Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-3485828-20140722174414/@comment-3186827-20140723172813

Datadragon Odahviing wrote: It is actually impossible to know what age a person really is. This is due t the fact that lying is not difficult online and some people are way more mature than their physical age, while others are way less mature.

For example, would you ban an 11 year old just because of his age when he's a lore expert making constructive comments, behaving way more mature than he is? Even if he was helping out people with legit tips?

Or would you allow a 30 year old to behave like a little kid? Would you not ban someone for being childish, the rationale being inappropriate behavior and not age?

I think not in both cases. Age is something impossible to check in the online world. An age gate, as Garoux Bloodline says, is completely redundant because it is impossible to use correctly and lying bypasses it easily.

So why add useless extra code to the wiki? It's more work for Sysops and it dosen't even change the problem, which is underage users going on chat

My two points summarised: Age is not a reflection of maturity, thus we shouldn't ban people based on that. Also, you can't even check the age of anyone who enters this wiki.

It's true that maturity can vary wildly and age often isn't an indicator. Age is difficult to verify, but so is the level of maturity until the user actually interacts with the community. If they are constantly disruptive, they can be banned under current policy anyway.

It would be a shame to ban a productive but underage member of the community, but if they reveal they are underage - then what choice would we have?