Forum:Issues of age and identity

Hi all, a while back I was asked about Wikia's position on COPPA and said I'd get back to you. I've had a chance to talk to the Powers That Be now, and have a clearer idea of what does and doesn't apply. The first important point is that Wikia is not aimed at those under 13. There's a whole lot of complicated stuff that applies to sites that are, so this makes things somewhat simpler.

The next thing is that COPPA applies to Wikia and not to you, our users (including admins). That means that you are not responsible for enforcing any restrictions on those under 13, and don't need to block people who claim to be younger than this. If you are concerned, then you can let us know of the situation at community@wikia.com

We also talked about the general risks of putting personal information on a wiki. It is best if all wikis discourage this. Information like your real name and year of birth should only be given out with careful consideration of the risks to privacy and of things like identity theft. I noticed there is quite a trend of adding character infoboxes to user pages - which have a year of birth to fill in. I would say that's a bad idea - if it's there to fill in, people often will without thinking. Perhaps the templates should have a warning? "if using this on your user page we recommend you do not enter any personal information such as real name or year of birth." Or maybe there should be separate templates for userpages. I'm sure there is a good way to do this... -- Sannse 19:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC) (wikia community team)