Is It Any Good?

Although creators have included a number of safety measures (including registering for the site with a parent's email, requiring a parental permission slip to be sent via snail mail, taking a thorough pre-chat test, and reporting abuses by other players through a "911 report"), one of the site's major mishaps is that the chat rooms aren't monitored around the clock, so there can be predictable teen-like interchanges about "hooking up" and some inappropriately frank -- and sometimes hurtful -- comments.

Many of the educational components within Whyville are sponsored by well-respected institutions in the science, art, health and math fields, such as NASA and the John Paul Getty Trust. On the negative side, however, there are a lot of advertisers on the site, including Wal-Mart, Disney, and the car maker Scion. The constant call for clams and trumpeting of big-ticket items like cars makes Whyville somewhat of a conundrum for parents: Do the educational benefits outweigh the commercial influences?

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