[…] Not participating. […]

If you set the JIRA as a Showstopper..you can see how quickly LL can work when they want to. It’s been downgraded to “Normal - minor loss or impairment of function, other problems that have workarounds..”. No response from them otherwise of course. They’ve just gone into ignore mode, and changed the flag so they don’t get bothered.

Simple to see what they will do now though. They’ll say (now that it’s too late to enter a build), that there was a miscommunication, and of course a group composed of child avi’s would have been allowed to build…and will be welcome next year. Then all the people who got upset at the child avi banning will go away…with never again a fight against the principle of banning groups in the first place…leaving the less popular Gor and BDSM community waving in the wind.

They could easily have allowed all to participate, making their judgements based upon the build and the fact that they will be in PG sims…where any overtly sexual content could have been controlled under the rules that we already for the most part understand. Nudging in the “right” direction rather than ruling by autocratic fiat. As for their being afraid…confront the wingnuts with the truth..ask them for specifics..tell them to put up or shut up. Don’t roll over and show them your throat..they are worse than dogs. They won’t stop. They’ll rip your throat right out. If they can tell LL of a child in a child avi..do so or go away. Protect the children the only way possible..one at a time. There are quite specific rules in place to deal with that. If I remember being a child though…any children on the grid are in adult avi’s. Kid’s wouldn’t want to play kids anymore than a CPA comes online to play a CPA. LL has specific, almost McCarthian rules about what to do with a suspected underage avi…where the accused is guilty until proven innocent…so this is purely unnecessary silliness….

Shin, it was not LL but Harleen Gretzky that changed that status.

Haven’t read it yet, but saw a showstopper “bug” on this post - you’ve forgotten to close a tag and now the entire blog is italic after Update: ‘… :-S

Argh, I meant, a %3Ci%3E tag. (I need to remember the HTML codes for that one.)

(ARGH. WordPress doesn’t like me. I meant the (left-side arrow) i (right-side arrow) tag.

Fixed. (I’m quicker handling errors than Lindens! ;))

First, thanks for your initiative and creativity on using the Jira channel for this.

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.

[…] http://www.vintfalken.com/children-not-welcome-at-sl5b/ […]

I was, of course, alluding to the famous song “Signs” by the Five Man Electrical Band, later covered by Tesla, with that headline. But you can fill in the blank any way you want, as LL seems to be doing. Today, it’s “child avatars” and “Goreans” and “BDSM aficionados.” Tomorrow…?

Well, now I’ve got this bug in the back of my mind that my application for an Isle of Lesbos location build isn’t merely delayed in processing (I’ve been waiting for a while to hear about it) but rather it is being studiously ignored. I’d really like to quip “C’mon! Everyone loves lesbians! Just count the number of men that pop in to the Isle lookin’ for sex!” But I can’t. Our community faces discrimination every day. And it sickens me to think that someone at Linden Labs™ could be looking at our application with the same eyes my church’s elders use to look at me. If I’m wrong and the application is simply caught in grid lag you can bet I will decline a placement offer. After all, I have standards, too.

[…] some reading material, it was originally collected by Vint Falken, who also created a JIRA I urge you kindly ask you to go vote for, cuz who knows what community […]

It will be interesting to pick out an early European morning just to have a look at how SL5B eventually did turn out… I’m not approving of any of the recent turn of events, just being curious what the result is like…

[…] Vint Falken set up a JIRA. As usual, vote. Not that it matters. Those yank twats won’t listen anyway. But at least it’s a way to voice your opinion if you don’t own a blog yourself. […]

[…] email to M and Robin did nothing for the problem, Vint filled a JIRA. Go there, vote and read the comments. Creativity is on the scene again. Hardly that […]

[…] « ‘Children’ not welcome at SL5B […]

[…] to vote on Vint Falken’s JIRA entry about the exclusion of these communities at SL5B, please see Vint’s post here and follow along in the blogosphere or write your own opinions and get […]

Count me in, Vint. If my post doesn’t show up, I’ve got one that should be pinging back to you.

