Merging Teen and Main Grids?

On yesterday’s Metanomics show, Philip Linden mentioned the possibility of a merge between the main and teen grids. He said:

Generally, I think that the future of Second Life needs to be one where people of all ages can use Second Life together, and that’s the direction that we’re taking in our planning and our work. I think that the educational opportunities for Second Life are so great for all ages that we need to make it as available as we possibly can to people. If you look at what we’ve done with the Teen Grid, I think we’ve done a good job, as a small company, of being inclusive and creating an environment in which teenagers were able to use Second Life, I think, perhaps earlier than, I don’t know, we might have been able to. We pushed hard to get that working.

But, if you look at the problems with having a teenaged area, which is itself so isolated from the rest of the World, they’re substantial. There’s an inability for educators to easily interact with people in there because we’ve made it an exclusively teen only area. Parents can’t join their kids in Second Life so problems like that are ones that we think are pretty fundamental and need to be fixed. We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody. So that’s the general direction that we’re taking there.

Initially, I had the same visceral reaction it seems that many main grid residents had. “Umm… no.”

But let’s face it… if Linden Lab decides that’s what they want to do, it doesn’t matter whether I — or the rest of the main grid — think it is a good idea. They’re going to do it. If I can hazard a guess, they’re going to say “Use the age verification system we put in place to block off your parcels.” Which ignores the fact that people from many countries can’t age verify. It’s just legal camouflage that pushes the burden of keeping teens out of your parcel onto the residents themselves.

So how could they possibly make this work? (And by “work”, I mean that in the loosest possible way, since I am unconvinced this can happen without someone getting hurt.) Maybe the answer is one more land rating: G. Currently, land is PG or Mature. If there was the possibility of rated G areas — possibly a continent of them, to prevent camming into a non-G area — serving as a areas for educational institutions and other teen areas, those could be governed by tighter rules than PG or Mature areas.

The thing that struck me as I read posts in the blogosphere and the official SL Forums was that this is a really polarizing issue. Nearly all main grid residents say “not on my grid.” And nearly all the teen grid residents say “We’re bored and this is the answer to our SL dreams.” Sadly  for the teens, it sounds like if adults have their way, they will barricaide teens out of most of the mian grid, meaning that the teen grid doesn’t really expand, just ends up connected to the main grid.

Who would benefit from this? Well, if my understanding is correct, the burden of paperwork for the teen grid is a pretty big one. If suddenly you didn’t have to take time to verify all the new teens, you could save time and man hours. Sounds like LL would benefit in labor costs. I’m not entirely convinced that the teens would benefit. And I think the consensus is that the adults wouldn’t benefit from this move.  So LL comes out the winner with streamlined operations.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few weeks or months, to see who ends up the winner or loser when these plans go forward. I’ll have to ponder whether I would let teens into Harbour. Would you allow them into your region?

Edit:

I posted some additional thoughts this morning to the SL Forums that touch on an aspect of this that I didn’t get to before I got sleepy and finished last night’s post:

Sadly, we live in a guilty-until-proven-innocent society when it comes to offenses (real or imagined) against children. Speaking as someone who ended up on a state child welfare watchlist without even knowing it had occurred, I am not interested in fighting my way through that kind of RL red tape ever again because of the actions of a minor.

For instance, a minor on this new merged grid sends me an inventory offer. I decline it, and go about my business. If they sent me a no-trans item, it still ended up in my inventory, just went to my trash (or is it lost and found? I haven’t had it happen in a while). I have still ended up with heaven only knows what, passed to me by a minor. The minor’s parent decides they’d better check up on them and checks their transaction history. ZOMG, they gave me, an adult, an inventory item. Of an objectionable nature. I must be a pedo. Good thing the lawyer is on speed dial. And the state department of child protective services.

I’m not saying that this can’t be done in a way that works. But the risks to responsible and totally innocent adults on the main grid are huge. Bigger than I think LL has thought through.

PhotoHunt – January 14

I have only been participating in the weekly  PhotoHunt since December, so I didn’t realize at first that last night was the biggest turnout ever. Not until we overran the PhotoHunt contest board and it ended up broken for voting, anyhow. It’s great to see an event like the PhotoHunt growing. It’s rapidly becoming a highlight of my week in Second Life.

This week, we visited Opera Joven. This region is run by a nonprofit association founded in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1999, and it promotes  the cultural heritage of Jalisco, Mexico.

As always, we had an hour to bring back our best unretouched snapshot from the area.

