The new marketplace maturity ratings system, as announced here in the merchants round table on the official forum has got off to a shaky start, the first shaky start being moving the discussion thread to the merchants roundtable, because unless Linden Lab have changed something, plenty of merchants won’t even have access to that forum…..ah someone has their eye on the ball, since I first posted this and people mentioned it being in the rountable, someone at Linden Lab has sensibly moved the discussion back to the commerce forum where people do have access. Another part of the shaky start being people wondering why their items have been set to a certain maturity level, general, moderate or adult being the levels.
This is a sensible approach from Linden Lab, maturity ratings on the marketplace should match those inworld, so this is a sensible move. This really should have happened long ago, but one wonders whether Linden Lab departments actually converse with each other, not only because this change has been brought in because of the arrival of teens on the grid, meaning it really should have happened prior to the grid merge, but also because the maturity ratings appear to be different to those inworld in terms of content.
Teething problems are not unexpected, especially when it’s done via an automated process, so there will be errors and there will be mistakes in ratings. However, there will also be some frustrations and that’s where the discussions and listing guidelines can help. The listing guidelines FAQ can be found here, and it’s another case of wondering whether departments talk to each other, especially with gems like this in the moderate section:
“Depictions of, or references to alcohol or tobacco use“.
Linden Lab once tried to put references to alcohol use in the inworld guidelines as being mature/moderate and were promptly told it was stupid, they removed that guideline. The marketplace has it back, why is this stupid? World of Warcraft has references to alochol, there are taverns all over the place and you can get the following achievements:
It’s Happy Hour somewhere – Drink 25 different types of beverages.
Drunken Stupor – Fall sixty five yards without dying whilst completely smashed during the Brewfest Holiday.
Brew of the Month – Join The Brew of The Month club.
The Brewfest Holiday that is mentioned is a drinking festival, somewhat inspired by Bavarian Oktoberfest, as explained here. This was held in September/October and my character drank a few ales and my screen shook, as I was drunk! This all happens in World of Warcraft which is thirteen plus but such references are considered too hot to handle for sixteen and seventeen year olds in Second Life.
Then we have Gor/Gorean which has gone back to being considered too dodgy for general audiences, the problem there being many building creators advertise their totally PG buildings as Gorean or Gor style because the Gorean market does have a tendency to go for the medieval/fantasy look in buildings, this content is not adult. There was a time when Linden Lab agreed that all Gor wasn’t adult, but to be fair to the marketplace team on this point, Linden Lab have made this change inworld too.
The teething problems, I can accept, these things happen, I know when I roll out fixes in my day job, even with testing, sometimes you get unitended consequences, the silliness of some of the reasons for flagging an item as moderate or adult are harder to accept and like with the adult continent fiasco, Linden Lab still childlishly refuse to allow us to know which keywords will flag an item, they say this is in the name of preventing people circumventing the rules but all it really does is punish the people who want to abide by the rules.
There’s also the issue of automatic filters, Pamela Galli reports that her birdbath, that has little singing birds that cock their heads and raise their tails are considered adult, at least it’s easy to see which word is the likely culprit but it’s really going back to the Scunthorpe problem when issues like this arise.
Linden Lab should listen here, just share the word filters with us, for goodness sake, those who circumvent the rules should be punished, as with the traffic inflation policy, it was worded in such a manner that those circumventing the camping rule by having camping under another name, would still be punished, Linden Lab should be working with us here, it’s in the benefit of both parties for Linden Lab to work with us.