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

Very good point.....I am going to be banned from being me?

I think that just about sums it up. Teens and ... well, teh unwashed masses. What a charming thought.
"Apres moi le deluge"?

I think there need's to be mature check box on everything, and those people who are under 18 will be unable to manipulate the object, accept the object, or enter parcels checked mature. This way if a minor has items that should be rate mature in their inventory the liability can fall on the object creator.

The items could even be muted from their view. I dunno.

Is wellhung who you are?

If that is the case, let me introduce myself:

Hi Wellhung, I am Lightly Tufted, nice to meet you.

/me falls over

LOL...ya both killing me....LOL

His world, his imagination.

Now why do ya gotta start hatin....trying to put my two cents in here on a serious subject.

2 cents? Doesn't sound very well hung to me.

And by your own admitance you didnt even read my post.

I have to admit, even through all the other changes LL has made I have remained silent but after hearing this I cant remain unheard.
In my opinion I think merging the teens with the adults is an extremely bad idea.
When the Teen Grid was first created the concern was this very thing! Residents were assured that the teen grid would be closely monitored and NOT be a part of the adult world.
The are enough problems with teens sneaking into the adult side disrupting things as they do.
I come to second Life to be with adults and NOT to deal with the teeny bobber mentality everywhere I turn. You can say all you have to do is leave but the problem goes a lot deeper then that. The legal liabilities alone are huge not only for LL but for the residents themselves.
I am strongly opposed to this decision and its my sincere hope LL will listen to its residents and not go forward with this!


Jill Mackenzie

I agree, Jill.

No, that was me.

Isn't that pretty much what signing up for the Teen Grid now entails? But why would most teens acept all those hoops, if they could get on the main grid without it, and it was no longer "wrong" for a teen to be on the main grid? Many of of them, more than do today, will simply lie and get in masked as adults. If they get caught having lied about their teen status, do they get banned until they turn 18? Or banned for life? And how do you do that, when they can create a new, anonymous account in less than 3 minutes, and be back on the grid?

Can't see how this would affect anything other than the official LL client. Third party clients would not differentiate.

LL doesn't control the Voice traffic. That goes through servers other than their own. You'd have to ban all Teen accounts from using Voice. Which would be a very good idea, since it is impossible to log or to verify alligations about what is said between two people in Voice Chat.

And you don't think it would be a problem to have people present that you can't see? And that others can? Let's say there are three teens in a mall, chatting with each other and with two adults who want to interact with teens. And I have an avatar that does not interact with teens. So I walk right through the teens in the conversation, like a ghost? Or I try to talk to the adults that I can see, not knowing they are in conversation with teens I can't see? Chaos... Worse than being a non-Voice Chat user and walking amid several people who are talking in Voice Chat. At least I can see their apparently inert bodies while they jabber words at each other that I can't hear.

Or a slave girl arrives in a mall in nothing but her collar, leash and chains, and someone who is "teen approved" takes a snapshot of her kneeling beside a teen, and apparently offering herself to the teen? Great AR material, and the poor slave girl thought she was only flirting with the adult that she could see...

And what if I WANT to interact with my own 13 year old daughter, but don't want to get caught flirting with a teenager? How can I see my daughter, and not see the other teens?

Good Idea, but Blue Linden has already rejected the idea of making teens wear any sort of "Scarlet Letter" marking them as teens. Just as LL has refused to make a person's Age Verification status a fact that others can determine, by any means other than their inability to step onto a ground-level age-verified parcel with you.

I agree they should be visibly marked. Likewise, anyone who is age verified should be visibly marked. And we will have three classes of people in SL - marked teens, marked adults, and unmarked people who refused to verify or can't verify. None of which would necessarily be valid proof. The teen label could be a pedo who lied about their age downward. The age-verified label could be a kid that borrowed daddies wallet to get his ID info. And you'll have no clue about the rest, who could be 15 or 55.

