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

oh HELL no...

its a legal nightmare waiting to happen... for us as players AND LL... ffs do they want lawsuits cos little Johnny saw something he shouldn't have cos he cammed too far???

Leave them separate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Surely this cannot be true !!!!!! We all know SL is very sexually orientated and whether we agree with this or not is irrelevant. The main question is .... would you want your 13 year old daughter/son or 13 year old granddaughter/grandson coming on here ? I wouldnt and I am sure this is something we ALL agree about.

Of course it is possible now for those under 18 to be here but for LL to make it an "open invitation" would have disastrous results. For Heavens sake LL, forget about the money and the convenience, think about the "children", the moral issues and the implications and do not open up a Hornets Nest.

LL wants to have a place for parents and their kids to interact? A place where educators can hold classes for all of their students? Then LL should build a continent/grid/world called 3rd Life or SLfamily for that purpose. Far out in the void and no way a kid can be teleported out to our grid.

What I see coming are more legal hassles rippling down to us. I love kids, but I don't want them on our grid with us. If LL wants to see an avalanche of accounts being closed, this is one way to do it. Now is a really bad time to be trying such a risky gamble(world wide recession ring a bell LL?).

And as for the kids already on the main grid? They are breaking the TOS rules and know it. Some parents may be sitting right there and supervising, kudos to you. But, most of the sneak 'under 18ers' aren't under supervision. I've run into some individuals who don't care how they treat others or how crude they are. And LL doesn't think the kids won't run into them sooner or later?? Having a ugly experience can leave a lasting memory.

I will hope fervently that LL will drag out the collective common sense or be prepared to see SL slowly fade away as it changes into something unrecognizable.

This must be the no brainer of the year! Has anyone else got teenage daughters or grandchildren who might be on the teen grid?
If sl do this, membership will rocket..all perverts!
get your common sense together, Linden Labs, this would lead to a complete disaster for SL and for many children who would be exploited on the grid.

I've not managed to read through all 21 pages yet. However most of the posts (well, all of the ones I have managed to read) talk of the problems of allowing Children on the main grid.

However, there is also the other side - i.e. allowing (unscreened) adults on the teen grid (which is what will be the case if the teen grid and the main grid become one).

Parents are increasingly worried of the dangers of allowing their children onto web sites where they may end up talking to (and in some cases arranging to meet in RL) with unknown adults - possibly adults pretending to be children. If anything there are growing calls for areas of the internet where parents can allow their children to go knowing that they will only be interacting with other children - for SL to fly in the face of this is folly.

The only way for a merger of the main grid and teend grid to work would be for

a) there to be a *reliable* mechanism of verifying age- not just verifying that you are over 18 but also reliably verifying that you are under 18 (the current system unfortunately doesn't meet the reliability criteria)
b) there needs to be the ability to *reliably* limit areas to both verified over 18s and verified under 18s
c) group membership also needs to have age limit controls.
d) there needs to be "family accounts" whereby an avatar can be *reliably* associated as belonging to the child of the owner of another avatar in RL.
e) there needs to be parental controls so that the avatar of the parent can apply limits as to where they avatar of their child can go in SL (e.g. a home area where the parent and child can meet, and under 18 areas only, etc.), and also who the child's avatar can communicate with in terms of group and personal IMs (e.g. can IM the parent and under 18s only) etc.

That is a non-exhaustive list of the top off my head. However, without those sorts of control you not only risk a mass exodus of adults from SL (into the opensim perhaps), but a mass of parents banning their children from SL (as opposed to encouraging them to use it!).

Matthew

You mean "the current situation"?

It's not technically possible for them to do that, unless you want to limit visibility to 30m and not have the sim send you any data from more than 30m away.

I wonder how this will settle for peoples of different countries.

the problem for both grids is: there is no way to verify who is at the controls of the computer, only the data that was given is correct.

Bob can use Tom's data to verify as a teen for the teen grid, the Jerry's data to verify as an adult for the main grid.

Bob's age is irrelevant, all LL has is the data given to verify the two accounts.

With proper planning Bob can even re-verify if ar'd as under/over age

There's a difference between the occasional kid who can pass for an adult driving dad's car and giving drivers licenses to 14 year olds.
That's what the teen grid *is*.

There are days i wish nobody cared about what kids do online, it's such an inextricable mess when someone does...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10147171-38.html


Well they just deep sixed one unenforcable bit of BS

But who pass those stupid laws?

People that want to legislate morality and cater to religious and parental groups that want them (got to cater to them when it's a good size portion of the voting public... plus when it's 'for the children' it looks bad voting against it)

Illegal content, such as drugs, guns, gambling etc, is freely accessible on the Internet, to the same 5 year old, and therefore it should be made available on the main grid. It is an absurd idea, no more absurd than using the accessibility of mature or adult content, which is in many regarded as illegal content.

The quantity and quality of the Teen content should not be the basis for building an argument for merging the grids. The simple solution here is to increase the quantity and quality of their content.

