Ciaran Laval

ugh.. its so annoying when you people insist on calling 16 and 17 yo "kiddies" and act like they are going to be traumatized by your profile picks for bukkake bliss. these "children" have most likely seen far worse on google, and its highly likely that they are doing more sex than you are. they arent children, they are teenagers.. they hold jobs, they drive cars, they have babies.. they arent 12 or 13 year olds. ugh. The law of most lands disgrees with you, 16 and 17 year olds should not be discovering about bukkake bliss and whereas I agree with you that they can find far more graphic content via Google, LL encouraging them to come here without putting in proper safeguards is an accident waiting to happen.

Officially allowing the teens in before dealing with profiles is part of the reason why I say the whole business is irresponsible, the main grid is not a suitable environment for minors and LL have done nowhere near enough or worked hard enough to make it so.

Why are you giving Facebook the time of day when they quite clearly don't embrace the concept of Second Life? You guys should be leading, not following.

I still don't get why some people get so uptight about being able to connect SL to Facebook. I have no issues about others finding out who I am....its not like I have anything to hide or have anyone to catch me cheating on them with an SL pixel. The way I see it, the only ones who feel the need to hide in SL are either RL cheaters, criminals, crazy people or sex offenders. So yeah, great feature, the whole Social Network thing. Kudos. The second word is off, seriously, you want to share your details with the world, have your house burgled when you go on holiday, invite stalkers, fill your boots, there are plenty of us who don't want the world to know everytime we take a dump.

The group leap, whilst welcome, is a temporary reprieve, you will never have enough groups, you need an overhaul, land groups and communication groups should be different beasts, you are merely chasing your own tail right now.

Jack you'll be sorely missed, you're going to leave a gaping hole in customer relations and it's going to be extremely hard to fill, you stood up and listened to us and handled some extremely angry customers in good faith and good humour, best of luck with all you do in the future.

Joshe, actually, they do take them back for services already. You can cash out your lindens to pay your tier and Premium membership - I did that for two years. And cash out the rest to put in your bank account if you have enough. Those lindens came from my customers, I didn't buy them. Did you think LL was just giving away free money? You're both in agreement but seem to be coming at it from different angles, Linden dollars for show in search places and inworld classifieds have already been purchased, they get destroyed when you use them for those services. Selling your Linden dollars to someone else, LL take a US dollar cut of commission, if it's Supply Linden selling the Linden dollars, that's direct US dollar income for the Lab.

So you send out emails announcing how crap you are making inworld classifieds by reducing their appeal and then you roll out this beta nonsense, Get a bloody clue over there will you.

Those who won't participate because of their perceptions of SL, are largely not ready to come here anyway, business wise certainly, the internet at large is full of far more obscene content than Second Life, but business has found a way of monetising their web presence, so they ignore the adult content, they haven't got to that stage with Second Life, they've largely lacked imagination, take for example recent intellectual property issues, companies tell LL to remove content, as they should, but don't see the marketing opportunities staring them in the face.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Ah you're right, I remember now someone's profile being flagged adult for the word submissive.

So BDSM is adult only now then.

UPDATE : One more point I would like to mention - The two biggest games out right now are EVE Online and World of War Craft. Played by both adults and kids. Think about it. If LL is changing the behaviour of SL that means eventually.. no more sex balls.. no more anything that is of an adult nature. Companies like Xcite - Bye Bye. Maybe this is what Philip wanted all along. To have a game where kids can play and shut down the reputation SL has for being sexxed crazed Maniacs. Catch what i'm saying ? WoW and Eve-Online are both subscription based games with a very limited trial option, there's a lot more security in such a model than the one Linden Lab offer. However there have certainly been concerns raised about interactions between children and adults in WoW.

I just checked... Transaction History is showing usernames only -- so if you see something like "Joe" or "Jane" in your Transaction History, that really is their username, and they got lucky by getting a simple name on the first day. Remember that most newbies probably haven't even set a Display Name, so they're running around simply as "joecool123" to V2.3 users, and "joecool123 Resident" to everyone else. Thank you, yes it was a one word name, I wasn't expecting it.

Display names in transaction history is really not a good idea, we need usernames in transaction history, display names can change or be used by multiple people.

You're looking at the math wrong. while there may be 26K sims in SL, how many are general? Of that mumber, how many actually border mature sims? There are around 31,500 sims, although this includes plenty of homesteads, just over 4,500 are general, how many border mature land I have no idea, but I know it happens on mainland as I had a PG parcel that bordered a mature sim, and one day found a gentleman's club had opened next to it, it wasn't until I stepped onto that parcel that I realised mature and pg sims neighboured each other, I sold the parcel as it was pointless having a PG parcel bordering a mature sim.

