It's a pity that there's no good place for #
OpenSimulator users to meet and discuss and exchange ideas and such. I guess Google+ used to be one, but when it shut down, people couldn't agree where to go instead. Luckily, they didn't agree upon Facebook instead. But still, the #
OpenSim community ended up largely strewn about.
In order for there to be a healthy discussion and exchange culture, a minimum critical mass of users is required. Small groups can only serve as support groups for common technical issues, for example, but not so much for discussing things. If they're a bit larger, discussion may become possible, but only about whatever is mainstream in that group. Anything that's niche is either too underrepresented, i.e. there may actually be only one group member able and willing to talk about it, or it isn't represented at all. And OpenSim itself is already pretty niche.
If you want to talk about something that's niche within your niche, an overall fairly large group is required. The bigger the group, the bigger each niche, the more likely it becomes for people interested in non-mainstream things to find someone to talk about it. Otherwise, you can post away about your thoughts, seeking a meaningful dialogue about it, but you're completely ignored at best or out-right told that you're wrong or dumb for not doing as everyone does at worst.
Now, when I say "niche", I don't mean weird kinks. In OpenSim, "niche" can be a lot from immersion and realism to preferring or only using legal content. In all these cases, you're likely to be told that you're doing it wrong if you aren't doing it like everyone else, and that you're either clueless or stupid or both.
A big, international OpenSim forum would be nice. Whatever your "niche" interests and topics are, you'd be likely to meet like-minded people. But there is no such thing. What forums there are are either specific to one certain grid each, so you at least have to feel bad for posting about other grids, or only for rather small, tight-knit communities.
#
OpenSimWorld is currently
the OpenSim community hub. But one of its biggest shortcomings is that it's almost total anomy. There is absolutely no moderation whatsoever except for the admin sometimes deleting stuff without saying a word. In fact, there aren't even any community rules because the whole thing was primarily created as a sim catalogue and not so much for user interaction.
Besides, unless some drama erupts somewhere, there's hardly any discussion going on. The forums are being used for advertising events without having to pay gold coins, but hardly for discussion. You can't even be sure to get any help there. There's even a discussion group feature which could be useful for niche topics, but which is hardly used because people don't know that OpenSimWorld has groups in the first place. It is as if the sidebar to the left doesn't even exist for most users.
Also, what doesn't happen on the frontpage or in the chat box counts as not happening at all because nobody notices it. And getting posts onto the frontpage costs gold coins which you have to buy for real money.
In practice, OpenSimWorld is almost entirely about showcasing sims and pushing their rankings, announcing events and the occasional drama erupting from comments.
Some OpenSim users ended up on MeWe. But MeWe has even less meaningful exchange, and it's even more about presentation and less about interaction than OSW. That's also because the OpenSim community on MeWe is so small and inactive that it isn't worth checking the various OpenSim-related pages daily. Thus, you can't get discussions going, for even if you get a reply to anything, you get it after a couple of weeks or months.
Only few OpenSim users have found their way into the Fediverse so far. The main gateway for OpenSim users into the Fediverse is through #
WolfTerritoriesGrid and OpenSimSocial, so everyone who doesn't enter the Fediverse there is even more of a proverbial lone wolf than Lone Wolf himself because connections from there to the outside Fediverse take their time, if they happen at all.
Still, regardless of which instance OpenSim users are on, they hardly have any interaction. It's extremely rare that I see even one measly comment on OpenSim posts.
Interestingly,
there's an OpenSim community forum on #
Hubzilla with connections from all over the place, from Mastodon to Diaspora*. Unfortunately, it's dead. New connections have to be confirmed by the owner who hasn't shown up in ages, so you can't even hijack and revive it. By the way: It was named "Metaverse Community Forum" years before Zuckerberg claimed to have invented the #
Metaverse.
For topics that aren't OpenSim-specific, it might sound like a good idea to join a community that isn't OpenSim-specific. I'm not too sure it is one, though.
First of all, you can forget any place that only talks about #
VirtualWorlds that are too different from OpenSim in structure and UX. If you have to explain how #
SecondLife works and then that OpenSim works the same whenever you want to talk about it because people can't imagine what having an inventory or modular, configurable avatars is like, then you're in the wrong place. Even more so if the general consensus is that virtual worlds absolutely require blockchains, cryptocurrencies and NFTs, because those communities aren't really about 3-D worlds, they're all about making lots of money through crypto and NFTs while claiming to have a halfway working 3-D world.
Speaking of Second Life, one of the biggest forums about virtual worlds is the official
Second Life Community forum. But neither Linden Labs nor the other users will tolerate people joining and then never talking about Second Life itself, but instead about something that's actually direct competition to Second Life and, unfortunately, living on pirated Second Life content being distributed for free.
However, there's also
virtualverse.one. It's a general discussion board about virtual worlds that even has an OpenSim subforum. Yes, it's very Second Life-centric, it's more about Second Life than anything else, but talking about certain topics with Second Life users is likely to be a lot easier than with, what, Horizon or Roblox or VRchat users.
There's still the risk of Second Life users shunning OpenSim users for reasons such as being pirates/supporting piracy or not using "the real deal" or something. And there's certainly the risk that Second Life users completely ignore the Virtual World General because they're only interested in Second Life and nothing else. Not to mention that it's very hard to talk about OpenSim-specific topics if only few people there use OpenSim in the first place.
Also, virtualverse.one has a reputation of being a shitposting hive. It sometimes does have that certain "4chan before Anonymous became the good guys" vibe. But then again, since I occasionally communicate through memes myself when that's easier than writing out what I'm thinking, that doesn't have to be too bad as long as it's still possible to have a meaningful discussion there.