Wouldn't even be granted for most of the Mainland, since in virtually all locations there are mature sims or parcels within visual range of you, which could at any instant become a XXX venue.

The only place this could be implemented without major disruption would be to keep it on the teen grid, and open that to adults for G-rated, mixed-use access.

LL refuses to resolve resident-to-resident disputes. You think they will be willing to police this? And how about any teen found guilty of engaging in adult activity, regardless of rating? Or being in posession of a graphicly-detailed adult skin, or XXX pose balls, or...

Again, on the Mainland, in virtually all locations there are mature sims or parcels within visual range of you, which could at any instant become a XXX venue. What appears "safe" today could have a BDSM Bordello next door tomorrow.

Wonderful loophole for a malicious teen to hack. They sign up by falsifying the "Parent" responses, so they can control all the "Parent-only" options...

"White List" controls only work to 50M above the ground, so won't keep the teens out of skyboxes. Many stores, including adult shops, are located high in the sky, to reduce lag. White-list access and age verification do not function more than 50 M above ground level. Even explicit bans by name still only are functional to 768 Meters above ground level, and don't affect 3/4 of the buildable airspace on a parcel!

None of this would work on the grid as it is run today.

None of the above proposals prevent the teenager from seeing and interacting with adult content on mature parcels, up to several sims away. Or from interacting with the XXX content that pops up next door tomorrow, on a mature parcel.

To give the teens any access at all to Mainland parcels, you would have to re-arange and re-zone and heavily enforce covenant restrictions on all existing land. That is just NOT going to happen. To allow teen access on private sims, they would have to be disconnected from all other sims that were not similarly rated, and accessible only to those who are vetted for teen access.

It MIGHT work if they wanted to open the Teen Grid to mixed use, keeping the kiddies away from the Adult grid. But not on the main grid, sorry.

This could turn out very badly for LL if they are not successful in segregating minors from adults on the grid. They would merge the grids, and at that time there would be a small decrease in the number of adult users, but nothing huge. LL would think that all is well.

UNTIL the first time an arguably innocent adult gets hit by an expose or, god forbid, lawsuit in RL. At that point the outflux of adults from SL would be immense.

LL cannot indemnify adult users from frivolous lawsuits relating to child molestation accusations if minors can mingle with adults. Therefore, it makes no sense for adults to share a grid with minors. The only protection adult residents can have is if LL guarantees that adults can assume that areas on the grid are child-free, as the entire grid is now.

I'm sure LL knows that, and I certainly hope they act on that knowledge. Though, frankly, I haven't heard a convincing solution to sharing a grid that is safe for both minors and adults.

They would be better off to make a separate firewalled grid, like IBM's, with RL identity verification required for anyone moving between the main grid and the firewalled minors grid. Perhaps that IS what they mean when they talk about this.
.

Man..
The issue must be the R18+ content in Second Life, otherwise you've got no leg to stand on whatsoever. Most communities online allow people of all ages. Even ones with a bit of mature content, such as the art site I mentioned in my last post.
I recalled last night that sites with R content - porn, etc, whatever - don't allow minors in.

If that's your point, I'll shut up. I agree. (ETA: Though I would like to see you explain Furcadia. xD)
... Otherwise I'll continue to facepalm.

Do not interact with children outside of my family now. I will not go onto a "blended" sl for a lot of reasons. I hate that all adults re considered possible perverts and wanting to abuse children. That Linden Labs has to "protect" the teens from adults. Get a grip! teens are not innocent and regularly commit crimes up to murder. Then there are the police and their unconstitutional baiting of people to commit crimes. Having considered to have committed the crime when it is all a lie. Will police stalk Second Life and residents considered to have commited a crime just from being in the same sim? The police can make up all sorts of fake chat logs just to fullfill their quota of catching suspected pedofiles.
I am going to go unline and start dumping my adult items. Deleting them from my inventory. Most of them are transferable but it is too risky.
Thanks for nothing Linden Labs, Second Life is suppose to be a place to get away from the problems of real life.

