The New Second Life Community Platform, With Ranking System

On Tuesday, somewhat overshadowed by their decision to act against Redzone, Linden Labs through Vogt Linden announced the launch of their “new and much improved Community website.”

Today, we are pleased to launch the new, and much improved, Second Life Community website. The new platform integrates Blogs, Forums, Answers, and the Knowledge Base into one powerful integrated system that enables you to more efficiently leverage the power and knowledge of the community. We have also redesigned the Customer Support Portal around this platform to make it easy to find the most relevant answers to your technical support and customer service questions online or to contact us when your issues are more complex.

The announcement had a Youtube from Torley Linden describing what’s new with the forums. This includes “a smarter SL Answers” section, a detailed FAQ area, a “unified search,” and “contribution based roles.”

You will notice that each person in Second Life has a role, or rank, based on his or her contributions to the platform. The roles start at Resident and go up to Helper and with each rank comes more capabilities. So, keep those contributions coming and watch your community platform ranking rise.

This ranking system has been getting some chatter among Second Life bloggers. It’s been compared to the leveling system MORPGs use. Hamlet Au, whom admitted he’s long wanted something like that on the Grid, was “pleased to see this baby step in that direction,” feeling what was needed next was to make these ranks visible inworld. Tateru Nino disagreed, feeling at best it wouldn’t change behavior much and at worst pointing out Second Life’s earlier achievements system was judged not to work and finally scrapped.

Personally, I can see how these ranks would serve a purpose on the community board, but not inworld. In a sense, we already have our own inworld “achievement system” in which talented residents become successful content creators and scriptors, DJs and musicians, combat RP aces, and of course hotshot news reporters.

Feedback from posters was overall positive, though some people did express missing the avatar profile pictures on the old blog.

To read the blog entry and comments: Click Here.


Bixyl Shuftan