Disappointment with Teen Town Hall Answers

I thought the answers at tonights meeting were vague, sarcastic and condecending.

LL is biting off way more than they can chew here, and for what? MONEY. Nothing less.

Expect errosion of CS and other services.

seriosly.... Why worry so much about the kids having mature content.... The teen grid shouldn't be *all* PG... But that would be probably against the law in some states somehow...

The more you supress that stuff at a young age the more issues you will have later on in life.

The fact is, these are pixels... the really dirty stuff happens in the imaginations of the players and that will happen regardless of a PG rating or not.

I know this thread has gotten a little hot with some of the responses - but respectfully, Robin - I think believing that teens would prefer to be on a teen grid is being somewhat naiive. If I look back to how I would have felt as a rebellious teen, hearing "stories and rumors" about the adult grid would just make me want to visit it more. You should see the crazy rumors that make it around my office... less mature kids are going to tell even wilder stories.

All I can say is look at it this way: I'm assuming you're basing your infiormation on talking to teens that don't currently use the adult grid. Because "stealth teens" put themselves in jeoprady simply by speaking to a linden as a teen in the aduilt grid, you're never going to get their perspective. Based upon my own observations, and purely unscientificly, I'd guess the "stealth teen" population on the adult grid is around 5%. If I'm correct, that's 750 teens roaming around on the adult grid right now. They're not all bad - but the bad ones can cause some of the worst grief and hassle. And you (LL) aren't even aware they're teens.

I posted before on this topic... I'd feel a lot better about opening the teen grid if it was done in tandem with new anti-grief land tools being released by LL. I know when I was a teen, I wanted to do "adult" things despite the fact that there were "teen" things available to me. And if an adult were to ask me my opinion on the subject, frankly, at that age - I wouldn't have been honest about what I really wanted, and would have told the adult what they wanted to hear.


Travis

What to say what to say...........

This is an extremely hard topic to peg one way or the other, especially since none of us, including the folks at LL, can see into the future with absolute clarity. There are merits for both arguments about the Teen-Grid and to be honest a lot of points brought up are very accurate. Cris did ask a very legit question and while I would say that the reply was a little to "pat" for my taste, the "playboy" remark was one of an analogy instead of the "most" that will be discovered I felt.

What worries me the most however is that LL believes that the Teen's will be content to stay where they are and just simply go with the flow so to speak. That is a disaster just waiting to happen. haven’t you ever heard of the phrase "the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill"? Well from there perspective (the teen-grid) our SL grid is going to look VERY green and inviting. Teens are some of the most original and creative thinkers on the planet (while at the same time not the wisest) and some of them are the BEST hackers in existence!

Teens will get away with stuff simply because some of them will NEVER be reported. They are in our grid and some DO get away with being there right under LL nose. If they can get away with it on OUR own turf, how much easier do you think it will be for them to get away with it there own one with mostly other teens around them. My father (who is 83 on the 25th) use to say this:

"If you want something to screw up, just find a teenager and let them gum up the works. It works every time."

Human nature dictates that we strive to grab that brass ring and will do anything to get it (most of the time), and that not only applies to us as adults, but to teens as well. It is totally naive to think that the teen-grid will have little or no impact on the adult grid. The teen-grid haven’t even opened yet and see what effect it is having now just on these forums alone. I for one am opposed to the grid in the first place because I enjoy playing SL with adults, not kids who can't even spell the word wisdom. SL is called second life, NOT second life adult, or second life teen. When teens are officially allowed to play SECOND LIFE for me the magic and unique aspects of this game will no longer apply because it will no longer be just for adults anymore, and that will be a day I light a candle to once was..........

And for the record, Cris DOES know what TSO is like now, seeing as I myself showed him just how bad it has become shortly after I arrived in SL. I still remember the line spoken by him "Oh God please make it stop. Please make it stop." quite fondly. Cris knows TSO, as do I and a whole lot of former players believe you me.

