Element 14's Wonderful Forums ...

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Element 14's Wonderful Forums Considered Harmful Fri, Mar 9. 2012

Element 14, the web presence of one of the Raspberry Pi distributors, Farnell,  operates a wonderful forum system. However, there is one significant problem with their system: under their terms of use, a person who is under 13 is prohibited from using the forum (and those between 13 and 18 from using it without their parent's explicit consent).

This understandable requirement, probably a result of US legislation (and perhaps legislation in other jurisdictions?), is at odds with the Raspberry Pi's stated focus on children (hence the "considered harmful" jab).

I'd encourage the Raspberry Pi community to use forum and wiki systems that don't exclude the device's target audience from participating! Perhaps Element 14 would consider a revision to their Terms of Use, or a dedicated forum with special rules that would enable children to participate. In the meantime, the Raspberry Pi Foundation's forums and the E-linux Wiki do not have age restrictions on participants.

Posted by Chris Tyler in CDOT, Facebook, Fedora Planet, Mozilla Education Planet, opensource@seneca, Seneca Planet, TeachingOpenSource Planet Comment: (1) Trackbacks: (0)

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#1 - Joe Buck 2012-03-09 18:45 - (Reply)

In the US, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 makes it very complex to allow children under 13 to participate in social media, because there are so many rules about getting information from children without parental consent. That's why sites like Facebook require a member to be at least 13, though lots of kids violate this by lying about their age.

For a younger child, the parent and child can participate in the forum together, so the parent has access to any communication or advertising directed at the child.


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