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

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-kidsonline26-2009jan26,0,1604080.story


Biggest threat to kids, is kids.

But, they are a big threat to adults due to the protect the children laws.

Best to keep them separated, teens in an environment that can be monitored (and comply with the various laws)

Why is that bad news? Wouldn't that make it easier for the pedophiles? I mean why not make it easier for the sickos of the world to engage, corrupt and molest the youth of the world. You think the age verification or flagging of parcels will stop that? Pfffft, think again!

/me hopes some sanity prevail....kids? no thanks!

wouldn't the easiest thing to get rid of teens on your land is to tell them that although they think they are just watching pixel sex in SL that there is a 50% chance that they are watching residents who in real life are over 50 years old?

BINGO!

And quite possibly their parents

=^-^=

I was just sitting around thinking the other day that I need to be hit on by more twelve-year-olds, and have more people calling me a bitch when I won't add them to my contacts because they haven't even said hello yet.

I was also reflecting on how much I enjoy being in a welcome area listening to some kid on voice getting angry because no one is listening to their demands to have everything explained for them.

And I don't think people are worried about getting teens accusing them of being a pedophile. If anything, they're worried about being in some SL sex club and only later finding out that half the people they were interacting with were minors.

Even when teens aren't allowed on the main grid, I constantly get propositioned for sex by minors, and I don't even go to sex clubs. I can only imagine what it would be like if the floodgates were opened.

What flood gates? o.o
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I think the only real concern (even if some find it paranoid) is protecting oneself from legal issues. (teens/moms reporting adults) Worrying about "immature" teens ruining the grid is ridiculous.

I don't think a lot of us realize how few teens actually decide to play on teen second life. (I posted some statistics earlier, from 07 when the max concurrent users was somewhere around 600). Also realize, those 600 teens are the nice ones that didn't lie...
Almost all the "immature obnoxious" teens you fear, are already here....

Hmmmm sounds to me like you should be able to make a naked skin and wear it on the pants and shirt layers to cover up the undies. Just like you can on the SIMS 2.... or so I have heard..

Teens don't wear undies 24/7 ahaha. They have transparent ones or use the client menu to take them off/edit them.

Maybe but if they are, they got 'here' by lying. At least there is a tiny leg to stand on, if an adult gets accused in rl of acting inappropriately on SL with a minor. They aren't supposed to be here, they lied and said they were 18. Will it make a difference in court? I don't know, might. If you are on what is presumed to be an adult site, then maybe just maybe you have a tiny chance of being vindicated. People have a tendency to think that adults are always to blame, and in so many cases it's the sexually overly precocious minors that initiate contact, then get mad if you choose not to interact. I too do not accept friend requests from people I've never even said hello to. TP requests too, what is that about, I am going to tp to someone I"ve never met before? Can't imagine why I'd be invited, lol.

The figures you quoted don't mean anything. Yes, there might be only 600 teens at a given time on TSL, but that doesn't mean there will be only 600 teens any given time when the grids get merged. You forget to ask the question WHY there are only 600 teens on TSL. Don't you think their numbers would rise if they get easier access to the main grid? Perhaps not to stay, but only to peek? It might just be so that TSL itself would attract more teens if it was more challenging (for lack of a better word).

And once more: the fact that teens are already on the main grid is no reason to open up the grid. The standard shouldn't be set by the current practice. Those here are here illegally and - at this moment - still have something to fear when they cause mischief: the one-click AR before they disappear forever.

I completely agree with you.



Did I say that was a reason? o.o

*sighs* I should just give up posting here.

Yeah... They got that figured out >> http://sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=312997 << Teen grid, but, NSFW. (=_=)y

I have enough problems dealing with the illegal teenagers in main grid, then to suddenly deal with an onslaught of them once they open up the main grid.

I joined SL because it kept out teenagers. Surely many come here illegally and maybe they're not all troublemakers, but we were allowed to AR them once we found out they were NOT over 18.

