i think goon should be an 18+ server, like everyone else.

[Fuppy]

Hiya

I haven't really been around the last few months so I've definitely had an outsider looking in kind of perspective on a lot of these issues, but I feel like what I have to say is relevant since I have been in another server that is 18+ during that time. First off I'm in support of raising the age to 18+. The main reason being, to put it bluntly, I just don't wanna be around children in this space and I find it very uncomfortable that I have to be careful with what I say. This is especially considering that most of the playerbase is already adults, and it feels rather out of left field when a child does pop into the conversation (whether it be on Discord or in-game). Now when I say "be careful with what I say" I don't mean NSFW or anything explicit, I just mean there are a lot of topics I'd discuss around other adults that'd be ill fitting to bring up around kids. You know, life stuff. Or perhaps a show or movie that has mature themes that a child isn't really ready to process. Anyhow that's really the crux of how I feel about it, its not super deep or anything I'd just rather not be around children in a space that is already primarily occupied by adults.

That said I do wanna address some points that were made in this thread, ones I think that are both good and bad.

One of those is the concern that making it 18+ will give people the wrong impression about goon, and invite people wanting to ERP. I believe this falls under the "read the rules" category, and we would just... ban people accordingly if they decided to not read the rules and adhere to the sexual content policy. I dunno I feel like its about as straightforward as it is now for anyone who'd make the argument of "I didn't know!" Also as others have mentioned, there are other 18+ SS13 servers that explicitly state they are not ones for ERP.

The other point is "people can just lie" Well, yeah but it kind of shifts the liability elsewhere when the person in question lied about their age to gain access as opposed to there being no safeguard.

Last point I'd like to address is Joel's, which I feel is honestly pretty salient and adds to the conversation in a way that I hadn't really considered fully. I suppose it is somewhat relevant to what I said earlier in regards to there being certain topics you just don't really bring up around children, but it is going to be frustrating for both parties no matter what when both of said parties are someone in their early 20s and the other is one who is thirteen. One has finished high school, likely has held down multiple jobs, and could even be in the process of finishing college. Where as the other is just starting 8th grade.

What I'm trying to illustrate here is these two are basically on different planets in regards to development, and where they are at in life. And this, as Joel said, leads to a lot of isolation and misunderstanding. Especially considering most of the community here is already over the age of 18. So while I can definitely picture myself enjoying SS13 at that young age for the silliness on the face of it, I can definitely imagine myself in all of the scenarios Joel brought up because, like any 13-14 year old, I was socially awkward and didn't understand a lot of things in regards to the socializing.

[Waffleloffle]

where I'm stuck on this, I suppose, is a question that hasn't been answered yet: how would this potentially be enforced?

it's pretty difficult to actually enforce an age limit in a digital space that doesn't involve showing ID or something like that. the alternative would be to ban only on those who slip up, but then the rule in practice isn't so much "anyone under this age isn't allowed" and more "if you admit you're under this age you get banned". this is the case with a lot of unenforced age limits online, and with how rigorous the administration evidently wants to be in maintaining the rules, it feels like that option may just feel too loose

[Leeanei]

I have no particular opinion on the age limit but I do want to say that IDing is impossible and we really don't want that much information on a player. Any given age requirement would be handled by people outing themselves or us having a good hunch someone is under the limit, generally young kids are pretty obvious. Some aren't, though, which always makes that method fraught. Better than the "are you 18?" checkbox, tbh.

[Mordent]

Individual opinion, not whole team stance, etc. etc.

I don't understand what we have to gain from changing. We'd lose a slice of our players (there are more teenage players than some people might think) for... what?

At the end of the day, safety of our players is very high on my list of priorities. I do not want to give a shield of "well, the game is for adults, how was I supposed to know they were a child?" to anyone. While we expressly do not allow any sexual content right now, and thus they would still be breaking the rules if they did it once we shifted to 18+, I don't really care about that. People who were going to break the rules were going to break the rules, we have tools to deal with them (bans, mostly).

What I do not want is a place where players feel like they have to lie about being 18 to play, or a place where adults can "safely" assume that they're off breaking the rules with someone who is also an adult, and therefore it's "not hurting anyone".

People trying to engage in predatory behavior is difficult enough (and, frankly, disgusting) without us then having to try to discern the truth in whether they're just being a horny ERPer (not allowed here, but whatever, I'm not going to judge) or being an actual internet predator.

I see zero benefit to bumping the age requirement unless we're enforcing it, and I have zero desire to handle the vast swathes of PII that comes with verifying that you're 18. Having to verify your age alone would be enough of a deterrent that it would affect our player count, let alone the <18 year old players we'd lose from it).

[Guv Guvington]

I believe the idea to make the server 16+ is not about excluding players or enforcing age supervision (I mean, its 13+ right now and its not beeing supervised now either), but its more about Goon's culture, especially when it comes censorship and what you are allowed to say and what not.
While its not breaking my neck, there are some words and actions that are bannable on Goon that I really don't see an issue with and are allowed to exist freely in pretty much every other server.
I actually witnessed this causing issues with players from other servers like TG migrating to Goon and then getting screamed at for saying words they are used to saying.

