April 16, 2013

My post in Second Life Forums gets deleted by mods

So I made a short post in the Second Life Forums General Discussion section that linked to my blog article titled "Linden Lab losing focus?". Almost a week after I put it up, the topic was suddenly removed by a moderator along with some 20 replies. And the replies were as interesting and divergent as one could want including several pro-Linden Lab perspectives.

The reason I was given for the removal (in PM) was that I had linked to a third-party website (my blog) which was a violation of the Community Guidelines. Well feel free to read them yourself. I couldn't find a single thing mentioning third-party websites or otherwise -- only that one can't put up a link to something that promotes a product or service.

Now I have done this in the past -- put up a post with a few comments and a link to the full article on a topic. Sometimes it's my blog, sometimes it's someone else's or even a news article. Others do it too, often blatantly commercial. It's kinda like why in the hell bother with a URL feature in the Forums if you can't use it!

Plus, as most of you who follow me know, I don't even have this blog monetized for ads. It's strictly something I do for fun.

So hmmmm. I suspect it was more the fact that the TOPIC was negative about Linden Lab. OK, that's fine. I could actually somewhat respect that as the decision factor. But couching the topic deletion in non-existent Community Guidelines was, IMHO, lame.

So does anyone know what the moderator structure of the Forums is? I can't figure out who has mod rights and where you might appeal. I asked the moderator who pulled the post directly why it was a violation when there was nothing in the guidelines suggesting it was.

No reply so far.


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