Ciaran Laval's blog

I have mixed views about the latest blip in the adult content saga. All land swaps are on hold until Wednesday July 8th, as blogged by Jack. This is good and bad news. The good news is more land is coming online, more waterfront and more choice.

The bad news is that it yet again exemplifies what a shocking display of customer service ineptitude this whole process is. Throughout this process Linden Lab have had feedback on how to improve the process, how to make it less painful, suggestions of far superior alternatives and all they have done is put on their "Blah Blah Blah we're not listening" headphones, they've done this from day one and they're still doing it today.

The whole thing is a disgrace, the people involved should be hugely embarrassed at how badly they've handled this. However there is hope during this pause that maybe someone will take the whole fiasco by the scruff of its neck and whip it into shape.

Anyone who owns mature mainland should be entitled to a swap to Zindra, absolutely anyone. They purchased that land under terms that are no longer valid, Linden Lab should use this pause to give those people what they paid for. Linden Lab moved the goalposts, for what reason is still a huge mystery because I still haven't seen people congratulating LL in any sort of large numbers over this policy. I still can't recall huge debates about the issue of adult content.

All Linden Lab had to do was:

Default all mature mainland to mature content, putting the onus on the parcel owner to identify if it was PG safe.

Ditto with classifieds on mature land.
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So I went to check on the hunger striker at the Linden Estate Services building and she's gone! I mean there's no sign of her, has she been abducted by the forces of corruption? Has she simply turned herself invisible or did she have to go to bed? Who knows!

However my journey there was a dangerous one, sneaking down dark alleys and whilst there a shadowy figure *cough*Dytska Vieria*cough* said "Pssst, wanna buy a Robo Marx T-Shirt". Well I had to haggle and she haggled me down to accepting it for free. Really, she should have released this to the stock exchange!



Get them whilst they're hot! You can pick up a free "Free Robo" T-Shirt from Rusty Nail Bar and Grill in Lunata:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lunata/167/217/25

In a rather bizarre Jack Linden office hour the Freedom for Robo front accused the G-team of corruption, accused Linden Lab of following a socialist doctrine, threw in the word "communist" a lot and to put the icing on the cake one of them is conducting a hunger strike in support of Robo in the lobby of the Linden estate services building, I'm not making this up! How long they remain there is another issue but we were invited to pop by during the week amid claims that they will still be there at the same bat time on the same bat channel next week.

From the sidelines someone asked "Who is Robo Marx?" which generated many answers, some suggesting he's the messiah... he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy. Attempts to raise Robo from the dead put him more in the Ra Ra Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine category. I can picture it now, ten years from now in SL Che Guevara T-Shirts will have been replaced with Robo Marx T-Shirts, the great freedom fighter struck down by the establishment.

I thought it was just in the UK that we were experiencing summer madness due to the heat, seriously, two days of being in serious Betty Swollocks territory does strange things to one.

Meanwhile Jack promised that more waterfront land will be available in Zindra. The mess that is the adult content policy just gets murkier, already people are getting rather irked that so and so got a waterfront parcel when previously they had an empty parcel/no adult content/ they're fic/ Linden alts. Really, is everyone going off their rocker?
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I am receiving unconfirmed reports that notorious ad farmer/parcel cutter, Robo Marx, has been permabanned. Ace-Exchange is down for me right now so I can't confirm the details just yet.

I will say this for Robo Marx, he has a good sense of humour so if it is true I'm sure he will take it all in his stride.

*UPDATE*

Confirmation has now been received that Robo Marx account has been terminated, Robo has commented here, for more details see the forum post at ACE which is now up.

I told you he'd take it in his stride!

So I decided tonight that I want my alt to be able to access my adult land. There are two ways for me to do this, one way is for me to go via aristotle and one way is to go via buying linden dollars.

I won't go the Aristotle route, I age verified Ciaran in concierge beta where details such as passport number were not mandatory, they fixed this so it now is mandatory but Aristotle were happy to age verify me without it in concierge beta. I'm not giving my passport number to a company who have no means of verifying it ( I asked the UK passport agency about this at the time and they told me Aristotle do not have access to this info), end of story, the information is clearly not relevant.

So I decide I'll buy some linden dollars, I'd seen something on XStreetSL that I wanted to buy anyway and decided to buy L$15,000 worth so I could make this purchase and then I hit the billing limits issue. How bloody annoying is this? I mean why do I have to go to all this bloody hassle to buy Linden dollars with an account that has all my other personal details already attached to it.

This account isn't new, it was created in September 2007 and fends for itself generally. Yes of course I can login to my other account and transfer the money over but why can't this account be linked to the information they already have on me?

I wouldn't mind if I had to submit a support ticket where I had to agree to allow my billing information be used for this account, sure I'd have to wait but I'd have done that by now if this were the case, it would have been painless. Instead I find myself wondering whether I'll ever bother making that XStreet purchase.
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Three months of feedback and Jack Linden shows that Linden Lab really do listen to the community by parcelling land on Zindra to make it easier for people to choose parcels. There you go, customer service at its finest.

Actually I'm only half kidding, the fact that they have cut parcels has came after residents asked for it so this is a response to residents, it's an easy one but it's still a response and that should be welcomed.

More interestingly Jack clarified the position of kid avatars on Zindra and I agree with his approach, on the blog post Jack said:

"Are child avatars allowed on Adult land? Child avatars are allowed on adult land as long as they are account verified like any other Resident. Those choosing to represent themselves with a child avatar do not represent a minor as the account holder. Not all adult land is going to be hosting adult content either. There is plenty of protected land on Zindra that will technically be adult but safe in terms of content. This however does not change any prior policies regarding child avatars. Sexual ageplay is not allowed anywhere on the grid, regardless of rating."

That's a sensible policy, the hoo-ha over kids on Zindra blew up on empty land for goodness sake, nobody has moved there. A kid AV in an orgy room would be bad, a kid AV standing in a monorail station shouldn't be bad and call me a prude but I don't see the need for people to be whipping out their avatar bits on every square inch of Zindra and nor it seems, do Linden Lab. { Read more }

The community standards have altered, adult sims are finally recognised and we have, well yet again a case of Linden Lab doublespeak.

This gem appears:

"Adult Regions, Groups, and Listings
Second Life is an adult community, but 'Adult' content, activity and communication are not permitted on the Second Life 'mainland.' Such material is permitted on private regions, or on the Adult Continent, Zindra. In either case, any Adult content, activity, or communication, that falls under our Adult Maturity Definition must be on regions designated as 'Adult,' and will be filtered from non-verified accounts. Other regions may be designated as either 'Mature' or 'PG.' For more information on how to designate land, events, groups, and classified listings, please carefully read the 'Maturity Definitions.' "

Now to me, that reads as if all adult activity is banned from mainland, the whole kit and caboodle, that's your private residential pixel bumping banned. Linden Lab have said this isn't the case previously, but if I were a new user that is most certainly how I'd read that.

However I'm not a new user and have some faith that Linden Lab will actually be true to their word on adult activity in so called private spaces but, and it's rather a big but, were I new I'd also find it far from predictable to discover that adult activity is allowed. { Read more }