Forum:Underage users



Topic
Suddenly, it's come to me; but I think we need to stop banning underage users altogether. It's pointless, and accomplishes nothing. It's Wikia's jobs to disable the account from the site completely, not ours.

I am already going to stop dealing with underage user reports altogether. I think it's a waste of my administration. Unless the underage user is vandalizing or causing other disruption, blocking doesn't need to be immediate. I believe we need to stop blocking underage users from this wiki, and just start reporting them whenever we find them.

This also means that I will start ignoring users who claim to be underage on chat--I think it's above my jurisdiction to enforce. For example, if a user admits they are underage on chat, and we ban them, we technically accomplish nothing. Why? Because Wikia will never accept chat logs or chat screencaps as proof, so the account will never be disabled. It's a pointless thing to do. Whenever I come across a user who claims to be underage on a wiki, the first thing that comes to mind is to file a report via Special:Contact/general with the link where they admit they are underage.

I also want to answer a few questions people keep bringing up repeatedly:

Can't we just ban the user till they are 13?
 * No. Under Wikia's Terms of Use; any account created by a user under the age of 13 is unauthorized, and is grounds for a global block from the entire site and disabling of their account(s). Because of this, Wikia has made it clear that users need to have their account disabled from the entire site - blocking them on one wiki does nothing.


 * They are technically violating a contract between the [user] and [wikia], which is an important reason to close their account altogether. Most websites do this (e.g. Facebook, Tumblr, etc.), and they are likely not going to change it. Underage users need their accounts terminated forever till they reach the age where they can create a new one, and not just till they are 13.

Wikia's rules say underage users need to be banned, don't we need to enforce that?
 * No. Wikia asks all their users to follow the Terms of Use, not to enforce them. The Terms of Use is Wikia's job to enforce, not ours. We can create our own policies here (while still abiding by those terms) for users to follow when editing. Wikia has stated several times that they do not ask us to be the "COPPA police", but to only report the users when we have definite proof that they are underage.

Do we need to ask users for their ages to make sure they are not underage?
 * No. That is a Terms of Use violation itself--asking for another users personal information is strictly prohibited and is in violation of the terms as well.

Do we need to report users when they say they are underage on chat?
 * No. Per Wikia's word on it: they always take action when they [see] someone state they are underage, but they never take any action just because you say they are. Chat screencaps don't count as actual proof. So to put it short: Wikia will only disable an underage user's account if they state they are underage on chat while a Staff member is there. This is why I think banning underage users from chat is highly unnecessary if staff will never do anything afterwards.

This, in whole, is why I think we need to stop blocking underage users from this wiki. There is no need to do it. You can support, oppose, or leave comments on this decision below. -- •• • • +  DeviantSerpent  04:45, March 14, 2014 (UTC)