Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

Looking at the latest wiki transcript etc, I can't help thinking that the distinction between mature and adult land is less about *what* takes place and more about *where* it takes place.

i.e. we could define PG and Mature Activities more or less as the current PG and Mature definitions.

Then we could define:

PG land as being land where mature content and activities are prohibited everywhere

Mature land as being land where mature content and activities are allowed in private areas, but prohibited in public areas

Adult land as being land where mature content and activities are allow everywhere.

The problem then turns on defining public versus private. This is not easy:

i) lack of a security orb or ban lines does not indicate public - it could be that the owner doesn't like ban lines from others bleeding into his area, and doesn't like being teleported home when lag causes him to stray across a border, and doesn't like being hypocritical.

ii) presence in search does not imply public land - the owner may just wish to be found, in the same way that having your name and address in a telephone booth does not imply your home is open to the public

iii) in SL, your home can be more imaginative than a box with a door so lack of a door, or lack of enclosured for your home does not imply that it is a public space.

Unfortunately I fear that the subjectivity of public versus private in SL will mean that no-one would risk using mature land in case their definition of public/private did not match someone elses definition of public/private and the resultant AR was upheld by LL.

Matthew

Thx for the pointer there Matthew, it seems that for some it works and others it doesn't, it makes me wonder why its intermittent or maybe is people filling it in incorrectly? I wonder if they will be looking at these things

I think that's an awesome idea.

Did you all see this? http://business.avn.com/articles/34688.html (NSFW)

Its an an article about this on the AVN website. So the story was on their radar at some point

I have picked up and moved, as a single take and drop, builds containing well over 5000 prims and over 300 individual prims or linksets. Not sure how many scripts, but on the order of several hundred. So it can be done.

But it is NOT an easy task, and in many cases may be greatly complicated by multiple owners of content, group owned (deeded) content, and the presence of Linden plants as part of the build. Even ensuring that you don't miss and leave behind small items like pose banlls and pictures on the wall can be an issue.

I've seen plenty of group areas where each building had a different owner, the furniture was spread across three or four people, and the plants and trees and the swimming pool belonged to someone else. And much of it was no copy or no-transfer items. And oh yeah, two of those people left SL forever, but left their stuff in-world for the continued use and enjoyment of the friends in the group that they left behind... There is no way that any one person can move all that, even if they have mod rights for all the involved content owners, and appropriate group role permissions.

I've participated several times in the complete rebuilding and moving of a major mall. It was utter chaos, as the old build got deleted, vendors got returned, and everyone had to scarmble to sign up for new booth spaces in a mall that was configured differently, to accommodate the new location's geography.

Moving some of these areas is going to be a task that would be daunting or even impossible for a pro Builder, let alone for the average landowner. In many cases, attempting to relocate something like a mall will require starting over entirely from scratch.

And none of the above touches on unsuitable geography and terraforming limits at the destination.

You'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath.



..and if your "best" turns out to be utter crap, like so many other things in SL, what then?

I realize you're drinking gallons of the kool-aid there at LL (hell, you may even be the one serving this particular flavor), but once you've gone and made a huge mess of this, what then? Undo it? Too late!

You only get one shot at this. As it stands, we're telling you it won't work, based on some VERY legitimate empirical data, and some VERY sound reasoning. All you've managed to put forth so far is spin. You're not exactly inspiring much in the way of confidence here, because you refuse to address the hard questions and recognize the relevant facts.

Maybe that's your job. To just keep repeating the same spin over and over again, in a feeble attempt to get people to just accept that things are going to happen, regardless of whether or not they are well-conceived or grounded in reality. If that's the case, I hope they are paying you extremely well, because this debacle will likely give you premature gray hair and probably at least one stress complex.

For me, I see RIGHT THROUGH the spin, as I am sure many others here do. If you all proceed on this course, this will likely turn into a major nightmare for LL and the people closest to it. As such, you better think long and hard about it, and come as clean as humanly possible with your customers, because if you don't, it will come back on you 10x worse when it explodes in your face, PRECISELY because of the way you are handling it here today.

TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE DAY: Can you name the show this semi quote is from?
"Oh man, we pulled Judge XXX. That guy hates me!"
"Why?"
"Well, I kind of ran over his dog with my car. And replace 'kind of' with repeatedly and 'dog' with son."

@Minx, @Lindal -

Right there with you both. After the whole broadly offensive fiasco, most adult focused parcels I know of made it so you had to look for the sex to see it. Either moving it up in the air, or walling and roofing it off. I doubt LL has even received an AR reading "I'm so offended I teleported to Naughty Neva's sex room, and there were naked people there!" But I bet not an hour goes by that there isn't an AR reading "I was at 'random' Welcome Area when GrieferX walked up nude with a 6 foot penis waving about and started 'insert lewd act here'." Having continent porntopia is not going to make one iota of difference.

Patasha

It isn't filling it in incorrectly, as the postcode field is clearly marked as optional. My experience during the beta, however, was that for the UK at least, was that leaving the postcode blank resulted in the verification failing, whereas entering a postcode and leaving the passport/driving license/id card field blank, resulted in the verification succeeding.

Matthew

Good point. Without wanting to be seen as a proverbial pain in the backside, is one of the issues of communication currently the fact that all of our views and ideas/problems/questions have been lumped into one category in the forum?

I know it's a bit unpleasant for some to consider, but should there not be a thread specifically for thrashing out the definition issue (and others maybe which inform/help implementation).

Quite rightly, a growing number of Residents are only just becoming aware of the policy change and realistically need somewhere to comment either negatively or positively about the decision of LL, also.

The technical issues raised concerning search is a whole area in itself also (as I feel 'definition' is different to 'issues around keywords). Personally, I feel very strongly that there should be a thread for people to publicly disagree or agree with the changes and to discuss and challenge the legitimacy of the policy - but it's certainly making this single thread almost too much for folk, with respect.

Just my two-penneth.

Repeating this, since it's been burried 25 pages back, amid many troll flames and unrelated posts, with no reply.

Lacking any clear Linden response to this discussion, I don't see how hashing it out among ourselves can be of any further use. I wish to formally call for a Linden Response to the issues raised by their customers in this thread and the preceeding threads. In particular:

1: The Lindens started this with an assertation that "Based on our research, we estimate that around 2-4% of content on the mainland would be considered Adult according to our current thinking on defining that. For all of Second Life, our content research shows it is around 5%. In other words, 95% of Second Life either mature or PG."

Please back this assertation up with a clear description of the methodology and standards used to obtain these percentage figures. None of your residents in this discussion so far seem able to validate this assertation. The number appears to be randomly chosen, and no more than wishful thinking on LL's part. Most of the residents in this thread assert that these numbers are impossibly low. Since the LL decision to proceed seems based on the assertation that this only affects a small percentage of the resident population, this serioisly needs to be validated, or the entire plan is questionable at best.

2: The Lindens posted an initial "Maturity Ratings FAQ" that was rapidly shot down in flames as being so broad that 100% of erotic content, anywhere, even in a private island sim with a restricted access list, would be forced to flag as "Adult Content". That FAQ has since been removed, and the link to it was even edited out of the original blog post.

Please provide the current working definition of "Adult Content" that Linden Lab is using at this time. Even if it is clearly labeled as a rough draft, subject to later revision. We can not provide constructive suggestions against a hidden agenda with hidden goals. We can not determine who this truly affects when LL refuses to tell us the criteria for selection.

Let's start with that, at least, Can some Linden PLEASE be brave enough and responsible enough to reply to those two critical points?

One, you cannot link more than 32 prims together. A single room in any club far outstrips that. There is also a maximum distance two items can be to link, as well.

Two, while you can avoid the link problem by simply selecting one item and then dragging the select rectangle to cover everything in question, this misses small stuff that isn't rendered because of distance or because it's too tiny to be displayed. I've had that happen before - I built a space ship and took it all into inventory, but all the small details were left behind and remained in the sim afterwords. You may get the rooms, but you'll not get the tipjars or the pose sets.

