Guy Fawkes Day Disinformation Control.

Vendors, Friends and Family of Pulse Sims,

On Thursday the 5th of November we will be celebrating Guy Fawkes Day with a bonfire party including fireworks, and live DJs from around noon SLT till at least midnight. More details will be coming including a promotional poster and how you can get involved. We are doing this in coordination with STEP UP! a group promoting content theft awareness. Their web pages are here.

http://stepupsl.wordpress.com/

http://step-up-sl.ning.com/

In addition to the Guy Fawkes themed education parties the group is calling for an act of solidarity among designers in not doing any content uploads on that day. We are encouraging everyone to support the Step UP! activities here on Pulse, or on your own sims and stores.

There is another group, Artists Voice, that has a different plan of action. No call for events or education yet but a general boycott of L$ transactions. The boycott they are asking for on November 5th and 6th is as follows: Content uploads, Purchase of $L currency, Sale of $L currency, All XStreet.com purchases and sales, In-world Purchases, In-world Sales, Land store purchases, Stop blogging about Second Life, Paying of shop rentals. While this does send a louder message to the Lindens, we feel it does so in a way that hurts more than it helps. As an example: for anyone that relies on SL for their RL income a 48 hour outage of sales in a week works out to over 10 hours out of a 40 hour paycheck.

Step Up! has made it clear that they do not support the actions of this group and neither do we. However in the interest of fairness we implore you to look at both groups and make up your own mind. The Artists Voice website is here.

http://theartistsvoice.org/

Hope to see you on the 5th!

Roblem Hogarth

Ivey Deschanel

Lindens are ramping up the Adult content policy

So out of the blue last night I received 2 identical emails from our buddies at Linden Labs…

Dear Second Life Resident,

In September, the Adult Content Policy transition period will end, and in preparation, we recently reviewed parcel descriptions and classified advertisements. We noticed that, while either your parcel description or classified ad contains or references adult content, your land is not flagged as Adult. We're writing to alert you to this oversight in your listing and let you know how easy it can be to address it. Please note that if you don't take action, your listings may be removed from search results (though they will continue to incur full listing fees) and account restrictions may be imposed when the transition period ends.

How can you avoid this messiness and continue to reach your target audience with your listings? Simply comply with the Adult Content Policy by taking one of the following actions, if you have not already done so:

• Private region owners, change your region rating to Adult.
• If you rent, or if you own Mainland property then move to an Adult region (Zindra or Adult rated private region.
• OR Remove any adult-themed content from your parcel description, classified ad and land (whichever is applicable).

For further detail, read the Adult Content Policy and tips.

Thank you,
Linden Lab Customer Support

That’s it, no information about what sims, or parcels are at fault just the ominous “…if you don't take action, your listings may be removed from search results…and account restrictions may be imposed…” So we are taking actions, we have rewritten our ads, are reviewing and changing all parcel ads, and will be contacting concierge support to see if we can get more information. Trust me we are not happy with this latest information, it was our understanding that adult keywords would not be viewable to non age verified accounts. NOT that they would not be viewable to anyone if our sims were not set to Adult or that “account restrictions may be imposed”. Sorry for the hassle, we will try to make this all as painless as possible.

Adult content changes are on the way.

Hey Pulse/Snatch City vendors, just a quick note on the upcoming adult content changes for SL and us. The most recent wrap-up post from the Lindens is here.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2009/06/01/adult-content-changes-in-summary

All private sim owners have to make the decision to remain Mature or go Adult. Ivey and I have talked it over and we have decided to remain Mature. The potential loss of customers that cannot or refuse to age verify outweighs any benefit to going Adult for our customers or vendors.

So what does this mean to the sims and you? The Lindens have broken out “Adult” into 2 major categories, advertised adult activities and Adult keywords in search. As wild as we like to get it has been a long time since we have had an advertised event that crosses the line into Adult. We are in the process of moving our dungeon to the mainland Adult continent so that will not be an issue either. (I’ll bet you forgot we had one.) Simple nudity in ads is not an issue either.

The Lindens had published an official list of adult keywords but this was quickly removed, there is a good list available here.

http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/Adult_Content_Keywords

So yes the mention of even the word Nipple will cause your entire ad to become censored to all but the age verified. This also seems to be the case for Object names and descriptions that have “show in search” checked off. This may or may not affect your land parcel ad as well. So unless you are targeting Adults specifically I would remove “offending” keywords and turn off Show in search.

As always any questions contact me inworld.

Roblem Hogarth

Condom Quest 2009 Ends / PulseSims Launches

Welcome to the PulseSims Blog Covering Events and Specials on the Pulse Family of sims (Pulse, Snatch City, Asylum, and New Kadath)

Thanks go out to everyone that participated in the Condom Quest 2009 Event. We had a huge response across Pulse and Snatch City with people exploring all over the sims. Ivey and Roblem will be returning all the condoms we can see today. However help us out and pick up any that we miss. (We still find the occasional snowball from the hunt last year) Thanks again!