Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » 18+ Check Forum Thread

Would it maybe be possible to have a sticky thread on the Adults Only Looking For RP forum for checking to make sure anonymous characters who have put their RP ideas on the normal RP thread are being played by someone who is 18+? Like, just a thread where they make a random post to prove that they are 18+. Because I've come across several interesting RP ideas that I would like to do, but they've been posted on the regular forums. So I kinda steered clear of them...

I have a couple questions about this...

• If the subject matter is not going to contain adult material, as suggested by them being posted in the normal LFRP forum, why do you need age confirmation for the other player?
• Would doing all your RPs in a group with the age limit set to 18+ not provide the same protections?
• Why not just ask the person what their age is?

Didn't we have a suggestion in the past, that players/anon chars who wanted to 'verify' their age as 18+ without revealing their birthday or sacrifice their anonymity, would be able to toggle an official status on their profile?

I know I'm not OP but I'd like to answer these questions from my own perspective:

Would doing all your RPs in a group with the age limit set to 18+ not provide the same protections?
For me personally, I don't have one group for all my roleplays that contain adult themes. 99% of all my adult themed RPs happen in PMs, because they're 1x1. It's wasteful and time consuming to create a group that will house these RPs, as it means that I might end up sacrificing anonymity by having them all congregate in one group, so I'd have to create a bunch of separate groups. They're great for a lot of purposes, but they don't really work efficiently when PMs are your preferred method and you can't use those to verify age.

Why not just ask the person what their age is?
Because people lie, a lot. While they can certainly lie when signing up on the site, most new members don't sign up with the intention of hiding their age to get around a rule that has been set up. This happens later. As birthdays can't be changed on accounts, lying is the next best step without losing all their characters and having to recreate the profiles on a new account. Hence I don't trust when someone just plainly tells me "Hi, I'm 18+" while having their age hidden or playing from an anon char. The laws and their enforcements are so fickle and generally weird on this that people have still gotten into serious trouble despite the minor lying about age, because somehow we adults should know better even when we can't, and that's scary. The account age restriction is a bit more of a solid defense because of all the legal stuff involved when agreeing to the terms of use etc. which feels entirely different from a casual conversation. I'm not sure if that has been a deciding factor in courts before, but logically I think it would.

I have skipped on a lot of RP offers because there was no easy way to verify someone's age if I had been approached outside of the LFRP-AO forum. Sometimes when people post in the regular LFRP forum, the story can still develop towards adult settings even if this wasn't the original intent. (A simultaneous up and downside to organic story progression, I guess?)

I would absolutely, 100% positively adore an easy way to verify whether I'm playing with someone 18+ or not without making us go through posting a topic on LFRP-AO or going through a tedious group process. A small icon or a piece of text that a user can toggle (ergo "I want to publicly show I'm 18+ on my profile without revealing my age directly and/or on my anon characters so I don't have to make them public") that is easy to check and rely on.

It won't take away all the issues that you can run into when RPing adult themes. Kids can still lie about their birthdates. But it sure feels a heck of a lot safer and more convenient in the long run.

To answer that first question, it's basically for anyone who doesn't feel comfortable RPing with people under 18 for whatever reason, be that just personal preference or reassurance that if adult material does happen to be brought up that they aren't RPing with someone under 18.

The second question Sanne answered, but I'm going to add another point. I myself am not sure how to set up groups and such, and I'm sure that some other people don't know as well.

And finally the last question. Again, Sanne answered it, but I'm going to reiterate. Channeling Dr. House from House M.D., 'People lie. A lot. About a lot of things.'

Now, I didn't think of that one box check idea Sanne mentioned, but it does sound good. But if it's something that would take awhile to do/ something that is difficult to do/ whatever, the forum sticky thread can be a good temporary/permanent solution...

I agree. People do lie, but I do think it would be nice to have some sort of enhanced confirmation. Maybe like a little badge or something.

Some people just don't feel comfortable roleplaying with minors, maybe they want to rp only with people more their own age, or they had bad experiences with minors in the past.

Personally I will rp with both, but it's nice having a way to verify someone's age without having to mess with a group of the adults only forum. Let's face it, as Sanne said, there are people who will happily lie about their age to engage in illegal rp either not knowing or even worse, not caring about the risk to their rp partners. So I imagine that in the worse case scanario having it down that the minor lied about their age and breaking TOS when making their account would carry more weight then a simple question of "Are you 18+?" in casual conversation.

I would actually like to bring up the case of Zach Anderson who hooked up with a girl who claimed she was 17 on an app. The girl was actually 14 and despite admitting to her lie to police, the guy was still punished with: 90 days in jail. Being on a sex offender registry for 25 years, is banned from using the internet for 5 years and cannot visit any premises that serve alcohol.

The judge is reconsidering his judgement, but that is only because of a national outcry.

While obviously underage sexual rp isn't nearly as extreme, it just goes to show why people may be unwilling to simply ask for someone's age.

I'd like to add to this idea actually. You know how we have icons for swearing, risque stuff, extreme violence? How about an icon that a person could put on their characters even if they are anon that connotes that their player is 18+? Naturally this icon is only usable if the account is registered as being 18+. It's quick, effective and easily noticeable, tho you should maybe make it visible on the main page of the profile tho, maybe right next to the mini profile pic.

