COPPA Form and Uderage User Management

[danielwmoore]

I manage a family site where many parents fill out and send in the required COPPA form.  That's working great, but SMF isn't very friendly when it comes to keeping up with this form and who has a form on file.  Once you "activate" that user, you just have to make a note somewhere that a particular user is under 13 if you want to be able to keep up with it.  Then you have to file a hard copy of the form, etc., etc.  It's just too hard to keep up with.

Underage User Management is a MUST for family forums that receive a lot of forms and must maintain a list  of them. 

I would like to see underage user management that does the following:

• When activating an underage member, it prompts for an upload of the form, and allows the upload in PDF format.  (I convert them all to PDF anyway, and pretty much anyone can convert to and use this format.)
  
• It stores the document in a safe location and prevents people from accessing it directly.
  
• Viewing the form is permission based, so I can give my assistant admins and/or moderators access to view the form, but not allow general users to see them, and give permissions to membergroups to manage underage users.
  
• New section for managing underage users, where it will automatically list all users who selected "under 13" at registration, even if they don't have their birthday listed. 
  

Underage user management should:
1. automatically remove a user from the underage list when they turn 13 if the birthday is listed. 
2. have a link to the COPPA permission form that was uploaded when the user was activated for viewing.
3. allow manual removal of a member if you know they have turned 13, even if they don't have their birthday listed publicly.
4. allow manual addition of a member if you discover AFTER registration they lied about age at registration, which would "deactivate" their account and send the COPPA form to their email address.
5. upon a user editing their birth date, if that new birth date makes the user under 13, it should add them to the underage list, send a COPPA form, and deactivate their account automatically.  (This is how most underage users are found out, by the posting of their birth date some time after registration. Handling it automatically would be a drastic improvement.)
6. Allow a link to "resend" the COPPA form should it be needed.  I have had to manually copy and resend the COPPA form on many occasions, and just don't understand why this feature isn't included already.

I feel this is long over due.  Anyone who manages such a site in the US is bound to agree, however, they are probably using forum software better dedicated to the management of younger users. 

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Honestly, I think that is a great idea - for a mod (perhaps officially supported and provided by the team?), not as a standard feature though - since I believe most forums either do not fall under the laws requiring this, or choose not to allow underage users all together to save trouble.

[Kindred]

all of my sites are run in the US and I don't bother with this, as I just reject any application under 13.

I agree that the expansion is a decent idea, but as Lex says, it's mod material, not core functionality
and the "management" that you are requesting is fairly intense (and would be code intensive, from a brief glance)

[danielwmoore]

all of my sites are run in the US and I don't bother with this, as I just reject any application under 13.

I agree that the expansion is a decent idea, but as Lex says, it's mod material, not core functionality
and the "management" that you are requesting is fairly intense (and would be code intensive, from a brief glance)

Rejecting under 13 isn't really an option for a family oriented site, especially one that discusses games played primarily by children.    Yes, the management will be fairly intense.  If not, I would have already done it.  Perhaps it is something I can look into developing over the next several months in my spare time, that is, if I can find some spare time.   Time is my real enemy here, not the coding. 

I can see why LexArma states this should be a mod since not all users will need it, but it should be a mod that's first class and well supported and documented. 

I also imagine that if this were available, there would be less people rejecting under 13 applicants for the reason they are too difficult to manage, and would open up a great many sites to younger users. 

[danielwmoore]

I shall assume that since this was moved to the "Applied or Declined Requests" that it has been Declined, since there was no statement of application.

[IchBin™]

I think it's safe to assume that most think this would be better as a mod and not as a standard feature.