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

Nice job trolling. Too bad Gonta is talking about two different types of honesty, and you're just trying to pull a gotcha.

Obviously LL is trying to smoke out the perverts with teenage entrapment scenarios!

The horror!

i am just curious..how many types of honesty are there?
i'm not trying to sound sarcastic or anything..
i'm missing what you mean i guess is what i am getting at..

We don't allow kid touchers in the Pervert's Union. They have their own place.

It could be that account creation was broken outside the US for 18 MONTHS!!

apparently it's fixed now, but my son hasn't had a chance to try it yet...
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-734

And we are supposed to think the same company can come up with a way to safely vet the age groups for an integrated Grid?

Well I think having minors around might not be good for the amount of trolls.
However, the teengrid doesn't allow children to take off underwear, which is logical.

But then teens walk around and see an adult who walks around naked anyway, because they are allowed to by default.

So either you force all avatars to wear underwear at all times, which means the majority will never come back, or force teen users to see underwear that isn't really there.

Oh the possibilities. And we need pedo hunters like they have such on the teengrid.

Because else, the children will be anywhere. And the child molester club already resides in SL. I caught one doing some age play somewhere high in the air in a sandbox, which is, a PG rated sim, so yeah.

In my opinion they should leave the teen grid where it is. I don't want Hanja to become a playground for teens with hormone issues.

If LL wants a place for everyone to mingle that's safe and family *and advertiser* friendly, great have at at. It isn't a bad idea business wise, but there has to be a place for adults to congregate, create, and socialize with reasonable assurance that everyone is an adult. It should be a default area, where jumping through hoops or relying on private islands isn't necessary. I'm also one who wants her virtual world Adults Only. If SL doesn't provide it, I will find my entertainment elsewhere.

I have some sympathy with the teens that want to cross over, because I doubt there are many places on the teen side like Welsh Falls used to be like (maybe still is). So I can see wanting to see some of the builds here. Unfortunately, in the cited case, you entered through a rather non-PG market area and the last time I was there, it had more and more support for mature activities. How LL expects to force or ask some of these sim owners to work something like that, I don't know. Going PG, especially in the early phases, is like asking to turn a 'mature' business into a non-profit and, just as in the early days of video when the normal films took the place of the mostly porn, some businesses won't make it to the other side.

I could probably write a novel about your first question (but I won't ). I've played on both grids now, and the teen grid has some significant problems. I am extremely happy with main Second Life right now. Although I'd like to see my TSL friends, I'd never ever choose to go back there. I posted some statistics earlier about the extremely low player count/etc. that Blue linden posted a while back.

For me, the problem mostly had to do with my business and the itty bitty market. Im glad I was able to play SL at all, but there is so huge of an unfair difference in the levels of success you are able to achieve on each grid. There aren't a lot of teens on that grid but some of them have talent! Teens don't sell very much and their prices are dirt cheap.
To give you an idea: take your stores monthly sales.. toss out 25 days worth and now you are living like a teen gridder.

I have to show off some teen designers hehe:
http://nouvelleblog.wordpress.com/
http://sharifamorenz.wordpress.com/
http://tweedsilvera.blogspot.com/
http://wickedloudon.com/

There's also an unimaginable % of stolen content going around on that grid on full perms. The grid is so tiny, one or two teens can fill up the whole grid with ripped content. Lindens don't regulate it (or at least none that I've heard of). Teens are already starting to rip my new items here so that they can bring them back to tsl..

There's a lot more problems (like the sign up problems LL took over a year to fix) but those above are my personal big ones.

note: when I was mentioning "Why can't teens be a part of second life?" earlier I was referring to this grid. Why can't they be apart of main SL and be given similar opportunities? TSL is good for some casual teen players but for many it feels like a prison..

If you want to make teens a part of Second Life, you need to talk to the California and United States legislatures and do something about the appalling laws passed allegedly to protect teens.

I've read through all the replies by now and have seen some strange things happening, especially in the reasoning of some who advocate a possible future merger (and yes, I am thinking Blue Linden here).

