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Compulsory age (range) on profiles?


Heathcliff

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The recent thread on 'inappropriate actions with underage members' seems to be winding down now, with the result that the status quo is ok. I accept that, but I wanted to ask people to consider a smaller change (hence this thread).

The recent debate shows that it is very important to people to know the age of other members they're interacting with (particularly knowing who is over/under 18). Given that, how about making it compulsory for members to display a realistic age (or age range) on their profile? I mean, not allowing people to put '00' or '99' or post no age at all.

Let me deal with a couple of obvious objections to this right off the bat:

People could just lie about their ages.

True, but they can already do this. A 15-year-old can already lie about their age on the forum to join the adult board; an adult can lie to join the youth board. This won't solve that problem but it won't make it worse, either.

Some members (especially older members) might not want to display their exact age; it's not fair to force them.

I agree entirely; and this is why I said 'age range' in my suggestions. If an older member of the forum wishes to be imprecise about their age, I think that's fine.

If a forum member was 45, 55, even 65 I would be happy with them just putting 'over 40' or something like that. Even something like the Count's 'old' I think is fine, because without him giving his exact age, he's made it pretty clear he's in the 'over 40' bracket, for example.

I'm less concerned about older members giving an exact age; where I think people should be giving their exact age is: definitely 18 and under, and probably to mid-twenties. No-one should be ashamed of their age in that age bracket, and it seems to me that under 25 covers the ages where people and life experience change the most from year to year. My main concern is accurate ages for teenagers, and a clear representation of who is over/under 18.

Ok, opinions welcome- let me know what you think about that.

H

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Ugh, yes, please. I would be happier with exact ages being required on profiles from now on, really. If people are that concerned about privacy they can fudge their birthday by a few months/days in either direction (even though the chances of somebody recognizing somebody by their birthday here are basically zero).

But I'm pretty sure that option is going to get a lot of backlash, sooo, I would be happy if it was required for people to at least mention whether they were underage or overage. Since a lot of the argument on the other thread seems to be about legality, as a reminder, if something happens between two people here and one is underage, the "but I didn't KNOW she was thirteen, officer, honest!" defense holds exactly zero water and that person's ass will still be grass (and the owner of the domain can still potentially liable for it).

If people were required to display their age, or at least whether or not they were underage, it would at least eliminate the problem of being in the middle of reading an obs and realizing midway through you're reading about literal children, even if it doesn't address any of the other concerns about U18 safety.

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100% agree with this! I wasn't showing my age for a while until this issue was brought up in the other thread. I immediately put my age back in to support this when I realized it was indeed a problem to let members not show their age, specifically because of the underage issue.

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I think it's a great idea. Do you suggest that the age be displayed on the basic info when you post a topic or comment or actual age only be displayed on their personal profile when you click on their profile pic or name?

I think the actual age or age range should be seen on under the basic info when you post a topic or comment.

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Like I said in the other topic, I oppose this strongly. This is a question of personal privacy and security and while it mmight not seem like a big deal to those of you who live in countries with several million people, please remember that not all places are like that. This forum goes to great lenghts to make sure people are secure and forcing people to display their age would make alot of the other thins seem pointless in my opinion.

No-one should be ashamed of their age in that age bracket

It has clearly been a while since you were under 18. People underestimate you, treat you like you are 5, assume you know nothing of anything and that you can only be interested in "kid stuff", and even pretend to not understand you at all when you speak to them. Back when I was under 18 I would not tell anyone my real age simply because I wanted to be treated as a human being instead of an airheaded inconvenience.

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I'm in favour of this, but I wondered whether it would be possible for the age to be automatically updated from the date of birth. Mine is regularly incorrect not because I'm trying to appear younger but because I forget to update it when I have a birthday!

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It has clearly been a while since you were under 18. People underestimate you, treat you like you are 5, assume you know nothing of anything and that you can only be interested in "kid stuff", and even pretend to not understand you at all when you speak to them. Back when I was under 18 I would not tell anyone my real age simply because I wanted to be treated as a human being instead of an airheaded inconvenience.

I'm not sure if this is the case for all minors on this forum specifically, but I have been a member here since I met the minimum requirement at age 13, and people always treated me exactly as they should have in regards to respecting my maturity -- except for those who apparently thought I was more mature than I actually was and made sexual comments towards me.

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This is a question of personal privacy and security and while it mmight not seem like a big deal to those of you who live in countries with several million people, please remember that not all places are like that.

This argument doesn't hold a lot of water for me because displaying your age is a matter of safety for the forum at large, while nobody is obligated to reveal their location. The solution to this seems to be just not to tell people where you live and it would solve the problem you indicate here entirely.

