You imply that this wish to exclude these things might be because these things are creepy, shocking and violent but protect yourself in the mantle of a commercial entity’s right to decide.

I have no quibble with the Linden’s right to do what they want, and promote how they wish. But your implication is that they’ve made this decision to set a tone for what kind of community they want to represent, and that kids and Gor and BDSM is too “creepy, shocking and violent”. But first, these are PG sims we’re talking about, and second, these are multi billion dollar market segments.

This leaves us with the conclusion that they have the right to make BAD decisions as well. Which is true, but their bad decisions aren’t because of a FIC, their bad decisions are because they don’t really know WHO they’re marketing to, don’t understand the competition, and don’t really know what it means to retain customers through community relations.

So in the end, sure, they can do what they want. But don’t imply that they’re doing it because they’re sanitizing us from creepiness as sound business practice. There’s nothing sound about it.

What we can probably agree on is they don’t run their operations very well, market poorly, and have sub-optimal communication skills. We also agree that we as a community shouldn’t rely on the Lindens for anything more than billing, the ability to log in (usually), and an occasional upgrade or two followed by endless patches.

1) There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing a kid avatar to express one’s inner child, to find a place to escape the adult responsibilities of RL.
2) People that look at kid avatars and automatically assume the worse are likely projecting their own dark and repressed tendencies. They are the ones we need to keep an eye on. o.O

Now, this year the celebrations are all under the banner of diversity, LL themselfs called for the communities und cultures to participate and contribute, to present themselfs. Now, at the very last moment, when stuff already was at least partly build and the talks were about how and where to setup – they got told: “Oh, not you, you are not included.”

This is a cowardly decision – and a shame that LL gives away the opportunity to conter the attacks from wannabe-journalists and instead choses to punish its paying customers.

–
Kids5B – LL doesn’t want us to present ourselfs at the offical party – we will do our own!

People think differently about this.

I do, for example:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/06/slb5-not-censor.html

This isn’t about censorship or discrimination, it’s about the Lindens as a private company promoting what they wish. And I think they probably reflect the majority of people on the grid, who find the slavery and violence of Gor and BDSM distasteful and uncomfortable, and who are creeped out by kids on the adult grid, even though we’re told a million times (and we don’t frankly buy it) that these kids are never, ever sexualized.

Voltaire should have been asked whether he felt the creepiness of adults playing children or the slavery and violence of Gor and BDSM were what he intended by freedom of expression.

But…it’s not *about* freedom of expression, which has not been curtailed. That’s why I find all the protesting about this misguided. It’s about *not promoting what you don’t like*. The Lindens have chosen *not to promote what they don’t like*. Yes, a bitter lesson. They don’t like a lot of stuff. Me, for instance, on the forums. Goreans in the birthday build, for instance. And that’s their right, as a private company on their servers.

What we can only hope to do is to morally shape them, not legally complain about censorship or discrimination, which are not the case here. We can try to get them to be more inclusive or not. In this case, I think the Lindens have made a prudent and civilized policy not to let minority lifestylers fill up the public space with creepy and shocking and violent stuff, and that’s ok. They haven’t banned it; they’ve said they don’t wish to promote it.

@Russy – I’m not even sure anymore that they’re organized enough to be making decisions based on favouring corporate customers. I’m still waiting on an e-mail to billing after all (3.5 weeks and counting).

It’s actually not entirely clear, but he does say:

> Child avatars are welcome at the celebration. However, we do respectfully decline the submissions we received to create exhibits for the event.
>
> Goreans, role-players, and members of the multitude of international communities are all welcome, and I hope you come.

which would suggest, since Goreans et al are mentioned in the same sentence as everyone else apart from child avs, that they are not banned from exhibiting.

I find it regrettable that LL has decided to snub three of its more significant and loyal constituencies by excluding them from SL5B: kid avis, gor and bdsm.

I find it doubly regrettable that LL has lumped the kids community – in my experience, one of the nicest, smartest and *least* sexual communities within SL – together with gor and bdsm. Not that I have any objection to the latter – or for that matter, anything else between consenting adults. To paraphrase Voltaire, “I may not like what you roleplay, but I will defend to the death your right to roleplay it.”

I simply resent the insinuation that the kid community is centered around sex, because that is just false. Furthermore, we are not child molesters. In fact, virtually everyone I know in the kid community really cares deeply about real kids (just look at our fundraising for real kid charities) and has zero tolerance for anyone who would hurt a RL kid. Nor do we abound in real kids hiding behind the kid avis. Our community is probably tougher than most of SL about reporting any real kids who sneak in.

Most of us just want to be young and happy again, to release our inner child, to re-experience our youth with the good stuff – and without the bad stuff, which for some of us was really bad. Particularly for gay people, our school years were usually somewhere between lonely and nightmarish. Is it anything to be ashamed of that we want to re-experience them in the way that we wish they had been? Does LL really feel they have to sweep this under the rug? Aren’t emotional needs (not to mention civil liberties) like these one of the business premises of “Second Life”?

Perhaps LL thinks they can make piles of money turning SL into a corporate virtual networking platform. If so, good luck. I guess you don’t need us. But right now, the kid community represents a fairly large base of loyal users who pay significant real money into SL. It is a shame that LL doesn’t have the backbone or vision to see that publicly advocating “roleplay rights” (i.e. virtual or fictional activities between consenting adults) is in their business interests.