Compulsory age (range) on profiles?

[Sawyer]

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.

I understand people wanting privacy from bigger, more powerful groups (i.e. government or whomever would be in charge of collecting this data), but I want to know what bad could ever come to me from the higher-ups knowing that I have a sneezing fetish.

Besides, if they are gathering data in the first place and getting some from this forum, then they will have all sorts of information about you -- your IP address, for example. They probably wouldn't care about you posting your age on the sneeze fetish forum.

[Bruyere]

I really like the idea of age ranges being compulsory and visible on the basic info next to a person's post. /short and sweet thoughts on the matter that add very little but a nodding head.

[Scandinavius]

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.

I understand people wanting privacy from bigger, more powerful groups (i.e. government or whomever would be in charge of collecting this data), but I want to know what bad could ever come to me from the higher-ups knowing that I have a sneezing fetish.

Besides, if they are gathering data in the first place and getting some from this forum, then they will have all sorts of information about you -- your IP address, for example. They probably wouldn't care about you posting your age on the sneeze fetish forum.

I'm mostly thinking long term here so many consequences will be unpredictable. Logs containing IP-addresses and such are not stored as long as content itself in general I think. And the public parts of this site can be scanned without access to logs, just like visiting it. Say that in 30 years you run for political office or you are some other kind of public person and attract some enemies. If they know sensitive things about you they might blackmail you or something.

Data leaking is potential problem. When you gather data someone might hack your system and make it public. After some time there might be enough leaked data or with advances in big data and cheap processing power for hire that private individuals can learn the identity of forum users who have revealed enough about themselves.

Also I'm not saying that this piece of information is necessarily a big problem. I just want people to consider unexpected long term consequences when talking about what information to make public (or demand someone else make public).

[Sawyer]

I'm mostly thinking long term here so many consequences will be unpredictable. Logs containing IP-addresses and such are not stored as long as content itself in general I think. And the public parts of this site can be scanned without access to logs, just like visiting it. Say that in 30 years you run for political office or you are some other kind of public person and attract some enemies. If they know sensitive things about you they might blackmail you or something.

Data leaking is potential problem. When you gather data someone might hack your system and make it public. After some time there might be enough leaked data or with advances in big data and cheap processing power for hire that private individuals can learn the identity of forum users who have revealed enough about themselves.

Also I'm not saying that this piece of information is necessarily a big problem. I just want people to consider unexpected long term consequences when talking about what information to make public (or demand someone else make public).

The point of this thread isn't to state one's birthday explicitly, but categorize oneself as either 18+ or as U18.

I'm not planning on having a political career, so this would only pertain to members who are in the same boat as me, but if somebody is (non-benevolently) collecting all of this data about me that extends even to which forums I visit for sexual and social reasons only, I think I would have way bigger problems to worry about than who finds out abut my sneezing fetish.

[cally]

Throwing my 2 cents/pence into the ring here, I honestly can't see what the harm is in having your age or age range listed. While I'm not super paranoid, unless someone really tried to figure out who I was based on my age and geographical location, they'd have a hard time, unless they knew something more about me. I have a separate email for here and yes, my tumblr is in my profile, 99% of that is so innocuous that I'm not overly concerned. I think that if someone tried to track me down or doxx me, perhaps I'd feel differently.

That being said, as I have said before, I think that this forum is an incredibly safe place, and I have nothing but the highest regards for the staff who keep it that way. If having an age or age range allows them to to their jobs better/easier to protect everyone here, then so be it.

[Scandinavius]

I'm mostly thinking long term here so many consequences will be unpredictable. Logs containing IP-addresses and such are not stored as long as content itself in general I think. And the public parts of this site can be scanned without access to logs, just like visiting it. Say that in 30 years you run for political office or you are some other kind of public person and attract some enemies. If they know sensitive things about you they might blackmail you or something.

Data leaking is potential problem. When you gather data someone might hack your system and make it public. After some time there might be enough leaked data or with advances in big data and cheap processing power for hire that private individuals can learn the identity of forum users who have revealed enough about themselves.

Also I'm not saying that this piece of information is necessarily a big problem. I just want people to consider unexpected long term consequences when talking about what information to make public (or demand someone else make public).

The point of this thread isn't to state one's birthday explicitly, but categorize oneself as either 18+ or as U18.

I'm not planning on having a political career, so this would only pertain to members who are in the same boat as me, but if somebody is (non-benevolently) collecting all of this data about me that extends even to which forums I visit for sexual and social reasons only, I think I would have way bigger problems to worry about than who finds out abut my sneezing fetish.

