Linden Lab turning back the clock on the blog

Way back when, Linden Lab staffers had a bunch of blogs for talking about what they were doing at work and involving Second Life (though most readers just followed the combined blog aggregator that gave them the whole kaboodle). The Lab decided that blog communications were old-hat, and mostly abandoned the blogs, limiting important announcements on the forums, where only registered users could access them. This was considered an unpopular move.

The forums themselves became increasingly unmanageable, however, until — with approximately 600 active forums users — the workload for Linden Lab became too much to handle (even with the assistance of volunteer moderators), and they began to shut chunks of the forums down, and instead focused on a single blog with a limited opportunity for people to comment. This was also considered an unpopular move.

Then grid status, problem and outage reports were moved off to their own comment-free blog, in what was widely regarded as an unpopular move. Try to ignore the emerging pattern. We'll get back to that.

Later on it was announced that the blog would be restructured, essentially going back to the old ways. The current single blog "no longer serving people's individual needs". A number of requirements were outlined for the new blog system (all of which are within the capabilities of the current WordPress blog setup). After that, very little was seen on the main blog for a while other than a series of press-releases largely touting the successes of the Lab, though a broader mix of content has started to appear again recently.

Nevertheless, what we essentially have coming up (and is slated for a launch on Thursday, 19 February) is a return to the old blog days. Multiple blogs, probably an aggregate too. Though it is likely that some sections may not be available to the broader public eye.

It's 2005 all over again, and the Lab's blogging will seem to have come full-circle.

Will this also end up being an unpopular move? Statistically, it is hard to argue that it won't be. Every time the Lab alters communications, it seems to draw more criticism each time.