This proposal has also been posted to the mainsite, and can be viewed here.
This proposal is a proposal to undo the age raise from this 05discussion thread, including unbanning the appropriate users and shortening the bans of others.
Why do this, you may ask. In short - this age raise has alienated a majority of our readerbase (and partially creator-base), does not solve the issue it looked to fix, and infact worsened any future examples of the issue.
First point - alienating the community.
Here's the 2020 survey for reference.
According to this survey, 66.27% of our readerbase is 19 or less, with nearly 20% being below 15. If we're to assume a roughly even distribution between 15-19 it's not unfair to assume that this age raise makes nearly a half of our active readerbase - the kind who follow offsite/onsite communities enough to do a survey as long as this one - unable to join the site and participate in full. This is a major gutting to any potential artists, writers, staffers, and creators we could get from this age demographic, which is our main demo. Many of our most prolific and active users - DrClef, Rounderhouse, Yossipossi, Lilyflower, Elenee Fishtruck, DarkStuff, etc - joined the site while they were in their teens.
We are gutting half of the site with this at minimum, so any pros better be good. And.. they aren't.
Second point - This does not help stop the harassment of minors.
The age of 15 was initially chosen because that's when people start being mature enough to act reasonable in online spaces, but most importantly, this is when people start being good at lying. 12~15 year olds are typically questionable at hiding their age, and lord above knows 11 year olds are shit at it, but once you reach high-school age you get the hang of not being blatantly a tween. Any 16+ year old who was not made by Geppetto can lie on the internet to a pretty convincing degree. This means that even with the technical age limit, we're gonna have a lot of teens running around the site.
A teen being around the site is a teen that can be harrassed as per usual.
Moving from this onto the third point: This does not do anything to protect the minors we have in the community. It, infact, makes them more afraid to come forward.
Sexual harassment on the degree that members of this community previously went through is not something that happens between two randos; one person sending another "hey show me ur tits" is something that Disc is already capable of handling. This kind of thing happens between two people who know and trust eachother. Similarly to how rape is most common between a person and their long time friend, this kind of messed up interactions that you can't just ignore come from a place of two people who interact for a while in a shared environment. For this to happen in a uniquely SCP group, (because outside of SCP that's not really something we can control), the people involved have to be people who interact and take part in some onsite or offsite community. The two have been part of that community for a while, shared some laughs, and know eachother.
They have been part of an SCP community for a long enough time to create meaningful bonds with others. Someone like this is someone who, on some level or another, does not see the Wiki as just "another site" anymore. It's their pastime; they read stories in it, participate in discussions, meet with people, join side servers - to these people, this site has value and meaning. To these people, getting banned off the site is major. If this hypothetical person does get into a situation where another, older user starts manipulating them, and then they get the strength to snap out of it, they can't tell it to anyone without being taken out for being underage. Even if they don't say so directly and use an anonymous avenue, the harasser has blackmail in the form of "I can get you banned this quick; I know you're lying to them." If the victim comes forward, the harasser casually let it slip that the victim is a minor in a public space, and, well, disc cleans up their problem for them. Their other option is just to take the ban and leave the site, which is a dilemma we should never be posing anyone with - you either stay in this community, or you protect yourself from harassment.
This issue did not solve the issue of minors getting into abusive situations, and infact made getting them help worse. It did help one group of people, however.
Point 4 - Washing our hands of guilt.
This proposal puts up a sign that says "we do not allow minors." It doesn't actually stop the minors from coming in, we don't have ID verification, and any minor with half a brain can bypass it, but it stands tall claiming that this is a minor free zone. It's not, but the sign was put there to claim it is. Now, instead of it being the owner's fault that they can't deal with the abusers in their community, it's the abused's fault for coming in. The owner can now sit content knowing it's not their fault anymore.
I understand why this change came to be when it came to be - a major case involving multiple well-known and previously trusted members came to light, so people were confused and afraid for the members of their community. Any solution that promised to protect minors on the site was welcomed with open arms with nary a dissenting voice in sight, but this solution only worked in the most literal form - it stopped harassment of minors on the site by not having any minors on the site. Minors on the offsite were still vulnerable, minors in the larger community were still vulnerable, and the issues that could recreate such an event were never properly treated.
It’s understandable to have made the initial decision at the time that it was made. However, it's been long enough since that initial call that we should reevaluate whether or not this actually helped solve the issue it set out to solve, and what were the repercussions it caused in its wake.
During opinion-gathering for this proposal, a few specific points of contention were brought up. As opinions regarding them seemed to be very evenly split, they will be raised to vote along with the main proposal. As such, this proposal's voting post will include the following questions:
1) Should the user age requirement be lowered? y/n
1a) If yes to 1), to 15 or 16?
2) If the age requirement is lowered, should the staff age requirement be kept to 18+, or lowered (with exceptions for Disc and AHT)?
This discussion is open to all staff.