Even if users are only under/over 18 everyone under 18 when the system is put into place will still have their age pinpointed with fairly high accuracy (depending on how long someone can wait after turning 18 to register as 18+) as they will move from below to above 18 in a presumably short timespan after turning 18. This would however require pretty regular monitoring of the forum which makes it much less of a problem for long term.

As for collecting data. No one is likely to collect data on you specifically unless you are some sort of high value target. The power in mass surveillance (or just big piles of data) is that everyone, no matter how little of a risk they are (if it's government) or how little money is to be made from targeted ads (it it's a company like Facebook) has their data stored for later use. In the case of this forum the forum saves the information from posts and profiles to function; but it can still be mined for data later. That way, if a person becomes interesting later it's simply a matter of retrieving already stored data rather than starting from scratch.

[bloom]

I'm not trying to railroad the conversation, but it's going in a distinctly tinfoil-hat-topped direction right now, and it might be a little bit more productive if we were to focus on issues that are more likely to actually affect our users rather than some kind of nebulous governmental bogeyman who's out to figure out who masturbates to sneezing? Just a suggestion.

[SexualOddity]

I agree with Junia.

Not that I want to in anyway deny or undermine the risk of data mining and the nefarious use of that data, but the threat to U18 members (or the threat to over18 members who inadvertantly become engaged in sexual conversation/the threat to the site owner) are real and immediatly conceivable threats.

If we share our age, someone might use that against us at some point, if we're important enough and the Government/spying organisation is able to work out who we are.

People getting into sexualised situations with U18s is most likely happening now, and could happen to anyone.

I think showing an age range is the lesser of two evils.

[Blah!?]

I was fully content to stick my head in the sand on this issue, and I'm sure I'm going to wish I'd just kept doing that after I post this. I didn't even care one way or the other until earlier today, and then I finally realized something. I've seen my fair share of fetish websites, and every single one of them that I'm aware of doesn't allow members younger than 18. I don't care whether they do this to protect minors from predators or to protect themselves from legal action. It just made me realize something. Why do we?

I don't think I have a whole ton of coherent stuff to say, but I'll go point by point on a few things.

"I don't want the government or corporations to discover my identity."

Look, I hate the government and corporations and whoever the heck else having my information just as much as any other 20-something blowhard on the internet, but as far as legitimate privacy concerns go, this website is a total non-issue. If you so much as have a facebook account that you haven't used since 2009, the government already knows a thousand times more about you from that than they could ever hope to glean from this website. Also remember for a moment that the government already knows literally everything about you from the moment of your birth unless you were born in a cave and haven't left it since sputnik went up.

And furthermore, if the government would for whatever reason decide to crack down on people with fetishes, wouldn't it be even more likely for them to come after alleged pedophiles first? Note the word "alleged." I think they're far more likely to drop the hammer on you for so much as maybe being a pedophile than they are for you definitely having a sneeze fetish. These are both complete tin foil hat conspiracies, but they're equally likely in their implausibility.

"I only like sneezing in a non-sexual, non-explicit way."

I don't know if anybody has even mentioned this point in this thread before, but I don't feel like keeping track of what's in this thread and what's in the other.

I really get this, I really do. I feel like this a lot myself. But despite all that, I have a question:

So what?

Say people under 18 years of age were no longer allowed to join. I see nothing in that that's stopping you from continuing to enjoy sneezing in a way that's not inherently sexual. There are plenty of other adults here who feel the same way, so there's no inherent need to allow minors to stay because of this. It's not a reason to block their entrance either. It's just completely irrelevant.

"If this forum was over-18 only, I wouldn't have been able to join when I did/won't be able to stay a member."

If this had always been the case, half my career on this forum would be kaput. There are also a bunch of R-rated movies I didn't get to see until I was 17. I didn't get to drive a car until I was 16. But once I hit those ages, I could go back and do everything I thought I'd been missing out on. Now that we're in the digital age especially, that story you wanted to read isn't going to just disappear because somebody lost the manuscript. It'll always be there when you can eventually join. There are already age gates on basically everything where safety is a concern. I don't always agree with all of them, but I can at least understand why they're there.

There is actually a bit more I could say, but in the interest of having this post remain visible, I'll leave it off for now. Perhaps I'll be back once I think of a more diplomatic way to phrase it.

