It's not maturity, it's caution. People are more careful when their real names are attached.
It's also not a good comparison because the set of options is completely different; it's like arguing whether a trout makes fewer programming mistakes than a human. There are no interactive 3D zoophile sex dungeons in Facebook to use your "free will" to avoid. (Facebook app, anyone?)
I agree that John Gabriel's theory is in play. But I'm not suggesting that the people themselves are less mature, just that the net result is that SL is quite apparently more adolescent than FB.
And I think it's a great comparison. Both of these social/entertainment systems were designed to be the way they are. What are the results?
Certainly many people who have tried both and opted to spend many more hours on one than the other. What difference is there in the communities on each, the interests represented on each, and the individuals who use each? Which is better social therapy for the painfully shy? Why hasn't SL had the FB-like mainstream breakthrough they've been expecting?
I wonder if you could wire up a MUD engine to a simulation environment like breve (http://www.spiderland.org/) with 1000 lines of code in any popular scripting language and have something interesting enough to demo to people.
See what I just did there? I described developing a massively multiplayer interactive 3d environment as trivial! What chutzpah!
Stop with the spin in the headlines, please. There's no "drubbing" here at all, and adding "well-deserved" is as bad as something you'd expect from the Bush administration.
Says Gartner research chief Steve Prentice: "Second Life is moving into a phase of disillusionment."
Gartner talking about MMOGs is like John McCain talking about Nine Inch Nails.
The article isn't a drubbing, it's merely pointing out issues that virtual communities have to deal with as a result of real-world situations.