Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Motivations and Goals

They need a "business grid" then. But if they want to make the mainland into a business grid, they've got a LOT of other stuff they need to fix before they get anywhere near sex. They'd be better off with a new "professional" continent, with a "business casual" dress code.

Yes yes yes yes yes. Yes. This. Yes.

You should be able to take a build, select the parcel, right click, and select "archive". You get a file selection dialog, select a folder name, and click "save". It saves an XML serialized version of any full perm content along with either encrypted or UUID-tagged references to third-party content, along with terraforming.

Well teleports seems to fail with the same regularity - although these days chances are you'll get thrown to some corner of the sim you are teleporting from rather than thrown out of SL completely.

However, policy stability is as important as technical stability, and in the last six months we've had a major revision to what is permissible on openspaces and now what is permissible on mature regions. Not being certain that a LL blog post in a few months time will completely wipe out any investment of money, time and effort is as much disincentive to use the platform and worrying that a technical fault will wipe out that investment.

Matthew

Exactly

I already paid extra ( a premium over PG land) to buy mature land.

Now they want me to do it again ? Whose to say they aren't going to pull this same crap again in a year ?

I am not seeing this. At all. I occasionally get teleports failing, but a week ago when I got logged out on a teleport it was a surprise, because it had been so long since that happened. And I haven't had a build ruined by a crash in months.

Compared to the days when you routinely had to remove *all* attachments before teleporting to have a hope of success?

Important, yes, but it was clearly not what they were talking about, so it's unfair to refer to them as liars (as the message I was referring to was doing) on those grounds.

"Over the past year or so we have been hearing from a growing number of you that the experience in Second Life needed to change."

Yes, yes you have, bots, land cutting, griefers, stability, performance. All are issues that have concerned all of us who utilize SL. However, what you are calling adult content was never a concern for a MAJORITY of your PAYING residents. (and by that I mean the number of paid accounts, not the amount an account pays) If you are not a paying resident you don't count, if you want to complain you need to pay for that right.

" We gathering a great deal of feedback and data, and then sat down and tried to imagine how we could serve most needs best. What we came to is that we didn't need to change very much about Second Life to meet the majority of those needs."

You are correct, there are a number of outstanding issues with stability performance and usability that need to be addressed, none of which are related to the "graphicness" or "adultness" of SL.

Basically I am saying that you, LL, are lying to us about the need to do this, or that your reasons are not the ones you have stated.

Some have stated that this is a move by LL to impart some kind of CYA measure against minors viewing adult content. To which I counter with BULLSHIT. They are already covered as much as they need to be by the laws of the country in which they reside. If you don't believe me, just pop on over to pornotube or youporn.

Adult content is not what keeps people out of SL, and the possibility of casually viewing it is not a concern of your residents. Are you playing a game of "wag the dog"? What is the real issue you are trying to distract us from?

If this is a real concern you can prove it by answering one question, what percentage of unique paid accounts have complained about this issue?

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
--Voltaire

In some ways, yes. In still a frighteningly-high number of other ways, no.

I still am losing random inventory items over time. I think I am up to around 10 objects which, in whole or in part, are now reporting "x does not exist in database", but I haven't pulled out every piece of my 25,000+ inventory to find out.

Sims don't crash as bad as they used to, but ever other day I get kicked off of SL because "the simulator you are in is going down". No restart warning. Nothing.

The client still crashes on me also on a daily basis. I am having some issues with my system, but this is also seen and reported by friends on a frequent basis, so I know it's not just me or my setup.

SL still has periods of daily instability as bad, if not worse, than the past. Remember last month? For several weeks, we had daily "don't TP or rez no-copy objects" issues.

So, yeah, while it has improved in some ways, it still is as bad or worse in others.

What general public? The one you want to kick out of the places where they were living and playing for YEARS before you showed up?

"Personally, I am looking forward to screening the Goreans and some of the others role players that trash Native American women right off the main grid. I don't want to see that crap advertised and I don't want anyone else to see it without explicity asking for it."

Yes this has irked me as well as other Native Americans the way the goreans have somehow made native Americans confused with part of their role play.

Some times i will wear native American clothing and I have heard things like " I hate male slaves." or " it's nice to see a gorean" or the gorean who came onto my land, no where near a RP sim in a PG area, who told me " I own you kneel when I address you.'not to mention should a person want to buy any Native American items, they always seem to be tucked away amoung the gor nonsense.
Try this type potawatomi in search, the RL Tribe that I am associated with, and what do you see besides my sim? some store also offering gorean garbage.
I for one would like to see gor gone.

