Thread:452/@comment-452-20150520141539

Deleted comments for my own future reference: 452 wrote:
 * User blog comment:Ozuzanna/What is COPPA and what should I do about it?/@comment-452-20140906161512

On my home wiki, as an admin, I personally have a good policy when it comes to COPPA:


 * I do absolutely nothing, and completely ignore that COPPA exists.

It is not worth my time.

If a well-spoken 8 year old wants to become a worthwhile contributor, good for him. Whether Wikia catches him is between him and Wikia, and has nothing to do with me. 452 wrote:
 * User blog comment:Ozuzanna/What is COPPA and what should I do about it?/@comment-DEmersonJMFM-20140905215330/@comment-452-20140907113038

As part of the reply, I received these two links:


 * http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:AnitaTotallyRocks/Underaged_Users#comm-714365
 * The Terms of Use apply to all Wikia users. If you discover someone who is under 13, you are welcome to send us a link to where they admitted their age (though it's not OK to actually ask someone what their age is out of the blue). Local admins are not, however, required to police this aspect of our Terms of Use. This is Wikia's responsibility, not yours. 

"This is Wikia's responsibility, not yours." means "this is Wikia's job, not yours." It is literally not the responsibility/job of a local admin to do this. Reporting users for violating is something that all users can choose to do, and Wikia can choose to ignore or enforce any reports of TOU violations it receives.


 * http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:AnitaTotallyRocks/Underaged_Users#comm-717549
 * The reason for us not asking you to police it is because the Terms of Use are an agreement between Wikia and each individual user. It's therefore up to Wikia to enforce the agreement (within reason), and up to each individual user to follow it. User A doesn't have anything to do with the agreement between Wikia and User B, so we don't ask people to take on that additional responsibility.

It was also reiterated that admins are permitted to block for no reason at all.

However, I think good admins should always only block in accordance with actual local policies, and not make up reasons on the fly, or cite (hide behind) the TOU for things they are not required to block for.

I think that blocking otherwise harmless users for a technicality is... not a good reason to block, because blocking exists to prevent vandalism or other problematic behaviour.

edit: To put it another way:
 * It is an admin's job/responsibility to block users with actual problematic behaviour.
 * It is not an admin's job/responsibility to block users who are not causing problems,
 * Admins may choose to block users who are not causing any problems, if they wish. But the fact that it is possible for an admin to block someone for having green hair does not mean that it is their job to block someone for having green hair.

edit: the "when you edit immediately after editing, your previous edit is lost" problem still hasn't been fixed.

edit: Above, I've made the assumption that it is the job/responsibility/duty/requirement for admins to issue blocks for vandalism and other problems - technically I've never seen anywhere that actually states that this is the case either, but in my opinion, "preventing actual problems" is what admins are for - but that is a different topic entirely.  