That's more or less what I suggested. I think a small 18+ icon next to their name in a PM, as well as somewhere on the profile (users: beneath the icon or next to the username, characters: in the toolbar maybe?) would be the most convenient without cluttering the UI and layout. It can be toggled in the settings so players who don't want to share their age don't have to participate. Maybe even allow it for anonymous characters only, unless that's too time consuming to do.

Ice dragons.

Lie about your age? The ice dragons come.

In seriousness, however, it brings up some very good points. I'm an old grumpy man, and I generally have trouble connecting with the younger ages.
To be true, although I don't really get into the saucy bits very much unless I have gotten to know the person OOCly, I would feel better if there was some sort of extra layer that could be used legally.

Because Katia has a good point. People are stupid. And in a litigation happy society, insulation and protection become the rather necessary.

Just to play the devil's advocate.

The tag, the forum topic, etc. These aren't real solutions. As everyone has pointed out.

People lie.

So if they're going to break the rule already, they'd break it even with the badge.

If you ask their age and they say 18 or whatever and they lied,

What's to stop them from falsifying a birthdate?

People do so already. So a badge wouldn't stop this problem. Nor a topic.


The only truly SAFE way would to be to require some sort of verification from a real form of ID. And no one wants that.

Just my two cents.


Edit: I pose this because what has been suggested doesn't seem like a REAL solution to everyone's problem with people lying/falsifying their age. And from a development standpoint I wouldn't see a reason for Kim to spend time/energy/resources on a feature that doesn't really fix that common complaint.

Edit 2: The badge idea is good except the 18+ forum already does that. It requires that person Anon or not to be 18 on their User profile to read/reply/interact with posters there. So if you are wanting someone to prove that they are 18 and are an anon character. They've posted in the LFRP regular section. Have them tell you the name of one of the topics in the 18+ LFRP and any other information from that section. That will verify just as much as a badge albeit a little more complicated. But that interaction would more than likely snuff out a liar better than a badge.

I'm pretty groggy right now so this won't be a thorough response, but I wanted to at least acknowledge some of the points being made and let you know that I see it, I hear you guys, and I'm thinking hard about this.

The plan I remember was a full-on age verification system, wherein for a fee we would check people's IDs and certify them as "real" adults or not if they wished, to try and eliminate this problem of people faking their birthdate as much as possible. This plan was quickly scrapped due to the expense and legalities and the ways that people could still get around it and the various countries involved and the fact that it would have us spending a ton of time and energy and money catering to a part of the RP community that is not our main focus as a site.

Okay, this makes sense, and is about what I suspected. But I gotta ask.

Just as a matter of semantics -- I don't think we really have enough evidence to know if that statement is true. We catch first-time account holders who registered as 18+ now and again, and I'm sure there's more out there than we are able to identify. If a person enjoys and regularly engages in sexual RP, there is every reason for them to lie at the point of signing up, and to know that they need to do it without ever reading our rules. Most minors are well aware that the world at large wants them to be 18+ before they engage in those types of activities. Whether they are lying to you or lying to us, they are willing to lie. This is a hard problem to cope with.

Given the wide array of character templates out there, plus custom templates (where an icon could be faked), this is a major proposition to add a potential design element to all 175+ character template styles. Depending on where we put it. Maybe it could be tucked in with the groups a character belongs to.

I love this thought.

Thus the reason for me bringing up this topic. Because people can make a secret second account that is 18+, read the information, then go back to the account you're talking to them on and tell you the information you want to know. With the sticky thread I'm suggesting, you can have them post on it and link you the post so you can check, and others can see that the anon character's player is 18+.

But you're still running into your core problem. If they were willing to make a sneaky second account to go through the trouble to RP with you posing as somone 18+ what's to keep them from doing that also? If they're willing to lie and break rules they're going to do it.

Yes this is still the core problem, but I imagine the badges, 2nd accounts and the like would carry more weight then just a simple question of, are you 18+?"

Personally, I like the idea of badges to indicate the age of a character played by an anonymous person. It would certainly be something to ease many players' minds when they see it, and it could be a simple badge that just has '18+' so that it's not complex and make people unfamiliar be like, "what does that symbol mean?"

Putting it where the Game Tags are is a good idea, though what about putting it where the 'played by' would typically be on a profile that shows the player? I do suppose it might look odd on some layouts, but it would be readily visible without having to click any other aspects on the page just to verify.

Come on, give us kiddies a break

The anon could belong to a fake 18+ account.

Unless you know the user in real life, there are not many ways to 100% verify their age. It's also pretty much impossible to verify an anon's age. I say to either take their word for it or just not roleplay with them.

It just gives an easy way to verify the age on an anon's account. It would also be useful for those anon characters who are not lying about their age to be easily able to show the age on their account. Although the idea of quoting threads from the adult section was clever.

Okay, I've been mulling this over, and I have a new idea: Lots of sites use Facebook to help verify a person's age. Maybe we could do the same?

There would absolutely still be ways to cheat with this, but it does provide another layer of protection. We can place restrictions on how old the FB account needs to be to qualify, so just making one to cheat would be much harder.

As long as it's only used to verify age and not link in other ways, I'm 100% in for this.

Nope, no public linkage.