>18?

So… I was roleplaying and some of the ways the fur acted were a little… Child like, I know it may be nothing but I am just concerned like, how do I know I am not talking and role-playing with a child irl? I have to admit that the thought of this is kind of concerning, there is nothing stopping a minor from saying they are +18 and engaging in erp with us. I am not saying that I am against any cub’s, just not in any way shape or form up for erping with a minor.
I am just writing this post cause I wanted to know what others thought, is this me just being over-exagerative or an actual thought others have?

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I’ve had similar situations like this, I had no hard evidence to report them. If I suspect it I try my best to ignore them, the closest I had to someone outing themselves was an occasion of someone mentioning school but as there was no specifics on what kind of school I couldn’t really call it evidence either.

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I’m pretty concerned about this, too. There isn’t really a way to gauge if players are 18+ so if I feel they’re suspicious I’ll opt to ignore them, but even then it’s not fool-proof.
An obvious response would be to simply ask, but… Folks can just lie.
I’m not sure if anything’s being put in place (or already has), but as far as I know, the best course of action is to practice caution, and if push comes to shove, politely voice your concerns.

I’m positive there are many others on Wolfery who are concerned about this, though. I’m not sure if there’s a disclaimer anywhere (at least obvious) stating that the site is definitively 18+ or not.

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It is indeed a tricky one.
People can behave very immature, or type poorly, and still be well over 20, or even 30.
People can be well behaved, with a good typing level, and still be below 18.

Behaviour or typing level is unfortunately not enough of proof.

If someone admits to be below 18, you should report it and attach those logs, as we do not want anyone risking doing ERP with an underage player without their knowledge.

On the Welcome page we have a disclaimer:
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When you register, we have a disclaimer:
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In the Terms of Service (that you have to agree upon to continue), we have a disclaimer:

And in the Rules, we have a disclaimer:
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Yes. We have disclaimers :wink:

(Edit: Or did you mean a disclaimer that we guarantee that everyone is 18+? No. It is near impossible to make such guarantees, as it would require identification similar to those required by banks.)

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Ah, thanks for showing this! Admittedly I could’ve sworn I’ve seen these earlier but before I made my response I couldn’t find it (mostly just looking in the wrong places.) :shark: :sweat_drops:

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@Accipiter An aside: When designing web forms like this, which require the user to assert something that’s hard-to-impossible for a web app to prove, I like to use form fields that require a “Yes” answer.

So in this case, you could supplement that disclaimer with a required Yes/No answer to “Are you 18 years old or older?”. And if they select “No” they immediately see a “Sorry, kid” message and the Submit button grays out.

This has a few effects:

  • Prevents sign-ups from minors who didn’t read the rules carefully, but don’t want to break them if explicitly told about them
  • Forces minors who shrug and lie to know they’re breaking a rule, and have no grounds to protest if they’re found out and subsequently yeeted (making mods’ lives slightly easier)
  • Reassures adult players that the site cares about keeping minors out and intends to enforce this rule as much as possible

I stole this technique many years ago from a competition site for independent creators, which had an “Are you ‘indie’?” Yes/No field on its entry form. Just forcing that tiny bit of self-reflective friction probably saved the organizers a lot of trouble, weeding out of a lot of entries that they’d need to disqualify.

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This may seem like a great idea in practice, but what if they just re-load and click yes? Should there be some way to detect this (and is there a way to detect this?)? :thinking:
Also, there is the side of what if they click yes, I am 18 and continue on anyways?
Maybe a select-your-age way of doing it would be better as it incentivises people, to tell the truth. Especially if >18 options are displayed.

Oh, they can always lie. We cannot stop that.
And while date-pickers are sometimes used, they serve the same purpose that @Halstrick’s solution suggested, just with extra steps. The lie “Yes, I am 18+” and “I am born 1990-01-01” will be the same.

But yes. Maybe an additional “I am 18” thing is the right way to go after all.

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A yes/no also feels less intrusive than a date-picker; I’m not really providing any Personally Identifying Information if I just tell what side of the 18 divide I’m on, versus being asked to punch in my literal birthday.

(Did a number of websites send me mail congratulating me on turning 123 years old on Jan 1 this month? Oh, probably…)

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Happy bday lol….your a year then before and wiser

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I’m often told I don’t look a day older than 110.

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I’m glad more people are speaking up about this.

The less effort that is spent on restriction and enforcement, the less people have to work with when asserting the idea of a reasonable expectation that this site is in fact capable of socially presenting itself as an environment where minors are in fact restricted from entry to the site to the best of the site administrations means/ability. That becomes an important thing to be able to reasonably assert when/if there is ever a problem for a user who had no clue they’ve been interacting with somebody who was not supposed to be on the site in the first place.

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It did make me nervous there was no pop up agreement to terms when I signed up. While I realize there’s no foolproof way to enforce this. A yes/no would go far to put my mind at ease.

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Okay, so about an hour 3 hours ago in sinder town I was talking with a fluff, in ooc, happened to be talking about gen z and, they said something along the lines of “I was 2008”. Of course they meant in terms of birth year and was swiftly banned. Okay, but then… Only 1 hour later I help this fluff out to get to grips with the game and decide to ask if they were born before 2005, just to be doubly sure… “Nope I was born in 2006” they say. "Did you read that this is a 18+ site I ask? “Yes, but please don’t report me”. I am not 100% sure if this is just a huge coincidence, but I am a little concerned now, how many minors are on this site?

By the way @Accipiter I have a small idea that I brainstormed with a cutie of a possible solution, let me know if you would be interested.

Any minor that we know of will be banned. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t minors we DON’T know of, of course. And because we don’t know, I cannot answer that.

But we have discussed the issue within the staff team on how to improve this. We have just not yet taken action on our plans.

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