A patrol for Web game parks

For two years, all the inhabitants of Webosaurs, an online virtual world for children from 5 to 12, they could customize their avatar dinosaur with leather armor, and other extravagant clothing.

Recently, though, the founder of Webosaurs, Jacques Panis, decided that the leather armor should be available only to premium members, who pay about $ 6 per month. Players with free registration would be denied that dress.

Then the Metaverse Mod Squad responded. The company employs moderators around the country who monitor the site Webosaurs to keep its users safe and happy.

In this case, Webosaurs said that if the changes were made, free users may abandon the world turn one on Webosaurs or another. In the end, the dinosaurs maintained their armor and Webosaurs avoided the possibility of alienating some of its 1.5 million registered users.

Mr. Panis "I'm running a business, but the Metaverse Mod Squad, as moderators and community managers, is the voice of children," she says.

Because in 2007, starting from the Metaverse, Amy Pritchard, its Executive Director, has emerged as an industry expert in creating online community safe and appealing for children and adults.

The Metaverse is a client list that includes the Cartoon Network, National Football League, Nickelodeon and the State Department. Employs an army of workers — moms — often pantofolaio to monitor and moderate Web sites where you can create your own character or avatar and children can interact with thousands of other users. Employees of the metaverse frequently create their own avatar to help keep the peace.

MS. Pritchard says that the stakes are highest in online worlds for children, as Webosaurs. More adult-oriented sites like Second Life, users must be at least 16 and presumably more equipped to deal with the threats of online interaction.

You have found that maintaining safe kids has much to do with keeping them entertained. "If you release just guys in these parks online games with no one to monitor them and without rules, you" Lord of the flies "," she says. "But if it is possible to balance safety with fun and involve children, ensure that you have a site with a great group of guys and not cyberbullying. "

In three and a half years, Metaverse has grown from an idea hatched in a whimsical Second Life virtual bar in an agency that has been profitable since 2009 and had revenue in millions of units "last year, she said to be more precise in decline. The company is private.

With its reasonable bob and librarian glasses, MS. Pritchard, 42, looks like a typical suburban MOM, until you see his shoes. Its chunky Mary Janes, with oversized stitching, giving away his side less conventional. So that the stickers of skateboard schiaffeggiati on the back of his PowerBook. A sticker is a surf shop, another is a punk and two are "Sesame Street," added by 5-year-old daughter, Mary, who somehow is responsible for the existence of the company of his mother.

A lawyer by training, Ms. Pritchard should continue as a commercial litigator when she became a mother. But "Mary had changed everything," she says.

She stumbled upon a business idea while exploring the virtual world of Second Life with her husband, Ron, who had taken a job at Linden Lab, creator of Second Life. MS. Pritchard was taken with breathtaking landscapes, buildings and capricious avatar — from long-legged Blonde blue shells of giraffes — that users create for themselves. But she says that she noticed that some users have visited some complex environments created by big companies, because companies have nothing to do there.

"The company had no idea how to create relationships in 3D," he says.

MS. Pritchard, however, knew exactly how to make friends online. As a side job, she moderated message boards for the WB television network and had hit up close friendship with several other moderators.

After introducing them to Second Life, affirming five of his friends to moderator to create Avatar and join her regularly into a sports bar called Second Life virtual Tiger thirsty.

There, MS. Pritchard struck up a friendship with the creator of the bar, Mike Pinkerton, an advocate of real life in New Orleans. One night in July 2007, ran past him on this idea: what about a virtual company, providing remote staff moderators for Second Life websites for businesses and moderated Web Forum? Mr. Pinkerton signed the chief operating Officer of nascent business.