I tried to capture a “watching the sunset” snapshot, but wasn’t happy with the results, so I kept looking for something a little different. Finally, I settled on my entry for the week… a sultry sunset shot through the supports of a pier.

One of the most amazing things to me about the PhotoHunt is returning to find out what the other hunters have captured. They were all looking at the same region, the same prims, yet there are remarkably different images captured by each of the photographers.

(This snapshot of the contest board contains images that are the copyright of other photo hunters. It was taken shortly before the volume of entries into the weekly PhotoHunt broke the contest board.)

Join in the fun! The Photo Hunt is held weekly at 6:00 SLT on Wednesdays, at the Virtual Artist Alliance Gallery in Chiaksan. A new beta web site provides additional information about the Virtual Artist Alliance.

Rich Desoto Flickr Group Now Open!

Rich Desoto played at the Blarney Stone Irish Pub last night in Dublin. It had been a long time since I managed to hear him play inworld, and judging by the turnout, I’m not the only one who has missed having him around.

I remember hearing Rich for the first time only a few weeks after I had come to Second Life, in May or June of 2007. Like last night, he played at the Blarney Stone, though the bar looked a lot different than it does today. That was both my introduction to Rich’s music and also my introduction to live music in Second Life. I’ve been a fan of both ever since.

After Rich’s set, I posted a few snapshots from the event to Flickr, then went to add them to the appropriate Flickr groups… only to realize that there was no Flickr group for snapshots of Rich. Well, I can fix that! Behold the Second Life – Rich Desoto Fan Club Flickr group. Got snapshots of the man? Add them!

Photo Hunt!

The Wednesday evening photo hunts are back on now that the holidays are over, and I participate in my second one. This week’s was at The Shire, a Lord of the Rings themed region. I hadn’t been there before, and I enjoyed exploring the area, especially since I ran into Gandalf himself!

I had a hard time getting a picture I liked this week, but I settled for a shot of the sky, seen through some ornate chair backs.

We returned to the gallery and everyone put in their votes… and I was voted third place for the week! I was pretty flattered. I’m not doing it for winning or losing, but because I really enjoy the challenge of  bringing back the best snapshot I can in the allotted hour. Still, the enthusiasm and support of the other Photo Hunters made me feel good, which meant a lot after a rough few weeks here.

So I plan to be there again next week. If you’d like to join in the fun, the Photo Hunt is held weekly at 6:00 SLT on Wednesdays, at the Virtual Artist Alliance Gallery in Chiaksan.

Holiday Over

I didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas, but the past ten years or so, I have put up a tree because it’s beautiful and festive.

Three years ago, I spent Christmas night sitting up with my cat Cyrano, and he died the next morning. Now, I take down the tree on December 26, and I remember.

Holiday’s over. Time to face forward. What’s next?

Merry Christmas

Wishing you all the magic and wonder of the season.

First Candle

I’m not going to pretend to remember all the stuff my Jewish grandmother would like for me to have remembered. I also didn’t marry a Nice Jewish Boy. But I do remember enough to know that it’s time to wish all of my friends who celebrate it a happy Hanukkah.

Good News for Sailors

I should preface anything I say here by saying that yes, I have a sailboat in Second Life. Anyone who has visited Harbour has seen it tied up at the dock.

Regardless of what’s sitting at my dock, I don’t really consider myself part of the sailing community. This is, in large part, because I totally suck at sailing in SL. I used to sail for real, years ago, but I seem to have lost all ability to do much more than run aground. So my sailboat is a lovely, and rather primmy, decoration in Harbour, but it isn’t really what I would consider a pastime. I had to search my Flickr photostream to find a single photo of me with the sailboat underway to include in this blog post.

That said, the sailing community just seems to have scored a major victory in the openspace skirmishes. An official blog post announced a 40-region sea is being put into place next to Nautilus. After insisting that the sailing community can’t afford to keep their regions under the homestead policy, and also insisting that they can’t use the new and not-improved openspace regions due to the lowered agent limit, they’re getting a shiny new sea of homestead regions, funded by the the Lab. Merry Christmas for sailors!

Additionally, the estates who own the United Sailing Sims just got a special perk: being attached via this new sea to the mainland. We’ve come a long way from the owners of those regions threatening to shut them down in the wake of the openspace announcements. Of course, this coming summer, the same price hikes that those estate owners were insisting would cause them to have to abandon their regions will come into place. Is the added value of being uniquely attached to the mainland enough to make them more valuable and save them from sinking into the Linden ocean?

