Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

Well the interesting thing about the last 156 pages of comments is:
1. This has already been decided by Lindens and all they are trying to do is 'ease the pain' by letting everyone vent here.

2. Wonder what the ratio of PG to Mature now is? I would think it would be a lot easier to move the PG folks to a place that was PG so no one would be offended. Because I venture a guess that a LOT more of SL is Mature than it is PG.

3. Obviously this has to do with marketing more than reality. Simple zoning is a easily done especially in SL where you just have to make a new "virtual zone" for anything. So what's the point here? Getting more of the teen market??

4. Be a lot easier on sign up to allow avatars to indicate PG only and then restrict them from Mature zones so they won't be offended by what people actually do in RL.

5. I always thought Mature meant Adult now I find out Mature means "not quite Adult". What a revelation for us all.

Why don't you just tell us what you have planned instead of all the normal yada yada hype that usually accompanies another "change for the good of all" pronouncements that brings on another diasaster and yet more people (yeah those who made SL what it is today) leave again.

I'd change #6 to be "why not a PG continent ALSO?" since that's what's been asked more often than not, in that regard.

Also hearing about how they're going to address the population density issue, one of my biggest problems with this whole deal, would be good. And how they came up with the 2-4% number (/me suspects "we counted oceans!" is something we've been asking since hour-one of this. And how they're going to move multi-parcel/owner builds. And why they're in such a rush to get this done.

Where will sex-education classes be held?

Having just read the forums, after hearing about this from a friend, all i can say is, wow, why aren't you listening to your customers? how many high functioning, incredibly creative, intelligent adults (with money and time) do you want as griefers??

This is crazy. What options are there for us to protest, fellow residents?

“If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.”

Erica Jong - American writer and feminist, 1942

This is a perennial problem, support staff clearing calls by dumping people into JIRA. It needs to stop. Personally, having been a manager in such an operation myself, I think there should be a rule that if a support staffer is going to clear a call to JIRA that they should have to write the JIRA. That would improve the quality and usefulness of a lot of JIRA content...and reduce the number of "misfileds" too.

Possible solution, start naked and get dressed. He did say taking thier clothes off. Ok joke to lighten the mood.

Office hours and the forum, from the sound of things.

jest leve it the way it is let thim bitch about it we dont need the stuff to get moved as if you move it your going to loses half your prfets from resdents and you will see the numbers drop is that what you want LL thank before you act repein your teen gride and it will all be fine make the miners stay in pg sims dont move thaings and dont make it harder for every one you all rady have a barthdate tab on sing up lets see if there going to lie about there bearth date there going to take there mom and dads ssn and say its theres hm did ya thaink about that i bet not so leve it the way it is ban the camplaners ban the press lets see that will fix it i do belive

And there you have the nub of the problem - your idea of 'overtly sexual' is very unlikely to be that of your neighbour, or your neighbour's neighbour. It's a moveable feast, from generation to generation, country to country, individual to individual.

Okay so you don't have anything that constitutes your OWN SIM to be classified as Adult. Fine. But you don;t want to be a pg sim. So you opt for MAture. What does this mean? For instance. I co own a mature sim with my business partner.

We have residents living on this sim along with businesses that hold emoters, hair and *Gasp* naked skins. Will I haveta remove the skins? Will my tenants haveta relocate? Will the rules for a mature sim stay as they are?

It would be nice to Have SOME answers even if they were only best guesses. Then at least we would have something to work towards.

Okay and now onto Age verification. Can you garuntee that the verificated Avatar IS who they say they are and haven't just snitched their parents details? What about people like myself who don't WANT to give their details to a third party and have them leaked out? Becuase it HAS happened and WILL happen again.

How are you going to ensure that if we give our details they aren't going to be leaked? Which by the way you can't.... Is there going to be a forced verification?> I have heard a rumour that I hope is unfounded of a new update that will force you to age verify before you can log back into sl.

If this happens then I'm screwed as is my business partner who OWNS the sim my business is on.. Which means my business goes down the pan, the sim gets taken away...need I go on? Okay I doubt I'll get any answers but its always worth a try.