I've seen an increase in being logged out on teleport this week, but prior to that things had been much more stable and it could be an issue with my router, I've had that happen before.

I wouldn't say they are lying, I'd describe it as being economic with the truth. It simply does not add up to go to these lengths for 2-4% of mainland content.

Of course merging the teen and adult grid becomes logistically easier if they can get adult content moved to a new continent, although of course Linden Lab have no immediate plans to do this and tell us this proposal has nothing to do with that......

Argent, I agree with you to some degree. I don't think name calling and accusations is the rout to go here and get results as some are doing. But I do think that in an event like this the minority will win, why? Because the minority is the type that LL whats in the grid. They want it to be a virtual training ground. But I don't think they want the ones who built this world to leave either. Change is needed, but I think it needs to be done in a way that suits everyone involved.

Now I don't have sex related items or do I frequent the sims that do, but yes, I do go to mature sims because that is where the stuff I like is. I don't let the sight of boobies of anything else bother me as it is what some like. We all need to enjoy are time in SL or what is the point of even logging in? Separating the sims may be a bad idea as I stated a few pages back, but flagging them would give the proper warning to those who need it. LL can't babysit adults and we should all be responsible for our own actions. If parents can't control there kids activities either on the internet, sl or in rl, then nobody will be able to. It is 100% the parents job to police this activity. I just don't want to see a world we have ALL created get destroyed because some parent hasn't done there job.

And on another thought, could this change be money related? Now I am only asking a question and am not assuming anything or accusing anyone here. But with the loss of thousands of open sims in the last 5 months could they need to change the grid to produce more revenue? I understand this is a business for LL and making money is there goal. I just hope they don't cut there own throats in trying to make everyone happy.

I do also think that once payment info is used, you should be age verified automatically. Let companies like PayPal due the dirty work of verifying people. This also eliminates the chance of yet another 3rd party company getting our personal info. I have had mine taken 4 times in 3 years and don't want to deal with it again. It happens and we all know it, and some have gone through it, mine was stolen from a employer, lost by the military, stolen from a breach at a bank, and stolen from a merchant I used. So this alone shows how easy it is to have happen from just about any company or government agency. This also would eliminate the chance of lawsuits against LL for identity theft related cases.

No, the ones who are not using Second Life yet. A lot of the ones who are already here are bored and boring, looking for excuses to leave all the time, not really contributing anything new.

Golly, lovely seeing someone who has faced insensitivity hypocritically project the same ignorance on other people. Kudos.


If you look into Gor, you'll find the story itself is about cultures brought to another planet who then evolve on their own. They aren't confusing anything, it's part of the storyline. I have no idea if your tribe is in the books, but I know many cultures are.

How about granting people the same tolerance you and your culture were denied for so long. If anyone should know the hurtfulness of judging people based upon ignorance, you should. Right?

I, for one, would like to see just intolerance gone from SL. That's a lot of what this whole situation is about.

It will be filtered the same way a roleplay sim advertising N*gger slaves would be filtered, as a violation of the terms of service that demeans an ethnic group.

It would put some teeth into this TOS requirement:

In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not: (iv) take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content as determined by Linden Lab at its sole discretion that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, causes tort, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;

the problem with Gors is that they are extremely offensive to Native Americans. If people what to engage in that activity, they should do it in private.

The public display of Native American women as slaves and Native American women as sex objects at all deters Natives from using Second Life. It's harmful to Native Americans. It encourages demeaning imagery that is harmful to Natives. There is no reason to tolerate that kind of behavior.

No one should be using SL to get their kicks at someone else's expense.

OKay one more suggestion about how to deal with the actual problems:

Recognize, first of all that the biggest mistake SL ever made was to "sell land" in a format that made people unwilling neighbors of one another, in a format that nearly matched RL in its permanance and level of difficulty relocating. On top of that, the "RL" format of this "land" did not include any of the privacy one could expect from an actual house with walls and such.

Along came Open Spaces, which went a long way towards addressing this fundamental flaw. It provided private space for people at a price that started edging into affordability for the entertainment oriented user. However instead of recognizing you had a winner you ditched it.

Now you are being asked to behave "like any other online community" and put adult activities behind a filter or two. And find yourself in a bind, because you didn't design a world that allows for that. Nope, you've got a messy amalgamation of nonmovable Real Estate. If your corporate users want to slash and burn the mainland to make way for their "legitimate, productive" use they need to pay us all off in real money for the privilege like they would have to in RL.

So... Fix it fairly!

