[sl] First Teen Led Activist Campaign to Change Second Life
I learned yesterday of the The Walk For Integrid Commerce
Their group's description reads:
"On May 6th. 2007, at 12 PM SLT, there will be a walk on the SL road from Meiji East to Opera. This walk will be the first protest walk in Teen Second Life.Our mission is to get Linden Lab to grant teenagers permission to travel to the main grid's PG sims, and adults to travel to our public sims. We would have teen only sims (Teen Grid), as the MGers would have their mature sims.
Linden Lab, let our people go.
Invite people. Let's show LL what us teens can really do."
This is in conjunction with what has been named the Unification Proposal, which is reprinted below. It is exciting to see the teens self-organize through a grassroots campaign. We hope that some of those teens might report on those activities here soon, as many are involved with Global Kids.
Unification Proposal - Unite Teens with Adults
Proposed by Alex Harbinger along with the Teen GridProposal - Unification
I, Alex Harbinger, propose that Teens be allowed to venture to the Main Grid's PG simulators, yet the Teens will still retain the Teen Grid for themselves.
Connecting the two Grids (Teen Grid and Main Grid) would allow for a more diverse community, which in turn would prove the underlying essence of 'Second Life' as it really is - A Second Life, adults with Teenagers. There should be no age discrimination, no segregation.
Teens should be allowed to venture to the Main Grid's PG sims. This may raise some problems however, such as: Legal and financial issues of exposing Teens to potential mature situations, the time and effort needed in allowing Teens onto MG-PG sims, adults disliking communications with Teens, and a magnitude of problems and issues that would arise.
By retaining the original Teen Grid, Linden Lab would evade any possible legal problems, and still keep their theme of a place 'only for Teens'. This would also allow for teens that wish to stay separate from adults, separate.
It may be needed that Teens on MG would have a tag in their profile alerting others that they are, indeed, teenagers. In order to counter-balance the problems that may come with this, teenager abuse reports against adults should take top priority, or teens should have their own 'support team' (Ex - The current 'Teen Grid Support' team becomes 'Teen Support', working with all Teen reports, regardless of Grid.
Adults would benefit from having Teens on the MG-PG sims in a magnitude of ways, including a more diverse community, being able to communicate not only across continents, but also across age groups. Adults would also be able to teach Teens how to mature, and in turn, Teens would be able to show off their creativity. Adults would still keep the Mature sims to themselves, so that any adults who don't want to see teens all the time can stay within the majority mature sims.
Linden Lab would benefit from this not only by being able to call their platform 'Second Life' and actually meaning it, but also by possibly allowing only Teens with payment info on file to be allowed on MG-PG sims, increasing both Teen-security, and allowing Linden Lab to retain more information on their customers, and increasing the chance of overall profits. This could potentially also increase the amount of customers Linden Lab has as more Teens would want to play, and adults that believe in a more diverse environment.
Furthermore, many Teens bring up the subject of 'economic meltdown' if Teens ever became able to buy MG items. Many residents on the Teen Grid have complained, "we aren't good enough!" or "there's no way we can stand up to adults! They spend 30 hours a day on SL!". Adults may spend more hours in a day per day on SL, but that does not mean they are all better then Teens, nor that Teen-created items will become obsolete. Many residents of the Main Grid encourage Teens to create, and are interested in Teen creativity.
A recent study showed that Teen-created objects sold better on the Main Grid then on the Teen Grid, not only in volume, but also in profits while the items were at an elevated price. The amount of L$ gained far succeeded that on the MG than on the TG with an EXTREME minimal amount of participation on the [seller]'s part (No advertising on MG; Lots of advertising on TG). If Teens sold their items on the MG, there would be no lack of L$-flow.
Teens are strong enough, by far. We are not useless!
I say Linden Lab, let my people go. Unite parents with their children, teens with adults. Give us a chance. Make Second Life what it was meant to be!
[For more information, visit http://www.alexharbinger.com - Updates will be posted as they come]
As an addendum, Alex sent us an email comment and gave them permission to post it:
From: "Alex" Subject: Message From Second Life Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 21:52:13 -0700 (PDT)On the subject of adult-owned islands on the Teen Grid, I think they're an awesome idea, and should continue to be supported to the fullest. The Teen Grid is the home for teenagers across Second Life, and will continue to be no matter where Teens may venture to. I believe that allowing Teens on MG-PG sims would allow other adults to participate more in teen-related activities and may lead to many more adult-owned teen private islands. It is my hope that all Teens on SL will begin to utilize the programs that educators here provide us; especially those on the Teen Grid, where their main focus is on helping us, and getting us to help others. The resolution fully supports adult-owned Teen islands.
Comments
I fully support this unification process. As an educator on the MG, I would love the opportunity to interact with folks from the TG without isolating ourselves from the MG.
I represent an nonprofit considering building a museum in SL, but one of our problems has been, which grid to build in? Our resources would benefit all ages, but we can't afford presences in both grids.