The simple fact that teens are already present on the main grid, doesn't mean that the the standards need to be lowered to the practice. If LL does so, we end up on a tilting scale. What if the 13 yo can enter? Why not the 12 yo? Kids are - nowadays - more computer literate than I could ever have dreamed when I was that old.

At this moment, everyone I come across is - in theory - at least 18. I treat them like that and I don't want to wonder if people are younger, because - in theory - they CAN'T be younger. And if I do find one: an AR is just one click away.

A possible merger changes that. Unless there are ways to know who is a minor, I will have to watch my words, no matter who I am talking to. I need to watch out which attachments I wear, which shirts I wear, which tags I have, etc. etc.

Once again, the notion that teens are already here is no argument to open the gates for more of them. For those who are here already, are here illegally and came in by lying about their age.

The fact that a group of teens wants to establish their businesses here, doesn't change that. If that is one of the reasons, it would be enough to have them sell their wares on XLstreet, or whatever it is called, and have them delivered to the main grid. Or have LL set up vendors or whatever.

As many have said before, SL is also a place where you can be who you want to be, where you can do what you want to do. Having teens around, as in real life, makes that you have to take into account the same limits and restrictions as you have in real life. Limits and restrictions you don't have on an adult-only grid.

My real life is full of those restrictions. I don't have kids, but I do see a lot of kids around and have to deal with their annoyances on a daily basis. Like many others, I don't want to have to deal with them in my second life or have to take them into account.

As has been pointed out before, it takes just a few pesky teenagers to - literally - ruin the lives of people. In their ignorance they can pull pranks which have dire consequences. So, keeping the grids apart is not so much a protection of the kids but more a protection of the adults who have no defense whatsoever against malicious youngsters (be it intentionally or unintentionally).

Age verification won't solve this. Not only is it a method that doesn't work, it's also simply forbidden in a lot of countries. And when it comes to that, I do wonder what LL will do... simply enforce age verification (albeit in a different system) and lose a lot of european / asian / american players or keep the grids separate.

I'll go back into lurk mode again and just wait for the Lindens to come up with a clever solution, I guess...

If they are somehow going to keep the teens and the adults separate, then LL needs to fix the parcel based Age Verification code first. If Age Verification is on then it usually locks out everybody, no mater if you are age verified or note.
See:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3923

This has been open for more than a year and has had a few updates but no real progress.

And, as someone pointed out, LL will have a tough time defining PG globally. It might not make a difference in reality because LL fails to recognize that some of these kids are very smart. Smarter than the average LL employee and it will not take long before they find away around anything that LL puts in place.

As I was trying to explain earlier I don't mean this in an illegal "merge the grids!" kind of way. Like other people have also mentioned, I'd like to see some shared islands/commerce/etc for adults and teens (because there's no fixing the rest of our grid at this point.. or at least any time too soon).
Adults and teens could interact on a few PG sims with restrictions like: Adults/teens can only speak in open chat, no inventory offers, etc. Approved teens could sell items on the islands/meet with teen transfers/family members, or they could be used for educators.

I know if I was still a teen gridder and they created one tiny island with some connection to the main grid I would be ecstatic.

^^^^
This. Has been floating in my head in bits and pieces ever since this thread began. Thanks for pulling it all together. I agree totally, do not want to be forced to take kids into account when doing 'my' SL. Malicious and/or overly precocious, sexually, I just don't want to have to be concerned about them, ever on the alert just in case that guy I'm flirting with might be 15. That is just horrifying to me, the nightmare that a person's rl could turn into. Yeah, teens in, I'm out, would just not be worth the constant fear it would cause, the stress, and would no longer be fun.

Yes! so lets keep our grid, and let teens keep theirs. I think everyone understands the legal problems involved and most of us know merging the grids where teens are all over the grid would be dangerous and unlikely. However I'm completely for the includement of teens in second life. Maybe that means letting them sell items on Xstreet? maybe that means a few shared sims? Im just hope we can better include teens in safer ways without automatically assuming that means a total grid merge and going into panic mode.