Three, WE aren't the ones causing the problems. We were here first and we followed the rules. If the new situation necessitates a G rated environment, then create one for those who are demanding it. Let all the new members and businessmen enjoy a new squeaky clean continent while we continue to enjoy our chaotic wild west. Both areas will grow because both groups will enjoy their world - A new Continent for a New Generation of Second Lifer!

What you propose now will not satisfy the prudes, the businessmen, or those of us you displace.

255 prims. 32 is the limit for a Physical object, like a vehicle.

If you look in Resident Answers, I recently gave some advice on how to select, take and re-rez everything in a complex build, without losing any small detailed parts.

Not denying that it will be a royal pain. But it's somewhat easier than some people think.

How much of SL is sexual in nature, or related to sex?

I don't know the exact answer to that, but I suggest it's a very large percentage. And I also think that LL should find out the answer before putting their new policy in place. I

Sex is in every part of the SL economy (not surprising. It drives much of the RL economy as well). Anything you do that affects SL sex businesses is going to have a powerful secondary effect on the rest of the economy.

Ah, sorry. You are correct - I was thinking vehicle, as that's the problem I usually face. Thank you for pointing that out.

Oh, it can be done, but there are plenty of ways in that it can fail with content loss:

Rezzing a Coalesced Object with No-Copy Components too Close to Parcel Edge Causes Content Loss
Open in jira: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3521

Coalesced items lost after refused rezing
open in jira: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-11025

Coalesced objects lost when rezzed on full parcel
open in jira: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3235

Inventory loss after rezzing an coalesced object containing Linden plants and non copy items in a place where not allowed to build trees
Fix pending in jira: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7198

Rezzing objects with 1024+ scripted prims fails
Reopened in jira: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1571


Yes, it can be done, but it is a little like Russian roulette since if something goes wrong or make a mistake with permissions or location, and you could lose the whole build!

Matthew

Agreed. That is why I recommend taking up all the no-copy stuff first, as individual items, and then doing a "take copy" on the rest of the build. You can then place the build on the new land, and if it doesn't rez right, can try taking a new copy and try again.

Repositioning the no-copy items individually is tedious, but better than risking a rez loss.

I am a PG character now, but when I first started with Second Life I debated getting involved with escorting as well. Not for the L$, I could just buy any I needed over my stipend. Because in RL I volunteered with an org that advocated for sex workers and I thought it would be useful to be able to see things from their side. I quickly dropped the idea though when I realized it would require to many neural pathways to be completely short-circuited.

Originally Posted by Professor Milos
LL: Are you going to help with moving Resident's existing builds, and their contents, that will be marked for transportation to the adult continent? This is extremely important for Residents with complex, multi-owned prim arrangements. Or are we expected to 'link+take+drop' (which isn't going to be possible for many and will necessitate a potentially costly rebuild) ourselves?


Forgive my ignorance, but why wouldn't link-take-drop work?



Not to mention the potential loss of no-copy items or the handling of no-transfer items by people no longer active in SL. I'm pretty good when it comes to building and moving large builds, and I've even managed to talk a few through the process...but its real easy for that to turn tragic. (at the very least, I would expect a few mainland rollbacks)

I don't think there is any easy way to do this, unless there is some secret Linden magic trick that can move all objects to a new location without changing ownership or altering permissions on items.

Ultimately, its just going to take time to get the larger builds back together.

On another note...could we go back to having separate forums for the different issues in this transition?
That was a lot easier to follow.

Just the address was out of date as i am not paying the UK passport office any more money till i have to renew my passport, as I have no problems in Holland with it, and have a mortgage, bank account etc here, and the system works on the Passport numbers etc. which are given to a main database that banks etc. can pay to access. The details from the passports are just basic for the institutions that use them but they confirm your age.

I live in Holland where we are required to carry ID around and most agencies make use of that information, banks Town hall etc. I thought that to open a bank account in the UK you had to have a passport?

Yes i agree the current system is not ideal at the moment but hopefully from all these ideas a new plan or alternatives will be born. I am sorry but i am in the camp that thinks verification should never have been stopped in 2006, but it was and now for whatever reason LL is now having to fix it.

There are ways around all this like pre paid credit cards for instance. You can get one and verify then stop the card and instant PIOF. Personally i would like to see LL charge a one off fee of $9.95 for everyone that joins as it was pre 2006 that would save no end of problems with alt army etc.

