Update: Right – so my unsubstantiated rumor idea doesn’t work so well – what seemed like a good source (a Linden speaking at an event) turns out to have been more like a speculative “yeah, we should move in that direction” off-hand remark.
As clarified by Mark Kingdon:
“There is indeed interest in Linden Lab and the wider Second Life community in having a mixed grid but it would come with a long list of challenges. As such, integrating the grids is not on our current roadmap. It would be a significant policy change for the Lab and we would engage the community in a deeper dialog well in advance of such a move should we decide to make it a strategic priority.”
So…moving on to verifiable stories then.
OK – from the ‘totally unsubstantiated rumor’ department, I’m getting word that the merger of the Teen Grid into Second Life is “imminent”. The issue came up – well, came up where I can’t remember, and from whom I have no idea….but I’ve now heard it from several people that the Lab has indicated they have a team working (round the clock? furiously? ploddingly? grudgingly?) on the merger.
So chalk this up as “Dusan is hearing things again” but if anyone can fill in the blanks it would be great.
The last morsel I was able to pick up, was that if it did merge, it would still be separate. That the most we could hope for is that pre-screened adults could go back and forth with the same avatar. No more of this horrible situation of being locked into one and only one location with limited resources brought over from the adult grid.
This is something I’ve eagerly watched for over a year. Please merge, please merge!
A quick look at the canary in the coal mine — SLUniverse — finds nothing newer than June. All but one of the posts found (search terms: “Teen Grid” + merge) are re-whispers of the suspicion which arose with the “adult content” fracas that it was preparatory to a merging of the two grids.
It is only a logical follow that if Linden Lab is looking forward to “explosive growth” with SL 2.0, they would introduce a new viewer, followed by a lite browser plugin and prepare for for 3D native Mozilla/Chrome browsers.
Logic follows that to open SL up to the masses and the web 2.0 world they must recognize the need to drop the adult 18+ checkpoint at registration/signup. Does Twitter or Facebook require you to be 18?
I doubt they will explicitly announce a merge of the Teengrid but will just spin the future “entrypoints” to SL being opened up, deleting section 2.2 of the TofS. Already there is no mention on the new glitsy SL website of any adult requirement, it is only found buried in the TofS, Section 2.2, and currently the Lab does not make it at all difficult for a minor to signup for SL.
Allowing all ages, including minors & students into SL appeared to many to be the real reason for the segregation of “Adult Content” and we all know architecturely it will not be hard to “spin off” the “Adult Grid” later if it makes good business sense. I cannot imagine that the Lab’s board and management has not studied the risk/reward ratio of facilitating adult content versis becoming a larger “Open Platform” like everything on the internet except legally problematic X rated content.
One remaining problem will raise it’s ugly head, the avatars that are themselves, walking porn with their outfits, names, picks & groups. What will they do with them? They can with the new viewer make “Adults”, mute & invisible to all except to those also tagged “Adult Verified” (see the Emerald feature for refernece).
Maybe P Squared will go Adult, with the love machine, volt meter and iphone apps. All the pieces are starting to come together don’t you think? ~lol~ Like always, this will be interesting to watch as it plays out.
I’m almost positive I was told that it was explicitly mentioned by a Linden who was attending an educational conference or other event in the last week or so – stay tuned, I’m trying to find the little note I scribbled it down on.
/me wanders off into piles of scrap paper
Those whippersnappers are the ones who are the brains and future of cyberspace. Segregating them is self-defeating. So long as private regions can be designated as Adults Only (and the onus for lying about being an adult is on the liar, not the region owner), I say merge.
“Maybe P Squared will go Adult, with the love machine, volt meter and iphone apps.”
Volt meter? like in “E Meters”?
iphone auditing?
welcome to Zenu.
Am i being “glib”?
c3;)
This is the fourth year that it’s been “imminent”
Last I talked to LL’s PR people about this, the reply I got was something like “WTF? Who keeps coming up with this stuff?”
really, like 84 teens…. will it make much a diff:)
This is huge news for the educators our there that are aggressively monitoring any step LL takes with regard to teens. Opening up such access will require exhaustive attention to managing the communication and perception of what is going on with specifics about how (paranoid) parents’ kids will be protected from undesirables (in their minds). After consulting several K-12 superintendents and technology directors about this I can tell you they are really, really cautious for legal and other reasons. These guys are even afraid of the implied condoning of on-their-own-time Teen and general Second Life usage simply by having anything Second Life-like in their schools, including OpenSim. Most reading this will dismiss this concern out of hand with a ‘well they can see anything on twitter and the internet now’ and they would be missing the legal point most of these educational leaders face. ‘To hell with them if they are that conservative,’ just would be in LL’s or any of our interest. Here’s hoping they do this cautiously, perhaps in conjunction with an affordable, competitive product to OpenSim, which more schools are firing up in their districts all the time.