In the end, the teen-grid may or may not work out, but one thing is a given; it's gona be F.U.B.A.R. 'd....... I just pray we don't get F.U.B.A.R. 'd with it is all. Oh and one more thing; A friendly warning. If I find any 14 year old in our grid after the teen-grid opens, I am going to have then say hello to my little friend, and blow there as* back where they came from!!! Stay in your own Grid, and we will stay in ours and all will be well by me, but if you come and crap in my (our) "backyard" I will personally cut your AV nose off and sell it for a profit!!!

How much $$$ do you think I can get for a rare teen nose anyways? $500L perhaps? LOL

I hope you do a great job at this LL, and I think you may, but please remember something my friends. You may be watching them closely, but WE are also watching you....... Best wish's and good luck folks; your going to need it............

Power to LL............


"There is no such thing as fun for the whole family." - Jerry Seinfeld

"What is, is." - Cable

They should just make a que of textures and sounds uploaded and monitor them as there added.. Assuming someone is there doing the monitoring then loading textures/sounds should load just about instantly.. spend about 2-3 seconds per texture.. Numbers wise I think it should be possible.. Would kinda suck being the linden who had that job, but at least id be easy

I am still flabbergasted by this entire enterprise. For one thing, children are not legally able to enter into a contract. Basically what that means is a child can buy a $3000 camera, throw it on the ground then hand the pieces back and demand a refund and would be legally right to do so. Using the credit card means there is an adult somewhere in the mix but the legal nightmare this could cause will keep lawyers busy for years.

As any big city policeman will tell you, the moment they learn of the location of a crack house they will raid it and send the drug traffickers to jail. This sounds great but then why are there so many crack houses in most cities? Ask yourself how much crime goes on unseen simply because there aren't cops on every corner. It's not so much sex between the teens as it is 38 year old Pervis Chickenhawk cruising for some young meat. He gets caught? Well, that $10 got him 5 leads on some local girls so it was money well spent.

Another concern is the fact that parents aren't allowed into the game to check on thier kids even though they are legally responsible for what ever content they have created in game. This could lead to lots of problems, the biggest is copyright violations. Little Johnny has Metallica album covers uploaded and plastered all over his walls and is wearing a Marvel Comics Wolverine costume and someone sues. The parents don't know because they aren't allowed in the game to check. If you don't think this can happen, just look over to City of Heros and the lawsuit brought by Marvel Comics in the last couple of weeks.

Another thing, land tiers. I can see it now, kids being confused about how it works and mommy and daddy finding $190 land tier because little joey thought it was play money they were asking for in the dialoge box. I know this will happen because it happened to my 42 year old sister. Hell, a lot of adults find it bewildering.

I am also wondering why resources are being diverted to the kiddie grid when we still have constant crashing, numerious relogs, mangled permissions, camera jumping while editing, etc. etc.


I think Phillip needs to read, "Lord of the Flies"

Mmmm, Cristiano, I am not that much concerned about teens secretly do kinky thing with teens. It is something that happen in RL now all the time.

However, I completely disagree with Robin thinking that Linden Lab can prevent adults from play on teen grid. There is no, absolutely no way control this. Especially in case of parent accessing the grid Linden Lab do not have any method to find out who actually use the account.

It is also obvious to me that teen grid will drag down economy and L$ value if teen money supply is same as main grid money supply. Maybe it will remain small and we won't notice much. Maybe not. Fact is that teen usually have more time and less money. So if you look at main grid and teen grid, then in long run logical result should be trade deficit where teen produce more than consume, cheaper teen labour economy working for adult economy with stronger influx of RL money. I would expect average teen spend more time on produce things, export to main grid, earn L$ and sell L$ on GOM to adults with RL money. So if Linden Lab want keep L$ value stable should be very careful how many L$ they add to economy for each teen.

Exactly this will happen.



I also thought this. Is it even legal what Linden Lab is doing? I think at least in some countries it may be in violation with law to shut out parents from this environment. Of course Linden Lab may say that parents could watch teen playing. Mmmm, so if my nephew play on teeny grid, am I allowed sit next to him and watch him do whatever? Is it against TOS if I grab that mouse to scroll through his inventory because he may have lied to me about that Metallica album? Ouch! Then I would be using teeny account, right? Mmmm, I think this need some more thought...