But they are just my views and obviously differ from yours and i respect that.

When you verify, all you are doing is confirming your ID via the card. When you buy lindens, all you are doing is buying lindens. At no point in either transaction will data on what you are using the lindens or the game to do available - I can spend the lindens on a Hello Kitty Teaset, or a Filthy Kitty Neko bed and neither are known by the credit card company. And if you worry about LL knowing what you have in your inventory, sorry, but they can and have and always will have that data whether you verify or not.

The credit card company doesn't know what you are buying with your lindens. They cannot. All they know is they have to pay LL X amount of dollars - for game tokens. Where you use the game tokens and when? They haven't a clue. But if you can explain the mechanism by which the Credit Card companies can know what I spend my lindens on when I may not spend them until a month after I've bought them, I'm all ears.

mea culpa??

Since you're around at the moment and in an expansive mood..

1. what is the proposed date for this move?
2. have you made a decision on land swap or are you going to leave us open to land extortion?
3. are we going to be hit with higher tiers unless we let the land bots grab our existing land?
4. are you going to consider another method for moving items on parcels?
5. what kind of goodwill gesture are you going to give your customers for this inconvenience?
6. are you going to put in a review process for those businesses/items that are borderline?
7. What will happen to those who refuse to use Aristotle for verification? You already have my credit card details and my VAT number which is far more relevant than me using old data that anyone could have got their hands on.

Kara - no-no. you really only have to do it once. Just notecard the chat, then from then on all you have to do is copy and paste whatever appropriate "/me heaves her sweaty torso violently against your well muscled chest while gasping 'ooo baby your'e so good'." For any future client.... oops did I just give away a secret. *blush*.

Patasha

Heh. That tells me a lot right there. Yeah, they are hard questions, but it should never have been tough to provide answers for them.



Then you have gone about it in the WORST possible way.

What you should have done FIRST, is define the nature of the problem. The REAL problem, not some vacuous platitude which is a non-problem. THEN, before you do ANY planning, engage the residents to determine the scope and actual impact of the problem. That would have helped you shape and refine your take on the nature of the problem such that you were looking at the RIGHT problem that needs to be addressed, rather than something which really isn't the problem at all. THEN you should have come up with a preliminary plan from the revised problem statement and feedback, and presented it to the residents for refinement and more feedback. I even would go so far as to say that you should have come up with multiple plans, or maybe just an overarching plan with a bunch of options to mull over. Once you received all the feedback you could on that, then make your decision on what specific plan to implement, and then engage the residents throughout its implementation to make sure you handle implementation issues as soon as they arise.

This stuff isn't rocket science. It shouldn't take the customers to educate a large, professional corporation on how to handle the customers.



No, the people who came before you intended such. It is beyond clear that the intent of your "cadre" of Linden is to start the process of censorship and limitation on what is "appropriate" for SL.

You CAN NOT support "everyone's needs and choices". Many people's needs and choices are mutually exclusive. The best you can hope to do is to provide for people's base needs, and give them good information so they can make the most informed choices. Taking an active hand in shaping people's harmless interactions is meddling in things that you shouldn't, and will backfire on you in a rather epic way.

The fact that you state you "have made this decision" goes to the heart of what we keep saying and asking about. The "decision" is ill-conceived, not just because it is based on a faulty understanding of the problem, or an invalid take on the nature of the problem, but because of how it came about.

At this point, you REALLY REALLY need to come clean. Right now, you and the other Lindens who have touched this "evil" are now "tainted" and incredible. You really need to purge yourselves of the taint by exposing it all to the light of reason and the (often harsh) wisdom of common sense. Go back to square one and do it right, and I promise you that you will have the best chance of achieving your goals.

Continue on your current trajectory, and I predict a most spectacular epic fail.

Don't forget the risk of the asset server crashing in the middle of the operation and everything being lost! (yes, I have seen that happen)

I want to say Thanks for the other posts about this as well. I am the furthest thing from an expert so I wasn't aware of the difficulties with Link-Take-Drop.

What kind of in-world technical support did you have in mind?