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  • Age Identification ?

  • General discussion about the RAILROAD.NET site, forums, or content ONLY. Please do not post your general railroading questions, please choose an appropriate forum. For help using the site, please post in the Help Using RAILROAD.NET Forum.
General discussion about the RAILROAD.NET site, forums, or content ONLY. Please do not post your general railroading questions, please choose an appropriate forum. For help using the site, please post in the Help Using RAILROAD.NET Forum.

Moderator: Jeff Smith

 #203687  by emd_SD_60
 
Otto Vondrak wrote:No need to wink, we know it's available... but how do you get somone to be HONEST and enter their ACTUAL birthdate? Short of using a major credit card to validate with (forget it), we're out of luck.

-toto-
My bad. Over there (at walmartsucks.com) people tend to fake their age, saying they're 5 years old or even 100 years old... LOL... :P

 #205673  by MEC407
 
crazy_nip wrote:anyone with half a brain would be able to pick up pretty quickly who is underage by reading a post or two
And how exactly would one use his/her half of a brain to determine somebody's age?

There are some people on here who have perfect spelling and grammar skills, and I know for a fact that they're under the age of 18... and there are others who have the writing/spelling/debating/reasoning ability of a 6 year old, and I know for a fact that they're over the age of 50...
 #213103  by atlpete
 
Assuming a modicum of familiarity with railfan topics one usually can tell a poster's age by the questions they ask/statements posted and their structure, while not a rule of thumb generally the poster's ability to co-ordinate the topics with their relevant dates/history is a dead give-away, questions like " did the Santa Fe ever buy gallery commuter cars"- a reasonable question if the poster was unfamiliar with the AT&SF pre-Amtrak. Not to imply there aren't young posters out there who don't know their stuff, far from from it, just that time usually tells, example- I'm near 50 but largely ignorant about steam technology. Generally younger posters will congregate where they're accepted and they can contribute without ridicule. The second "tell" is sentence structure, typically different generations use different syntax and grammer, web-contractions, e-slang, aol shorthand while not always a give-away usually will tell you whether the person your dealing grew up with B&W TV or a Gameboy. My .02 the best rule of thumb to encourage posters of all ages is to assume that all you respond to are made by friends, neighbors or relatives, that is; the old "Golden Rule".

 #230043  by benltrain
 
why would ages be necessary at all? we have a teen rail enthusiast forum for teens to talk about railfanning as teens, but don't you all agree that somebody is less respected when you know they are not adult? doesn't it give you the impression they are a less-than-serious railfan? if somebody wants their age to be know, more power to them. but lets have interesting rail discussions whether we are 5, 50, or 100.

questions for veterans, moderators, and administrators:
-has age ever caused problems on the forums?
-is there a security issue for a minor being exposed to so many people online at once on rr.net, especially in todays world?

thanks,
benltrain