Another thing I have been thinking as well. It may be reasonable to limit land ownership on teeny grid to something compatible to normal teeny budgets.



I am not worried about this. Linden Lab hired new staff, so should be fine. Lindens are not one limited resource but can be increased almost indefinitely by have human resources Lindens and investor Lindens breed new Lindens

A couple of thoughts..

The teen grid isn't going to suddenly launch on day 1 with five thousand pumped up teens running around. The point is that as with adult SL, the numbers will grow slowly and there will be ample time to watch and adapt as the teen population grows.

For the most part SL attracts a very definite demographic, and it is a very different demographic to the FPS games. The teen grid will be likewise, and I strongly suspect that Linden will be dealing with the more intelligent, more mature end of the scale as far as it goes.

Bluntly, if a teen is on SL, they are already on an internet enabled PC - and all the filth and fleshtones that the net can provide are available to them. None of the kiddy protection apps have ever really stopped this unless they ban all websites other than disney and cartoon network. So to some extent, parental control has already been exercised and right or wrong, that teen has been trusted by their parents.

In the UK and Europe, most children do SexEd classes aged 11 or 12, and the teenagers I know are really very streetwise indeed. Those with net access even more so.

I really think that SL has a huge amount to offer teens, especially creative, imaginative ones. And the situation is totally manageable, scaleable, and so on. Just as a teacher in class will confiscate illicit material, so the liaisons will deal with things as they arise. You can't wrap young adults up in cotton wool, sooner or later life and all of its flavour will land on them. At least in SL:TEEN they will have to wait for it to rez.

I just hope we at least get to see some of the creations they come up with periodically, as it will be really interesting.


Jai

As an enabling technology for kids to get themselves into trouble, SL is hardly novel.

All those who are waving their hands asking "what about the children and the sky falling on their heads?" are imbuing kid-grid with some magical heretofore unknown properties for degradation. We've got trouble my friend, Trouble right here in Linden City! Trouble with a capital T which rhymes with G which stands for Grid.

Yes, the issue of pedophilic predation exists, but there have been venues for people of that perversion for millenia and the real statistics for such events are really guite low despite the media feeding frenzy and the rants of politicians who think the internet scary. Want some examples? How about AIM/YM/IRC? How about abarrant scoutmasters, clergy, teachers, or just about anyone who can self-select themselves to work unsupervised with children.

It has been shown repeatedly that people have terrible intuitions about events of very low probability (e.g. Peter Neuman) it has also been shown that bad things perpetuated against anyone is overwhelmingly by someone they already know (e.g. Daly & Wilson). I have a daughter whom I care greatly about. The order of risks that I fear for her are (in decending logarithmic likelihood) are: car accidents, disease, mean peers, being struck by lightning, winning the lottery, being shot at school, being abducted. The last three are so unlikely as to be immesurably close to zero. My daughter surfs the web, sends e-mail, even has her own web site; she is seven. During the course of reading Laura Ingals Wilder books, the question of why "Mama doesn't want [13 year old] Laura to go near the 'rough men who are building the railroad'?" spawned an excellent discussion about people who might either seduce or force sex upon Laura and why that was to be avoided.

My daughter knows how to surf safely, she knows what information she can disclose and what she can't and why. I also do keep an eye on her online pursuits as I do her friendships and other interactions. I've even taken her on *gasp* tours of SL. There is nothing on the main grid that I would fear her seeing. I've also seen adults mindfuck each other pretty badly on the main grid. Such is life.

I've seen 15 year old relatives have 22 simultaneous AIM sessions. This kid is the antithesis of asocial but at 10pm on a Thurday night, where is she better off? Cruising around with friends saying "whadda you wanna do, dunno, you?" or in the bosom of her home talking to her friends (where the conversation is much like "whatcha doing?" "nothing. lol"? I spent some brief time in There (but won't admit to it). What did the kids talk about? Nothing. I've seen girls gossipped about viciously in school because they had the poor taste to develop breasts before their peers. Is there vProstitution in TSO? Probably. Does it lead to RL prostitution? Doubtful.