Adding the teens has its downfall, but in order for Second Life to achieve the popularity we all hope.. it will need to include the teens unfortunately they are the demographic which most of all these social media platforms start from.
Hell, we discussed this with claudia at SLCC 07, and i don’t see us anywhere closer.
Wow. Woowww. As an Ex-Teen Grid resident, I’m both cheering for this, and totally not believing it. Cheering, because this might help ease the content theft and economic problems plaguing the Teen Grid. Not believing it because this has been announced as many times as people have rung the death bell for SL. Either way, I’m going to wait on an official announcement before making any posts myself.
The Teen Grid is a ghetto. LL could not be more obvious about it if they formally renamed it that way. As is classic with ghettos, they pay the same charges as everyone else but receive significantly less services. I doubt that is deliberate policy, it is just that LL is just not good at dealing with communities whose needs vary from the norm.
Moreover, when a cousin who asked me to help with registering for that grid discovered, (1) it is actually impossible, for Australians at least, to meet the teen grid documentation requirements (2) for most legal purposes, particularly the laws on age of consent, child pornography and abuse, the relevant age in Australia (and most other jurisdictions including many in the US) is 16 not 18.
I do not think the Adult Content/Zindra project has been executed very well, but if it leads to integration, even with some limits, of the Teen Grid, that would be a good thing from the point of view of education and expanding the user base.
If the Hakone experimental workspace of NMC is any indication of virtual things to come, it would seem that closed environments (for schools anyway) would have the potential of allaying the (justifiable)fears of parents and stewards of our children, more than any configurations of grid crossings.
I’m just simply not convinced that formal education in its current forms, has any business in Second Life in the first place. Structurally, culturally and administratively, it’s a mismatch.
During the hot days of the adult policy change and Zindra birth, I wrote a blog entry about what *I* would have recommended LL instead of this red light district – including an idea for a kind of semi-merge of TG and MG:
*.*.*
- Don’t make Zindra a place where those who want to establish or see adult (or rather mature, if you keep the old classification) content have to locate to – make it exactly the other way around! Make Zindra a PG only continent where those who don’t want to encounter anything mature or adult can have their home, business or educational institution. Wouldn’t the existance of such a continent look much better in the public eye than a giant red light district? Of course it would be necessary to make sure that the PG rules are followed by everyone and everywhere there.
Now my fantasy goes even further. Philip Rosedales dream is, to one fine day merge the Teen and the Main Grid. There are very good reasons to not do that – but also some very good reasons why todays hard separation is sub-optimal. The Teen grid has a suffering economy (no wonder with such a limited customer base), someone who transfers from TG to MG when he turns 18 loses all contacts to the friends he made over years in the TG, RL parents can’t enjoy SL together with their RL kids and so on. Now, if Zindra was made the place I would like it to be, it also could be a mixed area. TG residents (who would be marked as exactly that) could go there, have a business there offering their creations to a much broader market or visit educational institutions. Former TG residents who got to old for TG could meet their old friends there and stay in contact with them. RL parents could spend time together with their RL kids in Second Life.
*.*.*
But knowing LL, *if* there will be a merge, it will be done in the most catastrophic way possible.
Umm won’t they need to untick the adult boxes on places search, type in words like ’sex’ and clean up all those PG and mature rated places touting sex before the teens get here.
I’m all for a busier grid, and I’ve got my mute button handy….It will be a crazy move if it happens
It’s gonna happen. Kingdon has already said that was a vision for the future of SL in an interview back in…I think…May or earlier. About a month before the Zindra thing was announced. So, according to the PR dept. where do we come up with these things? Uhm…from your CEO? Plus, it’s only common sense. I wish they would slice of the adult content folks into their own grid. That makes much more sense than having a teen grid.
the potential of allaying the (justifiable)fears of parents and stewards of our children, more than any configurations of grid crossings
Unfortunately, I’d contend that the Teen Grid is about allaying fears rather than actually achieving anything. The Teen Grid would not be the first child protection policy that was directed to allaying fear rather than protecting children. I seriously doubt anything like the majority of Second teenagers are on the Teen Grid.
LL offers teenagers a choice. Go through a rigourous documentation procedure and live on an economically crippled and socially isolated grid, or register an anonymous account and have a blast. You would not have to be too much of a cynic to pick which option most teens would choose. I doubt that either payment info or age verification offer much of a challenge either.
Moreover, because LL goes through the motions of separating teenagers on their own grid, while actually admitting them to the adult grid in large numbers, LL can then excuse itself from further responsibility because they can point to their separate protected zone.
Other than cleaning-up the grid; a.k.a. “Adult rating” – what are they waiting for?
http://commonsensible.net/2009/09/flame-me-burn-me-kill-me-just-don-eat.html
Post updated above.