What about the other estate owners? While I don’t think that the lab is terribly interested in having a Gorean continent (Jack Linden made it pretty clear in his forum post that the PG nature of the USS was important to this venture), and I don’t know that themed areas like Caledon would be interested in being connected to the mainland, other estate owners are likely to want a piece of the action, especially if it means higher value/occupancy in their regions.

I’m curious to see if this is a big policy shift in how the mainland will be managed and developed, and if so whether it stabilizes mainland land prices. If so, I’m sure that from LL’s business point of view, it was a good thing to do with 40 regions worth of computing power that were abandoned by openspace region owners who can’t afford the rising prices.

Hunting for Photos

I participated in my first Photohunt last night. A Photohunt is a venture where a group is given a location (or, in the case of last night, a selection of locations) and given 60 minutes to bring back their best snapshot from that location. No photo manipulation, just the 4:3 aspect snapshot you took, so the hunt challenges your in-world photography skills, not your Photoshop skills.

My entry for this week was a shot from underwater looking up at buildings in Creeve Town. I had never visited Creeve Town, and it’s a pretty amazing spot. Very dark and moody at default lighting, with tremendous use of phantom megaprims to make some astonishing, huge interlaced arches. If you haven’t been, it’s worth a visit.

Before the end of the hour, you return to the Virtual Artist Alliance and place your entry on the board, and the participants and spectators vote on the winner of the week. Cyanide Seelowe ran last night’s hunt, and I got a quick snapshot of her with the entries in the Photohunt Gallery.

The Photohunt was a lot of fun, and the group was welcoming and friendly. I’ll have to do it again when the hunts start back up in January, after the holidays.

If you’d like to join in the fun, Photohunts are held at 6:00 pm SLT on Wednesdays, with the starting point at the  Virtual Artist Alliance in Chiaksan. The next hunt is scheduled for January 7.  Rules and a FAQ are available on their wiki.

The Spaceship Has Landed

The Second Life blog today unveiled the first bit of work from Big Spaceship: the redesign of the Second Life home page.

I was a little underwhelmed, and I posted my immediate thoughts in response on the SL Forums:

Part of design is organizing visual data, but the first glance at the screen shot gives the impression of a busy jumble. It took me probably 5-10 seconds to figure out where I would click to move from this page. The page isn’t the destination, it’s a portal to lead you toward that destination. And it doesn’t lead, it mires you. It needs more organization and prioritization of what’s being presented.

I thought about it afterward and tried to distill what bothered me, and it comes down to usability. I wondered if the Big Spaceship folks ever heard of the 5-second test. The 5-second test is when you sit someone down in front of a web page and give them only 5 seconds to view it, then ask them questions about what they saw.  When I looked at the site, I saw all the confusing boxes and didn’t know where to go to do anything. From the comments I saw on the SL forums, it appears that many men saw “woman with big boobs!” I went back and looked, and I don’t know how I missed those the first time.  So we have a first impression of a confusing place, with big boobs. Not exactly the kind of first impression that Linden Lab probably wants to give potential customers. Maybe  was having a particularly dense day, but I didn’t even see the orange Get Started button at first. I was looking from box to box, puzzled.

The fact is, people who are browsing the web are like five year olds who just ate a glob of cotton candy the size of their head. They jump from place to place, multitasking, and if something doesn’t grab their eye in the first few seconds they are on a site, they’re off again. Studies have shown that you have less than ten seconds to grab someone’s attention with your web site. They aren’t going to figure out that slidey control at the bottom of the screen in ten seconds. They’ll be reading horoscopes long before that.

Speaking of the slidey control at the bottom of the screen, what’s up with that? Navigation of your site should be self-explanatory. If the site visitor has to wonder how to use the navigational controls, then Houston, we have a problem. As soon as they start wondering that, they aren’t thinking about your content. Then again, maybe it will distract them from the boobs.

The other serious concern about the site is Flash. The ten seconds you have to catch a visitor’s attention on your site includes load time. Even on a fast connection, Flash consumes 20% or more of that time.  Not everyone has flash installed, and those who browse from phones, PDAs, and other gadgets can’t install Flash. Flash isn’t very friendly to navigation by the disabled.

Overall, not so good. We’ll treat this like it was the chance to brainstorm, realize that maybe what you came up with isn’t quite right, and take it back to the drawing table. I hope that Linden Lab does that with the new Second Life home page. If they do, I have one suggestion: Your front page doesn’t have to be all things to all people. It only has to give you easily-navigable access to find all things. Make it so that the ADHD five year old who just ate the cotton candy can navigate from the front page to the next page on the site in less than five seconds, and you’ll be a lot better off.