User talk:174.27.17.169

Ratings

Hello, and welcome to the wiki! We're always happy to see users interested in critiquing the works on the wiki and rating articles, and I want to thank you for taking the time to do so. I would ask, however, that you please register for an account and update your ratings to use that username instead of an IP address. I'll be the first to admit that our ratings guidelines are murky on the issue, but generally we try to discourage anonymous ratings because they are an easy way to stuff the ballot box, so to speak. Now this is not to say that I think anything of the sort is happening here. Some of your ratings are the only of their value for the article, so it clearly isn't. But regardless, would you mind registering? --DanielDraco (talk) 16:00, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I cannot. I am under 13. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.27.17.169 (talk • contribs) at

Well, thank you for being honest about that. Please feel free to continue participating in discussions, but I'll ask that you not rate until you can register for an account. But of course, the discussions are the larger part of helping the community, so we remain appreciative of your contributions to article discussions. --DanielDraco (talk) 17:13, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I never intended for IPs to be banned from rating -- it was only not implemented in the auto-rater due to technical limitations. Surgo (talk) 22:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

So, can I continue to rate or not?174.27.17.169 22:56, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

While I'm personally okay with it, there are actually differing opinions here. I'm waiting for Tarkisflux to chime in before I can give an answer. Surgo (talk) 23:09, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe having you registered is okay as long as you don't provide an email address. Your edits may still require CAPTCHA, but at minimum you can use the automatic rating form without hitting it. Surgo (talk) 23:11, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

There's still the issue of my parents, though. 174.27.17.169 13:42, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm with the IP. I don't think that actual registration is acceptable without parental approval, e-mail or no, for COPPA compliance reasons (possible collection of first and last name, possible collection of email, possible collection of personal information on user pages, etc.), though I admit to not being a lawyer or particularly well versed in that part of internet law. That's my impression from reading summaries and white papers though, and I don't thing it's worth finding out if "you can register, so long as you don't provide optional personal details about yourself without parental approval" is technically acceptable.

That out of the way, we have previously ignored IPs who rated and left an unregistered user name and might be able to get away with that here if rater consistency was the thing we were worried about. I prefer it slightly for rater tracking purposes and the slightly greater permanence, but I'm okay with continuing the IP address thing also. I'm still not keen on IP ratings because of the tracking difficulties and potential for abuse, but the inclusivity and casual user benefits seem to outweigh the potential downsides (particular since there are plenty of better ways to do sock puppetry abuse of ratings). - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:48, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Simplified Races

I don't know whether you're watching it, but the author is unsure of the reasons behind your rating of Simplified Races. If you could explain your reasoning a little bit, I'm sure he would appreciate it. --DanielDraco (talk) 17:27, 24 July 2013 (UTC)