Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

Actually even if the bar *is* the same, there is a commercial advantage issue. Someone in the adult continent can use a wider range of keywords to advertise than someone running a similar business in a mature area.

This is just one reason why anyone on mature mainland requesting a free move should be allowed to move, not just a select few - otherwise LL is unfairly discriminating in favour of some people but not others.

Matthew

I am very self conscious that most of this thread is comprised of fantastic contributions from many many people who have English as their first lanquage. However the that last time I investigated nationality stats two thirds of SL residents were from non anglo saxon nations.
perhaps since then the population stats have shifted a little but for sure a huge contingent of the membership base have as a first language, German, French, Spanish. Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and dozens more to numerous to list.

Can any other nationalities let us know if the proposed changes have: -

1 been communicated to you clearly in your mother tonques with key specifics translated

and

2 Is there a similar degree of discussion either in agreement or dissent amongst your mother tongue speakers?

I'm here and ready to make other language versions of the Ursula Sucks! poster if you can provide accurate translations and notecards

UNfortunately, all of the non-english announcement and discussion have been posted multi-lingual folks in this forum.

Couldbe posted some different language versions of notecards to hand out to friends and groups, but they were all european, Don't think that we have anything for asian or african countries yet. Couldbe? could you re-post your non-english notecards for Lasher?

-V-

I have a german/austrian background but my friends in game plus some architects and artists are from all over the world and I try to corresondend with them mainly in english. I am not much with germans or austrians because it was and is one goal of mine in game to meet people from other continents and cultures instead of my own.

My own boring culture I know since 38 years, hahaha

But yesterday I was curious and was on a german website wich is called:

http://www.slinfo.de/vb_forum

The forum there is maybe bigger than this here and has hundreds of well sorted themes from A-Z around SL. Building, tutorials, events, lifestyle, social and general themes and much, much more.

They have actualy 17.119 threads running, 349.270 entrys, 22.058 user, 5.271 members and hundreds of guests around the clock.

There is a very strong and large german community since years, discussing and learning things - their forum is as big as this here if not bigger and yes: somehow 3-4 weeks belated the discussion reached now the germans too. The thread there is big and growing. Hundreds of postings meanwhile. The main sound is exact the same like here. They are mainly kind of shocked, angry and in opposite to LL's plans. They do also translate Linden blog entries to their website/forums. This website is the main meeting point for german people, much larger than the small german language forum in here.

So I think the germans and even the austrians (both in german language, ah and plus people from small switzerland /suisse) are on their way to get a full picture of what is going on. I understand also a bit dutch language and some french and there it starts slowly but intensive too. This I noticed in game, but they (the french and dutch) are relative closed communities so it can be good to give them more input.

I am only not good enough in dutch and french to translate them things exact, but for the germans I can say, that they are more and more informed about the changes and they start to be active analizing and acting in a way like we here. Their thread(s) there about the change are growing very fast the last days I noticed. Also in german sl-blogs it starts to be a theme.

Ah and about your question: no, the announcements and even Blondins answers or any brown bag meeting results reached them not in their languages.

Some english speaking germans/frenchs/dutch started to find and to translate that for their people per nationality.

About other nations I have so far no impressions about how much they are informed or not.

But that really doesn't absolve us from the responsibility to point out huge glaring errors they're about to make, when they ask us for feedback.

LL has a history of monumental mistakes, and unfortunately, a parallel history of ignoring the very feedback they purport to solicit. One poster on this thread tried again and again to warn them about what would happen with under-priced OpenSpaces. (Certainly not me: I'm not that smart.) LL insisted that they had the price set correctly and went ahead. Six months later they lost hundreds of Estate customers and alienated many more by rolling-back their decision--a very costly mistake they could have avoided entirely by simply listening to their customers.

We're trying to keep them from making another business-threatening error in judgment here. While they may "know things that we don't," we know things that are critical to this decision, and that need to be addressed by any policy that addresses their stated objectives or uses their proposed methods. A few examples:

1. Segregating content by search term and not by actual in-world content in no way advances the predictability of anyone's experience--quite the opposite, in fact.

2. Enforcing a new line of demarcation between Mature and Adult does not address the lack of enforcement of blatant violations of the existing rules: nothing about this policy addresses what happens to new users at InfoHubs and Welcome Areas, nor the griefing of in-world meetings. Rather, it creates a distinction that serves no purpose for the intended beneficiaries of the policy and makes more difficult the enforcement of existing, meaningful distinctions.

3. Neither age-verification nor payment info are reliable means of identifying the adult status of an account. Moreover, the age-verification process remains broken, as does the implementation of its in-world enforcement. (See /352/11/314444/152.html#post2398475 for over 20 unique unresolved public jiras on this.)

4. The process for migrating content to the new Mainland continent, as described so far, is neither equitable nor effective.

5. Communications about this policy have been confused, haphazard, and incomplete, with a large majority of affected residents simply unaware that anything is happening, and many others misunderstanding what is planned and how it will affect them.

