A Private Forum For My Daughter And Her Friends

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davidb

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Jul 14, 2007
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My 10 year daughter has been begging me to setup a private forum for her and her friends.

I would not want it to get hit by spam so I would use robots.txt to keep it from getting indexed by search engines. I’ll probably also password protect it just to be sure.

Since she and her friends would be in the 8 – 12 age range, I’ve been putting it off since I don’t know what kind of issues that could bring up? I tried searching about age issues/kids on forums but not seeing much that is helpful.

Has anyone setup a forum for kids before (either public or private) or knowledgeable with forums (running - not spamming :) ) have any helpful advice to offer?
 


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No but as a parent here is my two cents. I think it's a cute idea but make sure you make the other kids parents aware of it. This way your intentions are made open and you don't look like some creepy old guy setting up a "forum" for 10 yr old girls. Decide a head of time if there is going to be adult moderation and whether your going to extend the option to the other parents.

edit: Or dreamache sums it up in one picture.
 
Thanks Turbo - Good Advice. That is why I keep putting it off. She just doesn't understand my concerns. I'm still not sure if I'll do it or not as it seems risky or could even turn into a major pain.
 
I don't see what the big deal is?
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Exactly what some already jumped to - dreamache & Unarmed Gunman


add private security question that the user has to know to signup (.edu forums do this a lot to stop spam)
make all forums unreadable by guests
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Makes sense - thanks.

But already from the quick responses from dreamache & Unarmed Gunman this would probably no go over well so I doubt I'll set it up.

It's sad in a way since to my daughter it would be completely innocent.
 
This might also lead to other petty BS. If you give access to all of the parents, they'll all be lurking, calling each other up and saying "Did you see what Kayla said? I can't believe it!" Not worth it, bro.
 
This might also lead to other petty BS. If you give access to all of the parents, they'll all be lurking, calling each other up and saying "Did you see what Kayla said? I can't believe it!" Not worth it, bro.
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Very true - thanks. Exactly what I don't need!

I guess so far:

Pros:
Daughter is happy for the moment.

Cons:
Daughter and friends complaining something doesn't work
Parents wondering why this guy setup a private forum
Parents petty BS
Headaches

Looking like a No Go!
 
There's laws about collection information from children under the age of 13 (or so I've read on those forum signups).
 
You realize of course in regards to "Spam", robots.txt does not do jack shit, since spammers and the bots that spam, ignore that file, and legitimate services that obey robots.txt (which is for spidering not saying 'don't post here'), wouldn't be posting spam anyways.

What you need to do is of course setup registration on approval, also if you setup a forum for any child under 13, it would be in your interest to abide by COPPA policies (ie: put up notice, and information and such for parents to see)

Personally, I wouldn't bother setting up a private forum, I'd rather set them up at one of the many popular kids places, like I dunno Build-a-bear-ville or whatever crap the neighbor's 9 year old girl keeps bugging me to help her with.
 
Maybe turn off PMs and have a strict policy about posting private info like emails, names, phone numbers...etc That way everyone can see there's nothing shady going on.

I don't know from a kid's perspective, owning your own forum would be pretty bad ass. I'm not sure you should chuck the idea just yet.
 
That's a tough one. Like turbo said, you'd really need the other parents approval. If everything goes well, none of the parents would be thankful. But if anything goes wrong, you'd be blamed. Best to get them involved too.

And it could really happen a lot of BS. How to control who joins the forum? If it's popular those friends would soon invite other friends (or maybe crushes) and before you know half of the neighbourhood kids are registered there. With all the drama kids can cause, minor bullying being be one of the smallest issues.

And obviously there's a big difference between 8 year old and 12 year olds, already riding the hormone roller coaster. They probably want to discuss things 8 year olds shouldn't be part of. If not today, then definitely a year from now. And it's hard to just lock out the younger ones in a private area.




I'm already writing too much here. But with all the cons this has, I'd ask myself and the other parents this question: Would it help to keep them away from sites like MySpace longer? Or would it speed up the process for them to discover sites like that? All the negative effects a private board could have, it's still tons better than small children having unmonitored MySpace profiles.


In the end you won't be able to keep her away from the inet. This might be a good opportunity to teach those children a bit about how to use the internet safely. And more importantly the other parents. Surely most of them won't have as much web knowledge as you have and I think a lot of them would be thankful if you could tell them a thing or two about keeping their childs web adventures safe. Such a learning experience could be integrated with them having their own little forum? Idk, it's a tough one.
 
There's laws about collection information from children under the age of 13
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I remember seeing something about that also when signing up for forums (never ran my own forum before). Thanks.

You realize of course in regards to "Spam", robots.txt does not do jack shit, since spammers and the bots that spam, ignore that file, and legitimate services that obey robots.txt (which is for spidering not saying 'don't post here'), wouldn't be posting spam anyways.
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Didn't think about that, since the pages would not be indexed I assume they wouldn't be found. Excellent point - thanks.

What you need to do is of course setup registration on approval, also if you setup a forum for any child under 13, it would be in your interest to abide by COPPA policies (ie: put up notice, and information and such for parents to see)
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Thanks for pointing that out!

Personally, I wouldn't bother setting up a private forum, I'd rather set them up at one of the many popular kids places
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Sounds like a workable idea - thanks.


Maybe turn off PMs and have a strict policy about posting private info like emails, names, phone numbers...etc That way everyone can see there's nothing shady going on.
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Excellent advice! thanks. I assume there is a way to not allow them to post pics and video? But of course they would want to as this would be a forum about something they all share a common interest in.


I don't know from a kid's perspective, owning your own forum would be pretty bad ass. I'm not sure you should chuck the idea just yet.
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I know I know - she would dig it! Decisions Decisions, maybe I need some extra headaches to keep her happy!
 
The definition of a bad idea is one with very little upside and a huge downside.

I personally think this is a bad idea. I can think of so very many things that could go wrong - and only one thing that would be right - namely, you'd make your daughter happy.

Think about what would happen if one of those girls took a picture of themselves in a bikini - nothing trashy even - and posted it. And then let's say someone else photoshopped some naughty bits on. Now it's on your hosting, in your name.

I assume these kids probably have Facebook - they can make private groups there and have discussion threads.

But then again - I tend to be paranoid.
 
tread lightly, seems like more trouble that its worth. But also what turbo said, cool to have your own forum as a kid.

Since its such a closed group, you might be able to do it if you had parental confirmation by phone, since most other ways of authenticating could be spoofed.

Maybe turn off signups and only you do manual, after your own personal background check?

be sure to add some ringtone banners!
 
So many things can go wrong here man, I really would pass it up.

What if one of your daughters, friends, parents got pissed with you for some stupid reason and informed the authorities you run a forum for 10 yr old girls?
Even if it is password protected what if it got hacked and porn/porn links get posted before you realise?
Sounds like a massive headache and the only way to really do it is manually create usernames after verifying it with the parents of each of your daughters friends and even go to the lengths of getting them to sign a disclaimer.

Sounds like to big a headache for me ;)
 
You might just create the new Facebook for Pre-Teens. You could even call it Preteenbook.com. I say go for it and cash in.
 
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