Quote:
Originally Posted by jwb
Me thinks thou do protest too much, TH. I think that's how you say that phrase.
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As Woody said in Cheers, "Sorry Dr. Crane, I think it's "I thinks"...
Quote:
Originally Posted by SGR
The internet is weird. One thing I will agree with jwb on is under most circumstances, you'd never find yourself (assuming you're older) chatting with random 14 year olds in real life. You ever watch those vigilante predator catcher Youtube videos, the ones that are like DIY-Chris Hansen Dateline NBC videos? One of the excuses that the chomos will often use is: "Oh we were just chatting as friends, we have a lot of common interests, we were just gonna hang out and maybe watch a movie..." to which the retort is usually: "Oh yeah? You [some scraggly looking 36 year old creep] have a lot in common with 14 year old boys/girls? What the **** were you gonna talk about, how annoying biology homework is?!", etc.
Of course, the internet puts us into contact with everyone, and sometimes we don't even know the age. If I had my druthers, we'd only allow 18 or older on the site, but we don't, our sign-up guidelines state you need to be 14 years or older.
If we were to consider that this wasn't the internet - and we were all a group of adults who had regular in-person meetups to talk **** with each other, would we be okay with some unaccompanied 14 year old joining in with us? I don't think so.
If you had a 14 year old kid, would you allow them to go on message boards talking with random strangers? I wouldn't. I mean, look at some of the dialogue we have here - some of the jokes we tell - some of the things we talk about. We have a lax moderation policy regarding most of this (which I like), but is it really an appropriate place for kids? Often times, I'd say no.
When I was 15/16 and working my first real job - I'd often talk with some of the older guys I worked with about classic rock. But of course, work was a very structured and supervised environment. I don't think strictly talking about music and exchanging opinions about music with younger people is weird, but a lot of it depends on context.
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Bolded: this is twice you've used this phrase (yes I'm old): what does it mean? If I had my way? What's a druther??
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
I'm also voting a qualified "Yes" because I assume that conversation across generations is innocent until shown to be otherwise. It's one of the most natural ways for children to learn, and I was hoping to list situations where it was safe for children to talk to trusted adults. Unfortunately my list, which began "family/ school/ church/ work" , ran into problems straight away because of the way these institutions have allowed predators to operate. So we clearly need tighter safeguards to protect children against a minority with sinister intentions.
In MB's favour is the fact that contact with younger members stays in the realm of typed messages, and I hope stays in the open on these boards. AFAIK children are now taught from quite an early age about safe internet behaviour, so that as long as people are following the usual internet constraints about sharing personal info, I can't see that any serious grooming can take place here, and anything approaching the inappropriate is likely to be picked up by the mods.
^ One bad thing about MB is this: as SGR reminds us, the forum is open for anyone to read, from a 10-year-old to your grandmother, but we don't usually consider that, either in the heat of an argument, or in a volley of joking insults. How many innocent lurkers are we all unwittingly corrupting, just by our regular chat?!
On a lighter note, without looking it up, I'm pretty sure "methinks" is all one word, and to the question "Is it ok to talk to younger people?" I have the counter-question, "Well, who else can I talk to here?"  |
Bolded: God I hope a lot!
Seriously, this refers back to Eleanor as you know, and wasn't a case of one of us approaching her. She asked for recs. So the point is, would it have been preferable to ignore her - go away you're too young and I could get in trouble - or respond to her request?
As far as inappropriate talk is concerned, at least in my case - and I think most other people's - I moderated my own language to accommodate the fact that there was a child present. I think it's better we knew her age, then we could adjust our attitude and speech towards that.
Anyway I thought she was cool and I hope she's all right. It's always fun to get kids into the good music (shut up) for the first time.
I think, too, that kids are not stupid these days, and they will know if someone is being inappropriate with them. It's also up to us, in that instance, to step in and do something about it with the offending member, as was done at the time.
There's no real reason someone who's underage posting here, who wants to learn about new music, should feel left out or ignored. Obviously there should be no personal talk (she spoke about her school work, but that was her own choice) but otherwise I think it would be rude to ignore someone just because they're so young. I think in that case, we risk being kind of moulded or guided by fear and relationships suffer.