I said I wouldn't rehash thousands of posts here, so I'll stop at that. The point is that LL is either about to make a huge mistake or is simply lying to us about what they're trying to do: the steps they propose to take in no way advance the objectives they've stated. If it's a mistake, we should help them understand why it won't work. If it's a lie--if they "know things we don't" and it's "for a darn good reason" that they aren't telling us--it's hard to support a policy the objective of which is unknown.

All that said, I can't very well ask anyone not to trust LL. To one for whom trust has been consistently justified, skepticism must be indistinguishable from cynicism.

Shemale

but not:

Gay
Lesbian
Heterosexual
Hermaphrodite

I guess Shemales are adult and the rest of you aren't!



------------------


I see an awful lot of groups and places that say "No Ageplay".
I guess they will all have to take out their policy banning "Ageplay"!

This is getting more and more interesting!

I've noticed that many German-owned businesses, and most of the Japanese, advertise in those languages in addition to, or instead of, English. Has anyone tested to see whether the new search is multi-lingual? If not = instant advertising workaround!

Bosom isn't there but bosoms is??? I suppose that's because LL don't want to rule out 'bosom buddies' (unless it just hasn't been tried yet), but the second word doesn't even exist outside of American dictionaries, The word 'bosom' is a plural noun meaning chest and includes BOTH breasts - 'bosoms' is just an appalling bastardisation of the English language!

For it or against it, we all stand to lose something with this change be it big or small it matters not. Its just the degree of loss and thats an individual thing imho



Articulation is the key here be it SL or RL. People should consider what they write before posting or consider what they are saying before they say it and at this time it is always wise to at least show empathy towards your peers as they are your bread and butter Always be aware that what you say in other forums will find its way back to these forums of that I am sure, thats why I will never post in a manner here or elsewhere that can be misconstrued, as that is bad for business imo.

You have brought a lot to SL and do a lot for others of that i do know so please think before you post, passionate or not, blunt or not and i call it as i see it, don't let others see you as the enemy as you are the same as everyone else here and in your position wouldn't it be better to yes agree with the changes but work together to try and get some concessions to LL plans to the advantage of a lot of other people? Take the time to find out exactly how these changes are going to affect the community as a whole



I agree with you there, but none of us really know yet how this will affect us in any real way, personally i think it will be short term losses, with a long road to recovery, however things will never be the same here in SL and that is one thing i am sure of it will change the way SL looks completely. LL should remember that it is us the customers that built the world and without the intelligent customer base that LL has SL would be no more than empty racks of server space at the base line. SL is great entertainment for a lot of people but if LL keep screwing over the customers with crazy ill conceived plans eventually you will have no customers and those that make a RL income in SL will do so no more, i hope that all your eggs are not in the LL basket as you could be in for a shock at some point in the future as SL continues to change, because LL doesn't care about you or me they have shown that over the years, all they are interested in is making a profit, rightly so though as they are a company, but i would say expect tighter adult controls over the coming months, years.



I don't think you would and I support the changes as i have always said, its the way they are being implemented that i disagree with. If SL folded tomorrow i would lose a cheap advertising platform for our RL business and would have to re think things re advertising, i hopefully wouldn't lose to many friends as there are other ways to stay in touch, i would lose the money i have invested in here over the years, but i expect to lose what i put into SL, but i wouldn't lose any incomes that i use for my RL, obviously you would and i sincerely hope that you do not



Will it make the Adult Market more efficient? maybe or maybe not none of us really know at this point for sure, i think perhaps it will but at the expense of a lot of people as LL forces a quart into a pint pot so to speak with the forced relocation of people to Ursula. We have a full sim and are definitely in the moving category as we have a public BDSM area amongst other things and have done for a long time now, if we get turned down for a move then a lot of people will be safe from the changes . We got rid of our islands at the end of last year as i saw these changes coming based on reasonable forecasting and was not prepared to keep feeding LL extra money each month.

This is just the start of phased changes over the coming months I am sure as LL would like the adult content to be out of sight completely i believe. They accept i am sure that it will continue as it was adult content that drove the internet in the early years as it has here in SL, but you watch as the controls from LL tighten over the coming months or maybe years. Will it be a good thing? well we will have to wait and see



Doing away with verification was the worse thing that LL ever did imho but i am sure they were forced to do that with the venture capital that flowed into the coffers at that time and now the venture capitalists are asking for more changes as LL wants to hone SL into a business meeting place etc. etc. as they clearly show when you look at the big picture, they won't accept that SL is about entertainment and not a big corporate business meeting place and we are not their target audience anymore they have their sights set elsewhere.

The one i do know is that this going to be an interesting few months/years and i am glad that my income is not derived from either SL or the adult business within SL and that i can afford to play SL with a decent sized monthly budget, but there are many here that are not so lucky and for whom these changes will mean bad times ahead and thats the pity in all of this imho.

With the new Bots against the Tos Policy, it will be easier to disguise how many residents left over being affected by the new Adult Oriented Content Policy. They can simply say that their numbers reflect a severe decrease because many of the residents who left SL were Bots.

1. No. I am informing people in my Brazilian and Portuguese groups, distributing notecards with translations of the new rules and Blondin's answer's, but never heard one single word in Portuguese from outside these groups.

