No Kids in the Main Grid: Redux

Ah, South Park, the new Dr. Spock!

Your argument skips the whole idea that many adults simply don't want to hang out with children. Put all the sexual predators who'd love teens on the main grid aside for a moment, put aside also the porn, the gambling, and the escorts. You still have a community billed as an adult-only community.

The day I stop thinking about AND for(at least at this age) my childrens welfare will probably be the day they bury me




Please don't say you have comments on ways I should educate my kids, 'cuz then I'll have to shoot myself



I believe and agree with you 100%



Ah but the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child



Exchange of ideas? like what position is best?



Bless you, and my faith in god has now been restored



I'm gonna have to agree w/ you on that one

Copy that statement down on a piece of paper. Put it in a safe place and keep it there. If you ever do have a child wait until you are holding him/her in your arms looking down at that innocent helpless creature..... Now pull out that peice of paper and read it again. I guarantee you will not feel the same way..... especially about this part.....

Agreed! I raised mine, I'm almost done dammit, my turn! heh

And in my home kyrah's new keyboard would have become mom's new keyboard and kyrah would have been grounded from using anything more modern than a book for a month.

My kids survived, they don't hate me and they've lived relatively trauma free.

I think I'll stick with my parenting methods for now, thank you.

I wouldn't give my SSN. However, over 90% of Americans have a Driver's License. Others (such as the handicapped who can not drive) can receive an alternate form of legal identification. Your driver's license number isn't tied to your retirement plan, your bank account, or anything really *that* important in most cases. I wouldn't have a problem giving my Driver's License number to a virtual world that is 18+ to prove my age at all, especially if it is made clear that it is just being used for a one-time verification, and won't be stored in a database. Requiring a matching name, DL #, and age > 18 would be a wonderful start in age verification for anyone signing up from the USA. I'm by no means an expert in age verification, but I'm sure similar systems exist world-wide. Using IP address to determine country of origin would be a huge help too; it can be spoofed, sure, but in 99.9% of the cases, the user signing up wouldn't have the know-how.

As for dealing with griefers, Robin Linden had a great idea: shared ban lists. I own the Indigo sim, Luskwood has their two sims, and I'm friends with many other sim owners, as an example. In this model, like minded residents could created a shared ban list. So, rather than having to set each land parcel to ban an individual each time it occurs, each land parcel signs up for a "ban list." When an officer adds an individual to that banned list, they wouldn't just be banned from one parcel; they'd be banned from a significant portion of Second Life. This would be a great solution: a resident run deterrent to griefing.

Regards,

-Flip

Agreed. Good god, I hate to think what would have happened to me had I dont something like that when I was growing up. The words "military school" keep flashing through my mind, for some reason.

I can't think of any system similar to driver's licences in the UK - I don't have a licence, it's not as common as it is in the US, and for that matter I don't know if the data are publicly accessible. Anyway, can you imagine the nightmare of trying to implement a different system for each country? Problematic and flawed as they are, credit cards are the best way to prove that you are a real person on the net at the moment that I know of.

Shared ban lists, yeah, and that could be scripted as well.

What I'd recommend is if the IP's country of origin is the United States, we used driver's license numbers (or "ID" numbers for non-drivers). For other countries, credit card verification would have to do, and forget the phone; that's a frickin' joke.

Regards,

-Flip

Okay, realistic solution idea:

LL wants the signup to be easy, right? That does make sense, to bring people in easier.

I'm brainstorming here, so don't flame me, please -

What about the idea of having all new accounts:
- Sign up in the current format, using whatever current age verification LL has now
- be trial for 7 days or 10 hours of online time, whichever comes first
- requiring age verification at the end of the trial period
- ip / name checking is done upfront to make sure people aren't just burning through multiple accounts

A side-effect would be not having as much of an artificially-inflated number of residents listed on sl.com

Kyrah would have needed funds for more than a keyboard; the internet service itself and the residence required to access it are both expensive. Internet access is a costly option, not a necessity. I'd hate to mislead my kid into thinking that society at large will provide her with everything she thinks she is entitled to (*cough lindens cough*) without being able to pay for it.

i think the age limit should be abolished let parents be parents and raise and monitor their children NOT the rest of us...if children are seeing and doing things they should not be doing it is the parents fault ..they should be sittng on a computer next to their child watching and monitoring EVERYTHING their child does on the internet if they can not then their child shouldnt be online end of story!!!!

my children were on teensl for awhile and it sucked ..it was boring..nothing to do no one to be found anywhere doing anything and what was worse is i could send them nothing.no items no money nothing so they quit sl i would rather have them on the main grid where i could monitor them and send them to places and events that i know are safe and be there with them

what do we have the check here for mature content box for?
why do we get in trouble for mature content in things if under 18 are not allowed?

