Not quite goodbye

There was a blog, a well-known blog, that I used to follow. It has something to do with my job, and it was very active. It was updated more than twice a day. I didn't really like it, but I felt like I was supposed to read it.

After a while I began to realize that I wasn't getting anything out of it. It didn't have any news I hadn't already seen. Nothing there was was memorable or helpful.

So one day, I quit following it.

No big deal, of course... but as I said, in my line of work it's a well-known blog, so I really had to ask myself Am I making a mistake? Will I miss anything if I don't read it?

But in the end, I just said the hell with it.

I'm nearly at that point with the Second Life Forums.

I know that I ought to read it. After all, Lindens do pop up there. I've even had an exchange of posts with M Linden himself. There are a lot of residents who are very smart and helpful, and some who are quite funny.

On the other hand, there's a lot that's wrong there.

On the technical side, the forum software is missing a lot of basic functionality. It's hard to use. It's hard to get around. It's hard to follow threads without setting a bunch of bookmarks. And even when you do that, you have to open ALL the bookmarks to see if those threads are updated.

I've written a bunch of scripts to make it easier to use. It was fun; it helped make the forums interesting. But it's not enough any more.

I began working out a sort of proxy or wrapper for the forums: it would be a read-only website that let you see what was updated since you'd last viewed the site, and allow you to subscribe to threads. If you wanted to post something, or edit your posts, it would pass you through to the real forum.

None of that would be difficult to do, but I'm not sure that it would be worth the trouble.

In addition to the technical problems, there are problems on the human side. There is a group of people who weren't at the old forums, or maybe they weren't very active. They made their home at the new place before the old forums were merged in. They are very hostile to people from the old forums (like me). If you say you don't like anything, anything at all, they heap you with scorn and abuse and tell you to either shut up or leave.

Usually I wouldn't care. I'd just take my place and let them complain. The thing is, the place isn't really worth it. It's not as though it's a place I'd want to call home.

I'm not ready to say goodbye to the new forums, but every day I'm getting closer to it.

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