The lights are on
The Wii U's homescreen offers something akin to the Wii's Mii Plaza, only with social-networking functionality built into it. Nintendo showed off the new feature, dubbed Miiverse, during its stage presentation. If you thought it would function similarly to PictoChat or SwapNote, you're kind of right. You're also kind of wrong, too.
The L.A. Times is reporting that posts made in the Wiiverse won't be immediately visible to other users. According to Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, posts will face three different levels of screening, which will create a delay between the moment you press "send" and when your message pops up.
First, your message will be screened by filtering software. That'll block obvious profanity and other potentially objectionable content. People will also be able to report posts from other users. But what's to keep people from scrawling curse words or pictures of genitalia through the built-in drawing tools? The intermediate process is a bit more interesting, and it's designed with that in mind. According to Iwata, Nintendo will hire people to manually sift through updates before pushing them live onto the Miiverse. That kind of intervention is bound to create some kind of bottleneck, isn't it? Nintendo acknowledges the difficult position it's in, balancing the immediacy of messaging with the need for the Miiverse to fit with Nintendo's family-friendly image.
“The attraction of a social network is the immediacy of the feedback,” Iwata says. He also recognizes that there's bound to be a lag when people have to eyeball all those posts – a potentially mind-boggling volume, if the Wii U approaches the Wii's popularity. Iwata offered a ballpark estimate for what kind of delay users might expect to see. “[P]ersonally, I think 30 minutes should be acceptable,” he said.
We don't know how friend lists work on Wii U, and if having people on your list somehow circumvents the approval process. The console supports video chatting, too, which could create a host of other issues. Will Nintendo be putting those on a seven-second delay?
Email the author Jeff Cork, or follow on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and Game Informer.
Lolwut?
finally, somebody willing to step up and help eliminate stupid nonsense in messages. although it doesnt bother me as much, i do get tired of the inappropriate drawings for emblems for games and messages. seeing as nintendo has always been about family, im glad to see they are going to do something about inappropriate messages.
I'm fine with them blocking out some things (I.E pictures of genitalia and random vulgarity) but what is the extent of this going to be. Will any negative comments about the games or what not be censored as well? And judging by the fact that every post is going to be looked at..I think 30 minutes is wishful thinking.
This article is a bit misleading, Iwata said that 30 minutes would be acceptable when things were extremely busy, not that it would be the norm at all. Also that this only applies to public posts, private messages and messages to friends are not handled like this.
Censorship unfortunately never seems to work, not unless the ability to censor is in your hands (i.e. Let me choose who I don't want to see, or in the case of parent/child relationships let the parents turn on the auto-magic censorship). I like the idea, I see what they are trying to do (weed out the nonsense and create an environment healthy enough for everyone to enjoy) but, I just don't know if it'll work. I do however suspect it's more the 'global' interaction that are subject to censorship thou, as in confirmed friends are 'private' conversations and anything goes?
I think it's a little long but if it protects my eyes that's fine with me.
I kinda figured this would be the case.....i bet it will be longer then 30 minutes tho
How about the just get networking down before attempting to take on social networking. FACEPALM!
I think it's a good idea...If they can pull it off.
i mean nintendo would not have to do this if people had the good enough sense to police themselves and leave profanity to private msg