And what wonderful resources are the MG folks missing out on without input from the TGers?
I support the TG folks in their efforts, and hope to see you on our MG-PG land someday very soon!
Posted by: Stacy | April 9, 2007 11:37 AM
As an adult who teaches teens in RL and has raised 5 kids of my own, the youngest of which is stll a teen, I think this is an excellent idea. The teens have shown their ability to reason this out and their voice should be heard.
Posted by: Cyndi Uriza | April 9, 2007 11:59 AM
I just posted this reply on the SL Educators Listserv in response to a post Barry put up about this concept. I wanted to make it available here for the GK residents to see:
The ONLY way that this could work, unifying the grids, is if you had an age verification methodology in place that was both accurate and verifiable. And it would require an entire reworking of the MG, much in the same way as the Teen Grid is about to be restructured. To force this upon the SL MG user community would result in mass chaos.
However, there is a solution that might work. In the network world we refer to the buffer zone between a network and the Internet as the DMZ. Real estate in a new zone on the Main Grid could be opened and made available to those land owners that want to open shops for both groups (MG/TG).
Not sure how difficult it would be, but maybe the Lindens can come up with a plot relocation tool to move plots intact to the new zone. Ditto for Teen Grid operators who want real estate to open up shops for MG buyers. You could name this new area the "Community Zone", "Shared Zone", or "Resident Zone".
This opening of a new zone would accomplish two things. It would open up new land in the existing MG for new land owners that more closely match the existing neighborhoods. It would allow for a blending of residents into a new combined area between the grids. It would then be only in this area that residents of the two grids could meet up, do business, and interact in a social setting.
It would solve a HUGE issue we have on PacRimX Island with our students being automatically booted upon turning 18. A private island in this shared zone would allow these students to continue until graduation.
This is the only realistic way that I can see this happening without major pain and suffering on the MG, and huge liability for LL. This would allow adults travelling to this area to know that they are in the company of students, and to act appropriately.
Allowing teens to travel to the existing MG-PG areas is not realistic in any way, shape or form. There's far too much "adult" content, even in the PG areas. The potential liability from encounters of both avatars and objects on the MG with teens is too severe to even consider it in reality (and I am sure LL already knows this).
Posted by: Stan Trevena | April 9, 2007 5:33 PM
I also support the process in theory - I am an educator involved in the setting up of a TG project at the moment (we are launching in May) and we are finding problems with some of the restrictions being imposed on us as adults in the TG.
However, I understand, as Stan points out, that there would be complications to this - although an area is PG, an avatar can have non-PG content in his or her profile, inventory, etc. that might cause problems.
Posted by: Graham Stanley | April 10, 2007 6:24 AM
OK - seeing there's a new discussion on this, I'll add a simple comment.
I think that LL's idea of creating a new grid (if I got it well) where both adults and teenagers can interact sounds fine. Quite fine, actually. This would require some sacrifice from the adults who are on the TG already, perhaps, but I think that it would give an end to all the controversies, unless what is being sought is not really communication between grids, but---
--Intergrid commerce? Well - it barely ever appears as the main point, but it seems to be the final objective in this case. For that matter, perhaps the creation of a web store (like Katharine Berry's brilliant TSL Emporium, http://tslemporium.com/) could be the solution, but it'd definitely take lots of work and monitoring that perhaps LL are not willing to do or pay.
I honestly don't know what the main protests are for - simple communication or business. Still, I think that leaving that clear since the beginning will let everyone see more easily what sacrifices each part has to make before all are as satisfied as possible.
Posted by: Mariel | April 10, 2007 11:17 PM
I believe that a large number of us want to be able to see some of these things that we hear/read about, etc. That wouldn't be possible if we get stuck in an intermediate grid.
The other major reason, to enable communication between teens and adults (largely people who transferred and/or residents) would work if teens were restricted to a buffer zone, provided IMs worked. However, since communication between grids generally doesn't work, you cannot (currently) send messages between grids, so could only communicate with these people when they happened to be in the shared grid.
Furthermore, for some reason that nobody has ever really explained, teens cannot see into or access mature sims, instead getting a large cross on the map, access denied errors on teleporting in, and the region appearing as an empty space when you look at it. You can test this on the teen grid by taking two (or more) adjacent PIs, setting one to Mature, leaving it, and relogging. Since you can't get back in, it's advised you leave someone in there to set it back to PG.
If I remember correctly, even on the MG, profiles must fit "PG" requirements. Additionally, despite popular belief, the TG isn't exactly adhering to rules regarding mature content itself.
On a less related note, Alex Harbinger has been getting for too much credit for this. He wasn't the first person to write about it, wasn't the first person to write out a lengthy proposal, didn't start the discussions, etc. Yet, for some reason, he's always mentioned as the person who started it.
Posted by: Katharine Berry | April 18, 2007 5:54 AM