brodiac90

Poorly written or not, no one on goveranance or any resident for that matter, is going to look at a fully clothed child avatar and think .... oh they must have alpha'd their modesty layers. How awful!

It's a good point actually, Robin Hood Prince of Theives was given a PG rating in the UK and it has a scene where a young boy (Wulf) is nearly hung among other things. You'd never get away with that these days.

What sort of sim was it though? What sort of violence?

They might be pixels, but the same could be said for movies or photographs. Whether real or not, people feel child avatars are real enough and I persoanlly would not want to see child avatars being shot, stabbed, ran through or worse. I may be wrong, but I'd argue a lot of adult avatars would feel the same. I imagine to a lot of them, it would be very disturning to have child avatars involved in that sort of combat RP. They might want it but I'm not sure it is a reasonable request - I understand you are not personally advocating for them, merely explaining.

In regards to combat RP / violence and child avatars I would think: Most people don't want to see children being hurt in anyway. However, there are some forms of 'combat' that I think would be acceptable, for example, think of the laser tag game that is out at the Welcome Hub or things like paintballing. You know, things that would be acceptable for kids to partake in real life.

I respectfully disagree. The whole discussion around removing the back part of the female chest modesty layer was because of how much content it broke in regards to dresses/low back leotards and swimsuits with circuluar openings at the back. We want to break the least amount of content as possible, not break more. If you require boys to wear a chest modesty layer as well then that will mean boys will not be able to be topless. We discussed this last time, and someone pointed out whether it would be okay for adult males to be topless, and we all agreed yes, it would be fine. Then we all realised you would be requiring boys to cover up more than men, when typically, in RL, it is the other way around. This is from someone btw, who fully expected boys to have to wear a chest modesty layer because of how child avatars work, and who was pleasntly surprised when I found out we didn't. Your idea is basically, let's treat everyone equally by disadvantaging everyone equally, where if you disagree about the modesty layer for female toddlers, you should argue for its removal.

Perhaps LL could use more inclusive language? If it makes people feel better then I'm all for that. I don't think you can ignore biology though. If your avatar has breasts and you're a child then you should definitely have a chest modesty layer regardless of your identify.

It's not currently a requirement. The TOS references genatalia, not breasts or nipples. It would be an additon, not a removal. A stupid one really considering what @Kathlen Onyx said. You won't see them anyway on females and boys would look stupid without them. I do hear what you're saying about toddlers though, I've not made my mind up yet to be honest.

My thoughts exactly. You summed it up better than I could.

While I broadly agree with the majority of your post, I'm not sure there is a need to remove nipples from prepubscent avatars. By removing them, you're essentially saying that there is something sexual and wrong about them, which could not be further from the truth since there is nothing remotely sexual about nipples on a young child. It's redundant anyway since the modesty layer would cover them. By adding that requirement, you may actually be breaking more content.

Both Keira and Tommy Linden referenced skins when discussing the modesty layers at the Governance meeting on 9/5/24. I pointed out that skins could be removed (replaced is more accurate) and therefore it would be possible to remove a modesty layer in practice. Tommy then confirmed that yes, this was possible, but would be a massive breach of TOS. You can find his and Keria's statements in my thread.

Keira also said she saw no issue with avatars opting not to wear the back part of the female chest modesty layer and that she would also feed that back.

I don't think there would be any issues with someone opting to wear the chest modesty layers when they're not required to. I do think the reverse would be problematic though in some cases. For example., if your avatar has a developed chest then you should be required to wear the bra modesty layer. Doesn't necessarily have to look like a bra, it could be anything designers choose to create, but it should be covered.

That's the current position anyway. I'm not entirely sure LL has dropped the 'cannot be removed by any means,' element, just merely shelved for the time being.

Keira did say she would feed that back. It'll soon be the weekend so maybe we will hear more next week?

The best way to deal with unkind people is to ignore them. Their unkindness is a reflection on what is wrong with them, not you, and by ignoring them you empower yourself and starve them of the negative energy they crave.

I'd like to get a brightly coloured one like a modern nerf gun but not been able to find one yet.

Glad you noticed 😄

Leading on from my non binary post, I thought it might be a good idea to provide a proof of concept in order to show that it is possible for the same avatar to present in lots of different ways depending on the user's choices. Here are three different images of my avatar. I did not change the body, shape or skin. I did change hair, clothing, accessories and poses.

People are surprised that LL monitors chat and IM logs? I actually think them taking proactive measures is a good thing. They have been far too reactionary with pedofiles to date. Requiring child avatars wear modesty layers is part of the solution but it's not 'the solution,' they also need to go after the people who engage in that sort of activity.

I realised I put he/she/it when I should have typed he/she/they - apologies.

I addressed the non binary issue in the Governance thread.

I considered addressing the non binary issues raised last night in the original post, but eventually decided against it because I didn't want there to be any confusion on what the Linden statements were, and because quite frankfully filtering through all the chat messages was exhausting and I already went to bed late enough as it is (I'm UK based so SLT +8). I know, get to bed kid! Lol. Now to be serious again. I don't think the non binary issue is as serious as some people are thinking, at least not in SL. Let me explain. The majority of all child avatars (with the exception of older ones with options for breasts) come out of the box as already being non binary as they don't have any genatalia or m/f anatomy. It is the user making a combination of choices such as skin, shape, hair, makeup (if appropriate), clothing, accessories, display name (if it's not a unisex name), what they tell people they identify as, how they act, etc, which determines how they present themselves and whether they are percieved as male / female / masculine / feminine. There is no reason why people cannot respect people's choice of pronouns for he/she/they or anything else if that is what people choose to do. The policy doesn't forbid this. You can still identify however you want in regards to gender, but biology is still a thing hence why LL have specified the 'female' and 'male'. Unlike RL though, people can choose their biology very easily. RL children who are transitioning do not get to choose so easily. Those born female and wishing to transition to males would still be expected to cover up until they're fully transitioned etc. The only issue is if an avatar with very defined breasts insists they're a male and so they don't need to wear the female modesty layer. In those cirumcstances, sorry, TOS overidesd identity issues. We discussed in the modesty layer thread how this would work in practice: basically, you make your avatar, and decide whether it's presenting as 'male' or 'female' and which one it is more likely to be percieved as, and then you use the most appropriate modesty layer. If tomorrow you decide to present as something else, then make the same determination. Being able to present as different genders has always been a thing, and will continue to be a thing. I hope that covers everything, please forgive me if I've missed anything, and if any offence was caused it was not my intention.

That post was prior to the meeting.

I think the original plan was to have one that could never be removed under any circumstances, but they've kind of had to push that back when people pointed out the technical issues of this. The language very much went from 30th June is the deadline (and that is still technically true while it's in the documents) to talking about educating people and using BOM and alphas as temporary solutions and 'we don't have a concrete time line but we'll update you as soon as it's no longer an option.' I get the impression they're going to migrate everyone to using skin modesty layers while they work on something more permanent in the background. I think if LL wants that to happen then they're going to need to make their own heavily protected and coded child avatars. They could make three, one for toddlers, one for prepubescent children and one for teenagers, all with the relevant modesty layers. That would be a good idea.