Forum:Upcoming Policy Changes

Hello,

We wanted to let you know that in order to comply with federal law, Wikia is reviewing the way it handles communities that may be considered directed to people 12 years of age or younger.

This wiki has been flagged as falling into that category, and I wanted to let you know about it. While I know Digimon has many fans of all ages, it can also be especially appealing to the younger demographic for purposes of the newly revised Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

The only change you will notice is that we will be turning anonymous editing off for wikis in this category. Your users will still be able to edit and participate. They just need to make sure that they are logged in first. We hope the impact on your community will be minimal.

We realize this might be an inconvenience, but this is a step Wikia has to take in order to make sure we are in compliance with federal law. You can find out more about COPPA here: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/12/coppa.shtm.

The changes to the law will be going into effect July 1st, 2013 although you may see some changes before then. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thanks, and Happy Editing! --semanticdrifter (help forum | blog) 23:10, June 20, 2013 (UTC)
 * This franchise explicitly includes material that would not be appropriate for children, like Lilithmon or most of Talk:Digimon Collectors/Full. Furthermore, many of our editors are anons.
 * This change will be both hypocritical, as the logged in editors will have to add material that the anons are being disabled to avoid, and will kill a lot of traffic to the wiki. This is wrong-headed, please reconsider. 02:44, June 21, 2013 (UTC)


 * So, first of all if you have a convincing argument that the wiki does not fall into the appealing to underaged category, please feel free to share more links. I can't guarantee we will reverse, but we will consider them with an open mind.

Secondly, this isn't about content per se. COPPA is changing the requirements for collecting info on wikis that fall in the category; info like IP addresses. I am certain the anons here make many valuable contributions. If we didn't have to comply with federal law, we would not be taking this step. --semanticdrifter (help forum | blog) 03:25, June 21, 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay, I misunderstood. I agree it isn't hypocritical then.
 * As for falling into an older age category, while parts of the franchise are designed with kids in mind, especially in the newer entries we're seeing a lot of ecchi stuff like those seen above, or these (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). I know it's not R or X-rated stuff, but...I mean, there's parts of the franchise we try to minimize but still have to report on.
 * I'm confused, however, about why kids are only being blocked on sites that would be nominally safe for kids, but not sites that they could access that could be more damaging. Laws like this...don't make much sense. 13:28, June 21, 2013 (UTC)

Blog Post Up
For more info on this change, please see the Community Central blog post. Feel free to comment on the general policy there, and keep the wiki specific discussion here. Thanks, --semanticdrifter (help forum | blog) 19:24, June 24, 2013 (UTC)