Careful with Adult ratings if the sim owner isn't a native English speaker

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 18:17:04 -0400 from hubzilla

Not everyone in OpenSim has the same definition of Adult; CW: long (almost 2,000 words), NSFW mentioned, nudity mentioned, sex mentioned

@OpenSim

Don't blindly trust Adult ratings on sims in #OpenSimulator. They don't necessarily mean the same as in #SecondLife.

If #OpenSimWorld advertises a sim as Adult-rated, and the description is in any language other than English, chances are the sim owner doesn't even know what Adult means in this context. Chances are they run the whole of OSW through Google Translate, and "Adult" is translated into what only means "grown-up" in their language.

The concept of "adult" meaning #NSFW pretty much only exists in English-speaking countries, if not even only in North America. Places with other main languages use different wordings and often don't shy away from naming things clearly. Thus, people who live there may be unaware that "adult" stands for stuff like nudity or sex.

Also, the translations of "adult" in the viewers may not be the same as the translation of "adult" when running OSW through Google Translate. This might explain why some sims by non-English-speaking users have different ratings in-world and on OSW.

In general, it isn't quite as bad if the sim owner's native language is German. Germans are often pretty relaxed, and they're very likely to run sims which actually allow for nudity or even more. See Stark. Also, English as a second language has been mandatory in the Federal Republic of Germany for decades.

On the other hand, it tends to be somewhat worse if the sim owner is Italian, not only due to a frequent lack of any knowledge of English, but also because Italians seem to be particularly up-tight. It may be another case of that dreaded prudish "wishful thinking" that "Adult" only means "no child avatars allowed" in #OpenSim.

So if a sim is rated Adult, but the sim description is not in English, be careful and look around the sim. If you spot things like nude beach signs or furniture with naughty animations, chances are good that the Adult rating means what it usually means. But if not, don't assume it does.

#Metaverse #VirtualWorlds

Cheryl Furse

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 18:59:19 -0400 from mastodon

Not everyone in OpenSim has the same definition of Adult; CW: long (almost 2,000 words), NSFW mentioned, nudity mentioned, sex mentioned

@Jupiter Rowland @OpenSim

Is anyway all nonsense in Opensim. Never met somone younger than 40. lol Average age is 60.

In SL it makes sense. In the early years of course. There were teenagers in second life when it was new. But now you will only find teenagers in Fortenight (average age 27 yo) or other games.

What would it mean then for Americans if they are under 21? In Germany you are adult as 18 years old. In USA you can go in adult shop when you are 21 yo or in a Pub and drink alcohol.
In all other countries in the world you can go at the age of 18 in an adult shop or drink alcohol even with 16 in a bar or Disco.

It is all nonsense and made perverted what Americans made out of opensim. OSW is just a typical prude american website. There is no need for such. We write in Fediverse or Facebook anyway more.

Aeris Irides

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 21:52:37 -0400 from holoneon

I think it's more about letting people know they might feel uncomfortable or even shocked. Like some guys think 'girls in bikinis' is porn and all women should be completely covered up in sheets. And on the other hand there's plenty of R stuff on G-land in SL. It depends on a few things, like if somebody complains and who owns the Estate. If it's not owned by the big L (i've read anyway) they might refer any complaints to the estate owner, or do nothing. I don't think there are hard and fast rules and it's up to the user to determine the rating they want to be subjected to :) there's no age verification AFAIK. If minors are logging in it's really up to the parents to monitor.

Jupiter Rowland

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 03:49:19 -0400 from hubzilla

@Aeris Irides Originally, yes, #LindenLabs introduced that rating system to #SecondLife as content warnings for sensitive users: If you don't want to see sex and/or gore, don't go to Adult-rated sims. If partial or complete nudity disturbs you, you may want to stay away from Moderate-rated sims as well. When the teen grid was shut down, the rating system was also used to kept users under 18 away from sims that weren't General-rated.

Of course, it also means that the content on the sims has to be appropriate for the rating. The Lindens probably don't take kindly to public sex being allowed and actually happening on General-rated sims if they find it out. On the other hand, I guess they may also go against rating misuse the other way, namely Adult-rated sims with no Adult-rated content. But these may be rare because there's no point in rating a Second Life sim Adult and keeping everything squeaky-clean.

Now, experience has shown us that the Second Life rating system simply doesn't work in #OpenSimulator. It is based on the real-life age of the users, and even in Second Life, it only works with age verification: Only if you can prove that you're 18 or older, you may enter sims with a Moderate or Adult rating.