2. There is a small discution in Orkut, but few people participate - they know that nothing that is said there makes no difference - is just ramble.

The wiki in my sig line is available for people to post work arounds etc. just email me if you need any headings on the first page to pages yes i know there is the LL wiki but thay can pull pages on that in a heartbeat. Ours will stay up

Since anyone located in the Adult Continent, or an Adult Parcel will have to verify all of their Alts and even for the purpose of camping, will they find themselves more likely to be at the bottom of the search list when someone is looking for "Fantasy" using PG, Mature, and Adult filters all on?

I have no clue if and how this landed in the dutch community. Most of us (the dutch) have adapted to using english in SL, so I suppose the info should be within reach of most dutch. I haven't heard a big outcry though.

So if someone drops me the notecard inworld I'd be more than willing to translate it to dutch and then hand it back to Lasher Oh, together with a translation of the Ursula Sucks! poster.

On a sidenote: it seems that the spanish, italian and portuguese speaking communities are the largest that don't speak english very well (this is a very large generalisation and only based on my dealings with them). So I think it's of the utmost importance to have the notecards translated to italian, spanish and portuguese (if that hasn't been done yet).

In Dutch

Kunt = Can (Possible alternative word)
Winkel = Shop (Possible alternative word)
Wankel = Shakey (Possible alternative word)
Kut = Kunt with a C instead of a K

I am sure there many more and we will all have to become Bi lingual now

LL have made a business decision.
Implementation requires investment to pay for servers.
Rather than going to the market or their backers for the money, they expect a captive userbase to pay for the extra over and above the normal tier fees.
The up-front auction income in Ursula will pay for maintenance of the non-tier-generating servers left behind in the old Mainland. The 'millions of (silent) predictability-seeking users' that Meta is expecting to flood in post-AO are going to be slow in coming and buying mainland.

This nonsense about adult content not being adult content if certain words are not used in the parcel description is pure snake-oil.
Not having those words available to search while still having those things on a parcel is guaranteed to make peoples' experiences very "unpredictable".
Having such content available to public outside of Ursula will be a TOS offence. That's the whole point of Ursula!!
Anyone left behind in Mature based on some vague assurance that their adult content isn't really adult will eventually get ARed. LL will tell them to delete it or buy land in Ursula or an adult PI if they want to keep it. That's a no-brainer. If this is not the truth of the matter, then there is no need to create Ursula.
Blondin can post things like "The odds are that you'll be OK", but those odds will will get very slim-to-nothing after the land-swap window closes.


LL will swap the biggest and squeakiest wheels to a place in Ursula. Everyone else will have to pay extortionate prices to land barons if they want to have publicly-accessible adult content on their land.
LL moved in with a machete on the OpenSpace/Homestead users. It was business for them. The AO situation is business for them.

Don't get me wrong.
Businesses need to make a profit and survive.
Being dishonest with the user base in not a good way to go about that.

"Please trust us" posts Meta Linden.
Why? What I've seen from LL to date on this not a basis for trust.

I think that "Bi" should be added to the naughty list too.

Why would anyone discuss methods to work around censorship on the censor's servers?

To ridicule the censorship attempt.

So in order to see the false positives we will have to set our clients to 'adult' anyways? (or am I misunderstanding and adult hits will not be in search at all?) Even if we have no wish to see adult stuff but want the list of hits to be accurate?

So the obvious question ....

How does this protect ppl from seeing 'adult' search listings if that will essentially become the default used anyways?

Since it is possible to learn more than one language in a lifetime, there are many many people on these forums whose first language is not English (including myself).



Yes they can. Since many of those people don't know a single word of English, translators would be needed.



Of course. For example: The German speakers discuss their SL problems and topics on two major third party forums. The "adult content" threads amount to several hundreds of posts. Many useful suggestions and questions are being posted there. Most of those people are unable to participate in English speaking forums though, so their voice remains unheard here.

It would be the responsibility of LL to make those voices heard, or maybe the forum leaders could step in and put their project to a major use. Get some translators and put them to work! (Works well with the "moles" as it seems.)

That's not just an issue with the filter, that's an issue with the whole "Adult Content" definition. It's completely clear by now that there's going to be an order of magnitude more parcels that contain "Adult Content" and will eventually have to move than are going to be eligible for the swap.

I am also wondering how many of the 'banned words' at sare either part of or are in some word in their language.

Actually, heteroSEXual would be a naughty word according to their filter.
I agree 'shemale' is problematic. While it is typically considered an insult in the transgendered community, there is no denying that some people choose to call themselves that and are not 'adult'.




The same with anyplace saying 'no sex' ... which you often find at nude beaches, LGBT places, welcome areas, and a lot of places in SL.

Of course, 'ageplay' itself is a problematic word. To use what SL typically wants you need a qualifier ... 'sexual ageplay' (oops, now can not use that qualifier). By definition, anyone with a character not their RL age is engaging in ageplay when they use SL. This is most easily seen with child avatars, who most often avoid all connotations of adult content anyways, but strictly speaking would apply to that 50 year-old who presents as someone in their 30s.

On the Internet nobody knows you're really a 3000 year old demon-cyborg with glowing eyes.