Nany, Facebook has far more issues than Second Life will about contact between adults and children, there are far more kids for the pervs to target there, with the main grid here being 18+ and the teen grid having restricted access, the types who target teens have been discouraged from coming to SL, and long may it stay that way. However, LL are going from having a very good child protection policy, to a very bad one. The 13-15 year olds policy is decent enough, the 16-17 year old one simply isn't and LL need to get their heads out of the sand on this, they should have built a PG continent at the time of the adult continent, it made sense then that people who wanted a PG experience should be able to have one, it makes even more sense now that minors are being welcomed.

Blaze, What precautions would Second Life need that are fundamentally different from those in place on other internet social media like Facebook? Facebook is well recognized as exposing its users' real world identity information. Why aren't adults worried about being compromised by teenagers using Facebook? As far as the designers' original intention for Second Life, I doubt they intended it to become a pornography site. In fact it appears Linden Lab is willing to pay a very high price to remove that stigma. Again, child protection agencies put pressure on Facebook to install a panic button so that teens could report bad behaviour by adults. Education organisations have social networking policies advising teachers not to have students on their facebook/myspace/personal email list, precisely because of the concerns of adults being compromised by teenagers and vice versa. There are many many concerns about Facebook.

I'm all in favour of the merge being done right, this plan however falls a long way short of doing it right. Linden Lab simply do not listen, I have no idea whatsoever why they refuse to listen.

One way to redeem the single username schema would be to add an additional use case. Particularly, creating a single name login which could be used to access all accounts under that login name. You're all familiar with this usage from MMOs where you have your account login, but then pick your character (avatar) from a list. THIS would be a welcome usage of the single username creation, especially if it allowed cross-avatar inventory management (and Preferences settings which allow for "per avatar" or "all avatars" settings). https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-6212? I would be much happier with this sort of system.

Anybody in this discussion familiar with pornography on Facebook? I don't use Facebook very much and have wondered how they deal with the mix of teenagers and adults there. If it is dangerous to have teenagers in SL, it must be dangerous to have them on Facebook, too. But no one seems overly concerned about it for some reason. Child protection agencies put pressure on Facebook to introduce a panic button so teens could report unseemly conduct and approaches more quickly. There have been many concerns raised about Facebook. Education organisations often have policies that teachers cannot have students on their friend list on Facebook.

Only people that think SL is a Sex Game and a Sex Game only will think negatively on bringing teens in. These are people that no idea how big Second Life really is. I also see people that are too dumb to see what Second has as far as controls for regions. These are people that have never been an owner of a Sim or even a Parcel for that fact. Adults have their sims, go play there. If you do not want teens visiting your location , Flag is as Moderate or Adult and be on with yourselves, and quit harassing teens. That works for mainland doesn't it, you display absolutely no clue that you know what you're talking about if you are unaware of the mainland setup.

I fully support Linden Lab giving teens access to Second Life, I want to make this abundantly clear. However I strongly object to throwing them to the lions, this plan is clearly irresponsible, you do not bring minors into an adult playground. Linden Lab were told and told and told again, to create a PG continent during the adult continent fiasco, they refused to listen to that advice and now they want to bring the kids in to a completely unsuitable environment, shame on them.

Adults built this world, love them or loathe them, it's an adult world, it's no place for teens and until Linden Lab realise this, we're in for a whole lot of angst. Adults built most of the internet too and yet teens are welcome there (with relevant controls in place to limit their access to adult material, as is now the case for SL). The sooner 'adults' stop seeing SL as somehow different from the rest of the internet, the sooner we can move forward constructively and be done with all the 'angst'. The internet really isn't a good example Suella, there's content all over the place that is unsuitable for teens. I'll welcome teens when LL get a clue about the issues teens go through, tossing them to the lions is hugely irresponsible.

I welcome the teens, but do so hesitantly & not with open arms. I don't welcome the teens in any way, shape or form. I work day in, day out with 16-18 year olds, this is not a suitable environment for them. I will happily welcome them when Linden Lab get off their backside and make this a suitable place for them and adults, when Linden Lab acknowledge there's an issue here. Adults built this world, love them or loathe them, it's an adult world, it's no place for teens and until Linden Lab realise this, we're in for a whole lot of angst.