But #OpenSim doesn't have age verification. The rating system doesn't work as an access restriction system based on real-life age. And the fact that it was originally intended as a content warning system is completely forgotten now.

Add to this the fact that OpenSim doesn't have pre-defined standard grid rules built in. Almost no grid has any rules to begin with, so there's also no written definition of these ratings in OpenSim whatsoever, probably also because many grid owners believe that it's commonly accepted that the definitions are the same as in Second Life.

Without user age verification, the focus has often switched away from the age of the users to the apparent age of the avatars. This, together with a lack of a common mandatory ratings definition, led to this not exactly rare new definition:

General = G-rated
Moderate = G-rated; nobody knows what the difference to General is
Adult = G-rated, but no child avatars allowed

In part, this is due to misunderstanding on the side of grid owners/sim owners who don't speak English as I've said in the start post. But it can also be wishful thinking by deeply prudish and up-tight people who want all smut gone from the #Hypergrid.

This, by the way, leads to an interesting phenomenon. You can often see it when you attend an event in a place where nudity is not just allowed as per the Adult rating and the implication that it means the same as in Second Life, but encouraged and actually practiced. So you have nude avatars dancing.

Then someone who isn't a regular, who most likely has never been there before, comes teleporting in. Hellos are exchanged. They stay for about five minutes. And then they teleport out without saying a word. Why? Because they've spent these five minutes waiting for everyone's clothes to rez. After these five minutes, however, they came to the conclusion that some of the avatars are actually naked. Thus, they escaped from that cesspool, disgusted and disturbed. They clearly didn't expect an Adult-rated sim to actually have Adult-rated content on it.

Now, why does OpenSim have this ratings system in the first place if it doesn't work? Because it has to stay as close to Second Life as possible so that it can use the same viewers.

Some viewer developers think that adding grid selection is sufficient to make a Second Life viewer compatible with OpenSim, and they wish this was the case so that they don't have to take any extra efforts upon them. AFAIK, there are less popular viewers which are pretty full-featured when it comes to Second Life, but which lack a lot of OpenSim-specific features because the devs lack capacities and motivation to include them. If they only ever use Second Life, they can't even test them in the first place. Even Firestorm has removed the ability to create subfolders under Outfits because Second Life doesn't support them anymore, regardless of them working perfectly well in OpenSim.

This also means that changing OpenSim in ways that replace Second Life features with original OpenSim features is completely out of question. OpenSim needs its own ratings and content warnings system, but that would have to sit next to Second Life's General/Moderate/Adult system in the viewers at first and eventually replace it altogether. Viewer devs won't do that.

What makes matters even more complicated is that the grids run widely different OpenSim versions which viewers have to stay compatible with. #OSgrid is always bleeding-edge. Other grids still run OpenSim 0.8.2.1 or even older. Or they run some fork from 0.7.* times that only had a select few changes from newer versions backported over time, and which are no longer maintained anyway. This explains why Otterland which is stuck on OpenSim NextGen lacks both #BakesOnMesh support and even a fallback for BoM avatars, so it wrecks any and all BoM avatars entering the grid.

Even if OpenSim did manage to introduce its own ratings system, it'd take years for all grids to implement it which would require some grids to shut down for good. On the viewer side, the #CoolVLViewer would be the first to implement it, the #FirestormViewer would follow when they deem it important enough to include it in one of their next releases, and probably all the others would lag behind a lot or never implement it in the first place and become useless for OpenSim.

Cyborg 2-A ✅

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 06:33:15 -0400 from libertious

also, in Genesis viewer they don't use the label "G", they use "PG". which is probably more accurate i suppose.

Lin Jen-Shin (godfat)

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 23:25:02 -0400 from mastodon

Not everyone in OpenSim has the same definition of Adult; CW: long (almost 2,000 words), NSFW mentioned, nudity mentioned, sex mentioned

@Jupiter Rowland funnily due to this in Taiwanese Mandarin adult does often mean sexual contents: (adult video (成人影片)) https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%80%E3%83%AB%E3%83%88%E3%83%93%E3%83%87%E3%82%AA

Jupiter Rowland

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 04:32:40 -0400 from hubzilla

Would be interesting to see how this translates into other languages/to other cultures where there aren't abbreviations for ratings. It'd be easier to understand for them, but hard to translate.

Sometimes it wouldn't even fit. The German "translation" of PG is USK-6 for video games, or if you're too old for that shit, and all you understand are the FSK film ratings, it's FSK-6. But you can't transfer the #SecondLife and #OpenSim ratings to German because both Moderate and Adult would be USK-18/FSK-18 if you go by Linden Labs' age limits.