Minor

Okay There is someone who i met in sl this summer. They told me they were 20, but later i found out they were just a minor. I'm not gatta say there age but they are under 15. I would like to know where i should go to report them, and if i should.

Yes, you should. AR them. That is...report them to LL.

Well, you have two options at your disposal. I've dealt with a similar problem in the past, and chose option #1. This is a standard moral dilemma.



Option 1 - The Polite Route:

Convince this "friend" of yours to go directly to a Linden.


Option 2 - The Blunt Route:

If you're feeling a bit more nefarious with your conscience, you could just rat them out directly.


Option 3, "Do Nothing," is now probably closed because you made this issue known publicly.

In either case, your friend's account will pretty much be moved over to the Teen Grid. No frills. Happened to a friend of mine who I still keep in touch with over ICQ.



As for reporting this kind of thing, refer to the guidelines mentioned back during Teen Amnesty Week. As that time has now passed and I am not a Linden, I can't say what the exact process will be at this time.

I do know that the process has historically been painless, more so if the person chooses to give themselves over.


Your best bet, no matter which route, would be to contact Robin Linden. Her email is [email]robin@lindenlab.com[/email] - and has a good turnaround speed from my experiences.

Alternately, an AR is probably fine, though it may take longer to pass the chain of command with such things.

Good luck!

JG is being very nice. Please take option 2 for the benifit of everyone.

About the only way AR'ing someone who has told you he/she is a minor is going to be 100% effective is if you screenshot and include in your AR the conversation in which this person admits to being under 18. Lindens can only do so much to check ages in SL; if underage kids use their parents' credit cards (often with their permission) to join SL, it's hard for LL to verify their age.

I AR'ed a minor over two years ago who told me she was 11 years old; I made the mistake, however, of not screenshotting and submitting the information where she admitted her age. She still plays in SL.

Convincing this person that the teen grid would be a better or perhaps more interesting place for him/her might actually be a more effective route to getting him/her off the adult SL grid. (That's not to say you shouldn't go ahead and AR anyway, of course.)

okay thanks guys. well i sent a e-mail to LL yesterday, including Both Yahoo and Sl Chats. Do you think they will do anything?

Well, the only way that LL has of officially verifying a chat history and using it as evidence is if you use the "Include Chat History" option on your SL in-world Abuse Report (AR). I guess wait and see what happens. *shrug*

This is very very strange here........this person saying this.........Odd indeed.

IF they say their age in PUBLIC LL can do something. BUT if your trying to catch them using yahho or MSN your not going to get any luck. Yahoo and MSN has their own set of rules. BUT appling them to SL does not really prove much. THis topic posting is very very strange.....

Pardon my lack of understanding, but why does the simple fact that a SL member extracts minerals from the earth for a living cause so much outrage and indignation? I can't find anything in CS/TOS about this

digging for dirt is common in places where bordom is present

So far as I am concerned, if a minor doesn't cause any trouble, behaves himself and is known as a productive sl resident, then I don't care how old he is, and wouldn't dream of reporting him.

If a minor causes problems, he will soon come to the attention of the Lindens because of his griefing.

Its more of a CYA and legal issue for LL. Nothing to do with how nice a person is. Therefore, you wont see LL waiver from this stance.

It's not to do with their behaviour.

It's to do with what happens when Mr. Minor flies over the wrong area, sees a few pr0n textures, and then his parents sue LL for having supplied a minor with pornography (since it came off their server, through their software).

You can bet LL don't need or want that.

I understand why it has to be a big deal to Linden but I'm with Seladon , if they act mature enough and don't cause any problems I don't mind.

Lets kick them off and send them to play on MySpace all day , free and no abosoulty no porno there

I believe childhood is precious, and once lost, can never be regained.

Children trust. It comes naturally to them.

If a large number of adults didn't so readily and disgustingly violate that trust, I might feel differently.

I would report a child on the main grid immediately, unquestioningly, and without the slightest hesitation.



Furthermore, if I saw an instance where someone was clearly feeding their sexual fantasies with a minor - I'd call the Company and the authorities. Immediately. No warning whatsoever, no excuse for being stupid.

Most Sincerely,

If they choose some other site rather than the Teen Grid which LL provides for them, how is this our responsibility rather than their parents?.

Didn't say it was ours , just pointing out that porno is not as hard to find as some may think and most teens have seen much more hardcore stuff then cartoons animating and talking dirty. Key word being most .

I have been here only a few months and have yet to be propositioned by anyone in that sort of manner however I too would report asap if I witnessed any monkey business. I'm not saying no one should care , was just my opinion I stated in my 1st post and in no way am implying you must feel the same as I do.

You losing sence of the rules, if your under 18 your not suppose to be on sl......But then again there is one person in the mentors thats under 18. Go figure

And now that you've admitted you know that, you're obligated to AR them or face possible banning yourself. :/

Supposedly no action gets taken about ARs for minors inworld unless you have a chat log from within the Abuse Report dialog with the person stating they are under 18 in some fashion.

That jibes with the ARs I filed about minors recently.

Of course one be obligated to report it even though the report would go directly to the e-trashcan.

To quote GalaxyQuest:

"Minors, not miners!"

You miss the point.

At some point, I'm assuming the alleged minor did tell Usagi -- unless Usagi is making an allegation based on hearsay ...

I totally agree with this. We cant judge maturity solely by chronological age. As we all have seen there are plenty of "adults" in SL who are immature, who grief, have tantrums, provoke and taunt and act in childlike ways.

This is not really surprising when you think about the range and experience of adulthood. he maturity of an adult at age 20 who really has very little real life expeience may be bastly different from an adult at age 40, so we can have 20 year olds who act immaturely.

It doesn't have anything to do with the maturity of the minor.

As a lawyer, what do you think would happen if a minor's parents caught them having 'sex' in SL, or partaking of any of the readily available sexual scenes and lifestyles, or masturbating to any of the readily available pornography in SL, and decided to sue, or take it to the media?

It would be bad for SL, and bad for all of us.