Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-3026053-20130621001540/@comment-3026053-20130621073147

Semanticdrifter wrote: SeaTerror wrote:

Then I have plenty of images for you to prove that some of what were marked ARE NOT for children. Make the case in your wiki's forum! I can't promise we will agree, but we will certainly listen with an open mind. So basically, you're saying that if we can prove that Avatar deals with subject that rise above the typical "interest" of a child -like let's says, a war, genocide, death, and child abuse- our wiki can be exempt from this rule that will kill off the communities involved? Cause this will destroy the communities that rely heavily on anonymous traffic, and then what? We're just going to have to be fine with the fact that wikia is perfectly okay to sacrifice some wikis and all their work so not every wiki needs to be in accordance with the law? Really, this is very much an arbitrary decision as wikia just seemed to have picked and chosen which wikis they think should uphold the law whereas others do not. That is arbitrary in every sense of the word. Again, the law is there for everyone, not just the selected ones.

Another administrator on our local forum raised a very good point:

''The basis of this change is due to new prohibitions on the ways Wikia collects and stores information, I assume mainly with the blatantly obvious IP addresses. If Wikia really wanted to, they could (and would) have acted to modify site architecture to conform with the COPPA amendments instead, and still allow some form of controlled anon participation - however, that costs time and money, and that's where the line is drawn; better to go quick and easy by ripping out the entire system on "infringing" sites.''

Why not try getting rid again of that big banner on everyone's profile that splatters the IP out in big for everyone to see. Wikia has the ability to lock down pages from viewing by users why don't have the necessary rights. Why not do something like that for everything that has relevance to the showing of the IP address? Sure, it won't be a complete fix, but neither is the chosen path of wikia now, and the other solution would be a hell of a lot more fair and less destructive to the wikis that were selected to uphold the law.