Raul Crimson’s experiences in Second Life®
The merging of the grids, Teen and Main all in one
What was a rumour seems that will be a reality soon. Philip Linden in his interview in Metanomics yesterday and Blue Linden in this Plurk started by Damien Fate talked about it. Teen Grid and Main Grid may merge soon *insert here screams and sounds of people running and shouting*.
Well, Philip said a lot of interesting things i may comment in other posts, but today i’d like to center my attention about this particular issue, the merging of the grids. And, as always, i just pretend to show my personal opinion, nothing more… but nothing less too.
Personally i think the situation now is not good for the Teen Grid residents, they have access to a really small grid, with not much content and they are, someway, “closed in their golden cage”. I agree that the merging of the grids may be something really good for them, and they will have the possibility of sharing, learning and teaching with other creators and residents, may permit to share the experience of SL with their parents, but i have some doubts about this process.
My doubts are not specially related to “Mature” content and how “teens” can access to it, the internet itself is full of really mature content really easy to access to people even under 5 years, as an example, the daughter of a friend of mine was looking in the Internet for photos of bears and well, you can imagine what she found. Moreover the Main Grid has a lot of underage people, they are not a huge number, but from time to time Linden Lab has to close accounts of teens using Main Grid, so if they find some i’m sure that means there are more than “only a couple”. Also, i think is not the responsibility of Linden Lab to “control” the access to “Mature” content of teens (well, their responsibility may be to “mark” or “indicate” where the “Mature” content is), the responsibility of controlling that access is in the parents. Also well, some teen residents are much more mature than some of the main grid residents, seriously.
What makes me feel worried is how Linden Lab will face that change and what they do about it, specially thinking about how tabloids can use, abuse and distort the reality. I think they may need to work hard on PR and, well, lately seems not to be their best area of work. I know there are some technological tools LL may use to inform clearly about the contents, but the definition of Mature is diffuse in some areas and may change depending the culture or the country, and due this we saw some sad incidents in the last SL5B and in Burning Life in 2007. Linden Lab should clearly define what is Mature content and what is not, and should respect the right of creating and accessing mature content for mature users. So the issue here is not technological, is totally about PR and moral under my point of view.
So what makes me worry is not how bad it can be for teens, because i think it will be really good for them, what worries me is how that may affect our user experience, the right we have in this moment to express, create and live in the way we want.
Image by Daniel Voyager published under a Creative Commons license.
Ramblings about SL6B and the vision on Linden Lab team
about 8 months ago - 2 comments
Today was the opening of SL6B (Second Life 6th Birthday) celebration with a speech of Philip Linden, the founder and creator of what Second Life is (well, actually himself and his team). The picture above was taken during that speech. Just after the speech i started to think about how residents see Linden Lab and [...]
Customers or citizens of a benevolent dictatorship?
about 1 year ago - 16 comments
Sometimes, in the past, i protested for some comments of Philip Linden, the founder of Second Life. Most of the times i though he was having a wrong idea about the community of residents. Anyway, although all that M Linden is making me miss Philip badly. And we are having M for the last six [...]
Where is Katt?
about 1 year ago - No comments
I mean Katt Linden. Well, she is supposed to be the Public Relations of Linden Lab and i though, maybe i was wrong, that she was managing the relation between the Lab and the residents.
Ok, maybe she is just working now in the relation between Linden Lab and “corporate customers” (what is a hard work [...]
Poor, oppressed and under the rain
about 1 year ago - No comments
Image by Torley published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
“Bad weather, oppressive regimes, poor economic conditions — that’s what makes an SL user.”
Philip Linden (AKA Philip Rosedale)
Yes, he said that in an interview for Reuters, not a joke, just part of an interview.
Of course maybe Philip wanted to say Second Life is [...]
about 2 months ago
Please keep in mind that, as of late, the Teen Grid has been a cess pool of copybotting, and other manners of content stealing. I, for one, would feel it best for the Lindens to finally merge the grids and stop this madness already. I hate seeing all the copybotted junk on the Teen Grid, and it infuriates me when they do, because they invalidate the worth of the object copybotted on the MG, and make it illegal on the Teen Grid. Furthermore, the Teen Grid has decreased in size the most in 2009, and it remains to be seen when the southern sims will stop disappearing like this. Also, what has the MG to worry about, when the TG is very small, and where the MG has over 10 million residents, the TG only has about 2000 something residents- a number that continually decreases due to people losing interest in the TG due to a lack of content, or legitimate content. LL needs to realize that they must do something to stop the TG from sucking the MG into it, before it’s too late.
about 6 days ago
Really, I’m not against, It has its pros and cons, and pretty much teens that play SL, are mature, more than adults, and the adults whine about that, They really don’t have a problem with it when teens sign-up as an adult (I’ve done it before), besides, some teens are very helpful, and they can’t use that on the TG, cause that is basically a dustbowl, cause they can’t do anything, they are limited, on the MG, they can do anything, which makes the grid thrive. And their is not any fun on the TG. I’m not saying their don’t have anything to spend, they do, I’m an example. I have some linden, but their isn’t really anything to buy. Besides, what the adults who own stores don’t know is that their store will thrive more, cause the Teens will buy stuff left to right. Besides, it wouldn’t be bad, some of the adults are just worry about their “Sex” business. I’m pretty sure that LL is making it where Teen Acc. can’t go into Mature areas. If you have a big, I mean a BIG problem with it, just change your land to Mature. But anyways their aren’t many Teens that play SL left. The TG grid is so dull that Teens don’t get on SL anymore. The real problem with is Adult Preditors, but that’s the responsibilties of the Parents. This is pretty much the decision for the Parents to decide, cause the Grid Merge is happening.