I do want to state that while I am not a proponent of the age unraising proposal, I do think that the hoops we jump through to sniff out underage users are absolutely excessive. We should really just do the standard "if you apply you're telling us you're old enough to be here" and largely leave it at that, only taking further action if someone admits to being underage or shows maturity issues. We don't need to actively sniff out every single minor on site and it's kinda weird that we do that to begin with.

As the site continues to grow and we become more and more "official", we need to start considering running ourselves more like some of the larger sites do and really looking at what warrants our full attention and what doesn't. In this case, I'm not sure I believe that intense scrutiny of every single user to figure out how old they are is a valid use of our time.

The costs of doing it the current way, where we're putting in detective work and trying to catch people out, are not worth the costs in being:

• very probably illegal (although IANAL), under the GDPR requirements at least, and quite probably other data protection regulations in various jurisdictions
• very definitely creating a moral hazard (we are storing the ages of minors with their usernames in a list, this is incredibly ripe for abuse, and the information is being stored, however inadvertently, in multiple places, including here on 05, on the staff Discord, and very probably other places)
• creating work for staff (although i recognise that a weaker age verification process will create more work for staff elsewhere since there will be more moderation required, but we should just suck that up)

More than anything, I think it is crucial to reiterate: literally no website that requires you to be over 18 does anything like what we do. A tick box is by far the standard approach. Even for websites way more adult than we are, that do only pornography or fetish stuff. Our processes are way outside the norm. That isn't a good thing.

In general, I think the fact that we can catch users that shouldn't be joining the site (and I wouldn't call it a few underage users given the size of the 17 ban thread) is worth some hurdle, although if that hurdle is small enough while still having the benefits from before then it's all the better. So if an application works just as well as the current system, then both are fine for me.

Regardless, this is the weakest compromise on this thread in my opinion.

I agree with Gee - the original reason we limited the sandbox to invitations was because of a single high-frequency troll, who hasn't been active in quite a while. It worked fine forever before that - if it recurs, we can find a middle-ground like the one Storm suggested but as it stands making continuous and future policy decisions that actively inconvenience users and staff off one long-absent troll is dumb.

1) Edit https://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/system:join to clearly state that users have the option of privately disclosing their age to a staff member; rather than giving #site17 as the only acceptable method of doing so.
2) When informing staff at large of a new sandbox applicant, staff are not to repeat the age information. If the user reveals themself to be underage, this can be disclosed to Disciplinary; otherwise staff should simply give the username alone of the applicant (either in Staff chat or on the sandbox applicant list).
3) End the practice of keeping a record of old sandbox applications beyond a small window (1-2 weeks), and delete the current records.

These changes would be — to me — sufficient to protect user confidentiality, and I'd have no issue with the Invitation model as long as the above points are changed.

I'm on the view that any identifying piece of information — age, name, location — is major.

As I said — any identifying information or details about an individual should be treated as major while on the internet, to preserve anonymity. Age is one of these details about who a person is, and is one of the more egregious to give out. Information about who a user is in real life should not be treated flippantly.

Wikidot even has a spot in the profile to add your age, lots of people already have it filled out before joining the sandbox.

Yes, in one of those cases they voluntarily do so, and in the other they're forced to do so. You are more than allowed to reveal anything you want about yourself if you feel comfortable. You should not be forced to.

using the actual wikidot applications feature would be marginally better but like i've said so many times in staffchat - no applications worked for an entire decade. and yes, i've seen the troll pages that needed deleting over that time period, but we should not be prioritising saving work for staff over user convenience, especially when a sandbox cleaning mast subteam already exists

tl;dr: the reason we changed the sandbox system in the first place is gone. we are long overdue a change back to how it was before. no weird half measures

The current method we have was made in response to a repeat, insistent troll, and was made to be a temporary measure. It makes life harder on the end user, but due to how bad the situation was at the time and how the users don't have to do that much extra work, it was seen as a fine stopgap solution. In my opinion though, this isn't good enough to be permanent, as there's ways to ease both staff's and the user's lives.

On the user side it's pretty simple - they have to make a kind of awkward hoop jump (joining the chats just to ask for an invite), and most seem to throw somewhat personal info (their age) out there into the chat, which can't be good. If we can make it more straightforward on their end and more private, the better.

On the staff side - we have an odd, segmented workflow. We have people looking in chat for people asking for invites, we check the request follows the rules, pass it onto a page on 05command (which can run into edit issues), at which point an admin (typically Zyn) looks over the list and adds everyone there using the invite panel. This system requires monitoring chat for requests and two different people operating, which can probably be streamlined.

The simplest solution offered so far which seems to keep all the benefits of the current system while axing most issues I outlined is using the sandbox's application system rather than #site17. It's more private since it's directly in the application box and no other users can see it, it's on the same page the user is already on so no odd hoop-jumping, doesn't require us to monitor chat for this specific request, and makes it so the person adding them and the one pruning are the same.

The one issue mentioned is that it would increase the workload of the (currently, singular) admin running the invites, to which I say - well, let us help. Adding more moderators to the sandbox as admins could help with the application list, assuming other admins aren't doing the job right now.

I feel this is the best, most straightforward solution presented so far.

TL;DR: Why aren't we making users apply in the applying box it's literally what it's made for

the last time we had this discussion on 05 it sorta went nowhere and there wasn't really any clear consensus, but it keeps happening over and over again in staffchat so it's clearly not a solved problem

in short: do we want to change the way in which new users join the sandbox?

currently, the process is that they give their wikidot name and age either in the irc/discord help chats or PMs with a staff member, and then they receive an invitation in ~a day. what are the pros and cons of this, what alternative methods could we use? etc.

no timer because it's not like this can go to a vote any time soon if that becomes necessary (i.e if we can't reach a clear consensus)