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

Did you actually read what I wrote?

"I don't want to see 15 year olds officially on the main grid for the same reason I don't want to see 15 year olds with driving licenses. Or I want to see a rational legal and regulatory environment, but when you have kids being charged with producing kiddy porn of themselves for sending a picture to their boyfriends I know how bloody likely that is."

We need to protect the adults from the kids. Yes. Really.

With an open source client?

"Oh yeh, my SID is FEED-FACE-DEAD-BEEF..., yeh, really, ...."

Maybe that is the difference, in fact. Well, not the US, per se. Can it really be that France, evidently alone among the G7, has remained rational in the face of this hysteria?

For a sense of the mass insanity: for a time, utterly bogus "recovered memories" induced by hypnosis were legally admissible in courts that made 17th century witch trials positively enlightened by comparison. The "expert academics" behind that crap have all been debunked now, of course, but their innocent victims remain stigmatized for life.

My guess is that when the grids merge, a lot of strictly adult sims will disappear.

There are things the open source client can not hide, certain calls and such on the system can not really be bypassed.

A simple check at login where it makes those calls, and on false responses kicks them off at login.

I'm betting more than a a lot.

I'm betting most of the population will leave at the Disney world that sl would become.

no surprise there, they seem to be focusing on a lot to avoid fixing the things that are broken so HEY! Why not overload it some more!

I think there are just as many people who will sign up after. I've noticed LL has eluded to cleaning up the grid for a while and making SL more mainstream. I'd like to be able to meet up with my son on the teen grid.

Bring on the nineteen year old american cheerleaders

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay !!!!!!

That's interesting....I haven't trolled through the posts here yet on this thread, but I live in PA where a group of girls and boys at a local high school were ALL charged with child pornography because the girls sent naked/half naked pics to the boys. They charged the boys as well since the pics were eventually found on their phones. So what if a kid on SL sends someone a pic; that person ignores it (maybe they were offline when it arrived, and we know how that goes when things are just 'launched' into your inventory, never to be seen again); then the "authorities" find that pic buried in your snapshots or textures folder? I'm seeing way too many issues here.

Hey, anybody seen Tod lately...........?

Sorry, that one swiped just over the hairline.

who ???

notrly

There is a competor that is pure pg ... it's got nowhere the user base of SL

If LL wants to merge the grids, they will burn a lot of the current subscribers and pray they get the user base in new subscribers. And fail

One of the biggest sellers of SL accounts is the freedom, to do just about anything. When it gets pulled into being more or less a There clone... well LL's income will drop drasticly.

People want the freedom that SL offers now, they don't want a franchise ghetto version of SL where everything has to be PG due to the fact there is no way to verifiy the age of the person behind an avatar (even the researchers into it have found verification systems are worthless for protecting people)

That would be great.

I, and many others, would prefer not to meet up with your son on the main grid, however.

why is he a 'hoodie' ??

This I agree with. Sadly, we live in a guilty-until-proven-innocent society when it comes to offenses (real or imagined) against children. Speaking as someone who ended up on a state child welfare watchlist without even knowing it had occurred, I am not interested in fighting my way through that kind of RL red tape ever again because of the actions of a minor.

For instance, a minor on this new merged grid sends me an inventory offer. I decline it, and go about my business. If they sent me a no-trans item, it still ended up in my inventory, just went to my trash (or is it lost and found? I haven't had it happen in a while). I have still ended up with heaven only knows what, passed to me by a minor. The minor's parent decides they'd better check up on them and checks their transaction history. ZOMG, they gave me, an adult, an inventory item. Of an objectionable nature. I must be a pedo. Good thing the lawyer is on speed dial. And the state department of child protective services.

I'm not saying that this can't be done in a way that works. But the risks to responsible and totally innocent adults on the main grid are huge. Bigger than I think LL has thought through.

Name one.

Edit: PS: I'm not opposed to the open source client. I've worked on it. I've been involved in open source since the days when "free software" meant listings printed in Byte and Dr Dobbs and Richard Stallman was lurking in the MIT basement hacking on Emacs.

My point is that the only thing SL knows about your computer is what the client tells it.

First, this is already happening. Second, a safe area is not about the safety of kids (isn't that their parents' job anyway) it is about the legal safety of adults (and the company's).