Good luck Ya'll.

I think the real reason that LL won't entertain a new "PG continent" is they know that it would be BORING.

People who would be willing to always design for a Disneyland-type sensibility are likely creativity-impaired. Not that everything has to be raunchy and lewd, but constantly worrying about some blue-nosed busybody whining about "I shouldn't have to see" your stuff is not a good place to be for a creator.

Would Mainland be the amazing place it is today if everything had to be PG? I doubt it very much. Not because everything is a penis sculpture or a strip club, but because the brightest minds didn't need to worry.

I have to caution in the strongest terms: don't kill real profits from the residents while chasing imaginary corporate or academic ones.

I don't think it would be boring - I just think it'd be small.

If this whole thing was really about giving people choices and making sure that people who didn't want to see adult stuff didn't see it, they'd absolutely create a PG continent. It makes sense in so many ways and I've yet to hear a good reason for them NOT to do it..

I don't know how many times LL has to be bashed over the head with this one to hear.

My institution has been wrestling for some time with the decision of whether to move into SL. We were close to taking that step when the homestead fiasco erupted; currently, we're on hold, and this latest proposal does nothing to inspire confidence.

Do you think we are concerned for one moment about X-rated content? Of course not, all our students are adults over 18 and can look after themselves - part of our job as a university is to encourage them to be discriminating. What is much more likely to stop us from investing in LL is the instability of the platform, the unreliability of the provider, and a warped understanding of good business practice and customer relations.

THESE are the important things LL should be seeking to address, for everyone.

Let tell you guys; without Adults contain (all kinds i mean) SL is dead already!!!
And what will happen to all the persons who are free users????!!! HOw u can watch information on them without Credit card or paypal account???? RIP SecondLife

Well, I'm not a shop owner, nor much of a shopper, but I'll tell you this much: If I did own a shop on the mainland, I'd go ahead and label it "Adult" even if all I sold was roofing textures. I think as many people as possible should just go ahead and migrate over to the upcoming "Adult" zone, and form a whole new mainland that isn't just about sex, but about anything, as our mainland pretty much already is. Leave the PG guys behind to form their singularly Disneyfied land mass. If entire islands could be moved without forcing a name-change, that would at least keep landmarks working, I assume.

I'm not too comfortable with 3rd party age verification stuff. That generally leads to costing monthly fees, even if it's not initially the intention. They suggested segregating adult portions of the internet, once, but obviously that didn't exactly pan out. Honestly, why doesn't LL just compile lists of PG-friendly zones and offer them as some kind of tour route for people who can't find the time to censor their own lives? We should be our own babysitter. We shouldn't have to depend on everyone else in the world to do that for us.

Sometimes I imagine everyone in America being given their own individual MPAA-style rating, so that you can tell at a glance if someone is potentially prone to doing or saying things that could offend you, which is increasingly becoming something akin to a crime.

Blondin has already said that male quote attachment unquotes are not automatically adult.

"Has your SL experience gotten better or worse. Why or why not." Very simple.

*Smacks LL on the head with a newspaper*

Bad company!



My survey answer: "Much worse. Because your all idiots."

ROFLMFAO!!

I rented a room in a house full of gay guys once, don't ask how I don't exactly know but I was the only female and the only straight person there. Needless to say I was still self conscious about how I looked, what I wore around the house etc. Now there was nothing wrong with where I loved, I liked the guys there and we became good friends; one of the topics in specific that relates was of the topic of attraction to the preferred sex.

Now talking with a gay man obviously he has little to no interest in my body, but does that mean he wouldn't look if I waltz by in the nude? Of course not, damn right he'd look and I'd like it, why? Because I know it isn't a sexual advance from them, it's the admiration of the beauty that is the human body.

The point is, nudity isn't sexual, not by itself. It is the idea that society has created that nudity is some special treat to give someone in the bedroom, that you are only supposed to be nude in private or when you are planning for sex with your partner. Because of this any time, in "normal" society, nudity is displayed it is taken as a sexual advance and peoples minds jump towards what they could be doing with that persons body and not just watching it because it is art.

