July 1st, 2013 / COPPA Compliance on the American Girl Wiki and the Disabling of Anon Editing
Even Kit couldn't edit here until she turned 13.
Recent updates to US Federal law regarding COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act)--have caused a major effect on the American Girl Wiki and editing policies. Feel free to read more about it here on Wikia. But, 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 law--since it is a US hosted site--has disabled anonymous editing on wikis hosted at their site that might have targeted audiences under thirteen.
This means that, as of July 1st, all anonymous editing on the American Girl Wiki has been disabled. While American Girl has many adult fans (this 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.
Rules will be updated to reflect this, as we can no longer have any anonymous edits at all. If you want to edit on the Wiki, you must have an account. No exceptions, even if you're well over thirteen. I cannot turn anonymous editing back on. You will still need to be over thirteen, so we will be scrutinizing every new sign up we have. If you are found to possibly be under thirteen, your account will be blocked until such an age as you would be thirteen.
If you have questions or concerns, please contact me directly. While this will have a major effect on drive-by and quick edits, I believe that overall this will improve the editing quality here at the American Girl Wiki.
The biggest news, however, is that Molly McIntire and her best friend Emily Bennett are moving to the AG Archives and joining Felicity and Elizabeth, Samantha and Nellie, and Kirsten in retirement. With this Historical retirement, the first three characters ever released by American Girl will no longer be available by them. Get the two of them while they're still here!
ETA: This Other Admin would like to add that even with news of Molly and Emily's impending archivals, any type of mischief or misbehavior will not be tolerated. If you can read, you clearly have had some form of education, and that means you are capable of understanding and abiding by the rules.
Details on the American Girl Publication Website show a new series of picture books coming out about Bitty Baby, written by Kirby Larson. Amazon.com shows a publication date of August 27th, 2013. The five titles so far are:
There will also be bundles that include plush toys. Bitty Baby and Me comes in covers that show a black, white, Asian, and Latina cover. Does this mean a revamp of the Bitty Baby Line? We won't know until the books come out!
I've gone through the unsorted and unused pictures and cleaned up the sections greatly with help from a buddy. From now on, make sure every uploaded picture is categorized--as soon as it's uploaded, add categories. Uncategorized images are subject to removal.
Also, don't digitally edit article personal images to have colored backgrounds. Personal images are fine without digital edits, trust me!
May 4th, 2013 / Categorization for Character pages
To make things organised and a little easier for us to browse through articles of individual characters, users are advised to add the DEFAULTSORT tag at the bottom of each character page, i.e. {{DEFAULTSORT:McIntire, Molly}}
There are some exceptions to the rule, though, such as names that do not follow regular naming conventions, i.e. Chou Spring Pearl. Oh, and this also applies to real-world articles of people who worked behind-the-scenes at AG, such as Pleasant Rowland, Valerie Tripp and so on.
Molly McIntire represents America during the World War II era. She, along with her English Friend Emily Bennett, will be archiving, so don't miss your chance for her!