Offer genuine Private OpenSpaces again at a fair price. The island format allows you to shuffle things around at random without disrupting everything. Second, you should not only be offering configurable private areas to the Extreme Adult (tm) but to *everyone* who would enjoy a little privacy away from potential kiddies and anonymous griefers. (And by fair price I mean it should trend towards under $50 US like any other hosting for the tiny amount of bandwidth involved in providing a couple people access a few times a week).

That's been my suggestion many, many times in the past five years.

Recognize this is not a singular virtual world, and hasn't been since 2003. It ceased being so and started being an internet of 3D spaces when the first island was created.

RECOGNIZE THAT THIS WAS A GOOD THING. Private spaces should be encouraged for all the different ways people want to use this platform.

Why is it so hard?

Err, his tribe is real and Gor is a fictional work roleplayed rarely without the sexual slave element. While any fictional work can claim to make a culturual statement, comparing the two is a bit off. Apologies to any completely non sexual Gorean roleplayers out there. But one shoe fits, one doesn't here. Gor should be deemed adult and not show in vanilla search. The author of Gor (John Norman) has expressed his distaste of Gorean roleplayers so I don't think he'd have a problem with it either.

LOL, then any mention of murderous vampires should too, right? Vampires murder innocent people. People willingly roleplaying a book are people roleplaying a book, wanna pick and choose? I really, really don't think folks want us digging into the underbelly of their beloved myths.

Gor is science fiction. Period. Lovecraftians like myself have very brutal mythologies that focus on death, darkness, and evil. Shall we just deem any roleplay with a villain out of scope of the ToS?

Gotta love seeing the culture police skitter out from under the baseboards.

BTW, if you look into the religious basis for all this decency crap, you'll find texts that allow slavery, genocide, stoning people to death for minor infractions. Shall we make biblical areas adult only?

The subjugation of women wasn't invented in a sci-fi novel, kids.

This is nonsensical, as it usually takes a couple years for most people to really make dramatic and new contributions.

One would think that someone so sensitive to Native American issues would understand why being asked to pick up and leave places held for a long time and hide yourself in a special reservation would be greeted with outrage. It really is like that. It would be different if, like I suggested above, SL was an easily reconfigurable platform where every landowner could shuffle themselves around without reference to geography. SL didn't do that. Instead they made a "world".

Nah, gor should be allowed, but I define it as adult content.
Its different than just ''kissing'' or ''snuggling'' another person.. like mature content is.

That is a pretty nice TOS. Sounds like nobody would be allowed to do anything at all on SL. The "otherwise objectionable" pretty much covers everything not covered before it. What I find objectionable and what you find objectionable might just be two very separate things. Who is right in that case? Who should Linden Research listen to? Slaves actually did exist all throughout History. I'm not saying it is right, but it is a part of History. Also, would you go so far to censor the artist who created the art in which you described in your other post? Would you censor them from SL, or would you prefer to censor them in RL as well?

One thing is very clear, you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

That what has been said by Linden Lab employees every time there is a change - you let us tell you what we want and you do what YOU want - stop all the Bull Crap and QUIT thinking we are a bunch of idiots ! We told you what we wanted on Open Spaces and you screwed a ton of your loyal customers.

Renee Faulds

Screwed a ton of times already by LL

goreans are fake but offensive to Native Americans who are real. It is the goreans intolerance of Native Americans by making them appear to be property or subservant people, wow just like they are made at times to feel in RL
Nany Kayo spells this out perfectly
"the problem with Gors is that they are extremely offensive to Native Americans. If people what to engage in that activity, they should do it in private.

The public display of Native American women as slaves and Native American women as sex objects at all deters Natives from using Second Life. It's harmful to Native Americans. It encourages demeaning imagery that is harmful to Natives. There is no reason to tolerate that kind of behavior.

No one should be using SL to get their kicks at someone else's expense."
I tried to get the Potawatomi Band out here to help educate some of the younger members of their past since the last that i checked, over 80% of the Tribe lives off the Reservation and our language is becoming extinct. Well they to saw the bigitory out here and brushed the idea aside. Maybe now when the people who decide to " choose" to visit or run a sex based sim, are moved to an adult area maybe this idea can be presented again.
Unlike the BDSM, rape fantisy or other sex places who have a "choice to continue to provide adult content" and be moved is nothing like the Trail of tears in RL that involved the Potawatomi being relocated and raped by drunk solders who were supposed to be protecting them because of an agreement over the beaver trade with the french goverment. You have a choice, they didn't so don't even try to label my attitudes against goreans demeaning the Native Americans in their roleplay as intolerant.