An ongoing problem
Hello everyone,
We have an ongoing problem at Perfect Imagination where teenage writers between thirteen and seventeen are submitting stories rated higher than their age would allow them to read. For example, a fifteen year old submitting mature and explicit content (NC-17/M)
Now, our terms of service do forbid this, but it is very time consuming to enforce. Let's face it, writers tend to err on the side of caution when writing and rating, and I will freely admit that I was probably writing NC-17 material before I was eighteen years old.
The law on the situation is very unclear. There is a lot of clarity about what people can read, but not much on what they can create.
We have two viable alternatives to help with this problem, and I wanted your input on what you would prefer.
a) We could implement a check where the writer's date of birth and rating are matched against each other and they are blocked if they are seen to be at odds. However, this would probably result in a higher number of people fiddling their details and breaching other terms of service to try and access a beta.
b) We can leave it up to beta readers whether or not to beta mature content for those under eighteen. At the moment, on the request of the writing community, we do have the option for them to hide their date of birth from you, but we could change the age bracketry to be more specific, so rather than simply under/over 18 we could implement an under fifteen bracket as well, to help you make a more informed decision.
The only situation where we currently really come down on writers is if they're under thirteen, as they shouldn't be using the site anyway.
However, I would greatly appreciate your opinions on the issue and any ideas you might have.
Thank you,
Asli xxx
We have an ongoing problem at Perfect Imagination where teenage writers between thirteen and seventeen are submitting stories rated higher than their age would allow them to read. For example, a fifteen year old submitting mature and explicit content (NC-17/M)
Now, our terms of service do forbid this, but it is very time consuming to enforce. Let's face it, writers tend to err on the side of caution when writing and rating, and I will freely admit that I was probably writing NC-17 material before I was eighteen years old.
The law on the situation is very unclear. There is a lot of clarity about what people can read, but not much on what they can create.
We have two viable alternatives to help with this problem, and I wanted your input on what you would prefer.
a) We could implement a check where the writer's date of birth and rating are matched against each other and they are blocked if they are seen to be at odds. However, this would probably result in a higher number of people fiddling their details and breaching other terms of service to try and access a beta.
b) We can leave it up to beta readers whether or not to beta mature content for those under eighteen. At the moment, on the request of the writing community, we do have the option for them to hide their date of birth from you, but we could change the age bracketry to be more specific, so rather than simply under/over 18 we could implement an under fifteen bracket as well, to help you make a more informed decision.
The only situation where we currently really come down on writers is if they're under thirteen, as they shouldn't be using the site anyway.
However, I would greatly appreciate your opinions on the issue and any ideas you might have.
Thank you,
Asli xxx