User blog comment:Aj732/PROTEST/@comment-4142476-20150810000927

I already wrote some words below, but I'll address some more points mentioned in other comments and give my opinion about them. Bear with me, this is a long post!

About "maturity"

I agree that some users under 13 years of age do indeed behave maturely (as mentioned "ad nauseam", in Tupka's words) and don't give off the vibe of being, for instance, 11 years old. However, when dealing with legal situations, this isn't relevant. A few examples:
 * In my country, the BAC limit is at 0.05%, and many countries, including the USA, have similar limitations. This means that even if you're not much influenced by alcohol, if you get 0.06% on a police drinking test, you're going to be fined.
 * In my country and a lot of others, the legal voting age is 18 years old. When I voted, I barely had an idea what the political parties in my country stood for and there's a fair chance I voted for a party I don't know the agenda of. My best friend on the other hand, had been interested in politics since her early teens. She could not vote when she already knew who she wanted to lead the country.

I could go on with legal drinking age, age of consent, marriage and many other things. These legal age restrictions are there for a reason, the reason that it's the approximate age after which you're probably mature enough to deal with the responsibilities. Is it a 100% guarantee? Of course not. But what does it hurt to wait? I've waited before I was allowed to work. I've waited before I was allowed to drive. Have I thought that I was mature enough years before? I have, and many people around me agreed with me.

You may be cursing at the "adults" that are in this thread, and I'm not saying that we're[yes, seeing as I'm 18+ I belong in this group] more mature, just that we have been there in the queue for the "XX years old" age limits.

About Wikia, ToU and COPPA

As said by Ducksoup and several others in this thread: COPPA is a law. Wikia has to follow it and for this purpose created a rule in ToU that every Wikia user needs to be 13 years of age in order to create an account.

By creating an account you've had to agree to this, too. This means that you "acknowledged that the Service is not intended for children under 13 years of age". The users banned also had agreed that "Any registration by anyone under 13 is unauthorized, unlicensed and in violation of this Agreement."

To make another comparison with a real life situation: imagine you work in a grocery store in San Jose, where it is not legal to give plastic bags,1 and you really think it should be legal to give plastic bags to your customers. You give only 1 bag to customers who really don't have their own bag with them, BUT get caught by the police.

Of course you then complain about it to the judge, because it's not a fair law, but you still get fined. Why? Because it's the law. Complaining about the law after breaking it, doesn't really help your case!

About making users sad

Yes, I agree it's mean and not very mature to witch hunt or search out users who are under 13 just to report them to Staff. However, in the majority of cases this happens, I would say 90% but of course there's no statistics, users who report children to Staff are not out to get young users. They're just reporting a user breaking the rules as they would report sockpuppets or trolls. (And I definitely don't think they were trying to make the users cry! That's your judgement call.)

With this, I'm not saying "go right ahead and report all the underage users!" That's far from true; I think you should still be able to make your own call if you think the user seems mature enough, and you should definitely not take the liberty to share their age with others. However, no one is obligated to keep it a secret to Staff if they find out a user is below 13.

Another note: the Terms of Use also mention that you shouldn't be solliciting underage users for personal information. In other words, young users don't have to tell their ages, and it is a violation of the Terms of Use to insistingly ask for it. If young users are mature enough, surely they can keep a secret and just respond with "that's personal information I don't want to give out". Just a word of advice!