[Wikia-l] Why is DOB required for registration?

[Gil Penchina]

John,

Wikipedia is a 501c3 non-profit and thus exempt from the regulations as 
defined in the legal text

I would dearly love to explain EXACTLY why we require it - but the law 
specifically states that if you tell people, you lose the protection of 
the law.  I cannot imagine WHO authored the law - as it is unbelievably 
frustrating to us and caused us to do several extra rounds of expensive 
discussions with our outside lawyers.

As an example of a similar vague and not-helpful explanation, I attach 
facebook's "why we need DOB".  It may actually be worse than ours... but 
gives you a sense of what happens when deal with interpreting well 
intentioned legislation.

As my dad used to say
- there are the laws of god
- there is moral laws on man
- then there is the legal system, which no one understands

If you want to email me your phone number, I'm happy to get on the phone 
and talk through this in more detail, but the law actually limits what 
we can say on the page... mind-numbingly painful though that may be for 
both of us as non-lawyers...

gil



John Beckett wrote:
> Jamie Hari wrote:
>> Let's call a spade, a spade here.
>> Wikia is doing the right thing; legally and morally.
> 
> In that case it should be easy to insert a link to a page that briefly explains your
> assertion.
> 
>>From Gil's comment, it sounds likely that the explanation won't be digestible to
> non-lawyers. That's no problem. Just state the facts: Regulation such-and-such in
> jurisdiction whatever, requires DOB for circumstances xxx.
> 
>> I know this from years upon years of experience in many 
>> widely-varied online communities.
> 
> There are probably lots of other-kinds of people like me who are not in the habit of
> registering at lots of communities and who are amazed to be asked DOB.
> 
> I just clicked "create account" at Wikipedia and there is no requirement for DOB,
> yet they still have a privacy statement! I don't recall being asked DOB for my
> Google account (gmail and Google Groups). I'm not saying that Wikia is wrong; I'm
> pointing out that I have registered with several other organisations with no DOB
> requirement, so some explanation should be provided on Wikia.
> 
> John
> 
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