It seems to me that people under 18 cope fine in our mostly 18+ real world. I think they'll do fine on the main grid. The teen grid was a useless idea. Most 12-13 year olds are the ones sitting on 4chan posting pics of dead people with blown off heads. If you're too silly and think that anything that you might have seen in SL could be detrimental to a youngster, I think it is you who needs to grow up. How do they deal with some dumb kid's mom who seems him looking at horse intercourse in SL is another thing entirely. But, if these rumors are true, I'm sure LL's legal staff has already considered such possible situations.

I personally let a younger person onto the grid. But, this person is never allowed to IM, never allowed to leave my presence, cannot have anyone on their friend's list and is never in SL unless I allow it. They don't even know their avatar password. Parental control, ftw!

Just surfing and saw teh posting. Thought I'd add my two pennies worth.
First, Lindens got many issues to resolve before they add teens to their list. I think they have to change attitudes and directions of this world they have created. Generalization I know but something has got to get this place back on track from teh commercialism and inanity of it all. Its starting to become a glorified "chat world".
In order to prevent too many wanderering teens ogling our SLerian lives, I may proceed to ban everyone except a few friends from every one of my partner's and my own parcels of land. This will dissuade teen visitors. They can "cam" all they like but if they find abstract art and photorealist landscapes exciting then they may be worthwhile talking to.
I hate to say this but given the type of earlly twenties personalities drawn to sl these teenagers may be generally interesting additions to the grid. They have to be literate and "swotty" to really want to be with us. And it will be good to get new music, new ideas in here. I keep my distance from teens in reality in my "at home" life but need their support and good graces in much of what I do in my career so I wont condemn them out of hand. I liek them actually. I must add that I am NOT an educator so I dont have much knowledge of them at that level and I am NOT a parent so my opinion may be only spit in the wind to the rest of you.
I will NOT age verify because I cannot age verify since it is legally impossible to do so in teh country I live in. We cannot all blithely provide a private company with seriously private information with lack of forethought. Not all of us feel comfortable providing personal information of this confidentiality and pertinence. YOU do what you like; I wont jeopardise my personal security.
I am not particularly concerned that teens will "spy" on my sexual activities in sl. I doubt if they will. I was 15 once and I was way passed declaring "Oh My, what IS that hospipey thing" by then. Adults having sex was quite boring; I was much more interested in achieving my own orgasm and climax than watching anyone else attempting it. If you think teens are going to be shocked by what they may see in sl you must all be methodist missionaries or living in Brigadoon. Most kids my age at my school read "Lady Chatterley's Lover" at 14 coz our teacher was a Lawrence fan and we were bitterly disappointed by its lack of salaciousness and sexy passages. Realistically most American kids will be in bed by teh time I (and many many others) come on line and English and European teens will be few and far between.
I doubt if teens on sl main world will happen in my sl lifetime. I do add that they may arrive but they certainly won't disguise themselves as CHILD avatars; that is exactly what they are trying NOT to be. So, I welcome them (when they do finally arrive) but I will judge all this with "a certain alarm" as Arthur Miller might write.
Anyway, they may liven things up around here - much of sl is so deadly boringly suburban nowadays. There's panic for nothing here really.
One additional thought however - I AM concerned that sl is becoming too "family oriented" - I agree with many posters here that I dont like the idea of our world becoming a watered down version of reality and a ready-chat line for parents keeping an eye on thier kids internet activities.

if all parents were like that i don't think there would be a worry..
i know in the U.S. parents have too many other baby sitters and one of them is the internet..
i wish they all watched over them like you do with yours..

i used to do some FPS and some rpg with kids younger in their teens and there are some very mature kids out there..
it was easy to see which had respect for others and which were being babysat by the internet..
i do hope that if they do merge it there are a lot more parents out there with their kids..

You are right, none of the cartoon shenanigans in SL will phase a kid, they see far worse out there. But it's their lazy parents, who don't supervise their internet activity that will be the problem. You aoppear to be a responsible one, but there is enough evidence to show that many aren't. And those lazy parents will be dragging in TV reporters, lawyers and idiot politicians *are there any other kind?* when they see see little Johnny is playing with a bunny rabbit wearing a ballgag in his computer game. That's a headache LL is not capable of dealing with.