i think getting anywhere on this issue is gonna require an acknowledgement that the question we're asking ourselves here isn't "should we keep minors out of the site," it's "do we want minors to have to lie about their ages to join the site or not?" because that's what the age limit actually does, functionally. no minor who doesn't get filtered by the application process anyway is going to have a hard time lying their way onto the site. some of them will get careless and out themselves, but a significant portion of them won't, if the number of underage people who have become noted contributors is anything to go by. with that in mind, i'm gonna examine all of the contentious issues here and give my takes. we have been graciously spared the usual round of people invoking the vague specter of "legal issues" for now, but i'll try to cover all the other ones.
1. the wiki has a history of notable figures, staff and otherwise, using their positions to prey on minors.
this is true. one of these incidents was the thing that finally got people really pushing for an age raising a couple years ago. however, i'm not convinced that raising the age limit actually does much of anything to prevent this from happening. historically, nearly all of these incidents have occurred in irc sidechats, discord servers outside of staff's control, and dms. even assuming that a raised age limit will keep minors out of staff-controlled spaces (it won't), it can't stop minors from stumbling into the spaces outside of staff purview where the predation tends to happen anyway. additionally, as others have pointed out, a raised age limit may also discourage minors who lie their way onto the site from speaking out when they are targeted by predators. i'm with the unraisers on this one.
2. minors tend to be more immature than adults, which can create all kinds of headaches.
the way i see it, there are two kinds of minors: those who are mature enough to avoid exposure and become respected contributors regardless of what the age limit is at, and those who will get maturity bans regardless of what the age limit is at. i'll believe staffers if they tell me that it's a significant headache reduction for the latter group to get filtered by the age limit before they can get onto the site itself, because i don't have the insight into staff's internal workings needed to make that judgement.
i've also seen people bring up the social environment and interface on the wiki, and how developing brains can be adversely affected by it. this is a fair point, but i'm not convinced that a raised age limit actually does anything to combat it when minors can lie so easily. plus, grown-ass adults have had the same problems as minors on this front, repeatedly, so maybe we ought to be examining a different issue altogether if we want to address this. neutral on the maturity issue for now, since i'm just not sure that it matters either way.
3. we're missing out on valuable contributions from a lot of minors if we keep the raised age limit.
the minors with really valuable stuff to contribute will probably just lie (as they have been doing for the entirety of the wiki's existence), and everyone else can wait a few years. overall, i think we'll gain the same amount either way. neutral.
in the absence of legal issues that would make it risky to allow minors onto the site, i'm siding with the unraisers here. the only issue that i care about here would be better addressed by lowering the limit. as for what i think the new limit ought to be, 16 is a good number. it's the minimum age for a lot of things in a lot of countries, so i think it makes a good amount of sense. 15 has always seemed kinda arbitrary to me, and i suspect that it was only the original limit because it was the age of the youngest channers who found the site in its early days.
