Bad news of the day: They're thinking of merging the Teen Grid into the main one

i can't count how many times i have heard this silly phrase..it was always our plan from the beginning..thats just bullshit..
why don't they lay out their plan right out there so before we decide to invest anything in here we can see what the agenda is instead of all these freaking..it was our intention all along suprizes.

more like tell them what they want to hear until we don't need them anymore..lets do this and start phase 5 now..
Bleh
i can see why so many look for other places now..this feels like someone punch me in the tummy.

WE CAN'T HAVE THAT! WE DON'T NEED KIDS IN THESE CLUBS OR ANYWHERE ELSE THERE IS MATURE CONTENT! THAT'S CRAZY!

One big thing could be: block underage accounts from even accessing voice since it can not be monitored.

It wouldn't surprise me, but at the same time it would probably be a horrible business move. The Sex Industry in SL Is hug and unless it is guaranteed that by eliminating any XXX subjects they can still make just as much $$ or more they won't make that move.

I don't see how that article is relevant. The teen grid is separate not to prevent adults from pretending to be teens, but to separate adults and teens entirely.

Even ignoring sexual predators entirely, there's the issue of teens pretending to be adults, having online sexual encounters with real adults who simply assume that since teens aren't allowed on the main grid, that there aren't any. I guarantee it's happened to more people than you'd care to imagine.

I dont see why they cant allow access to the teen grid by approved adult avatars..
ie parents, educators and those that need to be there.

Personally i think this would be much easier and safer and wouldnt create the mess that a change to a PG grid would.

Imagine..
Skins.. would all have to be remade without anatomical correctness...
Animations... nix about 70% of them.. and while we are at it.. nix the cuddles and the slow dances too.. those are suspect as well.
Xcite... out of biz
Sexgen .. out of biz
Clothes.. yes.. tons of innapropriate clothing would have to be deleted
Gestures
Furniture

no more clubs.. so nix all that club furniture.. the poles the chairs the ... etc etc etc


how much will a move like that bork the majority of revenue in SL? how many creators would have to remake .. or even rethink completely their content
how many ppl would be out of pocket to the tune of MILLIONS of L$ for content they bought and can no longer use...

Wow you are all jumping to a lot of wild conclusions. No, I don't want teens on the grid, but as well, sorry I just don't see all that "sky-is-falling-total-Disneyfication" happening either. Am I the only one who thinks it will be almost business as usual if it did happen? I think somehow there would be a way to keep teens to only one part of the grid.

What's the difference really, to the rest of the grid, between keeping them confined to one part of the grid, in a totally PG area, vs. a totally separate teen-grid anyway?

"We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody."

Note the conspicuous absence of any word implying 'freedom of expression' in that sentence.

i just hate the careless approach they are taking..knowing a lot of parents let the internet babysit thier kinds..that LL's approach is going to be to fall back on the parents responsibility thing..
like thats gonna happen..in the days we know parenting is lacking they are gonna make some move that is like this?

Sure the parents should be the ones that step up and make sure their kids are safe on the net..but everyone knows and these guys do too that it's not gonna happen..
this should more than show where the care factor is for those that think there ever was one..

i could never sleep at night if i gave access to a kid and something happened to them..even if i could blame it on the lack of someone else that was suppose to be looking after them but wasn't..
thats when the should of's and could of's will eat a person alive..

i should of did this to stop it i could of did that to stop it or i shouldn't of did this..
let something happen and see just how far they get with the ..you are the parent and should have been watching them..ya a judge is gonna rip them 4 layers and then sideways..
parents need to be responsible for their kids but these companies opening up things like this to kids are gonna find out they have responsibilities also..

I dont think the content creators "would" do this.... Considering most teens do not even have the funds to purchase anything, why would they take hours remaking or re working items that they would sit with no one buying.

Yeah, so? That doesn't mean freedom of expression is going away, it just wasn't the focus of that particular sentence.

I'm not advocating merging the grids at all, but it seems as technically possible to create a PG area that combines adults and teens as it does to have a completely isolated teen grid itself. I don't know why everyone is jumping to the conclusion that most of the grid would be merged. I didn't get that impression at all. And as one poster said:

which part of OVERALL in the below quote Philip Rosedale is unclear?

I'm already bored with this topic.

Adults are kept off the Teen Grid. Put children on the main grid, in a single PG area, and every pedophile with a computer knows exactly where to find them, and can get there, unlike the current Teen Grid.

