Change to the registration process - Birthdays!

Old announcement of past promotion rounds and updates to Wolfhome.
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underdog
Alpha - Site Owner
Alpha - Site Owner
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We are in the process of revamping our registration process on all Chatwitch servers, which means Wolfhome, Cats Paw Island and Wizard Chat. The old registration process asked the person to check a box indicating they were at least 13 years old. We felt we had to do this in order to follow COPPA which is a law protecting the privacy rights of children under the age of 13 (more information here http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/coppa1.shtm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). However, we didn't like doing that and as the months and years have rolled by we have seen many other sites, such as Disney's ClubPenguin.com as well as lesser known sites such as Super Secret and Moshi Monsters allowing kids to register online and participate in their chats and games. They are not collecting the kid's e-mail address, but rather they are asking for the parent's e-mail address. The parent is sent an e-mail explaining what the website is all about and asking them for their permission to allow their child access to the website.

Starting later today I am going to change the signup process on Wolfhome, Cats Paw Island and Wizard Chat as follows:

1. The new registrant will be asked for their birthday.

2. If they enter a birthday that places them below 13 years of age, they will be asked for their parent's e-mail address. If they are 13 or older they will be asked for their own e-mail address.

3. If under 13, they will be allowed access to all of the public rooms and other places on the main wolfhome map, and any private rooms which have a rating of 'G' or 'PG'. They won't be allowed to enter rooms with a rating of 'R' or 'X'.

4. There may be other limits in the future, such as a 'dirty word filter', but so far my investigation on this indicates that a word filter is not practical, and it is fairly easy to foil (with spaces, hyphens, deliberate mispellings, etc), so I'm not putting the word filter in place at this time.

Wolfhome started out with no COPPA law and no real restrictions on the ages of its users. In fact, a quick poll of admins demonstrates that many of them first got involved in Wolfhome at younger than 13. What this says to me is that we are removing a lot of great future members with this 12 and younger restriction. Since we can avoid that, I think we should definitely do so.

There is an inconvenience associated with this. It is that everyone using the site will be asked to enter their birthday the next time they use the site. It will save this in the database and it will be kept private.

Finally, keep in mind that we are allowing 12 and younger kids on the site, but the rules apply to them too. I expect that we should try harder to follow the rules about PG-13 behavior, such as avoiding swearing and treating others with respect, it also means that being 12 or younger you are still on a site where you are expected to behave in a polite and mature way or you'll run into problems just like any other user. With that said, WELCOME TO THE SITE!

===underdog===
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