There are two things that I find most humorous about the kid-grid FUD: the most vociferous in opposition have (to my knowledge) no children and are guys worrying about what boys are going to in TSL. The other is that weapons on kid-grid are cool but pr0n isn't. Oh, and reporting predation to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a little misguided as the majority of the milk-carton kids have actually been taken by a non-custodial parent and not the mythical kid-snatchers. If there is a real offense, report it to real authorities.

Gotta figure out a way to keep the young ones moral after school. My suggestion? Pay attention to em, talk to em. Teach your children well, and feed them on your dreams, and those whose parents would do otherwise would likely find trouble kid-grid or not and there ain't nothing you can do about it.

I think Linden Labs will have to repspond to any complaints quickly regarding Porn on the Teen Grid. And im sure they know what may happen in regards to the law if they do not. They will find out soon enough im sure. The weight is on their shoulders. Let them carry it. They have lawyers and advisors.

Anything that the mind can conceive is possible, even in a virtual reality; things that happen in Real Life will mirror to Virtual Life. There just needs to be a quick response from the Virtual 911.

I do agree that some of the answers were a bit vague Cris. And seemed to be a bit blow offish (if that is even a word). I would have liked to have seen some more concrete answers and guarantees that would ease player concerns. Even concerns I do not agree with, it still would have been nice for Robin to be a bit more understanding and clear. We are a community of passionate people after all. And we care deeply about this world. It is not a lash out at LL to question them. We only want reassurances. At this point, it is clear to me that since many of the answer were vague, that LL is still deciding on how to handle some issues, and that they will be playing it by ear on a lot of things. I hope that method doesn't bite them in the butt, but I'll keep the faith.

That said, as far as my feelings on the Teen Grid go, I would have to say that the last posts by Jai and Malachi above sum up my thoughts pretty well. Of course, I am also not opposed to teens seeing nudity, but that is another issue all together. I personally think the teen grid is going to be a great asset to many teens and to SL. I will never agree that the two worlds should mix, and that is one issue I will stand firm on. I also hope that LL keeps an open mind about hiring more staff as needed so that neither grid suffers from the weight of needed support that just isn't available.

My experiences of town halls are that they are all marketing banter and bluster with very little actual content, or very little in the way of direct responses. I see this one was little different. They are simply a marketing exercise, to make the community "feel" that they're being listened to. If you actually think that they're anything other than this, they've achieved what they set out to do. I don't believe they're actually particularly interested in what you have to say (sure there may be the odd thing they take away), they're more interested in giving the impression that they're involving the community. The decisions have already been made the way they want to make them.

I just find them full of a lot of hot air and fairly pointless above just disseminating company plans on development.

My fears aren't for the teens, they're more adaptable than we think. My concerns are for the adults who will, despite the looming threat of dual-grid ban, try to exploit a new market. Its just a reality that I think will become more prevalent as time goes on. I'd love to be proven wrong, as well.

I do look forward to seeing (through whatever sanctioned means) what they come up with. Could be pretty cool.

i dunno. i've told two about it and they seem to have another hundred waiting in the wings. i wonder how many more the hundred have pumped up. they communicate things like this very quickly. and this is very way like totally cool stuff. unless ll limit the number of accounts that can be added weekly (NOT), i think they may well see a couple of thousand unique accounts the first few days and a couple more over the first month.

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13 year olds having relationships with 17 year olds… LL relying on pedophiles to be honest and not infiltrate teeny SL… Creating an easily accessible venue for pedophiles to form relationships with kids and luring them into RL situations… Parents not being allowed to access teeny SL and see what their kid is up to… Kids not being legally liable to any TOS contract they agree to…

LL you had better have an army of expensive, talented lawyers!

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A huge time-bomb is now ticking under all of us and will bring all of SL down when the first lawsuit is filed with the subsequent press covering of how a pedophile infiltrated teeny SL and did horrible things to somebody’s kid. Is it REALLY worth it LL?

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And for Malachi, I married and a parent and am certainly not just “worrying about what boys are going to in TSL”. The fact that Cristiano or anyone else who opposes this doesn’t have kids is not a factor in this conversation. I fail to see your point.