Using the age verifed on the parcel is NOT effective. That will make some adults banned from some sims cause not all adults age verified their avatars. Perhaps they need to have an option to select birth years... (For example: NO one born after 1990 allowed to see, peek, zoom or otherwise view any content on a parcel, sim, club, etc.) In order for this invasion by minors to infiltrate our MAIN grid to work?

Enabling that will take a whole lot of resources, coding to set up, I'm sure? Yes?

I certainly do NOT want teens integrated with the main grid. The illegal ones already here cause enough headaches and stress as it is...

Well said. I could not have expressed it better.


Having teens on the grid is a bad idea for everyone.
As a programmer, I think that this is a bad idea to merge the grids at all.
Any programming that is done, unless it is done *very* well, will not keep children out.
To me, the only real solution is to age verify *before* anyone is allowed onto the main grid by having that person provide a credit card to purchase an avi, but LL won't do that.
LL's solution of merging the grids is a recipe for disaster.

That's been hashed over and over again. It wouldn't really prove a thing. Further, the worst possible approach is to give naive people the impression there is a degree of certitude that doesn't really exist. Make each person that enters SL as an adult say as much on the initial splash screen at every log-in, remove password retention from the official clients and put the onus on the parents and children each and every time the user enters SL.

An even better idea. Thanks Cael.

This is how it used to be. And that did not stop a 15 year old kid from sending love letters to my IMs which at that time went right to my home outlook. Of course that caused all kinds of hell in my house.

Having a credit card only proves you have the means to get here - nothing to do with your age. After all, when I was 12 i ran up a $1400 American Express bill on Compuserve. They thought I was an adult. And ya, my mom chased me around the house with a whip for that one.

And therein lies the added barrier to kids staying here for long, they get caught because there's an audit trail.

Umm, not really.

There are prepaid visa cards and the like that a kid can get. They lie on the age with daddy's or mommy's information.

If the kid is home before the parent's the actual card can be snagged by the kid without the parent even knowing he spent 8.50 at walmart for the card and put 20 bucks on it.

Hell some parents use them to give the kids their allowance

I think that most of the problems, well the debate anyways, focussed on the OneGrid. This not the only option when Mr Philip Linden and other Lindens talk about allowing teenagers and adults to mingle in SecondLife. Its only one of the options and is the least practicable.

There are teenagers on the Teen Grid who dont want to Merge with the MainGrid and their are adults who dont want the Merge either.

One of the options that doesnt get a lot of discussion, although it has been raised here earlier, is the most practical option. Three grids.

Teenagers got their own room - The TeenGrid. Mum and Dad got theirs - The MainGrid. When each want to get away from the other then they goto their own rooms. The third grid is the LivingRoom where both can go. Three grids is a house. Two grids is a couple of igloos. And one grid is a tent.

I will not be surprised to see Linden Lab built a three room house for us to live in. And I will also not be surprised if this is done as the first Linden Lab OpenGrid Protocol offering to the public.

~o~

EDIT: And ya everyone wanting to go into the LivingRoom going to be fully vetted, and you can be as anonymous as you like in Mum and Dads rooms as you are now.

Mortvent: It still reduces the number of kids on the grid to the ones who have at least five bucks to burn on getting in, each time... that being the fee you pay for a new debit card. This is the same situation as with griefers. When they quit requiring a credit card to log in to second life, the griefers exploded.

It's not much of a barrier, but it IS a barrier, and as we have observed even a small barrier is VERY effective.

The flip side is that international users would be blocked, of course, and that's a much bigger issue.

12:50 AM SLT - Wednesday 28th January 2009 - SL Forums
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M Linden says:

The future of Teen Second Life and whether/when it will merge with the main grid: I feel that a single grid is much better than multiple grids (and Philip does too) but a lot of work would have to happen in order to merge them and make it workable and comfortable for all. The exec team has been considering our options (including merging the grids) and when we are ready to share a roadmap, we'll get the word out. Nothing to report now.