[froglatte]

Is it the ages of the members or the content that is problematic? Because if anyone is making the assumption that the older members of the forum are here to perve on the younger members, I don't believe that to be true, not from what I've observed of the forum. I understand wanting to protect the younger members, I do, but the forum is starting to become a strange environment for anyone over the age of 25. I know I'm being very, very careful of my replies and the topics I respond to, even innocuous topics, just because I feel targeted as an older member. And that's fine and I think as older members we have a responsibility to be more watchful, but if you want the forum to devolve into "High School RP everyone welcome!" or "My crush sneezed at band practice, omg" then this is a good way to go about it. I believe ages should definitely be included in everyone's profile. We should know who we're interacting with. And I think RPs and observations that involve U18s should have a great big U18 in the topic line so the older members know what to avoid. I like to read observations sometimes but I can't tell you how many I've noped the hell out of when it turns out to be a high school ob. Let's make it a safe place for the younger members but not at the expense of the older members if we can help it.

[Leafeon78]

Like no offence people but this is getting out of hand in my opinion is don't matter about age in some ones profile.

[Dusty15]

Eesh! I go away for 4 hours…

re: earlier questions from Heathcliff and others asking why I mentioned location when that wasn't the issue….I was simply stating age and location as factors because several people were calling out Sitruua on their comments regarding their own issues with revealing age and location. I was asking that we all be respectful of their opinions because it was starting to sound a little dog-pile-y.

I've seen my fair share of fetish websites, and every single one of them that I'm aware of doesn't allow members younger than 18.

I have also seen my fair share of fetish websites. As far as I'm aware, they are basically pornography websites. There rarely have any off-topic forums and they are heavily populated with only 18+ males sharing explicitly sexual fetish material, observations, media, etc.

This website is far beyond any of that. Why? I'm not entirely sure. Somehow a strange little community grew out of this interest in sneezing. For some members, it is a purely sexual interest and they come here only for that. For others, it's an attraction to hurt/care that expresses more like a 'crush' or in the way one might have a 'fetish' (i.e. actually a preference) for people who wear glasses. There's a very wide expression of interests here that is not comparable to an 18+ foot fetish website. I think this community is entirely unique and comparing it to a standard fetish community is like comparing apples to oranges, frankly.

[bloom]

The biggest problem with this issue on the forum right now is that in my view, we've gone past being U18-friendly to being U18-centric, and I find it unnerving that a forum for a sexual purpose is so, so childcentric. I don't mean to slag the staff here, because I know and appreciate that they work hard to provide what they feel is the best environment for the greatest amount of members, but the perceived inflexibility on this and related issues is very, very frustrating for a lot of overage members. I also realize the forum is not a democracy, but I think that members here have a right to know if the people they're interacting with are minors or not. Not an opt-in, non-mandatory option, either - something that members are required to display, both for the safety of the U18s and the comfort of the 18+ membership.

I knew my other thread was fighting a losing battle when I started it, but this one really, really seems like a brilliant compromise if we can't restrict U18 material so that only U18 people can view it.

Like no offence people but this is getting out of hand in my opinion is don't matter about age in some ones profile.

I don't think you exactly understand what you're saying here. ADULTS do not want to interact with CHILDREN about certain sexually-charged topics. This is actually a big deal to most people.

edit: and I cross-posted for the third time in this thread, I have no idea how this keeps happening lol

[Leafeon78]

You know what just make this forum a 18+ website that's all you lot give a dam about it because their is not much for under 18s.

[Blah!?]

I agree that this forum has evolved into a lot more than just a fetish community. Ultimately I find that to be both a blessing and a curse. It has enabled us to grow closer together, but evidently it also leads to problems like what we're having now.

Obviously I'm not in charge of this place, so I can't dictate what it should or shouldn't be, but I think catering to the off topic sections above the fetish sections is a mistake. This is the sneeze fetish forum, not the general discussion forum where people also happen to have sneeze fetishes. To be frank there is nothing this forum does that you can't get on any other forum aside from the sneeze fetish material. Of course the membership is unique, but none of them would be here without the fetish element. In truth this place is about as good a spot for meeting friends as a strip club. You'll inevitably run into some people with shared interests who turn out to be cool, but when you want to do anything but admire what's on stage, you go someplace else.

I'm absolutely not saying we should get rid of the off topic boards. I think they're an important part of what does set this place apart from the perverted masses that are many other fetish forums. I just don't think it's a good idea to pretend this is more than it really is.

[Oolia]

You know what just make this forum a 18+ website that's all you lot give a dam about it because their is not much for under 18s.

Well, if this isn't proof of what Junia just said about our forum being U18-centric, I don't know what is.

[Leafeon78]

I'm a TEEN i don't understand everything a adult says OK.

[SpookyScarySkeleton]

You know what just make this forum a 18+ website that's all you lot give a dam about it because their is not much for under 18s.

Well, if this isn't proof of what Junia just said about our forum being U18-centric, I don't know what is.