Hell, I look at woman, and I'm straight; we all do really, for their clothes, is she wearing something prettier then I am? Etc. But even nude, I cannot help but admire my own and others natural beauty in the way the body looks, smooth and curved. And there's nothing sexual about it: unless we want there to be.

So no, I do not think nudity is sexual, the mind; influenced by the brain-washing of society, says it's sexual and makes it thus. But it, by itself, is nothing more then art. And art should be admired, shared and stared at; not squirreled away in some seedy den or bar.

There's something to be said for this but one of the nice things about the existing mainland is that it's mostly vacent.

Mainland sims are capped to only allow 40 people on them at once. If you chop up a sim into 512m2 parcels, there's room for about 128 of them. Even if you chop it into 1024m2 parcels, there's still room for 64 of them. Obviously most sims aren't like this but the point is that LL has, and have for years, WAY oversold mainland in terms of number of people vs land on a sim. They encourage people to buy 512m2 - it's the starting "no-tier!" level and I'd bet good money that more-premiums-than-not don't have over 1024m2 of land. They don't allow anywhere near that many people to be home at once.

This works out ok, usually, sorta, because most of the mainland is mostly empty most of the time. Just look at the map and you can see huge areas of land with only a few people scattered around.

LL says that 2-4% of the mainland will be forced to move to the new adult continent. The mainland is currently at about 5000 regions so 4% of that means a new adults-only continent of 200 regions. Just to have even numbers, say they even make it 500 regions or 1/10 of the existing mainland.

LLs plan is to take a lot of the highest traffic places on the existing 5000 region mainland and force them to move onto a 500 region adults-only continent.

Soo... Do the lag math.

D'oh...........what fun is that for the professional offendees who seem to have a hotline for being 'consulted' by LL ??....

"In particular, it has become clear that some Residents are interested in pursuing certain “Adult” activities in Second Life that others would rather not casually encounter."


Of course, LL won't ever say how this became 'clear', what the context was, or how many were involved. It's the usual LL policy of stating 'what the people want'.....when in fact no people were ever involved or asked and the whole thing was just decided at some LL Politburo meeting without recourse to any data.

As someone involved in the more extreme end of BDSM on SL, I know that most if not all such sites carry specific content warning in an area that is often well away from the content itself. You do NOT just 'casually encounter ' such things. In the vast majority of cases....the notion that someone could find themselves in some dark dungeon 'by accident' is palpable NONSENSE and I would challenge LL to cite an example.

But LL are not interested in the truth. All they want is to pursue their agenda, and then present Politburo decisions in exactly the same ' we know what the people want ' manner as the Soviets did.

Even this thread is a complete waste of time. Comrade Governor Linden has already decided everything. This is just a treadmill for all the hamsters....sorry, residents.....to run round on and feel they are going somewhere.

LOL!

I made Sindy laugh. That concludes my contribution to this discussion.

(Joking, I'll keep bitchin' about LL till the cows come home)

What Sindy said is a good point. Most of the popular places in SL are adult rated under the new system from our LL overlords. So really they are taking the most laggy places in SL and placing them all in one location. Yay! We can call it 'greendots land'. "Come here to live out your every fantasy - In slow motion!".

The scarlet letter is G. The letter "G" is seen as such a scary proposition that Linden Labs tags "general admission content" as "PG" even though by their guidelines real live PG movies would violate their terms of service on "PG" land.

Well, goldarn it all, I think they ought to wear the scarlet letter with pride.

I spend a significant amount of time on PG land where people have been asked to leave for using the "b" word. That's a word that's been sold in the open with no plain brown wrapper in Bible Belt Texas. So it's REALLY G rated.

I think the fact that the "G option" is in such disrepute that people (including Lindens) consider it the kiss of death is more telling than the fact that maybe a couple percent of the population think that "M" is the scarlet letter. But I think both opinions are wrong, and I think a new "G-rated" continent would be a he... heck of a lot more successful than Linden Labs seems to think.