The virtual world industry should create a set of best practice standards for the operation of spaces for the under 18s.
It should further certify those operators that meet them thus raising the overall level of safety in online spaces and reducing confusion in the market place.
A couple of the comments I got on my ‘The winner might be’ thread combined with a few off-blog conversations I’ve had and a some presentations I’ve seen recently suggests to me that there is a fair amount of tension related to how virtual worlds for under 18s are managed.
Two things I can mention publicly are Dave Ricky (of Orbis Games) comment on the previous thread “until very recently [Linden Lab’s] procedure for keeping out children was less than a joke ,,,we're one of the few game operators that is *really* COPPA compliant”; and just about every presentation by Dr Jim Bower of Numedeon who given any opportunity talks about the safety measures taken in Whyville.
Of course no protection scheme is perfect, indeed some might be actively harmful and act to the detriment of kids; what’s more any scheme of certification has the potential to be so watered down and industry-back-patting that it’s rendered worse than meaningless leading people into a false sense of security.
But the possibly of doing something badly is not, in and of itself, a conclusive argument for not trying to do it at all.
It seems to me that right now the industry is small enough for meaningful operational standards to be promulgated and for some sort of association and publicly recognizable mark to be created.
Size I think is important as one of the challenges here is the international nature of these spaces. Dave mentioned COPA, fine, but that’s a US thing, I’m not in the US, I’m not sure if it would meet the guidelines put out by the UK government or which are better. If I were a parent I would want to know whether my countries guidelines were being followed or if there were some international standard that they all complied with. So if nothing else such an organization could help with international guideline education.
There would be problems if one or more high profile world failed to meet the standard and arguments ensued – but would this be a bad thing, a bit of industry mud slinging around online safety does not seem the worse thing in the world to me.
I’m sure there are a zillion practical reasons why this is a dumb idea – feel free to point them out.