[…] has been) but Vint Falken is keeping a directory of the blogosphere’s reaction to this decision: ‘Children’ not welcome at SL5B | VintFalken.com Thought I’d let y’all know in case you feel like pinging back to her on your own blogs, should you […]

[…] Vint Falken is trying to have a list of all the posts about all this, she is doing a great job(thanks, Vint *kiss*). So if you what to see an updated, you know, follow the link. […]

Well, I’ve made a blog entry on my blog about this, but I really don’t do this much and would love to know how to link my blog post to other like comments, to increase the visibility of all of them on Google, etc.

One more for yas … I blogged about it briefly at http://caitclawtooth.livejournal.com/1615.html .

Great posts and lists, Vint!

Here’s what I put on my personal weblog (which is really a LiveJournal, but whatcha gonna do?)

http://mmccann.livejournal.com/17919.html

>because that wouldn’t be in the best interest of the event and Linden Lab

i agree.. its a bad business decision… I dont blame em..

they are trying to build a metaverse platform here that has broad appeal. they dont need a ton of bad press over including what some may consider or assume to be vulgar..

If I was running SL?? I wouldn’t wanna promote that either, especially as part of a 5th birthday event..

SL is a community.. but its also a business..

and I think they are making a wise business move by avoiding a ton of unnecessary crap..

the rants from the subcultures are far less damaging than what the media and conservatives could do..

u wanna keep sl?? keep it healthy?? then its probably best to let SL go mainstream.. they need broad market appeal and not a ton of BS..

I respect everyones opinion and passion on the matter..

but I think this is a situation where.. where you stand is based on where you sit..

if you were sitting in their seat?? I bet you would make the same decision..

protect adults that like to role play children??

or protect your business, brand or investors..

its a business.. there is a world outside of this one.. with real consequences..

I see Collin’s point of view, but, well, i can’t agree. We can’t sacrifice some things in the name of the business. Well, Linden Lab can do it, but not us.

We are not talking about business, we are talking about WE, the residents, made Second Life what it is. Linden Lab made the paper and the residents wrote the book of what Second Life is. We needed each other to make this book.

Anyway, we are “invertors”. We invested real money and real time in SL. We invested creativity, dreams, nightmares, love, emotions and many other things.

About protecting the brand, well, that’s something some department of Linden Lab should be doing better. The only way to “save” Second Life from some kind of press is showing the world what SL is globally. “Hiding” behind a door what you think some journalists may consider bad is just saying they are right.

“Hiding” behind a door what you think some journalists may consider bad is just saying they are right.

Indeed. ‘Because one person is rotten, that does not necessarily mean the whole lot is bad.’ I thought that mankind was finally sort of realising the truth in such a sentence. Why kind we show them the ‘normal’ child avatars? That majority that stays as far as Mature land as possible, and just wanted to build a nice, child friendly build on SL5B PG grounds.

Raul, btw, are you in the photography department? And how are you going to cope with the ‘only PG, no nipples’ rule? ;)

And Marianne, sidenote, livejournals are ok! I use to have one. When I now look at it now - from the age of almost 24 - it is full of the usual rantings a 16 y old does. Ah well, nostalgia. =) So LiveJournals count, it’s just hard to keep track of them or comment on them, imho.

Solomon, you should be able to link to another blogger post and these will be notified that you linked for them. Communicating with the trackback functionality of WP blogs is not possible. Blogger insisted on re-inventing that and making it non-compatible with the rest of the internet. As for ranking it well in Google, I’m sorry, I know not much about SEO a blogger blog. Try to write good stuff. Interesting stuff. Get people to read it, to comment, to link to it. Comment on other blogs and ad something meaningful to those discussions, etc. I think. =d

Collin, I tend to disagree too. It needs more mainstream, yes, and it needs to be more ‘easy’ to use for mainstream in order to survive. But that does not mean the ‘older’ cultures need to be extinguished or suddenly rejected as the - founding - residents they are? What still attracts a lot of people to SL were exactly those ideals of freedom to express. If Linden Lab is slowly suppressing those, we are left with just a mainstream game that has a more crappy than mainstream graphics engine, and a more crappy than mainstream games uptime and with above-mainstream system performance demands?

Haha, Vint, no, i’m not on the photography department.

