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

[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.

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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