Moderator: SC Moderators
Also, a few questions:
Is there any safeguard to keep people from spoofing an SL member? I have my approval process via SL IM, but this seems to be a straightforward registration.
Are there any plans to "nationalize" the Wiki as well? I had a proposal regarding my own, unofficial forum, but having this one makes it unneeded. I ask only because it might seem a little odd to have the public reference for the laws of Neualtenburg in the hands of an infamous scofflaw and anarchist such as m'self. 
hehe... I'm not aware there ever has been an "official" forum. There's just what people use... which is the SL one. It has its limitations, as mentioned in the email to everyone, so we're throwing out new tools as possibilities.... see how they fly.
The only "safeguard" is the conviction that the members of the SC ought to moderate the forum. Re:.. spoofing a member... not that I'm aware of. But, again, just lauching something to see how it works.
As far as the "public reference" of the City being in the hands of an "infamous scofflaw and anarchist"... I guess we're assuming that in this transitional period, where plans for a proper site and associated tools are still in abeyance... I guess we're assuming that that anarchist will be kind enough to keep her site up and restrain the urge to burn everything... (that's what anarchists usually do, right?)....
Sudane
[quote="Sudane Erato":2m80kuso]
As far as the "public reference" of the City being in the hands of an "infamous scofflaw and anarchist"... I guess we're assuming that in this transitional period, where plans for a proper site and associated tools are still in abeyance... I guess we're assuming that that anarchist will be kind enough to keep her site up and restrain the urge to burn everything... (that's what anarchists usually do, right?)....
[/quote:2m80kuso]
Hee! Not this one - [i:2m80kuso]rational[/i:2m80kuso] anarchist, remember.
Of course I don't have any plans to pull it down (it's not as if it uses enough bandwidth to matter!) but [i:2m80kuso]somebody's[/i:2m80kuso] got to be the paranoid one around here.
Mainly was wanting to see if the time has come to pull my own forum down. Since this one is still being "shook-down" I'll leave it up for the time being.
[quote="Aliasi Stonebender":2f1muzjc]Also, a few questions:
Is there any safeguard to keep people from spoofing an SL member? I have my approval process via SL IM, but this seems to be a straightforward registration.
[/quote:2f1muzjc]
I'm with Aliasi on this one. Although it's fine to keep the entire forum world viewable ,we may want to make some forums where only citizens may post (to parallel current in world meeting procedure). In order to do that we need to be able to verify the identity of at least some forum members.
[quote="Claude Desmoulins":26ker6dd][quote="Aliasi Stonebender":26ker6dd]Also, a few questions:
Is there any safeguard to keep people from spoofing an SL member? I have my approval process via SL IM, but this seems to be a straightforward registration.
[/quote:26ker6dd]
I'm with Aliasi on this one. Although it's fine to keep the entire forum world viewable ,we may want to make some forums where only citizens may post (to parallel current in world meeting procedure). In order to do that we need to be able to verify the identity of at least some forum members.[/quote:26ker6dd]
Not just that - I could, f'instance, register for an account and falsely post under their name. This strikes me as not desirable.
... hmm, good point. I have to think a bit about it. It might be possible to have a "registration facility" to somehow check the avatar in-world and register online. Since we now have easy ways to make HTTP requests from in-world, it might not be [i:3aqb59fr]too[/i:3aqb59fr] difficult...
"I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country."
-- Philip "Linden" Rosedale, interview to Wired, 2004-05-08
PGP Fingerprint: CE8A 6006 B611 850F 1275 72BA D93E AA3D C4B3 E1CB
[quote="Gwyneth Llewelyn":2579bt54]... hmm, good point. I have to think a bit about it. It might be possible to have a "registration facility" to somehow check the avatar in-world and register online. Since we now have easy ways to make HTTP requests from in-world, it might not be [i:2579bt54]too[/i:2579bt54] difficult...[/quote:2579bt54]
You might want to talk with Foolish Frost, who did just this thing for the SL-Drama forum he had up for a brief time.
Otherwise, you could just do what I did and require accounts to be approved by a moderator.
[quote="Gwyneth Llewelyn":26bj8ho7]... hmm, good point. I have to think a bit about it. It might be possible to have a "registration facility" to somehow check the avatar in-world and register online. Since we now have easy ways to make HTTP requests from in-world, it might not be [i:26bj8ho7]too[/i:26bj8ho7] difficult...[/quote:26bj8ho7]
A moderator could send an IM to the avatar in question, maybe asking them a short question (officially posted on this website somewhere) for purposes of ID correlation. If the individual receiving the IM is puzzled, you may have a spoofer on the forum.
I agree with all the points made by previous posters on the need to check ids when registering.
It's good that we have a forum that can be put under the control of the City but I think that we lose something by departing from the LL forums completely. Now that it's clear that the 'Neualtenburg Projekt' forum is not going to be 'ours' what's to stop us from setting up a new LL 'City of Neualtenburg' forum?
I think we need to have a presence on the LL forums in order to retain contact with the wider SL community. Do we really want all discussion of things 'Neualtenburgish' on the main LL forums to be in the hands of people who are no longer involved with the City?
[quote="Patroklus Murakami":36hn6ye5]I agree with all the points made by previous posters on the need to check ids when registering.
It's good that we have a forum that can be put under the control of the City but I think that we lose something by departing from the LL forums completely. Now that it's clear that the 'Neualtenburg Projekt' forum is not going to be 'ours' what's to stop us from setting up a new LL 'City of Neualtenburg' forum?
I think we need to have a presence on the LL forums in order to retain contact with the wider SL community. Do we really want all discussion of things 'Neualtenburgish' on the main LL forums to be in the hands of people who are no longer involved with the City?[/quote:36hn6ye5]
I agree with you Patroklus that it would be desirable to have an LL forum to serve as our publicity outlet with regard to the SL community at large. I also agree with you that it is not feasible to have an LL forum carrying our name under the control of 'people who are no longer involved with the city'.
However, the experience from my brief period as an active moderator of the LL Neualtenburg forum has revealed to me that the kind of forums that Linden Lab offers for use by residents are in no way usable for groups experimenting with democratic governance or who want to set their own standards regarding moderation:
1) The founder of an LL group forum will always be in de facto control of the forum since it is apparently LL policy to revert moderation of the forum back to the original requester / group founder whenever they ask. Even if this same person has not been involved with the project for half a year and has absolutely no democratic mandate to make such a request.
2) As the moderator of an LL forum you do not have the power to ban people from the forum. You can only delete their posts. This is in my view extremely useless and flies in the face of an ambition to create a positive and constructive atmosphere in a discussion forum. I do not want to alter, modify or delete other people's posts. I do however wish people to moderate themselves with the knowledge that should they fail to do so, they will no longer be able to contribute.
Sadly, LL forum policy is completely unhelpful on these two counts.
I believe that we should strive to learn from the experience of having our forum taken from us by people who no longer have any involvement with the sim or the community with Linden Lab as an eager accomplice.
Therefore, my recommendation is that we strive to keep the forum at all times under the collective control of the SC and no one else. Furthermore, I recommend that we consider changing the name of our community as soon as possible since it is not desirab le to have a forum sitting on the secondlife.com website carrying our name but being outside the power of the SC to moderate.