Seamus Haley
Big Game Hunter
How much of it is on the individual kid, how much on their parents and how much is apparantly on everybody else?
There have been a couple threads recently where minors actively participated in what amounts to a flame war. Agressive back and forth with another member or members about the topic of a thread or some unrelated subject that ends up being brought into it.
During these, the age of the member was inevitabally brought up in order to defend the actions of the child and further villify the actions of whoever was opposed to the child. Conversationally... not from a moderation standpoint, as far as I know but I also haven't really looked at it that deeply.
But I am left wondering where the accountability is.
My take on minors and Fauna is pretty much as follows... If they're here and supervised, they won't be posting anything that is an issue. If they're here and unsupervised then their parents have apparantly decided that their child is mature enough and responsible enough to handle the site's content and that they should therefor be judged by the same standards anyone would apply to any other (adult) poster. Which means they should be culpable for defending their position, for their choice of words, for their actions both positive and negative. If they make an insightful post, they should be given credit. If they participate in a flame war, violate the standards for behavior and language, they should be subject to the same punitive measures and attitudes that an adult would be.
Fauna has a good number of active users who are under the age of eighteen, most of which behave in such a manner that someone coming along who was unfamiliar with the individual wouldn't assume a specific age. There are some however who seem to be persistantly in the thick of the kind of carnage that gets adult users hit with signifigant warning points, temporary suspensions and all the associated negative ramifications to their credibility and reputation... but those repeat offenders will fall back behind the sheltering shield of their age and escape the brunt of the consequences for their actions.
Again, just to stress the point- this is less of a moderation thing and far more of a general attitude of the membership subject... but I'd really like to know when I became responsible for coddling someone else's mentally deficient offspring through their animal husbandry blunders. Or when flagrant and overt insults became something to overlook just because they were uttered by a seventeen year old. Or when lies and spurious arguments and misinformation all became okay because they were being spouted by a junior high student.
What happened to the treatment of Hydrogen Cricket? Where did that response go and why did it leave?
There have been a couple threads recently where minors actively participated in what amounts to a flame war. Agressive back and forth with another member or members about the topic of a thread or some unrelated subject that ends up being brought into it.
During these, the age of the member was inevitabally brought up in order to defend the actions of the child and further villify the actions of whoever was opposed to the child. Conversationally... not from a moderation standpoint, as far as I know but I also haven't really looked at it that deeply.
But I am left wondering where the accountability is.
My take on minors and Fauna is pretty much as follows... If they're here and supervised, they won't be posting anything that is an issue. If they're here and unsupervised then their parents have apparantly decided that their child is mature enough and responsible enough to handle the site's content and that they should therefor be judged by the same standards anyone would apply to any other (adult) poster. Which means they should be culpable for defending their position, for their choice of words, for their actions both positive and negative. If they make an insightful post, they should be given credit. If they participate in a flame war, violate the standards for behavior and language, they should be subject to the same punitive measures and attitudes that an adult would be.
Fauna has a good number of active users who are under the age of eighteen, most of which behave in such a manner that someone coming along who was unfamiliar with the individual wouldn't assume a specific age. There are some however who seem to be persistantly in the thick of the kind of carnage that gets adult users hit with signifigant warning points, temporary suspensions and all the associated negative ramifications to their credibility and reputation... but those repeat offenders will fall back behind the sheltering shield of their age and escape the brunt of the consequences for their actions.
Again, just to stress the point- this is less of a moderation thing and far more of a general attitude of the membership subject... but I'd really like to know when I became responsible for coddling someone else's mentally deficient offspring through their animal husbandry blunders. Or when flagrant and overt insults became something to overlook just because they were uttered by a seventeen year old. Or when lies and spurious arguments and misinformation all became okay because they were being spouted by a junior high student.
What happened to the treatment of Hydrogen Cricket? Where did that response go and why did it leave?
