aheem heem
BACKGROUND READING: Administrative Fiat on Age Records, Application Process
Extended conversation in staffchat today, originally from the sensitive channel then ported to the main staff-discussion, centering on the topic of the admin banlist within the Wiki's admin panel. The Fiat states that:
It's come up that various staff procedures over the years have involved storing users' age information, including in publicly accessible places. Due to the seriousness of this, I am enacting fiat to start fixing the problem immediately. All pages that currently house such information are to be summarily deleted (and reposted with the age information removed as needed) […]
As clarified by an admin, this was meant to target several pages, such as an age records page on O5 only accessible to members of staff, and to channels inside staffchat dedicated to storing information for underage bans. Today a member brought up that there was another, antiquated page on O5 with similar information, which was then wiped. It was then brought up that the admin banlist — the actual list of users banned from the site within the admin panel, contained a column allowing for a ban reason, for recordkeeping. In the case of age bans, this was used to record information that either directly stated or could easily be used to infer the age of a user.
This would come into conflict with the fiat and the general vibe in the application thread that we shouldn't be storing age data. However, deleting the banlist would leave us without a valid, practical alternative for enacting age bans — since enacting age bans implicitly requires recording the fact that someone is underage. An admittedly pretty spicy discussion erupted over what to do with the thing, with many members noting that this was, in addition to being circular as fuck due to the nature of Discord-Discourse, was very much echoing the discussion we had had on the application process issue, both in the thread and in staffchat. I have elected to make an O5 thread for the issue so we can actually maybe talk about it.
POINTS OF CLARIFICATION:
- The ban reasons in the admin panel cannot be easily edited. To change them, you have to unban and reban the user with a fresh/no reason. There are many banned users, and only admins can access the admin panel.
- There is a collapsible on the Join page affirming users are of age; however, this is distinct from actually allowing us to store age information on them. (Which GDPR does not let us do regardless if the users are under 16 unless their parent gives permission).
- A simple generic message such as "Unban by 20xx" is not a solution because the "Unban by 2028" ones would still implicitly indicate the user's age.
- The fact that the admin banlist counted as a record of age data was not realized when the admin fiat was made, due to the fact that it also contains ban information on standard rulebreaking bans.
MIRROR OF: O5 Thread
