Users weigh in on Second Life's upcoming content policies

Thanks Tateru, that reflects pretty much what I think and what I heard from most people. And what I voted for.

A lot of people are not against an adult policy per se. But that would require it is properly thought out in dialogue with residents, it is properly communicated and it will be properly implemented. None of these 3 points are anywhere close to be addressed or solved or fixed.

We all know the Jira MISC-2727 with almost 4000 votes that is officially ignored by LL although confirmed watched closely from inside the Lab. It's not a solution to treat your residents like that or for LL to hit the hands who feeds them and by doing so alienate a huge percentage of the SL population. But we know it, the Lindens know it, and we knew it would not change a single thing.

I can only ask you Lindens who read this again to go into dialogue with your population. There is not much of trust left after all that happend in the past. You can't exist without the people who made you (and us) what we are. SecondLife.

Boy

How on earth do you conclude that 41% approve? Turn it the other way:

29% dislike the whole idea.
24% want it addressed in a completely different way.
17% think it has major flaws that must be fixed before they'll support.

According to my math, that's 70% who view the way LL is going about this as somewhere from heavily flawed to fatally flawed.

In fact, just for funs, I'm going to tweet it with my spin. You can agree or disagree.

actually it is not completly ignored by Lindens, Alexa did do some censorship when a guy tried to post about a security concern (involving both money and privacy) that was present on XStreetSL

if the majority of people responding are opposed no matter how you cut it, you have a potential problem on your hands. its easy for gamers/chatters/larpers to pack up and leave. know your users linden. eve grew by catering to its users. alienating your users is an easy way to make yourself a punchline.

I think Tateru is a little conservative in her claims as to how many people can be swung around to a positive view, it's not the concept people are objecting to, it's the deeply flawed and troublesome implementation.

Defaulting all mature land to "Mature Content" and then giving people the option to self set their parcel as "PG Safe" for example, would go a long long way to cleaning up PG search and that shouldn't be that difficult to implement, they just flip the current "Mature Content" checkbox to "PG Safe".

This is important because if you set your preferences to "PG Only" you get results from mature sims, but can't actually teleport to them in the release candidate viewer, as mature sims greatly outnumber PG sims there are umpteen PG businesses running on mature sims who are now going to find that visitors will be put off visiting them.

All recurring classifieds on Mature land are defaulted to PG if people didn't flag their advert as "Mature content" when they set them, this means said classifieds will only appear to people in Search/All if people are searching for PG AND Mature content, PG because the advert is PG and Mature because the land is mature, this is a big mess.

Publishing the banned word list would help people self regulate, Linden Lab don't want to publish this list but people who feel their content is "Mature" rather than adult would greatly appreciate this list, they don't want to find out their parcel is only being found in adult search due to selling Gorean clothing, the same as people who are seeing their profiles filtered are going to want to know why.

There has been a deafening silence on any sort of assistance for estate owners and tenants on mixed use islands.

I doubt hardly anybody would complain about adult items not appearing in PG search, but Linden Lab are making this all very difficult for existing business owners, in terms of reach and therefore sales and in terms of a simple solution.

The concept is a noble one, the execution is quite frankly ghastly.

The actual changes are too far from european standarts (at least mine) and to impractical to be supported by me. And in fact, Linden Lab will never be able to enforce really such rules, wich will cause problem to the residents of SL, and will not deter people using SL for money or sex only.
This new rules are a lose/lose scheme.

How many times will people still playing this game be burnt and then whinge and complain before their dependence upon this form of crack is broken?

* Gambling
* Banking
* Nipplegate
* Bay City Yawners
* Low Prim Regions
* Age Verification
* Mainland advertising flip/flop
* and now Mature Only

Each of these is a separate issue only months apart, each with the residents throwing disgust at the Lindens... yet a certain core fringe of masochists keeps bending over for the lab to ream them.

"Please 'M' may I have some more?"

It will happen, over and over and over again. The Lab will screw you over, then wait for a month or two for you to roll over again then repeat.

And for this you pay how many hundreds or even thousands of real dollars a month?

I do not agree with what linden labs is doing, the original EULA sateted 18 and over, there is a seperate area for those under the stated age. With the new change they will require age verification... this cannot be done with a credit card or paypal anymore, you must give them even more private information on what i consider a mediocer securtrity system.. ive heard of plenty having thier accounts stolen and thousands taken out of thier bank/credit credit card accounts, now they are trying to open it up for farther identity theft. The main issue, the adult content, around 60-70% of dancers in night clubs etc are non verified members and not able to get lindens in any other way than to work, look around, do you see many other job opporitunities? Second Life, do what you want, how you want, but do it by thier rules... that they change whenever they want.. it should just be, you dont like what you see, theres a teleport button, leave.

If you worry about giving up private information, just use one of the correct but dead people's info that is listed here:

http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/SL_Verification_(Age_%26_Payment)_-_Issues_and_Information

Basically I think the whole plan needs a total reworking. Do not remove adult content from SL. I as a legal adult enjoy viewing content of both sides of the spectrum, yet I do not wish to be censored should I feel the craving to go somewhere beyond where kids reside. Linden Labs, owners and creators of this game or not, do not hold any rights to censor my viewing pleasure, and the government has not given them any such authority. When the government outlaws porn completely, not just restricts it, I will comply.

However, I do agree with a point of SOME restriction. Instead of just confining us mature-minded individuals to a certain corner of the grid like we're a community of lepers, put 2 simple things in place. Don't allow camming across sim/parcel lines, and make it simple to restrict the movements of newbies. Simply put, if you don't have a credit card on file, and have used it for a purchase of at least 1000 Lindens (cheap, really) or at least one month of membership to get that "payment info used" tag, make it impossible for them to teleport into mature sims. Don't have the right tag? Ooops, teleport cancelled, teleporting you to your home PG sim. I believe it's not really the concern of Linden Labs to worry about whether or not a child has access to stuff on here, it's the responsibility of the parent. Make that clear, very very clear that you will not be held accountable. Now, this may skew your judgement on me, but my dad gave me my first Playboy when i was 14, he felt I was mature enough to appreciate it and not be twisted by it. So in this, you have that option, let the parents decide, conduct regular "pee tests" for these people too, got a rolling restart coming? how about you do a rolling age verify at the same time, reset people, if that kid can access momma's credit card a second time, go for it.

So yes, I do believe in controls, but not confinement. Doing something like this would ruin stuff for a lot of people, myself included. I have to scrape up enough just to rent an apartment for a few weeks in a mature sim, you think I wanna have to spend my real life monthly income just to rent it? hah, you're crazy. This will ruin the fun, and a large part of the economy. Just leave it how it is and put stricter controls, but not exile to a small corner of the grid. Read it, love it... Out.