Some friends and me made a porposal to SL5B organization (before all that story of childs banning and such), a group installation instead of individual ones. After some conversations with SL5B Art Direction we saw our project was not matching SL5B art project, so we decided to make it for our own, totally outside SL5B. In a Mature sim, btw ;-p

Soooo… I’m free to show my nipples!

(Lol, I love side references.)

True, Collin is right, but man, where did you go?? DID LINDEN BRAINWASH YOU?? One comment like that and you give them a little snack to feed on. :-S (They can say some disagreed, show our comments, and that some agreed and understood, while showing the only comment saying so, which is your one… :-S)

Too bad we can’t get Katharine Berry to join on this and suspend AjaxLife in protest. That would get the press here with the whole “shabang” - cameras, reporters, real-world news story at 7PM, etc. :-)

simply put..

if people perceive that SL is a hideout for Pedophiles, its not good for business. Doesnt matter if its true or not. Perception is reality.

I personally don’t know anyone that plays a kid, so I wont pass judgment, but its soooo easy for me to understand the perceptions around it.. Gor too..

I think those that favor roleplaying children in SL should be thankful SL hasn’t reversed its policy on the whole issue. Looks like a bomb waiting to go off to me.

Gor and BDSM are simply sick, they can have their sandboxes, but noone wants to see them at public events, noone wants their product depicted ’sick’ because of these sick people. Period.

Of course, we know a lot of people who are just as sick as these, like the leader of the FIA. (Look up Max Mosley in google if you want an appropriate example of a ‘noble’ UK leader who’s just as sick as everyone else in BDSM.)

Being a child avi on long terms is sick too, also it might invoke certain situations where the fact you are dealing with a “kid representation” places you into a discomforting or hard to solve situation or just simply hinders you or reduces your spectrum of executable acts. (Or make other people think you have childphobia. (Not philia.))

I don’t really care about any of these since I know there’s a perv or a not entirely developed soul, someone with a broken or an uncertain self-image behind these representations, but I refuse to be misjudged when I kick an SL “kid” in the head (several times, repeatedly), knowing that a 50some sick perv is on the other side of the cable.

(Btw that’s why furries or prim cube avatars or monsters or whatever are ok with me, I can shoot them, they can shoot me.)

If you want to play as children, do it in a private sim and don’t merge with the public. And thank Lindens they haven’t yet banned these so-called ‘kids’.

At this point, it started with the one post, but it’s now become several. My latest is here:

http://razorblade-cookies.blogspot.com/2008/06/hes-cold-hearted-snake-look-into-his.html

going into the latest surreality, that an image of Desmond Shang (governor of Caledon) and Miss Cornelia Rothschild (construct, songbird, clockwork princess, and *NOT* a child avatar!) standing together was denied for press release.

Why? One can only assume it’s because Miss Rothschild is short–her profile adamantly states she is not a child avatar.

Not that such denial would be valid if she *was*, but it’s doubly infuriating that she is *not*.

Emilly, so ‘midgets’ are evil now too? (Sorry, could not help the silly remark.)

Now the question is still, what can we do? Except for voting on the JIRA issue and teamG office hours… (wednesday, anybody?) *blah*

I would love to see the painting though!

You’ll get your chance.

According to the organizer of the Caledon build, Vivito Volare–as noted in Miss Cornelia’s LJ, has fought for and gained approval to use the image of herself and Des. So yay for one thing going right.

(Though to be fair to the situation, I do believe it was a case of Mr. Volare pointing out Miss Rothschild was not a child av, rather than the Lindens starting to think for once.)

What the fuck kinda sick freak creates an child avitar anyway and runs around pretending to be a kid. Oh thats right Second Life freaks do. More than likely it is a perv who wants to get butt fucked by another person acting as a kid. You are a bunch of sick freaks

You’re actually more of a freak, having searched for a post you can comment on with “you’re all freaks”.

Also, it’s not acting like a kid in child-involving virtual porn, it’s about remembering (and sometimes reenacting) the times of childhood. Y’know, the times you had with friends at the playground? The meet-ups to play old video games or watch TV? Et cetera?

[…] SL5B ft. child avatars. […]