User blog comment:AnitaTotallyRocks/Underaged Users/@comment-2170536-20140810091003/@comment-2170536-20140812174748

Absolutely right. I certainly didn't mean to imply that I thought Wikia was wrong to ban underage users; they are only doing so to comply with U.S. federal law and protect themselves from potentially substantial liability (Playdom, a Disney subsidiary, agreed to pay $3 million for COPPA violations back in 2011). Furthermore, as Brandon Rhea and others have pointed out, the Wikia ToU expressly forbids users under the age of 13 from creating an account; even if this weren't in response to COPPA, Wikia is perfectly well within their rights to establish whatever Terms of Use they deem appropriate.

All I was saying is that in every conversation I have ever seen between Wikia staff and the user base (and we got involved in many of them because our wiki was one that was closed to anonymous editing because of COPPA), we have been consistently told that we are not expected to report violations, and that Wikia Staff is taking complete responsibility for enforcing this rule. Therefore we have chosen not to voluntarily report violators, but we also do not encourage underage users to lie about their age. We simply ask that everyone refrain from divulging personal information, no matter what their age.

COPPA isn't about protecting children from internet content, it's about protecting children's personal information. As the FTC website states: The primary goal of COPPA is to place parents in control over what information is collected from their young children online. It is assumed that the rest of us are mature enough to protect ourselves, but the law is in place to protect those users who aren't necessarily aware of the consequences of sharing personal details online. Our policy of asking everyone to refrain from sharing personal information is us trying to do our part to keep everyone safe, not just children under 13. It certainly isn't to hide users under 13 from Wikia staff (we only edit their comments so they aren't picked up by webcrawlers). And we don't punish people for doing so, it's merely a suggestion for safe online behavior.

If Wikia were to change its policy and require/encourage its users to report potential COPPA violators, we most certainly would. But I believe that Wikia has not asked us to do that for a reason; what that reason is I don't know for sure, but I have my guesses. In the meantime, we simply try to be good netizens and let Wikia staff handle things they way they see fit.