Overactive Adult Classification in Ads and Events

[Prokofy Neva]

I've had multiple incidents lately of being forced into "adult" as a category when the content wasn't adult.

This is particularly galling given how daily, I am forced to view the most extreme adult hentai images (which really should be banned as child pornography) merely by opening up Search. We all experience this. There are edge-casers that pretend this isn't what it is, but it really hurts the eyes. We are FORCED to do this -- and now when I try to chose non-adult events and ads, I'm forced into adult against my will AGAIN.

I generally don't care for adult content. But I am forced to keep my avatar checked "adult" so I don't find myself suddenly unable to see something on the MP that someone has decided is "adult" even if it isn't, or to fly to take care of my tenants on my own land in Zindra, where I keep just one parcel to have my foot in that continent -- and avoid being blocked from sims that -- again -- someone has put in "Adult" just to avoid problems.

So now, I try to put my Rez Day Pavilion into the events list, and the system won't allow me, forcing me to post it as "Adult". I am bewildered, given that the sim itself is General. The content on my parcels consists only of birthday cakes, some of my favorite gatchas or the most beautiful gatchas, all of which are mere decor unrelated to adult activity. Thinking perhaps the line in my text where I advertised an "eagle ride" somehow triggered some "Adult" categorization, I took it out. (It's an actual eagle you fly from the mountain). I tried cutting my text three times even though for the life of me, I could see nothing in this content that had anything remotely "adult" let alone "mature".

In the end, I couldn't post the ad and had to move some of it to a mature sim. Hugely annoying after spending all that time placing things.

Then the same thing happened when my tenant tried to put an ad on her gatcha store in my mall in a Mature sim. There is nothing "adult" in that store or indeed on the sim. Again, it consists of gatcha knick-nacks that no one could possibly classify as "adult". Just ordinary furniture, no adult anims, and decor with no "adult" connections.

I tried to place an ad there in that store as well and got the same reaction. I tried first removing "Adult" from my own avatar's content description in "My Preferences," thinking that the mere "adult" category of my avatar would force any ad or event into "adult" by default. But that isn't the issue. I relogged so it could kick in. It still forced me to characterize a completely General store in a Mature sim as "Adult". 

Why is this happening? Is it a bug or a feature? Given how Support has responded, they just keep reciting that there is adult content in the store (there isn't and has never been) and not actually looking at it, it's very frustrating.

I have my theories for why this might be happening but want to gather more data.

[Phil Deakins]

Could it be that either the names or descriptions or both, of one or more items in the store, contain a word that, in another context, would have an adult meaning. I don't even mean a seperate word. There is a town in England that falls foul of auto-censorship because of four consectutive characters in its much longer name. So perhaps check all the item names and descriptions.

[Kelli May]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

Could it be that either the names or descriptions or both, of one or more items in the store, contain a word that, in another context, would have an adult meaning. I don't even mean a seperate word.

There is a town in England that falls foul of auto-censorship because of four consectutive characters in its much longer name.

So perhaps check all the item names and descriptions.

---

Two towns, at least, although one is more famous for this. The other is rather shorter, so I expect you are refering to "The Scunthorpe Problem".

[Phil Deakins]

Yep. That's the town. I didn't type it in because I was refering to 4 consectutive characters that it contains

I don't know the other town.

[Prokofy Neva]

Well the sim "Refugio" doesn't have anything like that, and the sim "Athis" doesn't either unless you really, really stretch it. I didn't give these Mainland sims their names. 

This is ridiculous.

[Cocoanut Koala]

The problem is the WRONG CATEGORY for listings.  

 

My store in Refugio is listed as adult EVEN THOUGH it is sitting in the MIDDLE of  a  MATURE SIM.

 

And nothing in the store is adult at all, unless you find something sexy about ordinary telephones, blenders, tables, lunch boxes, and other decor items.

 

This means that unless the customer is  a confirmed adult, he/she will not only will not see my classified ad, he/she won't even find the store or anything in it in Search!  This is a pretty huge problem if you are paying for a classified and not getting the value of it.

 

I have put in a support ticket for this THREE TIMES.  (Same ticket, which they keep closing.)  This last time they just said, "I'm sorry," and closed the ticket.  I guess I will just keep opening a ticket until somebody DOES SOMETHING.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Cocoanut Koala wrote:

The problem is the WRONG CATEGORY for listings.  

 

My store in Refugio is listed as adult EVEN THOUGH it is sitting in the MIDDLE of  a  MATURE SIM.

 

And nothing in the store is adult at all, unless you find something sexy about ordinary telephones, blenders, tables, lunch boxes, and other decor items.

 

This means that unless the customer is  a confirmed adult, he/she will not only will not see my classified ad, he/she won't even find the store or anything in it in Search!  This is a pretty huge problem if you are paying for a classified and not getting the value of it.

 

I have put in a support ticket for this THREE TIMES.  (Same ticket, which they keep closing.)  This last time they just said, "I'm sorry," and closed the ticket.  I guess I will just keep opening a ticket until somebody DOES SOMETHING.

---

This is something that is probably caused by the word filters LL uses.  Perfectly innocent words are sometimes the reason that the filters mark the item as adult.  These words might mean something "adult" in a language other than English, or sometimes, like the example of the English towns given above just coincidently have a few letters in the same sequence as adult words.  Merchants run into this all the time with MP listings of G items showing as A.  For example, you can't say XXL, but can say extra extra large, simply due to the XX.

Unfortunately LL won't release any info about the filters they use to make it easy to avoid these problems for fear of people figuring out ways to game them.

[Phil Deakins]

'lunch box' has a somewhat adult meaning

[Kelli May]

I was thinking of Clitheroe. Lightwater and Penistone have had the same problem, but Scunthorpe got the naming rights.

[Prokofy Neva]

It's a bug.

These stores have had hundreds of ads put up from them over the years. 

This is how the menu looks -- on the Mainland, if your sim is Mature, the ad defaults to Mature. "Adult" is not even an option for you to select.

So it is going to Adult due to a bug.

On the Knowledge Base, there is a notice of a KNOWN ISSUE, that says "ads in Adult show as Mature." So it stands to reason that the reverse could also be true as an issue NOT YET KNOWN AS KNOWN BUT OBVIOUS, "ads in Mature show as Adult."

Perhaps someone can file a JIRA. I can't do that as I am banned from the JIRA for specious reasons.