Friday, May 30, 2008

Still more...

Robin Linden has indicated that child avatars are allowed and welcome as attendees - this is simply affecting whether child avatars can be contributors.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's one more idea what you can do: Apply for an exhibition yourself. Think of something good. Something that represents your group, your RP family, your art, scripting, building, your culture in Second Life. Then apply for a SL5B exhibition here: http://slbirthday.info/signup/
I am applying for an exhibition about the child avatars DJ and music culture, cos that's what I feel most related to. If you like family roleplay, apply for an exhibition about that.
The more kids apply for a contribution to SL5B, the better.
What do you think about that.

Anonymous said...

"Robin Linden has indicated that child avatars are allowed and welcome as attendees - this is simply affecting whether child avatars can be contributors."

Which of course makes even less sense than the originally imagined position - any Journalist or Legislator or other Busybody who finds the mere presence of children somehow sexually suggestive will not be placated should they attend, whilst simultaneously those of Limited Height are made to feel like second class residents.

Marianne McCann said...

Rai - my oqn presentation was denied, as were other individual kids' projects.

Marianne McCann said...

Ordinal - Likewise, it means no ability to address the positive examples of child avatars.

Anonymous said...

Two more ideas: Since we get a LOT of support in the thread Daniel Regenbogen started ( here http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=261893&page=1&pp=15
), we could also call upon all residents to boycott SL5B.
Or we could call upon them to appear there as a child avatar.
Both ideas are not mine, but posted by adult avatars who support the child avatar community against this latest discrimination by Linden Lab.
So, the discussion is open. What should we do?

Marianne McCann said...

Rai - I like those. I'm also all for trying to get the content creators who will be involved to donate a prim or two for someting.

Anonymous said...

Ummm ..... how does that make sense? Are they going to investigate the backgrounds of every AV that contributes anything to their group's build (not every groups kids are in are kid-only groups, we do have various interests like anyone else). Who is the AV police? What standards will they use? What about people whose AV are kids sometimes and adults others?

Anonymous said...

It looks like we will have our own celebration, on at least 1, maybe more SIMs. The group "Kids5B" was founded to concentrate all efforts, please join, it's free :-)

Anonymous said...

I find it regrettable that LL has decided to snub three of its more significant and loyal constituencies by excluding them from SL5B: kid avis, gor and bdsm.

I find it doubly regrettable that LL has lumped the kids community - in my experience, one of the nicest, smartest and *least* sexual communities within SL - together with gor and bdsm. Not that I have any objection to the latter - or for that matter, anything else between consenting adults. To paraphrase Voltaire, "I may not like what you roleplay, but I will defend to the death your right to roleplay it."

I simply resent the insinuation that the kid community is centered around sex, because that is just false. Furthermore, we are not child molesters. In fact, virtually everyone I know in the kid community really cares deeply about real kids (just look at our fundraising for real kid charities) and has zero tolerance for anyone who would hurt a RL kid. Nor do we abound in real kids hiding behind the kid avis. Our community is probably tougher than most of SL about reporting any real kids who sneak in.

Most of us just want to be young and happy again, to release our inner child, to re-experience our youth with the good stuff - and without the bad stuff, which for some of us was really bad. Particularly for gay people, our school years were usually somewhere between lonely and nightmarish. Is it anything to be ashamed of that we want to re-experience them in the way that we wish they had been? Does LL really feel they have to sweep this under the rug? Aren't emotional needs (not to mention civil liberties) like these one of the business premises of "Second Life"?

Perhaps LL thinks they can make piles of money turning SL into a corporate virtual networking platform. If so, good luck. I guess you don't need us. But right now, the kid community represents a fairly large base of loyal users who pay significant real money into SL. It is a shame that LL doesn't have the backbone or vision to see that publicly advocating "roleplay rights" (i.e. virtual or fictional activities between consenting adults) is in their business interests.

Sylhouette said...

Hi,

I don't agree with what Linden is doing here, however I don't believe they are singling out child AV's.

I believe if a quad, dragon, etc. applied they would likewise be turned down.

SL5B is not about celebrating Second Life's 5th Birthday; SL5B is about taking the press around to hand-picked exhibits showing Second Life, for the free advertising.

Think about it -- Linden doesn't care about residents. They care about people who issue real-world currency transactions on the Linden Exchange, but they aren't worried about the residents other than that.

Thats the whole problem -- premium accounts aren't making them a lot of money, neither are the islands (even with what they charge). They contract out the servers, they blame everything on the contractors all the time as well. So I mean they're probably getting some sort of volume discounts, etc., but they're probably way overpaying for the servers.

If you look at it that way, its the Linden transactions that make them money. You have real world currency coming in to buy the Lindens. They have to keep some amount of that currency in a pool, to pay out people who are cashing out. But if you buy USD $20 in Lindens, then immediately sell it, you'll have a lot less than USD $20 (I think it works out to 15 or 16 -- I didn't sit down with the current numbers on the exchange).

Anyway, by saying "its a wonderful birthday celebration," they con the average SL resident (who could be outsmarted by a rock, and not necessarily even a particularly smart rock) into thinking that it is something other than a media circus.

What I'd love to see is these organizations putting up the exhibits, who have all been suffering through the same stuff the rest of us have been, to do something clever and synchronized (with obfuscated code if necessary) to protest Linden's overall actions in the last year.

I'm not talking someone launching a jello attack on the exhibition or whatever, because that would be wrong and also because that would not help. They'd be banned and whatever, but then they can label it off as "some random freak."

But if you get them there when they have the press, major important customers, etc. and you execute a coordinated demonstration -- by the people submitting the exhibit -- that hits Linden where it hurts.

I'm not talking anything dramatic here. Just have some texture (for example) on a 50x50 megaprim, and programatically throw it up in front of the exhibit in response to a signal.

The only way things are going to get better in Second Life is if people start doing things in ways that will embarass the Lindens publicly, and that they cannot easily retaliate against (i.e. within terms of service).

It would take more coordination than I am capable of, with as rarely as I am in SL right now.

But I think if you get more people to realize what it is, and either back out, or carefully script something hidden that can be triggered when Linden is showing off SL to the press, that could do a lot to shift Linden's attitude towards the residents in general.

Keep in mind, too, a lot of the residents just represent cost to Lindens. There are a lot of people who shift around Lindens, but who never conduct a transaction that directly earns Linden any money.

I think that tends to make Linden pay less attention to the customers than a more directly money-oriented service.

robert martin said...

just to put my 2 cents in
I would like to see more bridging between "camps" of non-mundane groups
as part of this if enough folks are interested i will form the "Bad Wolf
Syndicate" and begin doing the bridge between the Furry and Kid groups (picking up the "normals" as well).

side note i think giving LL a bunch of Round Tuits would maybe get the point across

final note i think LL should give a reserved location to the best of breed kids exibit