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

hahahaha!!!
A lot of weather??Not hot or cold just a lot of it lol

I'm in favor of this, and I'll tell you why. Say I'm on the teen grid, and it's my 18th birthday, and they transfer me over to the main grid. Now I can't see or talk to any of my friends who are still on the teen grid. I understand the reasons for them being separated, but in this case, why am I not allowed to talk to people who, yesterday, I was completely free to talk to?

And this is just another reason why I still hisitate to becoming a premuim member. Where I live you need to drive to go any place, and ever since the made the BAC.08 ( wich is BS in it self, but another story ), at my age I can't afford to pay for a DWI/DUI. So I checked out SL and it turned out to be a " PLACE to GO " and meet people in the confines of my own home, were I can down afew beers, smoke a dobbie , and not have to worry about driving home and winding up in jail and broke! And ever since they introduced voice, I have a great time talking it up with you all. I miss the casinos, and I ain't gonna age verify cause I AIN'T GIVING OUT THAT KIND of INFO to a entity that I only hear bad things about! I would love to open a virtual BAR in SL and pay for the privledge, than pay fines for DWI. So keep the kiddies in there playground where they are safe and LET US ADULTS live in an ADULT SL! What ever happen to" your life your imagination "? This is suppose to be an escape from RL; ex: having fun but staying out of jail, it's suppose to be a fantizyland were a person could socialize for a few hours and have a little fun. so all I got to say is, If you need to hangout with your kids in a fantsyland you outa get a real life!

In your case Ovaltine you make a valid point. But think of it like this, in real life you would be able to go into a bar, but you'd still have to leave your underage friends outside.

I'll believe it when I see it Rez

Then I think in SL, there should be places that are like bars, where you have to be 18 to get in, and places like outside, where anyone can go.

Simple solution: Reverse Age Verification

Teen Grid is smaller.
Teen Grid has less people.
Teen Grid has to provide an 'age verification' of being under 18 already yes?

THEY get the I'M UNDER 18 FLAG.

Turn on the 'over 18 over' flag on your parcels.

They can't get in.

Q.E.D.

They can still cam in.

Sometimes I wander outside my own parcel. That works if the flag is on for the entire grid. Otherwise, it's useless.

But this is SL not RL and in my fantsy world I DON'T WANT NO KIDDES AROUND! Don't get my wrong in real life I love having kids around, but just the same in real life I don't wanna have kids around in a real bar either.

Why on earth would any teen go around in a child avatar? I think that is the last thing they would do.

That would be part of the problem - they will be in regular adult avatars and the true adults will not know who is of age and who is not.

The only ones that we will be mostly sure really are adults will be the kid avies.

Awesome. I'm going to win some bets I made over this. This is the only way SL can get rid of the stigma of being an XXX adult place Well, it actually is a XXX adult place and I hope it will stay like that, but SL is not *only* a XXX adult place, it is much more, as is the world wide web. There *must* be a stronger separation between those two worlds if SL wants to be anything like the "3d web".

With age verfication in place (I hope for a stronger system though) it is not just the kids who will benefits but it is the the adults who will be safer. If you engage in adult stuff you are going to *know* that everyone around you is a verified account. At the moment you cannot - *any* resident you encounter might be a teenager and the profile doens't indicate any verification.

I wonder if an "adult grid" will be installed as well, instead of the "teen grid".

same in my own experience as well. The real kids dun wanna be kids here.

Easy. Just put a flag in the profile "Adult grid resident". If you are verified you may visit the sims being part of said "adult grid". If you are not you cannot (which doesn't mean you ar a teenager - you might be an adult person not interested in that kind of content). Problem solved.

I wonder what interaction between merging the teen and main grids and LL's acquisition of XStreetSL will be?

Will teens be shopping in the "uncensored" web based shopping site?

I also wonder what effect merging teen into main would have on this forum.

LL is acquiring XStreetSL? O.o

Not at all. On the contrary. A dedicated Adult Grid where you would be sure that everyone around you has been properly age verified and you know that no one would be offended by your scripted collar would make this kind of content grow even stronger.

they would need for the age verification to work.. or 90% of the grid would just become inaccessable.

I would expect that teens will have to register as teens and will be easily identifiable as such otherwise LL will be liable for finger pointing as obfuscating where the teens are.

Just heard that it is confirmed on the concierge chat, that and OnRez is closing down.

This is going up in my bar pronto.

An Open Letter to the Lindens

Subject: Age Verification, Adult Content in Second Life and the Teen Grid

Dear Lindens,

I would like to discuss several interrelated issues with you. I've heard rumors that LL is considering merging the Teen Grid with the main Grid. I think this would be an extremely bad idea, and I would like to tell you why.

First, adult content. Adult content is a large part of the Second Life economy. Now that banking and gambling have been eliminated, it is the *largest* part of the economy, after land sales and rentals and the fashion industry. Second Life's economy *needs* areas in which content can be created and sold, and in which land and prims can be put to profitable use. The SL micro-economy is the single greatest innovation of SL...no other virtual world has this feature, and it is a key to SL's success. If all adult content were to be banned today, tomorrow the grid would be a very empty place.

I can give you an example from my own experience. I teach two very different classes to new residents. One is a class on how to use the communication tools...IM, chat, gestures, notecards and voice. The other is a class on cyber-sex...what equipment is used, and especially how to use chat emotes. While the topic is adult, the class itself is PG...there's no nudity or explicit sexual animations. The first class typically draws 3 to 5 students. The second draws 10 to 15...that's between two and five times the interest. You should keep that in mind when you start thinking about eliminating adult content from SL.

Perhaps underage residents could be protected from adult content. However, the current age verification system fails on several levels to do this. It fails technically: Age verified parcels routinely block access by age-verified residents. It fails procedurally: There are many cases on record where a person has successfully age verified using false data; not stolen data...data that are simply made up on the spot. There are also cases where a resident has been unable to age verify because their country does not issue, or does not permit the distribution of, documentation required by the verification algorithms. It fails politically: many residents are unwilling to give personal information to a third party contractor, especially one who has a track record of failing to protect that information or for using it for other purposes. And finally, it fails, period: There is no way to tell if the person behind the keyboard is the person whose verification data is on file. It could be someone's ten year old son or daughter...especially since many people check "remember my password" on the login screen.

But let's say that all adult content is eliminated from SL, and that the worst bugs in the age verification system are corrected. This *still* does not protect the underage resident from sexual predators. Instant messages can contain sexually explicit content. Worse, someone can falsely accuse another resident of soliciting sex from a minor. These sorts of accusations can haunt a person for months or years, ruining their life and reputation, *even if the accusation is proven to be false*.

Let's discuss yet another aspect of this: gender switching. Playing an avatar that's different from one's real life gender isn't necessarily sexual...but the two are almost invariably linked in people's minds. According to your own surveys, maybe 25% of the avatars in SL are being operated by someone whose gender differs from their avatar's. SL is a haven, a refuge for the transgendered community. Do you plan to shut them out? By, for example requiring people to use their real life names for their avatars? There goes another big chunk of your paying customers.

One of the reasons given for merging the grids is to allow parents and their kids to use SL together. I think that is a great goal...but instead of bringing the kids to the main Grid, there should be a way for parents and educators to be vetted and allowed on the Teen Grid.

Keep the main Grid for adults.

I'm laid off from my RL job, my SL job is ending, XStreet (one thing that worked fairly consistently) is now owned by LL, and now they want to let kids come play in the one remaining escape I have left.

Time to start hitting the library again, I guess.