American Girl Wiki:COPPA Compliance

COPPA Compliance on the American Girl Wiki and the Disabling of Anon Editing



Details and COPPA Compliance
In 2013, updates to US Federal law regarding COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act)--caused a major effect on the American Girl Wiki and editing policies. Full, futher details are available here on Wikia. To sum it up, websites can no longer gather IP addresses from people under thirteen as this is considered personal information. Wikia, in order to comply with this new US Federal Law--since it is a US hosted site--analyzed multiple hosted wikis and chose to disabled anonymous editing on any that had a high chance of being edited by people under 13 due to their content--which included the American Girl Wiki. While American Girl has many adult fans (the head admin is in her early 30s), we must accept that the target audience by American Girl itself is eight to twelve year old girls. Thus, we are affected by this new federal law, and Wikia's option to comply with it.

Effect on the American Girl Wiki
As of July 1st, all anonymous editing on the American Girl Wiki was disabled.

If you want to edit on the Wiki, you must have an account. No exceptions, even if you're well over thirteen. I and no other admin cannot turn anonymous editing back on.

You will still need to be over thirteen, so admins will be scrutinizing every new sign up we have.

What if I'm under 13?
Underaged users will still be able to read the content of the wiki, so they can still access the articles and other pages that we as a community have worked so hard on. But they will no longer be able to actively edit or comment.

If a user is found in any way to possibly be under thirteen, the account will be blocked until such an age as the user would be thirteen.

Questions
If you have questions or concerns, please contact any admin directly.

--Nethilia, Admin