Ghetto grid: Katharine Berry slams Lab's negligence
by Tateru Nino 
Jul 4th 2008 at 7:30AM
Filed under: Culture, News items, Second Life
Famous Teen Second Life user Katharine Berry has spoken out on conditions in Linden Lab's Teen Grid. While, of course, there are rules about content and conduct, they're neither well-followed, says Berry, nor well-enforced.
'Of course, these rules are completely ignored ... Once upon a time, in 2005, Linden Lab would keep track of these things. Today, in 2008, they do not,' asserts Berry, citing an example in her experience where an unauthorized adult in Teen Second Life took more than a year to be removed.
Berry's particular gripe seems to be Linden Lab's lack of care, 'Linden Lab routinely screw up and put [main grid] classifieds in search (with the "mature" option set to "on", for that matter). People periodically accidentally (or intentionally) teleport to the main grid.'
The Second Life Teen grid is jammed away in an obscure corner of the main (adult) grid and shares databases to a large degree. Barriers exist to keep the adult areas hidden from the teens and vice versa, but many users on both sides have experienced the permeability of those barriers.
Comparatively speaking, Teen Second Life seems to be small and has only a small number of active users, and users of it seem to feel that the service is somewhat ghettoized by Linden Lab -- a largely ignored populace and aspect of the broader Second Life service. If you think Linden Lab is fairly uninvolved in main grid affairs, then the Teen grid seems to fall at the bottom of the Lab's attention-ladder, according to many teen grid users.
Berry herself, is perhaps one of Teen Second Life's most well-known users, multiply lauded for software, a lightweight client and web-services built to work with the Second Life service.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jay said on 9:26AM 7-04-2008
The capability exists in the client and in the simulator code I would imagine to lock PG accounts to PG regions in the main grid so there is no technical reason to maintain this artificial barrier, I really think we should let the teens roam free in the PG regions of the main grid.
We don't segregate them into different cities in the real world after all.
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Jacek Antonelli said on 6:44PM 7-04-2008
Katharine once mentioned that the Teen Grid was the fifth estate (group of sims with a common owner and rules) that Linden Lab created on the grid.
If we extend the medieval concept of the Three Estates of the Realm, that would put the teens two rungs below the general populace -- which seems to match how they're treated by LL.
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Jaymin Carthage said on 10:44PM 7-05-2008
Sounds like once IBM gets the kinks worked out of a hosted Second Life solution for the Teen Grid to be run via that technology.
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TigroSpottystripes Katsu said on 5:34AM 7-23-2008
I would like to learn about the tricks to move between "universes", just for curiosity of course (I guess curiosity in the style of "Will it Blend?" or just basic coke and mentos), after I got in (if I manage to) I would run some tests, like checking if I still had access to groups, friends list, inventory etc, check if scripted objects could communicate between the two areas and things like that, and then I would try to move back (or probably would at first keep jumping back and forth between them to try to get into the details of the trick)
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