Like I've said on this topic a thousand times, I don't care if the kid comes in or not but if they're stupid enough to tell me they're not old enough for my forum, I'll show them the door. I've already done everything on my end that covers MY butt. I don't care about their butts or how responsible they or their parents are. As long as I'm doing what I can for myself and my current members, it doesn't matter to me what those other kids are doing.
You're so right. My forum is PG-13, under the upper limit for Jcink I believe, so I shouldn't have to deal with problems like this one, but that being said I truly believe that: openly stating what your site is about and doing everything you can to show that you actively deny the under-aged viewing questionable material should be fine. As long as your intentions are out in the open, and you keep to the TOS, people won't have any legal precedent with which to sue you or bring your up on charges. They, just like anyone, should be able to see the ratings and the warnings. At the end of the day, you've then passed the responsibility onto them, or their parents.
Given I tend to stick around a 2-1-2 rating, I usually leave IC things open for all to see, although I usually have a 3-3-3 sub forum which I do keep hidden from guests and keep it password protected should there be any underage people about. But even with the password, one has to be very strict on whom it is given out to, and everything must be checked and re-checked before handing it out. So my system is that I do keep some things as hidden as possible to certain age-restricted groups so everything stays on the up and up.
You shouldn't have to hide your content if you're not violating the TOS of your page's host. I know with JCINK the general rule is PG-13 and 2-1-1, but I'm never sure if a password protected board is the way to go. I always thought JCINK could see and do everything with site's on their servers. However, I recently discovered they can't... I just realised how kinda unhelpful this post was >< Basically, I don't think you should hide your content if you're not violating host TOS or your country's laws. You're not doing anything wrong. For the most part, the Internet cannot be censored.
Speaking as a person relatively familiar, even if it's happening through a site's PM system you're still responsible for it as the webmaster. Password protection is both unlikely to be able to stop the JCINK owners, nor would it constitute a barrier to hide violations behind. All it would do is make it slower to get reported and thus make it less likely to get caught.
That makes a lot of sense. It's like IP hopping to stop people tracing you on the Internet - eventually, someone may or may not find out.
Nope, never hid it, never will. I own my space and my hosts ToS are fine with any mature written content. We have our rating all over the place, there is a thing called "parenting" I believe, though I am not one myself and do not want to be for others. >_>
If Jcink just visits the site by typing the url in then no he couldn't see everything. (What he sees is no different than what a guest would see.) However if he goes to the site via the PHPMyAdmin then he can absolutely see everything and he could very easily make changes. So don't presume that he can't see (or alter) your site's content. I will point out though that if you have a hidden/password protected section (non-premium forum) and get reported for mature content then it can make things worse for you. (It's an aggravating factor in decisions on ToS violation rulings. Because if you have a hidden/password protected mature section then it shows you know you're not supposed to have/display that level of content and are willfully disobeying the ToS.) Especially once the premium mode is finished when Jcink is likely to crack down on non-premium boards that are rated mature.
My perception was in showing the IC sections for everyone to read. This gives your guests an idea of every role play that is going on and offers them a preview to have them join up. What it seems like in what is being talked about is the R rated or 3-3-3 kind of stuff, frankly as long as you make it known up-front you've done your due diligence. Depending on your country things would probably change but as with everything else on the internet you can't keep the kids from leaking in. Password protected areas and the like are one way but eventually someone is going to get in.
To be honest I hide majority of the IC stuff, not because of its content but because of thefts. I and some of our members have had a lot of stuff stolen, for example character applictions/threads/roleplays. So I do pefer to hide the stuff for that reason, to respect the members work. I've had no problems with having the stuff hidden.
I kinda feel like this whole "think of the children!" thing is bunk. I grew up looking at whatever I wanted to on the internet, and I'm not some kind of screw-up (as far as I know). I'm not sure the legalities of it, but I also know that public libraries don't restrict what books kids can take out, and there's all kinds of novels with some really smutty stuff in them. Besides, anybody can bypass a birthday filter by lying... I did it all the time when I was younger. So no, I wouldn't hide any IC content. It's what brings a lot of people to the board, and I definitely wouldn't join a board without knowing how the members write.
The way I do this is Star Army's general forums are not hidden (and I think hiding them would be terrible both for recruiting and for SEO), but they're 2-2-2. However, for members who are 18 and older, they can also get to use 3-3-3 forums that are not viewable to the public.
As the people have said, if prospects can't see your posts you're not going to get random pass-throughs to stay easily. On the other hand you really don't want to ever be in the business of promoting sexual content to minors. So yeah a PG board is a nice idea, but at the least I would go with a 'please confirm your age' bar on the rest. The moment someone is required to commit a degree of fraud to access the content they shouldn't be seeing some of the responsibility is off your shoulders. More easily this is also what the big publisher/ sales companies do to protect themselves.. so almost certainly they have already taken advice from professionals and it is good enough for you to follow suit.
As far as what you're liable for, as long as you age gate the mature content and express that it is a mature site that you must be 18+ to join then I think you're safe. If every mature site was responsible for kids seeing their content even after having warned of the nature of the content and age gating it half the sites on the internet wouldn't be here anymore. So I think you're safe. For my site, in particular, we have all our sexual threads or overly violent threads in a mature board that's age gated and isn't viewable to guests. I keep the rest of the board open to be viewed by guests because I don't want the site to look inactive to potential new members. But what it comes down to is that you can never be 100% sure underage people won't join or view your site - the best you can do is try to deter that, but you aren't responsible for them seeing what's on your site. It's not like you're standing on the side of internet street with candy and the promise of smut reading lol.