Just as there was no clear definition on the purpose of Open SIMs, there is no clear definition on Mature Content, and this needs to tied down. It is clear from the residents that I have heard discussing this merger, they are clearly against it. Furthermore, many express that the idea of adults role playing as children on the main grid is inappropriate. My personal view on this merger is that the residents should decide on whether they want it. I for one certainly do not. I am also not fully convinced that Linden Labs have fully understood the implications of such a merger, nor taken into the future possible legal ramifications of this action. Nor do I believe that they are fully aware of legal actions that may result because of just such a merger. Yes, they have probably discussed these things at length, and have probable solutions to such things, but as we all know, our plans seldom go as we perceive them to go.

Therefore, Linden Labs, pay heed to your residents on this issue, and do not merge the grids.

True - any controls can be bypassed, but if the controls were implemented properly it should only be possible to bypass them by explicitly committing fraud (i.e. lying about who you are), and/or breaking the terms and conditions about not sharing your account.

It would need fairly active policing however by LL (no comments on LL's abilities here!)

Without these controls, however, there are too many scenarios which can result in undesirable consequences without those affected necessarily doing anything wrong (as opposed to deliberately trying to bypass controls).

Matthew

This whole thing is bad... but you're right LL won't change their minds!!! They should concerntrate on issues at hand and not create new ones. Cos believe me lowering the age will.

Wiki history shows no activity for over a year. See also http://blog.smileybarry.com/category/duogrid. Best I can tell, it was the germ of an idea for a project that would vet third-party (OpenSim) grids for access by Teen Grid members, devised by a Teen Gridder. (Interesting that unlike these forums, the wiki is a Teen-enabled resource--and yet it hasn't gone completely off the tracks. )
And anyone wonders why LL is doing this? Heck, even if no teens signed up, the inevitable quarterly sex scandals will generate a steady supply of fresh sign-ups.
Hmmm. Kind of like a "honeypot." (If only I could convince myself that LL actually thought like that.)
Very sensible. And politically impossible within LL. They're intent on becoming the 3D telco to the world, and every time anybody accidentally leaves voice enabled on their viewer, it's evidence of the stunning success of this business plan.

I am afraid I really dont see what all these posts are about, ok so kids will be allowed to access the 3d web, just the same as they have been allowed to access the 2d web.

There will be tools written to monitor where they go, and to block them from areas where they should not go, no problem there then.
they may get accosted bu some pervert, ok thats what the off switch is for, and if you are worried about when your child is on SL and who they are talking to, why are you not sitting with them helping them to learn.

SL, or something very like it, is the future of the web, it is an interactive environment where people can meet others from all over the world and learn from them.
At present it seems that teens can only meet other teens from their local area since signups are borked from any other area but the USA.

The responsibility for keeping your children safe is YOURS, not Linden Lab, or the Government, but the parents. It always has been, and always will be.

lol these old rumours are funny

The catch is: THERE IS NO WAY TO TELL WHO IS AT A COMPUTER EXCEPT IN PERSON

There is no magical program that lets them know Bob is at the computer vs Tom or Jerry

And no company will press charges on a kid, the parental groups would scream they should not be trying to ruin the little angel's life for childish indiscretion. Yet when the angel turns 18 they magically become a felon and get slapped in federal prisons for the same indiscretions... all because none slapped them on the rump hard enough to make it known it's a bad thing to do that.

I've pissed off a lot of folks, by pointing out that all the measures and laws they want will not work due to the catch posted above.

At one point LL could have tried to go the common carrier route but due to the way they do control and regulate content that is no longer an option.

Except it's a recent quote

Having read most of the posts here, nobody is really worried about keeping the children safe, 90% of posts are about the idea that the kids will spoil the adults fun.
They will run wild on the grid, stop people working, cause havock by ARing everyone in sight.

Obviously everyone who has posted here hates kids. Keep them away from us, they are monsters we are all afraid of them.

Someone said they will soon get bored of looking around , then what will they do?
what do bored kids do? they go and look for something that is NOT boring. Most kids dont just destroy for the fun of it, so they will move on to less boring child oriented games, there are plenty out there.

Just a point, One of the best scripters in SL is a teen on the teen grid, there are kids that build, there are people in SL who love to teach, myself one of them, I welcome the opportunity of being able to teach kids or adults to build or script.

It seems kids are the new foreigners, we dont understand them so we hate them, hide them away.

Is this the new racism?

the problem is thats not gonna happen..there are a lot of parents that won't get involved until it's too late..
LL thinks their responsibility is gonna end at the verification and then do the..we don't get involved in player disputes things..it's none of our business..
let a judge hear that and see where it ends up..
sure parents should be the first line but they shouldn't be the only line..
history will repeat itself..

whats gonna happen is the people that spent all this time building a grid thinking it was a place that adults could come and pretty much become whatever they wanted do a lot of what they wanted and preached that from the very start are going to be asked to give up half of it because now we hear an interview that merging the teen grid and adult grid was always a part of the plan..sorry but thats bullshit because thats not what they were telling everyone..it was a world made for adult by adults and we are losing half of it ..

it doesn't have to be reasons of sexual content..the fact is we were told we had this one place we could come and get away and express ourselves and even be a kid if we wanted..now we get to babysit ..
LL is changing platforms..just like a radio station..going from rock the elevator music..

I have not said that. What I've said is: There are adults on the grid that WANT kids here. Please allow me to spare you the details on what I mean by "want". You can't deny they're here. And, the way things are now prevents them from finding their feed. Let's NOT give the politicians and news media yet another outlet for "Those evil interweb people". (T_T)