Oh yes it has happened to me and loads of my friends, both male and female.
One kid at 13 was sending naked images of herself to 30+ year old men, from what one of the targeted men claim they NEVER knew that the person was underage nor did they ask for the images, she just sent them to him when he asked for a pic (expecting a PG one). And this sort of behaviour will occur more frequently if the merger takes place.

One incident I remember was with someone I assumed was over 18, he spoke on voice* and didn't sound like a child, his voice was really deep. I refused to talk dirty to him or get on pose balls etc etc and he went off in a huff, recently I found out (2 years later) that he has JUST turned 18, so at the time of him asking for slexin he was 15 nearly 16, made me shudder and sick to my stomach that I COULD have been talking filth to this underage kid and could be made accountable and labeled a pedo and NOT even knowing he was underage. He was a mentor btw as well!

There are some tales to tell in SL i am sure

*voice convos were in skype, as voice wasnt available in SL when this incident occurred! Just making it clear to all

LL could just delete all inappropriate content.

Much easier to do now that they took over Xstreet as well..

Plus it would fix the asset server overload.

I dont want to run around and shout that the sky is falling.. but LL has a habit of dropping things fait accompli .. and then ignoring the uproar that it causes.

The intent stated in this one line cannot be more clear:
"We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody."

I really dont think LL has thought this through much more than a "hey, cool.. lets do that to save some money". I understand that educators might have issues with underage students, and to that I say it was a KNOWN limitation of teaching in SL when you first came here. Over 18 doesn't mean "well, maybe...". I also understand that parents may not be able to "SL" with their kids. I say if they want to "stay in touch" with their under age kids in SL, they can lean their big asses back in their chairs and yell across the house to them, send them an email, or fire up good ol' MSN. Hardly reasons to upturn the entire adult grid for.
What happens when teen accounts are allowed access to Agni? Even if you strictly confine their movement to an area or continent, they still have access to adult grid groups and search results which we all know are NOT child safe by any means. Where do THEY go when "region(s) is currently unavailable"? Most of us adults get flung 2 continents away. How does "appropriately safe and controlled" affect all the mature content that could be passed to a minor, knowingly or not? One could go on with these type of valid concerns for hours. Bottom line is.. the list of proposed gains by doing this is microscopic when compared to the huge list of.. not only possible, but PROBABLE SL/RL concerns created by blundering headlong into this. I'm also pretty pissed LL would even consider putting its adult residents in that kind of risk just to save a buck on a handfull of teen grid servers.
Un-friggin-believable..

What makes OVERALL suddenly mean ALL parts of the grid?

Again, jumping to wild conclusions.

welllll
when combined with the fact that they no longer want isolated areas...
overall pretty much encompasses the whole grid..

Pedophiles already know where to find teens on the Internet. There are tons of places catered exclusively to teens that are easy reaches for pedophiles. There's no real way to "protect" teens now anyway. Anyway I was more commenting on the fact that people thought there would be a mass deluge of juveniles onto the main parts of the grid, turning SL into DisneySLand.

This will be the final nail in sl's coffin. Imagine mom walks into juniors room and see's a couple haveing sex, or maybe a foursome with a couple of furries thrown in. Full screen on jr's monitor. Shes gonna be pissed, and SL is the one shes gonna be pissed at. A couple of phone calls later, a million dollor lawsuit is in the works, knowing full well that sl will settle for a quarter of that just to avoid the publicity. When this starts happening 10 times a week, sl will have no choice but to roll over and die.
Sad part is that it wont matter at all that Jr had cam'ed into the next sim to get that view, and was the only one in the wrong

it's that everyone knows before the residents about this stuff and we only get half the message..
people start to look at investments and things and changes..rumors only enhance the tensions..
LL is terrible in keeping residents in the dark about big changes coming..
i bet 80% of the grid doesn't even know about the changes to xstreet or this here..
maybe 80% is a bit high but so is my stress factor right now lol

Hey now!

I was just as shocked over the Texting incident at that school!





After all, they never sent me the pics



HEH! If they had camera phones back when I was in HS, I would've had a TON of pics. Catholic School. Uniforms. Skirts. You figure it out!

That's exactly right, and to think all the problems that could be eliminated if LL disabled camming further than.. say 30m global or so.

ya it happened to yahoo with their user rooms and all their user rooms went away..
and the bots rolled in and yahoo is nothing now but bots botting bots while everyone goes elsewhere..
it's their world to screw up..if they think they can somehow keep control of what nobody else in history has been able to..more power to them..but i'm not having some teen or kid AR me because i refused to sex him up..
i'll deal with lag and pioneer elsewhere before that happens..