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Like I said in the other topic, I oppose this strongly. This is a question of personal privacy and security and while it mmight not seem like a big deal to those of you who live in countries with several million people, please remember that not all places are like that. This forum goes to great lenghts to make sure people are secure and forcing people to display their age would make alot of the other thins seem pointless in my opinion.

No-one should be ashamed of their age in that age bracket

It has clearly been a while since you were under 18. People underestimate you, treat you like you are 5, assume you know nothing of anything and that you can only be interested in "kid stuff", and even pretend to not understand you at all when you speak to them. Back when I was under 18 I would not tell anyone my real age simply because I wanted to be treated as a human being instead of an airheaded inconvenience.

I think you really need to understand that this is a fetish site with sexual material. It doesn't matter if you or other people don't see it as sexual, because it IS sexual for a majority of people on this forum. Yes, everyone is different, and yes, everyone has different levels on sexuality in relation to this fetish, but the important point is that it CAN and IS being used for sexual enjoyment. There should literally be no members under 18 on this forum. The fact that the forum administrators have decided to open it to anyone over 13 is their choice, but it is a privilege, not a right. If members are required to show their age range for added protection, it is their choice to decide not to participate if they do not wish to divulge their age range.

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This is a question of personal privacy and security and while it mmight not seem like a big deal to those of you who live in countries with several million people, please remember that not all places are like that.

This argument doesn't hold a lot of water for me because displaying your age is a matter of safety for the forum at large, while nobody is obligated to reveal their location. The solution to this seems to be just not to tell people where you live and it would solve the problem you indicate here entirely.

We all don't enjoy the priviledge of "passing" as native English speakers. Some people are very good at figuring out where you are from simply based on the grammatical mistakes and misspellings you do.

Like I said in the other topic, I oppose this strongly. This is a question of personal privacy and security and while it mmight not seem like a big deal to those of you who live in countries with several million people, please remember that not all places are like that. This forum goes to great lenghts to make sure people are secure and forcing people to display their age would make alot of the other thins seem pointless in my opinion.

No-one should be ashamed of their age in that age bracket

It has clearly been a while since you were under 18. People underestimate you, treat you like you are 5, assume you know nothing of anything and that you can only be interested in "kid stuff", and even pretend to not understand you at all when you speak to them. Back when I was under 18 I would not tell anyone my real age simply because I wanted to be treated as a human being instead of an airheaded inconvenience.

I think you really need to understand that this is a fetish site with sexual material. It doesn't matter if you or other people don't see it as sexual, because it IS sexual for a majority of people on this forum. Yes, everyone is different, and yes, everyone has different levels on sexuality in relation to this fetish, but the important point is that it CAN and IS being used for sexual enjoyment. There should literally be no members under 18 on this forum. The fact that the forum administrators have decided to open it to anyone over 13 is their choice, but it is a privilege, not a right. If members are required to show their age range for added protection, it is their choice to decide not to participate if they do not wish to divulge their age range.

Why is it so hard to understand that I don't forget how sexual this can be when I'm making these comments? I don't see how displaying your age/-range adds any kind of protection though.

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Why is it so hard to understand that I don't forget how sexual this can be when I'm making these comments? I don't see how displaying your age/-range adds any kind of protection though.

Because you don't seem to understand the implication of what it means. I'm not sure how much more clearly I can say it, Heath and Junia made it very clear already. We need to know the age of the people we interact with to make sure we don't say or do anything we wouldn't do with a minor, and we need to know who is underage to make sure we protect them correctly from sharks.

Honestly, I don't understand why we have to keep repeating this to you, and why you don't seem to get it at all. Your crusade to treat kids like adult is mind-boggling to me. They are kids. They will eventually grow up and be treated like adults. They are not a minority that is being oppressed.

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We all don't enjoy the priviledge of "passing" as native English speakers. Some people are very good at figuring out where you are from simply based on the grammatical mistakes and misspellings you do.

Okay, but even still, what are the chances that any given person is going to go "Ha! After studying, I can tell PosterX is from Whereverthehellistan! And they're 24 years old! Now all I have to do is comb through Whereverthehellistan's small population and isolate all the 24 year olds and I might be able to figure out PosterX's real life identify!" That seems ludicrous to me. How many people are likely to go to all that trouble? Alternatively, if the thing people are afraid of is that they'll be recognized by somebody they know in real life, well, that person would obviously also be here because they have the fetish, so it's not like they're going to be an asshole about it. Besides that, I think it's a lot more likely that somebody would be recognized by their art style or something than their age or location.