. There is a Y-O-U-T-H Board, many observations made by u18 , many stories and roleplays by u18 members and so many other places for u18 members . There are many places for 18+ too. This thread is not dedicated to making.this a 18+ board but rather making the forum a safe community for minors and 18+ members to interact. You've missed the point,dear. Best of luck understand the thread sorry if I came off as rude. I was just listing the many parts of the forum for U18 to be.

[Leafeon78]

Thanks Ellie i know their is some for under 18s but don't forget I don't have access to the youth board only validated members can and dont worry you wernt rude I think I was a little to be honest I'm sorry everone.

(sorry if their was any spellings wrong I'm not brilliant at it I'm dyslexic and make things so they dont make sense.)

[Dusty15]

As was previously stated, the Staff is discussing this and all the other issues that have been raised lately.

This Forum grows and goes through waves of new members and new demographics. As I stated previously, we're a pretty diverse and unique place. There are a LOT of things to consider even beyond the points mentioned here and this Forum has a long history with things basically the way they currently are. BUT no one has said nothing is going to change. The Staff is entirely volunteer and we're across several time zones, so discussions can take a while. We take all discussions of things like this VERY seriously.

I would again like to remind folks to keep these discussions civil. This is not the Snake Pit and the opinions of ALL of our current members need to be respected here, regardless of your feelings as to 18+/under-18 relations.

[tma]

The "Youth-Centric" thing... maybe I'm and my memory very well might be wrong but this discussion seems to come up somewhat cyclically throughout the past dozen or so years and far as "influx of U18s" and such. **Trust** me - I understand and sympathize with the way that things can be awkward with certain things. I never had a single second in the entire SF Community where I was U21 let alone U18, so....

Re-visiting and discussing stuff is needed sometimes. And things have changed over the years. I'm honestly fine with supporting things either way that they come down. There are a *lot* of issues and side-issues with things and Staff is always awesome about really hashing stuff through. They SOOOOO need a raise for all the work that they do.

I'm cross-posting so I might have missed something, but .... I just want to express my appreciation for our members regardless of age.

[tenderwarrior]

I'm a TEEN i don't understand everything a adult says OK.

I think this perfectly captures why the forum should implement a required age on profiles. A lot of U18s don't fully understand what adults say or do and even if a U18 does understand, not every U18 does! And that's okay! No one is forcing you to understand everything but because of that, it's better to be safe than sorry and protect everyone involve to inform everyone if they are U18 or not. I would even be okay with profiles just stating U18 or over U18. I don't think there's a logical reason to not require a person's age ESPECIALLY on a fetish site! Yes, I know this forum has evolved to more than fetish-related material but this is a fetish site first and should be treated as such.

[•.*°•☆. Q .☆•°*.•]

I like this age range idea, because at the very least it will allow me to better determine who an obs is coming from, or who's asking about such and such topic in General and i'd be better able to decide, at that point, how to respond, so as to ensure my response is appropriate.

[March Hare]

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.

On this forum, though, people only treat you that way if you act that way, no matter how young your profile says you are. You know that, surely? Teenagers who make good contributions to our boards do not get treated like airheaded inconveniences. People who say many airheaded and inane things, though.. yes. But I'm sure you've noticed that if ANYONE, under or over 18, says too many airheaded or inane things, people will start to treat them accordingly.

The great advantage of this forum is that people don't get distracted by each other's looks. We know each other only by what we say. Teenagers are perfectly capable of saying sensible things, which is why most of them will be treated with the respect they deserve. And really, do you want anyone to be treated with respect they don't deserve?

[Owen]

Theres probably not much point in me saying anything here but I'm going to anyway

I joined this forum 6 years ago, I'm 20 now so I was 14 at the time, it was a massive moment in my life when I discovered this forum. For the longest time I felt like a freak, was worried I was alone etc. Finding this forum made me feel okay about myself and my sexual interests. Being able to join at 14 allowed me to talk to people about it as well, which I really needed to do, it changed me, for the better. Made me comfortable in my own skin. Even though I've been here for 6 years not many people actually know me (I've had a few names over the years haha) but I still have so much love for everyone here. Being able to be a part of this community since I was 14 has been one of the best things to happen to me

Basically what I'm saying is, I actually quite like the idea of an age range, I was apprehensive about putting my age up publicly for a while as well so I understand those that don't want to. Rough age ranges like under 18 and 18 plus means you still don't need to put an exact age but can let adults know your age group, and vice versa. However, I'm strongly opposed to making this site 18+, I needed to join when I was 14, it wasn't enough just to browse, I needed to interact!

Sorry for any bad grammar, posted this on a phone!

*disappears back into obscurity*