While I agree... What you suggest could be compared to abolishing all laws and giving everyone loaded handguns.

Because some adults want to be able to not have to look at mature content 100% of the time.

OK, Hiro, I'll bite and up the ante a bit. Here goes:

1) Have an intial sign-up that requires age verification for a limited-functionality free 'tourist' account (shades of AW here). This would most likely be a CC and/or PayPal as not all users are US-based. IP verification would also be done at this step though it wouldn't be much use screening users signing on from internet cafes, etc.

2) 1 week (or mebbe a month.... it's up for discussion) free trial period. Yep.

3) Limit 'tourist' accounts to no object or script creation outside of Linden-sanctioned sandboxes. I'm not sure if this is entirely possible though.

4) At the end of the 'tourist' account grace period, users would then be required to either pay a one-off fee for a Basic account (which would unlock object and script creation as well as giving them a nice little L$ bonus to help them on their way in SL) *OR* sign up for a Premium account with all the bells and whistles.

Well, that's my contribution. Anyone else care to throw a few cards on the table?

Well anyone who seriously thinks the average 16 year old has not had to deal with sex, drugs, smoking and drinking lives in a dream world. Your child may not have participated, but I promise you that they are well familiar with the subjects.

That being said I don't want kids on the main grid, because 17 gets ya 20 and i don't want to think about it. I don't want to measure it, or consider it, or even question.

I think you missed the point of my suggestion entirely.

My suggestion was to preserve LL's "easy entrance" and require age verification later. Your suggestion is not only a step back to what we had previously, it's even more restrictive. I definitely am not in favor of limiting script and build use for new people - building and scripting is what drew me into SL, from day 1.

I'm also not currently in favor of charging for basic accounts, because I like this idea of allowing people to use SL for free - I'd hate to have to pay a sign-up fee for the regular Internet. And at this point the L$ with basics is basically trivial, since people could just pay for L$ anyway.

The point of my brainstorm suggestion was that users would still have the easy access to come in, but have the more secure age verification later.

Chaos works on this model, but we need larger ban lists.

Ban lists don't stop alts.

My opinion on the matter is that if an underage person really wanted to get on the main grid, it wasnt that hard to. This system may make it easier, but I think the impact will be negligable. In regards to the fear of griefers comming back, I can't predict how this will effect this. Id assume there is an additional unseen system that has preventitive measures, but I wouldn't know. I think LL's wait and see and adjust accordingly is probably the right idea.
I think people are failing to look at the good this brings. These changes could bring new content creators into the game, and new minds and new things are one of the things that make Second Life great. I think that the wait and see how this effects things approach is a good one.

Mmmm packet loss. Lag. Grief. People who can't type out complete sentances (hmm I might need to learn a second language).

Damn you people, learn to speak INGLAS.

I don't see what packet loss, and lag has to do with the issue.

I think if the grid is wide open, what they should at least do is limit all unverified members to the PG sims until they provide something in the form of age verification. That allows equal access to Second Life, but at the same time prevents unverified members from wandering into mature areas. It's not a perfect solution (there is no perfect solution), but I believe it would solve most of the big "underage in adult-oriented areas" concerns.

I provide adult oriented inventory, and while not blatently sexual or containing any nudity or foul language, I am not at all comfortable with the idea that, potentially, someone underage can find and wander into my market area.

I like Hiro's ideas listed above. As for the ban list issue, how about allowing you to ban a person on the list, and also have checkboxes for "IP Address" and "MAC Address" with options to block them as well, without displaying either in the interface?

Regards,

-Flip

Recently, i came across a old "friend" of mine, she use to say she was 20 and had fake pictures but later told me she was Underage and that wasn't her. i don't know what to do, if i should BAN her or not, because this is her second account she made...