[jan.antilles]

I believe the idea to make the server 16+ is not about excluding players or enforcing age supervision (I mean, its 13+ right now and its not beeing supervised now either), but its more about Goon's culture, especially when it comes censorship and what you are allowed to say and what not.
While its not breaking my neck, there are some words and actions that are bannable on Goon that I really don't see an issue with and are allowed to exist freely in pretty much every other server.
I actually witnessed this causing issues with players from other servers like TG migrating to Goon and then getting screamed at for saying words they are used to saying.

Slurs would still be banned regardless. That's not about teenagers, that's about being a decent human being.

[Ikea]

As a player, if the server was made 18+, I dont think the enjoyment of the game would be any better or worse. I could make sex jokes, which would be neat I guess, but I don't consider making those a huge deal anyways. As someone who played this game while underage however, I got significant enjoyment from it and I don't see the point in denying other people who are underaged that enjoyment.

There's the "ss13 is a mature game" argument, but honestly there's nothing in here that's too intense that a teenager wouldn't be perfectly fine with handling it. Seeing a few pixels of ketchup colored blood or meth being a thing isn't going to leave a 15 year old up at night after they run into it in the space fart game. Regarding adult and child interaction, I honestly can't really think of much that would be inappropriate to do between adults, that wouldn't also be inappropriate to do between an adult and a child. Verbally berating people in the space fart game is inappropriate, regardless if its an adult doing it to another adult, or one doing it to a child.

The only thing I can think of that's appropriate between adults and inappropriate between adults and children is romantic/sexual roleplay. For the latter, I just don't want that here, nor do I want to deal with that. For the former, you really shouldn't be doing that type of roleplay with people whose boundaries you don't know anyways, even if its all E+ some people just don't want to roleplay out flirting.

[Sov]

If we declare the server 18+, but change none of the existing rules, and do nothing to actually verify anyone's age...Will we have really done anything besides stuck up a post-it note that says "No Kidz Allowed!"

[UrsulaMejor]

Consider the situation where a 15 year old, having done the trivial lie of pretending to be 18, and having been abused or otherwise pressured into an inappropriate situation with an adult member of the community, might be too scared to come forward to the admin team for fear of being banned from a place they share with their friends.

Also consider the flipside where someone, having acted unappropriately with a minor over discord, claims that they thought the 18+ rule meant that the onus of making sure that they weren't interacting with a minor was on the goonstation team.

All this for what would, as sov said, be effectively no material change outside of these two things.

I don't see why we would do this. The only reason we would need this is if we intended to implement 18+ features inappropriate for minors, which we have zero intention to ever do

[Silent Majority]

I've thought about this a while.

The onus of this sort of thing ultimately falls upon the parent to prevent a child from engaging with content they do not like. It is upon the producer of content to ensure their content is used in the manner they wished it to be used, in a way that they feel is appropriate.

Ultimately if a child plays an upsetting game, the parent needed to prevent the child from doing so, rather than the game needed to be unreachable to the child.

Under BYOND's ToS, which is the only ToS that technically matters here

2. CONDUCT

User content uploaded to or displayed on the website can be filtered or removed at the discretion of the BYOND staff. Items that warrant such action include, but are not limited to:

• pornographic, racist, or otherwise vulgar content;
  
• content that is intended to incite or attack a particular user or group;
  
• content that causes a significant use of bandwidth for purposes that don't benefit the BYOND community in some manner acceptable to the BYOND Staff;
  
• content that breaks any laws or contracts.
  

For a player entering into Byond from an outside of byond space, these would be the agreements that the platform itself made, and indeed, what a parent, who ultimately, again, is the guardian of an underage individual, would be agreeing to.

Goons conduct rules, which are part of the agreement you agree to to entering into it from beyond byond, state a pretty detailed and concise list of the rules. (I do feel our wiki rules, which are our officially listed rules, could use a bit of possible cleanup on language since sometimes I feel some things come across mean spirited and I don't PERSONALLY know if this is the message that we presently are trying to project)

In the case of an underage individual joining the game, they should read the rules. If their parent has specific set of rules or guidelines to their childs behavior: there is a list that gives reasonable expectations.

Arguing that it should be higher or lower age cap are, as kinda stated, somewhat of a 'placing a sticker on the door' thing. the rules are clearly listed. I don't feel anything that is available to the game is 'hidden' or a 'trap' to endanger kids.

The five nights at freddys game have an age rating of 12. They feature murder, false imprisonment, torture, decapitation and a variety of other horrid topics. I don't think the 'we must consider' thing is so much of a good faith argument as it is we need to ensure that our intentions, expectations, and what occurs, is clear, transparent, and visible, to people that would be interested to know. 
I think we do that.

[ZeWaka]

Consider the situation where a 15 year old, having done the trivial lie of pretending to be 18, and having been abused or otherwise pressured into an inappropriate situation with an adult member of the community, might be too scared to come forward to the admin team for fear of being banned from a place they share with their friends.