Mature and PG sims sit side by side, the mature sim parcel next door to the PG sim owner isn't doing anything wrong with a risque (rather than explicit) promotion, the PG parcel is next bloody door.

It simply is not a suitable environment for kids.

The issue is also interaction with teens and adults.

A teen can destroy an innocent adult's real life by filing a false AR about a fictional voice chat with them.

That alone is one very good reason to keep them off the grid with adults.

A griefer can already cause enough trouble on a sim with a false id account, now imagine that same griefer logging into their teen account and filing an AR on the security that booted them off a sim for being a jerk. That security guy is now facing the police knocking on their door, and definitely a banned account. Because LL has no choice but to react that way to any and all such reports.

Read that till you get the point: Letting kids who have the power to destroy an adult's life with a simple lie mix with them in a grid is bad m'kay.

Content is never going to be out of reach, because they can find ways around the restrictions.

Got it in one...

The main grid of SL is an over-18 only, XXX content and activity allowed environment.

Unlike reality, in SL, you can't lock strangers out of your bedroom, bordello, adult swinger's club or super-kinky "dungeon playroom". But all of those places are allowed in mature sims in SL.

Allowing 13 to 18 year olds into that environment is as irresponsible as setting up a grade school or high school next door to an open-air, no walls, porn and prostitution business in real life. Doesn't matter if the owner of said business has no intention of selling anything to the kiddies. They can see it all. And in many cases, can buy all the XXX merchandise, too. And in SL, the store owner can't prevent it! He can restrict his parcel all he wants, including banning every kid by name, and they can still stand on the playground and watch, and can still buy his merchandise. And at the same time, they can peek into every bedroom in the neighborhood, and see what their neighbors do for fun in the 'privacy' of their own homes.

Other on-line forums restrict adult activity, and restrict all in-world content to material that the game owner has approved. In SL, every Player can create anything, including XXX material, and can sell or use that content. No filters for who can buy, and everyone is assumed to be 18+.

Okay.... Guys.... You enter a club, not too many people, and you see her:



Now... If she were willing to dance, would you dance with her?

If she were willing to cuddle, would you cuddle with her?

If she knew a nice private place for you to wander off and test out a MLP bed, would you?

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::!!ALERT!!::

That picture was taken from the teen grid. Snapzilla flags them appropriately. (=_=)

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/TeenSL.aspx

(=_=)y

Voice chat + kids = Epic fail. Got it.

Furcadia: been around for nearly thirteen years. It's a social MMO. It allows for content ranging from kiddy to adults only. They couldn't even add voice chat if they wanted to, the engine is so old. Furcadia has never been noted anywhere for people's lives being ruined due to kids making up false accusations against adults. Kids and adults coexist!
Proof's in the pudding.

Thank you and good bye.

Trick is furcadia also has nowhere near the user base

Far better controls due to the limits of the technology as well as to who can enter your dreams

SL has neither the ability to log everything (sim and chat logs are not permanently stored in any case... but purged over time due to data storage issues). Nor does it allow the controls needed to keep anyone out.

And proof is in the pudding: Google. Real life.

The "content" in Furcadia consists of blocky icons about 20 pixels square.

I set up an account in there and I couldn't even tell what species my icon was. It was supposed to be a ferret, but it could have been anything.

Compare that to the picture Immy posted.

You are not seriously trying to use this example? SL has adult rated content (real PORN movies, pictures, higly detailed human skins, real looking adult parts, realistic animations, escorts, strip clubs, red light districts etc..) and brings in people looking specifically for that. Mix horny teens in with horny adults and you have a bad mix. Even if you are in a PG sim the people there may still be there from an adult area wondering through. It is simply not a good idea. If LL wants to do this they need to make a second grid with no adult rated content. It would be a huge success in my opinion. I bet it would be more popular than the current adult only SL... However the adult only SL can be profitable also...