Daniel Voyager made a survey if the Teen Grid should be merged with the main one. While I was typing the comment I got the idea how to organize it all in the case that grids finally get connected.
It takes a bit more levels of the content beside actual PG and mature. We all know that dancing poles and occasional f*** word are not the same as the extreme bondage and/or "fountains of blood" violence.
Then, it would take Lindens to make an option in the client to disallow access to areas with certain, parent chosen, rating. It would also affect search results. That should be password protected. It's nothing new, there are content filters for the Web already.
Nice thing about it would be to have several categories to choose from, not just levels like for the movies. It is a huge mistake to mix sex and violence and to assume that if one is blocked the other one should be as well. One should be able to block violence but to allow some erotic content. Or vice versa. Whatever you feel is right.
Good thing about this is that responsibility of what children are experiencing in second life is back to those whose responsibility it really is – their parents. Other one is that it is not only teen protection but also a nice filter for the adults who don't want to run into content they are not feeling good about.
So, what do you think?
Teen grid should not be added to main grid… i like knowing that no matter who i’m talking to i can assume they are an adult because they clicked that they agreed to the TOS
in other virtual worlds such as imvu and kaneva you have to buy an access pass to see anything but pg content and also you never know if you’re in a room full of kids or not until you inspect each and every profile IF they have put down the right age
Hmmm… this one is a very strong argument against merging the grids. But still, does it matter how old is somebody you met in a PG area? In the areas not appropriate for kids, everything goes as it is now.
age is important to me because i feel wary about making friends with under age people due to the fact that i am 26 and if that kid decides to get me in trouble he/she can fabricate something about me that could cause me to be put in jail among other things. probably just overly paranoid but eh..
Hmm…if I was a teen would I want to try to slip over to the big bad Mature regions? Heck yeah! Personally, I like not having to (necessarily) worry about if the person I’m talking to is a kid. I like the fact that the Grids are divided, although from what I’ve been hearing, I believe that the Teen Grid should have more attention paid to it. No sense in having one and not making it worth their while enough that ours seems more attractive.
that’s a good point too! if they want the kids to stay put and not sneak over to our side they should make their side more interesting!
The easiest way is to just never merge the grids ever, it’s a much better way of doing things.
I am surprised to see so many voices against merging grids in the first place. making better defined categories and local content “filters” was supposed to make things easier and more secure or all of us. Kids would be still unable to access the “mature” parts of the grid just the same as they cannot access MG now. Responsibility would switch from LL and residents to kids parents, where, I hope you’ll agree, is the right place for that responsibility. And system would give some freedom for parents to choose how and when their children would enter the world of adults. Also there will be possibility for kids to attend events that are OK for them and that are happening on the MG.
I have to say as a Teen Grid resident that I’m totally for merging the grids. The responsibility for what a kid sees should be their parents and the land owners, not LLs. I could easily look up porn on my web browser if I wanted to, things worse that what I could see on the Main Grid, and you know, it’s not the fault of the people who make my web brower if I, a minor, looks at the porn – it’s the fault of the website that hosts the porn for not being more stringent in filtering out children. LL makes the browser and some public areas (the "web browser". Residents do the rest (the "websites"). Put some parental controls in and don’t be paranoid – adults should know that not all of them are pedophiles! I thought of a system that would allow objects to be labeled as Mature and PG. A teen couldn’t be make, buy or be given Mature objects (or even see them, if you want to go farther). What we need is self-policing and a better, more in-depty reporting system. Those would help smooth a merge.
Believe me, Teen Grid sees plenty and isn’t as innocent as you may think. I can’t count the number of times we have idiots running around the welcome area with prim penises sticking out, humping female newbies, and people shouting that they’re selling sex beds.
There is one important thing here: LL doesn’t only make the browser, they also host the content. All the things we create are hosted on LL’s servers. But, as such they can provide optional content filters (just as Google does for their search results) and inform residents, and parents in minor’s cases about the possibility.
But, more this story goes, not only in Sl but all over the Internet, it is more obvious that it is not about protecting children. It’s about total control of the media.
[...] http://metaverse.acidzen.org/2008/another-way-to-protect-teens [...]
I am 16 years old, I am not some immature, unintellectual idiot, I’m simply 16. I have been playing since 05, TG used to be awesome in the factor of fun but now I log on for about 10 mins than see that theres about no more than 40 people on as soon as midnight hits. Now it has been some time since this has been looked at most likely but there has been a huge uprising in popularity on TG of merging at the moment. There is absolutely nothing for me to do on tg besides talk to my few friends that do play, and build… If you have a problem with teenagers doing something like conversing with you maybe you should use you’re ‘intellectual superiority’ to render us as inhuman, or whatever tickles your fancy, to depreciating us to the point of making friendship with us eats inside at you that much.
i don’t think anyone here has said that teens are unintellegent or inhuman.. we just want to make sure that we are protected and allowed to have our adult content, as well as you teens being protected from that content as it is standard law to do so.
i don’t have anything wrong with teens conversing with me (infact i play WoW with smiley barry on occasion) as much as i do teens pretending they are adults and conversing with me in a way that may later endanger me and mine. and i have reason for that distrust which i will not post here.
i feel they should put more effort into the teen grid, but of course we can’t even get LL to fix the signups for the teen grid.. i suppose they just see it as a hassle because they want to focus on making money and pissing off the MG
Kevin, problem of separated grids is not about "intellectual superiority". As Nimil said, it’s about protecting adults from the teens that might show up as adults and involve into some play of sexual nature.
[...] Another Way To Protect Teens [...]
[Copy pasted from my comment on Daniel Voyagers blog]
No… no, no, no.
A grid merge WOULD allow both teens and adults to access more content… Because of that, though, teen created content will most likely be wiped out due to main grid products often being of far superior quality (anyone who spent a minute on Xstreet SL can tell that). Also, the economy of the teen grid would be completely killed due to the fact it is proportionally inferior (less L$ purchased, less L$ around), making all the teens horridly poor and unable to buy ‘higher quality’ adult content, and all the adults comparatively rich and able to buy entire teen stores due to low prices. Land, also, will be much harder to come by for teens due to less mainland emphasis, and, since most do not have jobs / have jobs with inferior salary, teens will be unable to purchase enough lindens or land or sims to have any chance in business comparatively to the adults. The teen grid militaries will also be rejected due to their less fair (no real written rules) policies and due to the fact they do not own entire simulators but large parts of them, and are main-land based.
Basically…
I strongly doubt the teen grid would benefit from a merge.
I doubt that content from TG is worse than main grid’s. Sure, I have not much evidence, just some screenshots, but still… Both grids have their good and bad content. Sure there is more of both on the MG but MG is much larger too.
Economy issues you mention are worth exploring, though I guess that would be leveled up very quickly.