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Too young to post?

FE21

Well-Known Member
I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a "Sorry, we do not allow children of your age to register." or similar message from websites/fourms because of my age. Especially when (in this case) I can view what other people have posted. What also erks me is that I can easily lie about it! Take Facebook for example. If I put my birth year as say, 1986, it would be absolutly fine, but how dare I truthfully type in anything from 1994-present! There are perfectly good reasons why websites wouldn't want 10 year olds (nothing against 10 year olds) trolling (or doing/reading/looking at other things), but when you can easily lie about something like that, I find it very annoying and not really solving the problem. Take for example my example: That message came from a prominent coin collecting website. Specific for that case: I know a good number of under-legal-age year olds who could/would contribute a large amount of knowledge to the fourm. I can understand on "adult" websites, but otherwise I don't see the benifit.

Somethings to consiter:
*Anybody could easily lie about their age
*Today a 17 year old can't join, but tomorrow the same guy (now 18) can
*It actually keeps people from (gasp) asking questions and (double-gasp) learning something)
*Serebii is free for anyone of any age to use, so lets all thank them for that liberty!

I posted this thread to see what you all think (both under and over age) about this topic, so without further due:
 

Sadib

Time Lord Victorious
This totally blew my mind when I found this out last year in my business law class. It is illegal in America for websites to collect information from people under 13. If your'e 12, they can't ask you for your name. This law was passed in I think 1997. I was wondering then why I suddenly couldn't play Yahoo! Games anymore. That's the reason.
 

ParaChomp

be your own guru
The interwebbs is a cruel, cruel place. Don't believe me? Apparently the majority of it is pornography.
 

Zibdas

not bad
Nope. Only 1% is.

If you are an animal, every animal photo withoud clothes is pornos.

Therfore ParaChomp's statistic is correct.
 
I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a "Sorry, we do not allow children of your age to register." or similar message from websites/fourms because of my age. Especially when (in this case) I can view what other people have posted. What also erks me is that I can easily lie about it! Take Facebook for example. If I put my birth year as say, 1986, it would be absolutly fine, but how dare I truthfully type in anything from 1994-present! There are perfectly good reasons why websites wouldn't want 10 year olds (nothing against 10 year olds) trolling (or doing/reading/looking at other things), but when you can easily lie about something like that, I find it very annoying and not really solving the problem. Take for example my example: That message came from a prominent coin collecting website. Specific for that case: I know a good number of under-legal-age year olds who could/would contribute a large amount of knowledge to the fourm. I can understand on "adult" websites, but otherwise I don't see the benifit.

Somethings to consiter:
*Anybody could easily lie about their age
*Today a 17 year old can't join, but tomorrow the same guy (now 18) can
*It actually keeps people from (gasp) asking questions and (double-gasp) learning something)
*Serebii is free for anyone of any age to use, so lets all thank them for that liberty!

I posted this thread to see what you all think (both under and over age) about this topic, so without further due:

The thing is, on a site like Facebook, you can put up profile pictures. If your age is 42 and you have albums full of Pokémon and pictures of 10 year old boys, it's going to get suspicious. Asking for age is better than not asking at all. We can at least compare the age of the user with his/her friends and see how it matches up. If a 42 year old's friend list is full of middle school kids, either he's really creepy or he's not old enough to have a Facebook. I know not all sites allow you to upload pictures of yourself (this forum, for instance) so there's no real way of telling how old someone can be aside from the way they post and interact with other members.
 

ParaChomp

be your own guru
Nope. Only 1% is.
Did my research (don't worry, it's clean). Nonetheless, when considering the whole, that's a pretty big chunk regardless.

On topic of arguments, they can get easily out of hand for worthless things. Just skim around these forums to find out what I'm talking about.
 

Sadib

Time Lord Victorious
Until the average young person is not stupid, we shall assume that they're all stupid and that discredits anything they have to say.
 
Somewhere between 2-12% of the internet is porn (depending on if you are talking full on porn sites or just sites that might contain porn). Most of those statistics that say 40-98% are just made up BS.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/julieruvolo/2011/09/07/how-much-of-the-internet-is-actually-for-porn/

Sort of on topic, conversations like THIS is usually why younger people are banned from most websites. Simply put, even on child friendly websites like Serebii things aren't really child friendly.
 