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Like I said in the other topic, I oppose this strongly. This is a question of personal privacy and security and while it mmight not seem like a big deal to those of you who live in countries with several million people, please remember that not all places are like that. This forum goes to great lenghts to make sure people are secure and forcing people to display their age would make alot of the other thins seem pointless in my opinion.

I don't think any country is so small that revealing your age makes it easy to find out who you are.

The worst thing revealing your age could do is, possibly reveal your birthday. The worst thing someone could do with your birthday is confirm who you are if they know you in real life, and already suspect you are a member of the forum... in which case, some personal things like the link to your deviantart page in your signature are probably more useful in helping them recognise you.

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We all don't enjoy the priviledge of "passing" as native English speakers. Some people are very good at figuring out where you are from simply based on the grammatical mistakes and misspellings you do.

Okay, but even still, what are the chances that any given person is going to go "Ha! After studying, I can tell PosterX is from Whereverthehellistan! And they're 24 years old! Now all I have to do is comb through Whereverthehellistan's small population and isolate all the 24 year olds and I might be able to figure out PosterX's real life identify!" That seems ludicrous to me. How many people are likely to go to all that trouble? Alternatively, if the thing people are afraid of is that they'll be recognized by somebody they know in real life, well, that person would obviously also be here because they have the fetish, so it's not like they're going to be an asshole about it. Besides that, I think it's a lot more likely that somebody would be recognized by their art style or something than their age or location.

I love Sitrus but that argument is just silly

because "Sitruuna" is literally "lemon" in Finnish

and location "Tuonela" is a place from Finnish mythology

so he is already declaring his home country very clearly..

But about the topic, I am not that comfortable with the idea of making the age display mandatory. I've seen many people on here who simply don't want to tell their age and I think it's better to allow that level of privacy. I don't really see how it would make the forum safer in any way to force some people out of their comfort zone, especially since the forum is already very strictly regulated and moderated.

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A reminder that this is a civil discussion and that members have the right to be for and against this idea. Some people are more concerned with revealing their age or location than others and we need to be respectful of that concern. I know when I first joined, it took me a few years before I was comfortable sharing my birthday.

And, as with other recent discussions, the staff is discussing this topic as well.

Carry on…..

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How is the concern of revealing one's age RANGE more important than the concern of underage members interacting sexually with adult members? I'm sorry, but this is just beyond me.

You know, if anything happens to a kid in here and there's an investigation that ties this forum to the case, the owner of this forum could be liable for it because they encouraged underage member to participate in a sexual fetish forum with adults. I'm this close to leaving for good honestly. I'm appalled at the reaction the majority of ADULT members are having to these discussions, all in the name of not revealing their age RANGE or just so that they can keep writing Harry Potter fics about 13 y.o. sneezing.

You want kids on your forum? Fine. But then put everything you can in place to protect them and the adults. You just can't have it both ways. Welcome to real life.

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Oh, I don't think anybody is advocating for a person's location to be mandatory profile information; I think that would be absurd.

This entire thing boiled down is that basically, adults would generally prefer to know whether or not we are interacting with minors on a forum for a sexual fetish. At the very, very, very least, I don't think some indication of whether someone is U18 or a legal adult is very much to ask for at all, honestly.

edit: whoops, cross-posted with Azu. My first sentence was directed at Dusty's post, in case that's unclear.

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I know when I first joined, it took me a few years before I was comfortable sharing my birthday.

Just to be clear, my idea was to have an age or age range displayed on the basic info that appears when you post on a topic; not to force anyone to reveal their birthday if they do not want to. If I remember rightly, the age is updated independently of any birthday added; please correct me if I'm wrong.

Some people are more concerned with revealing their age or location than others and we need to be respectful of that concern.

I accept that- but who said anything about sharing locations?

Look- I was just thinking, it is clear that ages of members are important on this forum (not just because of recent discussions but because of staff rules!) If an under 18 member goes into the chat, and I go in and start talking about sneezing with them, the staff will tell me off if they see it. (That has happened to me before: a 17-year-old girl in chat was trying to bring up the subject of sneezing; I was gently warned not to participate by a member of staff there at the time).

Tell me: what do you think the staff member should have done in that situation, had the girl put her age as '00'?

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There should literally be no members under 18 on this forum.

There are places (fetish sites) where members are required to be 18+ (to my knowledge). I have never joined them. 18+ members who feel uncomfortable with having *any* u18s around at all have the options of either 1) restricting their posting to Off Topic type things until validated and then discussing fetish things in the Adult Board, or creating a 18+ only forum.