Also consider the flipside where someone, having acted unappropriately with a minor over discord, claims that they thought the 18+ rule meant that the onus of making sure that they weren't interacting with a minor was on the goonstation team.

this, exactly. this would be guaranteed to happen, and is why changing any age guidelines makes zero sense.
this is fairly obvious if you have ever been a teenager.

Ultimately if a child plays an upsetting game, the parent needed to prevent the child from doing so, rather than the game needed to be unreachable to the child.
...
I don't feel anything that is available to the game is 'hidden' or a 'trap' to endanger kids.

^
the weird puritanical nonsense about protecting teenagers from pixel anvils falling on heads and blasting limbs off doesn't make sense
like Silent Majority says above, it's a parent's responsibility.
the argument for protecting children from emotional abuse has more merit, but then you just go down the avenue of ID check weirdness.

---

I do feel our wiki rules, which are our officially listed rules, could use a bit of possible cleanup on language since sometimes I feel some things come across mean spirited and I don't PERSONALLY know if this is the message that we presently are trying to project

somewhat off topic (lol), but yes myself and others have wanted to clean up (not materially change!) the rules to be more concise and clear, it's moreso just getting around to it and getting everyone on the same page

[Fuppy]

I don't think anyone who is for this change is suggesting we check IDs in any capacity. I'm certainly not.

[Kotlol]

Okay I seen some good points of making the server give a clear 18+.

One is obivious and I will paraphraze it: "I don't feel comfortable that teens could be around and we are okay with it while it's a clear adult game."
This is probably the best reason and while paraphrazing it sounds "dumb" the actual post in the last page goes pretty well in depth.
I am not changing my mind on the other hand to enforce it.

Cause again as people point out: "Teens will lie and be in the game regardless in any game even 18+ ones."
All we are doing now is put a sticker on and say: "No teens allowed (16+/18+)." But they come in anyway... it's just you feel conciously fine that we do not condone it.

And that's just what this age thing is... "Clearing the concious to know we make aware what is the right thing."
And while it fosters a safe community and may have dark undertones and possiblities by raising it to 16+ cause of cultural implications.

I still think both sides are overly concerned about situations (and this comes from me the guy who is overly concerned about a lot of things). Both sides come up with great scenerios and arguments that raise what is right but to me in the end still....

"It doesn't make a lick of difference guys"

13+ , yes Teens can join, but you can't do Sexual stuff CLEARLY! We foster a silly game where swearing like FUCK is allowed and fart all day like juvenlines.

16+, We still do not allow sexual stuff, but we are saying we do not allow young teens but some teens but we are also saying this game is violent but not really
(This is just a weak comprimise that in the end pleases neither side cause it doesn't fix either concern, it's that weird middle ground of "We changed it and did nothing")

18+ Rules say no sexual stuff, No teens allowed but it gives a big red neon sign of "Yes, we are consenting adults here." Atleast no minors allowed so they are safe.
(And this one still doesn't change much. Cause weirdos be weirdos)

In the end my standpoint is "I do not care if it changes or not, since the only thing it changes is your conscience and who sees the "welcome sign" of goonstation.
But in reality... I never knew what the age rating offically was on goon. I figured it was 18+ since it refers to drugs and violence and you can swear like a sailor.
So is adding 18+ to the mix really nessarcy like that? (Seriously I didn't know TILL the topic was brought up)

But eitherway... devs, admins, players, mentors. Whatever you decide, I do not care. I just wanted to throw my final hat into this topic to say... "Why not hold a poll to gauge community worries then discuss and worry about it?" Right now we are going to debate till it's done and done.
But why not check what everyone thinks with a good ole poll?

We do not need this topic to hit 5+ pages. Just poll it... see the results then discuss futher.

[Flourish]

I think people should stop calling others “puritanical” on either side, it’s not helpful and also not particularly accurate. You can have nuanced thoughts on this.

We are not going to do a community poll because it’d be misleading to do so and have people think that the results would actually determine what we actually end up doing / not doing. Ultimately it would still just come down to the admin team’s judgement.

[Katzen]

I think the initial post comes in with a bit of a loaded opinion about not being 18+. Goonstation just followed along from Byond being 13+, as server that actively avoids adult content and has cartoon violence (although opinions vary here on how strong the violence is) it would make sense there wasn't much real thought to put an age rating on it.

Speaking solely as myself, I am seeing some quite good points being made in this thread for raising the age restriction; JOELED especially brought up some things that clicked with me. 
I was neutral to the idea previously but I may now be leaning more towards at least raising the age to 16+. I will definitely keep thinking on this and reading people's thoughts on the issue.

Jelly

I generally agree with the concept of the server 16+, both for player maturity and violence. I also generally agree with the admin posts above that putting an age requirement on would be largely meaningless.
I see some posts speculating that the allowed content would change but I can't imagine the team having any desire to do so. The current rules aren't based on protecting children, it's for the content and tone the team want from the server.