I'd like to see the ACTUAL numbers of CURRENT citizens, and then i'd love to see the stats on page hits and how the forums are actually used. This might give insight on why some of us hate the forums, while others cling to them.
That's awfully vague. I can only speak for myself, since I get the "such and so has signed up for an account" messages, being on the SC and all, but 99% of the registrations we get are spam accounts. (really obvious ones, too. "iluhfilhfljsbh" is unlikely to be a real person's account name, after all.)
Perhaps it should be specifically noted - and heck, since I'm in a position to fix that I'll get right on it - that it's best to IM a member of the SC inworld or via email so we know you aren't trying to sell us "v!agr@ ch3ap n0w!" but are, in fact, an actual person.
Here's the hard data. Keep in mind that someone can read these forums without having an account, and thus the number of forum participants actually indicates the number of citizens who wish to post, and may exclude those who view the forums as a read only experience.
Considering only those on the most recent official citizen lists:
Total - 131
CDS Forum accounts - 57
AA Group members - 72
CDS Group Members - 87
Here's the overlap
All three - 32
Both in world groups but no forum acct - 18
Forums + AA Group - 1
Forums + CDS Group - 22
Forums only - 2
AA Group only - 21
CDS Group only - 15
NONE - 20
At least now we can be data driven 
Thanks very much Claude. This is interesting.
You can add 18 people who like our page in Facebook and 9 followers in Twitter.
About the issue of Forum registration. I registered, then was not approved. I asked Gwyn -- when I ran into her at a meeting -- and she discovered my request in the spam file. The login? Anna Toussaint, which is of course my name, under which I own land in CDS.
Would it be possible to at least set the filter so it wouldn't exclude known landowners in CDS?
And as a newcomer I ask -- with greatest respect, Pat -- why wouldn't it work like it does RL, where the more communication channels, the greater the dissemination of information?
Anna Toussaint wrote:About the issue of Forum registration. I registered, then was not approved. I asked Gwyn -- when I ran into her at a meeting -- and she discovered my request in the spam file. The login? Anna Toussaint, which is of course my name, under which I own land in CDS.
Would it be possible to at least set the filter so it wouldn't exclude known landowners in CDS?
The CDS forums are actually an instance of phpBB, open source forum software that most people run "off the shelf". Since it's open source, implementing a registration whitelist is almost certainly possible. Just how difficult it is would require some poking through code which I haven't done.
The second issue is keeping the whitelist up to date, Sudane has a script which maintains an up to date list of those who hold land in the five sims of the pre-merger CDS. At the moment, creating a list of landholders in the Andalusian cluster is something that I believe Rose does manually. I don't know whether Sudane's system refers to an external database or makes actual reference to the parcel owner field in SL itself. Nor do I know how much would be involved in deploying it across the Andalusian themed sims.
So the short answer is definitely possible, but perhaps not at all simple.
Thanks so much Caude. This is indeed interesting.
So it seems that only 57 of the 131 citizens are using the forum for debate. Likely, these 57 are the citizens who are returning frequently to the forum to even read the postings. Granted there is no data, only my supposition.
Worse still, only ONE person in only the AA group is also registered with the forum.
I think the forums are a great place to post long explanations, documents and serve an archival role. But for day-to-day communication or even as a preferred method of communicating ideas, they are horrible. Over half the citizens probably have no interest in them. And the majority of that half is probably AA.
Perhaps is it is no wonder that AA seems disengaged from CDS discourse. AA is just not communicating where where influential CDS politicians prefer to communicate. Surely we can all see how this can lead to mistrust between the citizens of the CDS group and AA group.
Obviously, the political leaders and citizens of AA communicate with each other. Lacking a forum, they must be communicating mainly in-world. No doubt building strong in-world relationships, working together and trusting each other.
I must say that my most valued communication with citizens is in-world as well. I do feel that if I know you in-world, I will be more likely to judge if I can trust you. So perhaps if we all made effort to engaged citizens from both sides of the estate line while in-world, and at more than meetings, then we would all learn that we share a great deal.
SL is an in-world experience. The forum can support that experience but is not a substitute for it.
I make a point to be in-world when I post to the forum. True, I might be in my cabin, but I am in world and available. Alas, not this isnstant, as I have crashed and cannot logon.
Tor Karlsvalt,
Eagle Rock Cabin, Alpine Meadow