I cannot and will not speak for current Staff and it is absolutely 100% their prerogative if they want to change things. I do feel fairly confident that this will be something that will NOT change though. There have been LOOOOOONG discussions about u18s both on the main boards and between Staff.

Yes, it is a privilege - all membership is a privilege and not a right. Yes, having the age range that we have can present issues. Are there certain conversations that I absolutely will not have with our u18 members, yes- because I would feel it wouldn't be appropriate for me to do so. I also feel VERY protective of u18s. I'm no longer on Staff but if I see a person being inappropriate I would have ZERO hesitation in reporting it and doing anything that I could to defend a member from being sexualized and/or taken advantage of. (I'll also defend all members from being "creeped on" because I care about the people here very, very much and the happy and safe balance is really important to me.

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You want kids on your forum? Fine. But then put everything you can in place to protect them and the adults

Speaking as a member (and not on behalf of the staff), I truly believe that this forum is very protective of all its members. It may not be perfect (few things in life are), and it's not possible for every policy to satisfy every single member and therefore inevitably some members will disagree with certain situations.

But I don't think its fair to imply that previous (and/or current) members of staff don't seek to protect the membership in many, many ways.

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Not to speak for her, but I don't think Azu was suggesting that we make the forum 18+ from hereon out. She was just saying that since this is a site geared toward a sexual fetish, certain standards need to be in place. Knowing who is and isn't a minor seems like a very reasonable standard to me.

And I cross-posted again, because I'm too slow, but this post is directed at tma's last post - I feel like quoting the entire thing would be redundant.

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If you participate in the more social aspects of the forum you will probably leave traces of where you are from. Hiding where you're from can be a lot of work, especially if you're not from an English speaking country(?).

Also bots, keeping tabs on who's a 'sexual deviant' can come in handy for certain types of governments and a rule of data is that many companies and governments will store a huge amount of it even though it's useless at the moment because it might be interesting later. Automatically processing vast amounts of seemingly harmless data to gain very detailed knowledge about people is done today. Even casual interaction gives of data. Displaying your age is more data and there are certainly entities out there who will use data for evil. Don't underestimate the need for privacy and also consider that what is posted on the forum may persist for unknown amounts of time.

If sounds like I'm arguing for not requiring age to be shown but I mostly want to present another side of the problem that you may not be considering. Weighing the different sides thoroughly and coming to a well based conclusion is not something I feel up to at the moment.

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Re: ages.

I **personally** would have NO issue with at least having a range. I do think that knowing if a person is u18 prior to making certain statements would be a good thing. Not in terms of people judging on people or talking down to them, but for things like avoiding comments that wouldn't be appropriate and especially if one is in an IM and/or chat situation. I confess that I have checked profiles for ages when I'm in with people that I haven't met before- even just for making certain "Off Topic" comments.

There are people who are more and less comfortable with flirting and/or talking about the fetish in places, and I think that if a person says something and finds out that the person that they said something to is half their age it can be *very* uncomfortable.

I think that having ages (even if not 100% *specific* ) would be helpful for u18 and 18+ interactions from both sides.

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I'm also weighing in as a member, and not on behalf of the staff - as Dusty mentioned, this is being discussed.

I stayed out of the other thread publicly deliberately. This is something that is brought to attention reasonably often, and I can definitely see both arguments (wanting to display it and wanting to keep it hidden).

I understand completely that as a fetish forum, members should know if they are talking to a minor or not. I personally think that age-ranges could be tricky because I wouldn't oppose it myself, but I can see how a 17 year old may not want to be in the same category as a 13 year old. I know it hasn't been suggested, but I don't think people's dates of births should be displayed (that is getting a little personal) but having a number in a profile would seem logical to me. But that is me personally, not speaking on behalf of the staff.

We, as Staff, have a duty to protect all our members, not just the minors, or just the adults. As Joal said, it is impossible for a policy to satisfy 100% of people. The saying "you cannot please all of the people all of the time" springs to mind.

As Staff, we are very vigilant in protecting our members and from what I have seen in the years I have been on Staff, we do a damn good job. I am struggling to see how displaying a number in a profile would give more indication about your true identity, but that is my personal opinion.

I have more that I could say but I'm going to stop because there have been THREE NEW REPLIES SINCE I STARTED TYPING THIS.

:dead:

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As a minor, I would like to speak.

I agree that the adults do not have to put their age, but the idea of an age range such as "Over 18" simple as that would be good.

It could be anywheres from 18 to 90 for all we know. No one could track you, no one could know its you for sure.

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