Maturity

What is this? I have been invaded by Meikaji today! Ohnoez. D:

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Hey guys, it's Meikaji here, not Seasonal this time around. I had an idea for a blog entry but didn't actually want to create a whole blog for only one, so I borrowed one of Sea's. Thanks so much, Sea!

And I'm warning you, I may jump around a bit. This is pretty much my first blog entry, and it probably sucks really bad.

Anyway, onto my topic, maturity. We all know that Wolf-Haven isn't the safest place for kiddies. In fact, you have to be over sixteen be allowed on the chat and in the forums. There's also a parent's notice onsite. However, being over sixteen doesn't really apply, seeing as it's not enforced at all. Some wish it was, but it's not.

I'm half for it and half against it. I'm for it in the way that some of the content I've seen onsite is pretty sketchy for younger players. I have a sister who is eleven that is a member of Wolf-Haven and thus subjected to such material. Now, as much as I dislike my sister, I don't want her innocent little mind corrupted by all of the stuff on the chat. Okay, that may be pushing it. Honestly, I don't want her to open her stupid little mouth about stuff she's seen on W-H (even unknowingly, she may not know what half the stuff said even means) and have out parent's block the site. I'm against it because I don't want to be kept from the community, since there really isn't anything else to do for the time being.

To counter the problem of getting youngsters with innocent minds and to keep their annoying antics out, some have proposed to actually enforce that you be over sixteen to get into the forums and chat. But think about how many good members would be lost. Corina, Rhiannith, Tiberiius, and Avenninyx (I think, at least, but I could be wrong) along with myself wouldn't be allowed on the chat anymore. There's probably others, but these are the members I know of.

Some people say we should allow some people and not others. How this would be regulated, I don't know. Perhaps a test to test a user's maturity? Maybe we'll take a vote on who wants them. Either way, it's pretty unfair, since some will be allowed and others not. I mean, everyone over sixteen will be allowed, even if they are less "mature" than some of the users under the age requirement.

Plus, to my main point, who is to judge who is "mature" and who is not? It seems to me that the community had a rather misled idea if which mature we want.

To me we have two kinds of mature. Mature as in a TV show rated MA filled with all kinds of negative stuff (sexual stuff, swears, violence among it) and mature as in knowing right from wrong and knowing where to draw the line. To me it seems we're encouraging the first kind, which is probably not a good idea.

Think of it this way: you're in science class at school in something like seventh grade. You're going to learn about mitosis, and of course sex cells are going to be mentioned. Most of your classmates snicker at the mention of the word "sex". Obviously, they are not mature. But they are mature enough to know what sex is.

It's obvious from the chat that we have tons of these members on our site. Hell, they're fine with things like dicks and vaginas and everything else, but as soon as someone says the word "rape" everyone jumps on them like it's the worst thing one can do. Instead, they say grape. People, c'mon, it's the same thing. The "g" in front of it honestly makes no difference at all. It's the same meaning. It's like when you were younger you would say "H-E-double hockey sticks" instead of Hell or "it" instead of sex.

So now I'll leave you guys with this:

Which kind of mature would you rather see on the site? The people who want to make a wildly inappropriate joke out of everything or the people who know where to draw the line. Do you want the kids who snicker about the mention of sex or the kid who can mention it without turning it into a joke?