Firstly, my opinion, so you know what my bias is (and will presumably remain once I finish writing the post): I like our little grid; it lets me do things completely impossible on the main grid simply due to its sheer size (statistics, anyone?). It’s also nice to be able to meet teens. However, it would also be nice to be able to visit some of these places on the MG, e.g. those covered on New World Notes.

Now, why shoudn’t we be part of the MG?

• LL might be sued by some over-protective parent.
• It would destroy the TG’s inferior economy, which is filled with inferior products.
• Teenagers might end up seeing things they really didn’t want to see.
• The MG doesn’t want ‘little kids’ running around griefing them.

Right. Let’s look at these.

So, are we really such bad people? Do we actually grief so much more than the adults do? My answer, using various complaints, comments on blogs, blog posts and forums, and personal experience of the Teen Grid, is no. In many cases, residents of the TG actually act more mature than their MG counterparts. We don’t all grief, a good number of us can in fact speak whatever our first language is without tlkng lik dis wit meny errors just cos i can filling our sentences with needless errors.

Similarly, if residents of the MG were actually mature and responsible, then there would be no reason for teens to see things on the MG that they shouldn’t. The MG does have mature sims – but it has PG sims too. There is still code in the system to prevent teens accessing mature sims – you can even see it in the open sourced client, and several people accidentally dragged to the MG by SL bugs have reported the same. Were the MGers reasonable and mature people (which they repeatedly insist they are, even if the Police Blotter disagrees), there wouldn’t be any “Mature” content in the PG areas.

Along similar lines, as long as LL are restricting teens from accessing the mature sims, they cannot be held responsible for what their users display in PG areas while breaking the rules. It’s not LL’s problem, it’s the immature adult’s problem. If you’re going to sue someone, sue them instead.

The only point not dealt with here in some way, the TG’s economy, is complete garbage in my opinion. There are numerous residents of the TG that are perfectly capable of producing products that could compete on the MG; especially since products tend to be so much cheaper here. If we maintain our pricing on the MG, even if our products are slightly inferior, we have a price advantage, which has to be worth something. If we raise our prices, as those who are capable of making decent products would, then we can benefit from the significantly larger audience with significantly more money.

Furthermore, as teenagers tend to have little money to blow on SL, the cheaper teen products would probably continue to be much more successful among themselves than the a similar, superior, but significantly more expensive, adult-created product.

Finally (and not listed above), there are the people who simply prefer the smaller, teen-only community of the TG. As such, my solution would be as follows:

Allow teens to access the PG regions of the Main Grid, while making mature regions inaccessible and blocking visibility into them, and possibly chat out of them. This would avoid any issues with mature content. However, do not merge the Teen Grid’s current sims. Instead, allow teens to roam around both grids. Additionally, provide a very easy way for parents of the teens to restrict their access to soley the TG, along with a significantly harder method (to avoid teens being able to invoke it) to restore access.

This would seem to me to provide the best of both worlds. Feel free to scream about how wrong I am in the comments, assuming you don’t mind me replying.

• Teens aren’t allowed on the Main Grid, so why should adults be allowed on the teen grid?
• I don’t play SL to learn
• They’re invading
• They ignore the rules set when they are allowed to enter the grid.

Arguments against:

• My life is enriched by the people on these islands
• They don’t affect you at all.

That fairly accurately covers what people have been saying. My thoughts are that these sims are definitely not having any negative impact at all – they can’t access our mainland, for that matter they can’t even leave their sims to visit other sims owned by approved adults (a rule I feel is pushing the limits of what is needed in the name of “safety”). Since all adults have to have background checks, there is no chance of a known pedophile, etc. getting onto one of these sims. In essence, if you don’t like them, don’t visit them.

However, islands do have a positive impact (sometimes). Global Kids has raised, or at least tried to raise, awareness about problems such as the treatment of the population of Darfur, run a successful summer camp, joined with UNICEF to run the World Fit for Children building contest (which I sort of helped out with, a little), and run numerous programmes in SL with their students (wrong word?) in real life. Less usefully, they seem to now be getting into gaming as well. I can’t see this turning out as anything other than a laggy mess that achieves little. You may have noticed that I have only focused on the Global Kids islands there. That’s because, in all honesty, all the other educational sims don’t seem to actually do anything. I have been told that the Eye4You Alliance is gearing up to do something (eventually), but right now it’s a mess. Schome Park is a mess, and last I checked a mess that broke LL’s stringent rules (specifically, it was open access without notecard spammers) (Update 22/03/07: the sim is now abiding by the rules, and snapshots indicate it has been cleaned up).

The private sims I can’t say anything for, although their blogs do imply they’re doing something. I have no way at all of gauging their success though, so no comment there. As a summary, I say that educational islands and approved adults should be allowed on their own sims. I also feel they should be allowed on eachother’s sims, which as far as I can tell they currently aren’t. The reasoning behind this is not evident to me. I do feel that they should be more transparent as to what they do, but requiring them to submit a form that has to be approved by the entire Teen Grid is just stupid – nobody cares enough to approve anything, and those that do care are usually against the islands.

As a sidenote, blogs suck at two-way communication, since you have to actually check back to see if your question/comment was responded too – not a problem for me, but it is for everyone else. (Or you could subscribe to the comments RSS feed, or use the email notification)