Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » underage warning pop-up

i think it'd be real swanky if a pop-up appeared on screen when an of-age account attempts to friend an underage account.

that is the premise, here is the pitch: some kids don't want their age public. they hide it for their safety or comfort and that is 100% valid! but, sometimes, i find myself scrunching my brows at accounts that don't have their age public. i'm one of the grown-folk here on RPR and i'd like to exclusively roleplay and interact with other grown-folk, just my preference.

it can be sort of tedious to pop into their inbox and be like: 'hey! are you an adult?'

without outing their age... it'd be really nice if i received a pop-up saying 'this user is not in your age group (18+)'. it doesn't put their age out there, but, it DOES let me know that this elusive person i'm trying to add isn't an adult. with the verified adult system around these days it is MUCH easier to navigate the forums. not everybody verifies (for their own reasons) and some folks still lurk under a hidden age. there is still some wiggle room for confusion and tl;dr i think it'd be nice to narrow that down.

i was going to originally suggest a mark or symbol on underage profiles, but i think a pop-up when trying to friend request them would be appropriately subtle. lemme know if you disagree or agree.

I think in your comfort and privacy settings, you can set it so only people in your age group can send you friend requests
edit: oh wait I misread the part about YOU sending friend requests to THEM, sorry

i'm aware of this! :> i mean when you specifically send friend requests to others.

yeahhh I misread that. realized this immediately after sending my post. sorry!

no worries! i understand.

People are entitled to privacy no matter their age. If someone chooses to hide their age it should be respected regardless of whether they are above or below 18.

I think that's why they're suggesting it to be vague with "this user is not in your age group (18+)" - still respects privacy of exact age.

Even with the settings currently in place to not receive anything from anyone outside our age group, we can still reach out accidentally, so having something to let us know this...

Or could go as far as to not let us know at all and just let the message/friend request not go through with something like "Cannot interact with this user due to you or their privacy settings!"
-- I'm not sure how it works for underage trying to interact with 18+, mirroring whatever they get when they try to initiate?

While I understand this, and I never want to take that away from anyone, there is a really bad problem with underage players befriending and trying to roleplay 18+ rps with adults on the site. It makes it really uncomfortable for adult players, I had to have a mod review a players page only a week or so ago because they stated they were a minor on their profile, but were posting in the Adults Only section of the forums.

People are still entitled to even that privacy.

You could in theory find out the age group of any user be sending a friend request and if it goes through (the user in your age group) quickly deleting it. Maybe you don't intend to use it for predatory reasons, but if people want to hide their age group for safety reasons it should be respected.

this is exactly what i am getting at. i don't think their exact age should be announced to me (the person sending the friend request) but it would be nice to know that the user i'm trying to interact with isn't in my age group.

the alternative would be to send them a message... which goes against my preference of not interacting with minors at all.

Wouldn't that just protect the child though? If you cannot friend them because they are in a different age group, then that protects them from being contacted by adults, while also protecting the adults from accidently engaging in conversations unknowingly with a minor?

Only if it's a setting that once toggled on can never be turned off again.

And even if that were the case, I still hold that people under 18 are not second class users of this site who have reduced right to privacy.

Woah woah woah, don't put words in my mouth. Your system is the one with a double standard. You break this rule already. Because when a minor tries to befriend someone who is out of their age range, it tells them if the person is a minor or not. So you don't give the same protections to adults that you give to children. It's a bit of a double standard, isn't it?

And the problem I'm dealing with is minors hiding their ages and putting adults in bad situations without knowing it. I want to protect the kids, AND the adults.

Edit: FURTHERMORE, if an adult wants to be a predator on this site, it's really easy for them to sign up as a minor and see everyone elses ages anyways. So your point it mute.

i'd also like to add that: if i am forced to message the user with a hidden age? that opens up the potential for that user to lie about their age. the system telling me, vaguely, that the user i'm attempting to interact with is underage narrows that down significantly. a system cannot lie to me... unless the user lied to the system in the first place. (but that is another can of worms)

Minors can find out we're adults immediately even if we have our age hidden.
It doesn't say our exact age, respects our privacy with that.
Why can't the mirror be implemented?

A simple "I do not want to receive or initiate contact with anyone outside my age group" toggle adjustment to what's currently in place, even.

Edit as well: Kids should be announced as kids when sharing spaces with adults, it doesn't have to be any deeper than that.

No it doesn't? I just tested this, there is no such alert.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about the verified adult feature, an optional process you can go through for the explicit purpose of making sure everyone knows that you are definitely an adult? Or are you also under the impression there's an alert about you being an adult when a minor talks to you?

I was under the belief that if we have these below settings turned on to what's shown, that minors who try to connect with us are told something regarding age group!
If that's not the case, great, but once again, whatever it does do, why can it not be mirrored to also block adults from contacting minors?



Edit: It doesn't even have to be a block, but at least a warning so the adult is aware they're contacting a minor and to act accordingly?

For example, I would like to not accidentally reach out on an anon char to another anon char and mistakenly connect them to a character with mature art and expose them?
And it puts protections in place so if in the terrible case of an adult being creepy, they can't say "they didn't know", but they're never given the minor's exact age.

So in my mind, the solution to this has always been saying, "Hey, real quick, can you send me a brand new inbox message? Not a reply to this one, just start a new one, I need to check something."

This gives the other user some autonomy on whether they choose to participate in a check that will prove their age group or not, and still lets you know what they claimed their age was to the system.

That said, what people claim their age is to us is an absolute crap shoot -- many kids are instructed by their parents to lie about their age and claim not to be a minor whenever they register for something, it's a whole mess.

Why are children not entitled to the same privacy rights as adults, again?

I don't want to know their exact age. Being told they're a minor isn't invasive to their privacy.