Are Teenage Dreams So Hard to Beat

He looks like Steve Bruce, he looks like Steve Bruce, Carlos Tevez, he looks like Steve Bruce…ahh what a night of excitement at Villa Park last night where the twenty four Million pound man struck the winning goal, but this isn’t the place to discuss that, although I’ve slipped it anyway.

No here’s where we discuss the grid merge, Linden Lab’s apparent security through obscurity policy and some glaring issues. Linden Lab have been absurdly and almost childish in their refusal to do the decent thing here, they should have built a family friendly continent at the time of the adult continent fiasco, yes this has been discussed plenty enough but we still go back to Linden Lab not listening to a solution that was not only perfectly sensible, it’s one that would have made the merge easier not just for sixteen and seventeen year olds, but also for the thirteen to fifteen year olds who have been cast aside.

Whilst Linden Lab have made some strides, their current policy on educators being able to still allow thirteen to fifteen year olds onto the grid is a good one and going around finding adult private sims neighbouring G rated sims is another good faith effort, largely Linden Lab have ignored areas such as profiles and groups and this is going to be a sticky wicket.

Profiles in particular, now that we’re moving to the super duper web profiles, are an area where residents and Linden Lab need to grow up. Residents need to be aware that their profiles are on the web, they have been for some time but now with Linden Lab jumping more heavily onto the Facebook bandwagon, users need to be aware that their profiles have no real privacy, what happens in Second Life doesn’t stay in Second Life. I still maintain that those widgets should be opt in, I’m also not sure whether payment info status should be so widely shown, we’ll see if Linden Lab actually listen on this issue, they have heard that’s for sure.

Where Linden Lab need to grow up is in regard to profiles needing to be PG, this is an outdated requirement that should have been addressed at the time of the adult content fiasco, adult merchants should absolutely be able to advertise their wares and services via their profiles, and that includes adult themed picks, people should be able to flag their profiles as adult if they choose and therefore their profile will only display fully when an account verified user searches for them with an adult search option ticked.

Picks should be set so that adult picks only appear when an account verified person is searching, otherwise those picks don’t show, but other picks would show and so would the general profile information if that’s not adult. There was a time when I supported the concept of anyone being allowed to search for anything, the theory being if someone wants to search for adult content they should find it, then they’d have to decide whether they wanted to get account verified to actually get to that content, that thinking needs to be tweaked a little now that minors are officially being welcomed, although it could still work if LL will allow flagging of picks and profiles so that they adult picks and profiles are never returned for minors, LL have made the sensible decision that an account verified minor still won’t be able to get to adult land, so there are ways of creating barriers.

The adult profile issue isn’t a new issue, Cindy Claveau created Jira VWR-15298 in August 2009.

One argument I’ve seen for people welcoming teens is that they are already here on unverified accounts, I don’t buy this. When I was a lad we knew which pubs would be more likely to serve sixteen and seventeen year olds, that doesn’t mean that the law on the legal age of drinking should be lowered and when I was at school there was a taller lad who could pop into the newsagents and purchase jazz mags for us all to giggle over, that doesn’t mean that schoolboys should legally be able to buy jazz mags, just because someone can do something, doesn’t make it right.

Linden Lab’s approach largely does seem to be security through obscurity here, Tateru Nino points out in a rather disturbing article on some legalities that the number of teens migrating across is between eighty and two hundred, with Tateru suggesting that the number is probably closer to just eighty. Therefore with so few teens it seems silly to make too many changes, although Linden Lab did some months ago change search so that any parcel on mature land is excluded from PG search, previously this wasn’t the case and many perfectly PG parcels sit on mature land.

The low number of official teens therefore lessens the risks and we’re not likely to have a Traci Lords style incident happening but this security through obscurity stance ignores the issues of growth and this is why Linden Lab should be working to ensure that a world that welcomes people from thirteen and upwards can be created and they need to be doing the right thing now, whilst they have the baton, instead of ignoring issues like family friendly continents and family friendly searches, they should be looking at introducing parental controls as World of Warcraft has done, they should be acknowledging that there is an adult continent and that adult private islands exist and allowing those businesses in those locations to thrive and prosper, to be able to honestly and within the TOS, advertise their wares withouth worrying that those who shouldn’t really see that content, can see it.

These things can be done but it takes some will and some joined up thinking, growth is surely what most people want to see in Second Life, so let’s see growth, let’s welcome the teens to a world that is suitable for them by making some changes this can be achieved and a lot of the concerns can be diluted at least. There will always be risks of course, but that’s the way of the world, Linden Lab can avoid tawdry headlines by making some tweaks and then have foundations for allowing even younger users to participate and that’s exactly what they should be doing.

Adult content and family friendly conten can happily co-exist if the right barriers are put in place, the internet at large has plenty of adult content, far more gratifying for a teenage boy who needs excitement and needs it bad, but Second Life has communities and discussions that will probably alarm parents more than their easily excited teenage son watching porn. These things can be done, the place can be suitable for thirteen years and up but there needs to be sensible dialogue and more importantly, there needs to be willingness from Linden Lab to recognise the world that has been created here.