ParaChomp

be your own guru
Sort of on topic, conversations like THIS is usually why younger people are banned from most websites. Simply put, even on child friendly websites like Serebii things aren't really child friendly.
Don't remind me of competitive battling...and don't remind me of anime either despite my signature.
 

Malanu

Est sularus oth mith
I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a "Sorry, we do not allow children of your age to register." or similar message from websites/fourms because of my age. Especially when (in this case) I can view what other people have posted. What also erks me is that I can easily lie about it! Take Facebook for example. If I put my birth year as say, 1986, it would be absolutly fine, but how dare I truthfully type in anything from 1994-present! There are perfectly good reasons why websites wouldn't want 10 year olds (nothing against 10 year olds) trolling (or doing/reading/looking at other things), but when you can easily lie about something like that, I find it very annoying and not really solving the problem. Take for example my example: That message came from a prominent coin collecting website. Specific for that case: I know a good number of under-legal-age year olds who could/would contribute a large amount of knowledge to the fourm. I can understand on "adult" websites, but otherwise I don't see the benifit.

Somethings to consiter:
*Anybody could easily lie about their age
*Today a 17 year old can't join, but tomorrow the same guy (now 18) can
*It actually keeps people from (gasp) asking questions and (double-gasp) learning something)
*Serebii is free for anyone of any age to use, so lets all thank them for that liberty!

I posted this thread to see what you all think (both under and over age) about this topic, so without further due:
This is where a parent fails! If a parent is not minding their child, and that child ends up somewhere they don't belong, It's that parents fault.

The age laws are there for a reason, failed as they are, they are meant to protect children from exposure to inappropriate material. I personally would not let my 11 year old son on this forum. I am fine with him looking at the other areas of Serebii for Pokemon research, but I don't want him to see the tripe some of the member here post. On a forum for a kids game swearing should be a immediate bannable offense.

But the point is there are rules about age for a reason, just because someone is willing to lie about their age... Well that just proves the kind of person is in the first place.
 

Kaiserin

please wake up...
I agree with the OP-immature people should be banned, and age wouldn't matter at all.

I hate stupid people...

Young is not necessarily stupid, though. And even if it is, it's entirely possible to grow up and learn better. Ask anyone who's been on the internet for five to ten years since they were a teenager, and you'll probably get a lot of similar answers on that.

Gonna have to agree that "child-friendly" doesn't necessarily mean anything on the internet nowadays, and that it's really the parents' responsibility more than the kid's. The kid is going to do what they want anyway, and more than likely lie about age to have the same freedom as the "big kids" online, which is why parents need to actually do something about it -- internet controls come to mind, although there's also a whole debate about invasive parenting in monitoring kids' online activities in its own right.
 

Sadib

Time Lord Victorious
The age laws are there for a reason, failed as they are, they are meant to protect children from exposure to inappropriate material. I personally would not let my 11 year old son on this forum. I am fine with him looking at the other areas of Serebii for Pokemon research, but I don't want him to see the tripe some of the member here post. On a forum for a kids game swearing should be a immediate bannable offense.

I didn't realize who you were until I tried to quote you. I thought your avatar was the Ampharos from your signature.

I agree that there needs to be stricter rules on censor bypassing. I don't know whether or not the mods are actually infracting the offenders, but the fact that the censor bypased posts are left unedited means that the mods aren't doing enough. It seems that even the mods forget that kids also go to Pokémon message boards.
 

Spock

Live Long & Prosper
You can't spell consider and you think you're going to learn things of consequence on this site.

Yeah you're too young to be on the internet alone.
 

ParaChomp

be your own guru
I agree that there needs to be stricter rules on censor bypassing. I don't know whether or not the mods are actually infracting the offenders, but the fact that the censor bypased posts are left unedited means that the mods aren't doing enough. It seems that even the mods forget that kids also go to Pokémon message boards.
I've been interacted for cussing through avoiding censorship recently but other times I don't. In all honesty, I think it comes down to the area of the forum or the mods (no offence). Worst part is, people are harsher in the areas that are stricter on censoring.
 

Jb

Tsun in the streets
It has already be stated many times that the censor rules depend on the section and mods in question. In Misc/OVGD/Atl. Anime, where everyone is pretty much 16+, you can curse and not get infracted as long as your post has some kind of point other than to swear. In other sections like Generation 1/2/3/4/5 discussion and GPD it might be enforced more due to Pokemon topics attracting younger members that are sometimes 10-14 of age or so.
 
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