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Bingo! Parents should not be using the internet as their babysitter any more than they should be using the TV as such.

The biggest problem I had with kids on the main grid was that in 90% of the circumstances they would not be supervised by their parent and it is THAT parent who will be the first to sue LL when their kids avatar is caught wearing a giant penis on their head.

I also agree that there is no cure for a disease that does not exist. We cannot predict exactly how the teens will do with their own grid because WE are not teens any more (at least most of us arent... ok lets leave it at we are not supposed to be).

I think we will just have to wait and see how it works out.

The card holder will be asked to confirm tier increases on the web sites before land sales complete (as happens with regular Second Life, anyway). Little Joey won't be able to increase his tier unless a parent logs in to approve it first.

Brilliant post Malachi! Especially the above. You nailed it.

Exactly!

And furthermore, the sentiments of some of the posters is a symptom of a greater illness of our age. The parents who expect the rest of the world to be child-proof only wish to remove all responsibility for their childs actions from themselves. These parents need to wake up and raise their own children. It amazes me how the media is always to blame for the actions of the children and the predators. The internet doesn't cause children to access porn sites but the fact that the children have private pc's or laptops in their bedroom with no adult supervision does cause children to seek out the taboo. A game will not cause children to be subjected to perverts but parents who think it is an inconvenience to check over their childs shoulder and ask questions about what they are doing and who they are doing it with does allow perverts to have access to their child. Who is to say that the sort of perversion feared could not happen in ToonTown? Maybe if parents decided that their child could have x number of hours to play on the net on a pc in a living area where the children can be monitored then we wouldn't have this problem.

But again it is so much easier to blame everyone else for a child's misdeeds than it is for the parents to blame themselves and change the situation in their own homes instead of trying to change the world making everyone else accountable for being unwilling to change. So take the pc out of the kids room (along with the tv's and stereo's) put them in the family room and watch what the kids are doing and with whom.

Pedophiles can be in any game.

How does that fact change anything? I know one thing... they will not be in teeny SL if it is never created. You can't dispute that fact.

the number one question I wanted to ask :

If we can sell stuff on their grid, and they can sell stuff on our grid then it may as well be the same grid since we can access each other's profiles as soon as this starts happening. Will IM's be impossible? Would it be impossible to pass items through the profiles?

I for one dont think we should have any contact at all. Let the main grid be a mystery until they are 18.

Seriously though,

----Best Case Scenario----
If there is NO communication but we can exchange items, how do we handle customer service that isn't even in the same grid? What if something goes out to the other grid and a permission bug pops up, how do you Save yourself from having your work distributed in a way you do not intend?

----Worst Case Scenario----
do you want to be bothered constantly by 16 year olds that happens to have your profile handy from some object you made? Most of the people on the main grid are annoying enough *looks around, ducks*

Do you think the idea of some pervert from the main grid having teen's profiles to access is going to make mom and dad sleep soundly? IM from Pervotastica Altman 'Hey little girl, did you like the horse sex pictures I sent ya? you said you like ponies'

OMG if we have their profile, can we TP them or they us? (JOIN US IN KLUB HAWT SEX0RZ WE NED DWELLL!! -accept- -decline-)
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If the possibility to exchange goods is made available, I strongly suggest against anyone acting on it... very strongly. DO NOT EXCHANGE ITEMS BETWEEN GRIDS

I want a concrete answer that says there will be no work-arounds and exploits, I want to KNOW that either there will be no content exchange or that both grids will be protected from each other in Objects, Clothing, Textures, IM, TP, etc.

ALLOWING THE EXCHANGE OF CONTENT IS ASKING FOR TROUBLE, TELL ME ABOUT FAILSAFE FEATURES THAT PROTECT ALL OF OUR ASSES

Neither would anyone else

Besides, I dont see lawsuits being carried out agianst AOL for IM conversations and chat room conversations. Dispute that.

Agreed Ferran, nice post. If you just have to do it give them some free stuff to start with but thats it. They will figure out the rest.