I think a "Safe Zone" where teens can conduct business with everyone isn't a bad thing, as part of a general area where educational and artistic events can also be attended. create it on the main grid if need be, or fix the teen grid and allow it there.

Since the main grid and the teen grid are both on the same geographical grid (the teen grid is off to the southeast of the eastern continents) creating a third "virtual grid" like the teen grid seems like the best solution.

I guess, although I still don't follow the logic:
Here's what I'm not understanding: because we know some teens are going to lie and say they're adults, how can we in good conscience just take their word for it, if what they may do could cause serious harm to them or the people with whom they interact? I truly don't think we can.

It's not enough that COPA's final defeat (which is a good thing) means LL might be able to wash its hands of whatever horrid consequences may arise, firstly because that would only save it from financial ruin at the first lawsuit (supposing for the nonce that they'd get the same treatment as an ISP), not from from an ongoing PR disaster whenever a muckraking reporter has a slow news day. And second, it doesn't prevent the actual incidence of things that are completely unacceptable to LL's customer base: life-ruining false accusations, and even possibly real abuse.

Of course we know that teens lie to get on the adult grid now and will continue to lie in an merged grid, so yes, it would be honest to accept that fact. But I don't see how it's honest to make it easier to lie.

I guess this could make sense if the position being advanced is that the whole grid should made "teen safe" so it doesn't matter if anybody lies. But I don't think that's what's being said. (Even if it were, I still don't see how one could achieve that, even if all adult *content* were removed, unless all *adults* were also fully vetted.)

For all that, it does seem to make sense to me that making available some safe destination for teens more appealing than the current teen grid would reduce the incentive to lie, and might thereby reduce the risks for both teens and adults.

If they merge both grids there is no doubt as mentioned you can say goodbye to SexGen and every other adult oriented object or script, SL already has caught fire in the press because of it's adult stuff going on, if they let in underage teens, (those not lying about their age,which SL can say, that isn't our fault they are on the adult grid), but let adults and underage kids play together it will become a WOW or Sims Online enviroment, No sex, no mention of sex, nothing that even resembles a sexual act being done, if any of that is on the main grid when they do merge them, it would be a firestorm in the media, and I can't see that being done, AVs will look like Barbie and Ken dolls or have the Sims blur over naked avs, nothing anotomically correct.

It would be a very bad idea, and I am sure they will lose probably 70% of the adults playing, if not more.

This is probably NOT news, but if you expand the sliders on the map out to their farthest, just beyond Serena are several small clusters of islands and one slightly larger cluster lying pretty much due east and slightly north of there.

The tiny clusters of islands are private. You can not teleport there. I used to consider them places of unmentionable evil due to their secrecy, but now I wonder.

The somewhat larger cluster to the far east includes ALA Island, Info Island and Chicago Public Schools. Search Chicago Public Schools and you will reach the easternmost island of the adult grid. It is silent there now, but why put a public school island on the adult grid?

If you want to have some map fun when you are out at Chicago Public Schools, play with the map. You'll see what is a very small continent of educational/library-related islands and then try to go west. Even with the slider set at the half way mark or fairly far to the left, it takes a while to see another island and those are the no-access islands.

You either have to do a random search in the database, receive a link from someone, or become very, very savvy with the map to reach the mainland from the mini-continent/buffer zone far to the east.

So when they letting the kids on? I gotta stock up!

Once the teens live among us for a while, they will be so disenchanted by adults they will give up and be gone forever. Our fickleness will lead to the ruination of their businesses, our morbid curiosities about our sexual natures will gross them out, Gorean slavery will appall them, and our greed and selfishness will disillusion them. Added to that centaurs, minotaurs and satyrs will horrify them and they will hand in their homework late with teh vapid excuse that a Neko ate it (who is prolly their grade teacher when she gets home at night).
It will be a farce.