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Folks,
There are some chat issues that need to be handled: so everybody, please listen up. (And if you know someone who needs to read this message, make sure they read it.)
Look, we have a problem. I'd sooner solve it with you guys than without it: so help me out here.
It's about sexy talk in chat.
(sigh) Having been one myself (when dinosaurs walked the Earth), I know perfectly well that young people are going to talk about sex whenever possible. However, in a privately managed chat area in the Internet of the present day, this presents a BIG problem...no matter how funny the inhabitants think it is at any given moment, no matter how circumspectly people think they're couching their conversations.
I very much doubt that most of you have spent more than a second or so thinking about the issue. But if some cranky parent saw some of the conversations that have been going on in chat lately, and chose to make an issue of them, then not only could I personally be in a world of trouble legally -- I have no particular desire to be arrested the next time I visit the US -- but, if things got really out of hand (and when don't they?), my career as a children's writer could be at an end.
I think a fair number of you would agree that this might be a Bad Thing.
Lee and I have spent some time discussing how we're going to handle this problem. I have been resisting the course some very smart (legal) professionals I've had discussions with have urged me to take -- which is to close down our chat areas completely, because they render me dangerously liable to all kinds of legal trouble.
I really dislike that idea. Yet at the same time, I can't just sit here and hope the situation improves. If it's a choice between giving my readers a place to discuss whatever they want, and having a career, I'm sorry: the career wins hands down.
So we're going to have to start handling things a little differently in chat if our chat areas are to stay open for anything but my monthly visits. I am going to have to insist that people using my chat areas avoid The Subject at all costs. If they want to flirt in the most general terms, fine. But the language filters are going to be turned up very, very high. And if people want to discuss biological imperatives in any kind of detail, they need to take those discussions somewhere else -- somewhere where the legal responsibility does not fall on me: instant-message clients, IRC, wherever. Also, chat transcripts are going to be reviewed every day. Those who violate the chat rules as I'm going to describe them are going to be kicked out of chat permanently, on the first strike. No appeal, no exceptions.
The rule is mostly going to be: Clean Language Only, And Discuss Sex Elsewhere. Hints, jokes, innuendo: take them elsewhere. I don't want to see them in my online space. If they appear, people will be excluded without warning and without appeal. There will be those who don't like this: they're welcome to find other venues to talk naughty. There will be no more of it here.
I'm sorry to have to be Bad Mommy again, but sometimes it's got to be done. Everybody, please take note. If a chat starts getting out of hand, I expect you, yes, you right there, to start pulling it back toward safe ground. Don't just sit there and giggle: do something. By so doing, you may help keep the chat areas open.
(They have an interesting law in Germany. If someone who's been drinking gets into a car and drives it, and the police catch them, they not only take the driver's license away, but the licenses of every other driver in the car -- because those people should have stopped the drinker from driving. I find myself wondering whether we need a version of that law here...)
Be warned. Start policing yourselves. It's going to make the difference between our chat areas being open, and open only when I'm doing a chat once a month.
And one more point. I've lifted TheClone's ban, since I feel that user has spent enough time in the Sin Bin to do some thinking about how not to get banned again. I have read some very intelligent messages from you guys on the subject in the last day or so. Just so that you're clear: I had my mind made up about this already over the weekend. It's just taken a day or so to get things implemented.
Thanks. Now go and enjoy chat -- and as the commercials say, "enjoy it responsibly."
Otherwise it will go away.
There are some chat issues that need to be handled: so everybody, please listen up. (And if you know someone who needs to read this message, make sure they read it.)
Look, we have a problem. I'd sooner solve it with you guys than without it: so help me out here.
It's about sexy talk in chat.
(sigh) Having been one myself (when dinosaurs walked the Earth), I know perfectly well that young people are going to talk about sex whenever possible. However, in a privately managed chat area in the Internet of the present day, this presents a BIG problem...no matter how funny the inhabitants think it is at any given moment, no matter how circumspectly people think they're couching their conversations.
I very much doubt that most of you have spent more than a second or so thinking about the issue. But if some cranky parent saw some of the conversations that have been going on in chat lately, and chose to make an issue of them, then not only could I personally be in a world of trouble legally -- I have no particular desire to be arrested the next time I visit the US -- but, if things got really out of hand (and when don't they?), my career as a children's writer could be at an end.
I think a fair number of you would agree that this might be a Bad Thing.
Lee and I have spent some time discussing how we're going to handle this problem. I have been resisting the course some very smart (legal) professionals I've had discussions with have urged me to take -- which is to close down our chat areas completely, because they render me dangerously liable to all kinds of legal trouble.
I really dislike that idea. Yet at the same time, I can't just sit here and hope the situation improves. If it's a choice between giving my readers a place to discuss whatever they want, and having a career, I'm sorry: the career wins hands down.
So we're going to have to start handling things a little differently in chat if our chat areas are to stay open for anything but my monthly visits. I am going to have to insist that people using my chat areas avoid The Subject at all costs. If they want to flirt in the most general terms, fine. But the language filters are going to be turned up very, very high. And if people want to discuss biological imperatives in any kind of detail, they need to take those discussions somewhere else -- somewhere where the legal responsibility does not fall on me: instant-message clients, IRC, wherever. Also, chat transcripts are going to be reviewed every day. Those who violate the chat rules as I'm going to describe them are going to be kicked out of chat permanently, on the first strike. No appeal, no exceptions.
The rule is mostly going to be: Clean Language Only, And Discuss Sex Elsewhere. Hints, jokes, innuendo: take them elsewhere. I don't want to see them in my online space. If they appear, people will be excluded without warning and without appeal. There will be those who don't like this: they're welcome to find other venues to talk naughty. There will be no more of it here.
I'm sorry to have to be Bad Mommy again, but sometimes it's got to be done. Everybody, please take note. If a chat starts getting out of hand, I expect you, yes, you right there, to start pulling it back toward safe ground. Don't just sit there and giggle: do something. By so doing, you may help keep the chat areas open.
(They have an interesting law in Germany. If someone who's been drinking gets into a car and drives it, and the police catch them, they not only take the driver's license away, but the licenses of every other driver in the car -- because those people should have stopped the drinker from driving. I find myself wondering whether we need a version of that law here...)
Be warned. Start policing yourselves. It's going to make the difference between our chat areas being open, and open only when I'm doing a chat once a month.
And one more point. I've lifted TheClone's ban, since I feel that user has spent enough time in the Sin Bin to do some thinking about how not to get banned again. I have read some very intelligent messages from you guys on the subject in the last day or so. Just so that you're clear: I had my mind made up about this already over the weekend. It's just taken a day or so to get things implemented.
Thanks. Now go and enjoy chat -- and as the commercials say, "enjoy it responsibly."
Otherwise it will go away.