Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-33546104-20160516192133/@comment-34029627-20160516205019

Hi all,

I'd like to clear up any misconceptions you may have about COPPA and Wikia's enforcement of it.

'''Please note that I am not a lawyer (IANAL) and I am not a representative of Wikia, Inc. in any way - this is just the answer as I understand it, from having worked with Wikia staff for many years. If you want to get an official response on this from Wikia, please go to Special:Contact/general.'''.

Wikia staff is legally required to comply with COPPA, which says that a website cannot collect information about those under the age of 13. This includes, but is not limited to: email addresses, IP addresses, usernames, legal names, addresses, general locations, and ages. This means that if Wikia staff witness a user stating they are of age 12 or under, they must remove all personally identifying information of that user from their databases to be in full compliance with COPPA. For example, if someone edited their userpage and put down their age as 10, and staff saw this, they would need to take action. Please note that this is not just limited to userpages, any edit where someone says they're younger than 13 that is brought to staffs' attention is fair game - this applies globally.

HOWEVER, as users of the site, you are in no way obligated to enforce COPPA. If you wish to block people for saying they are <13, go ahead. If you don't, that's fine too. If you want to block someone for saying they're a giant purple octopus that lives in the clouds, feel free! If you witness someone saying they're <13, you are not obligated to go tell staff, either. I find it's best to go by the rule of "don't ask, don't tell" &mdash; that is, don't ask for other users' ages, and don't give your age or the age of other users' out (if you know).

Also, one final caveat: the Wikia Terms of Use explicitly state you must not "... Solicit personal information from any user under the age of 18..." - however, since you can't tell if a person is under the age of 18 without asking, don't ask at all.

I hope that helps!