I just read a rule about not PMing young people. I understand the possible dangers, so I am on board with that, but I wonder how one can know to avoid it since someone's age is not usually not apparent.

I PMed two or three people just today, but I do not know their ages or how i would know their ages.

I can assure you that the mods will b in contact if you pm a minor or violate any board guidelines. We do our best to keep everyone safe here and if for any reason you have a problem or concern please contact me or any other mod.

Nathan

oh wow I forgot bout that. I think I have done that too.

R

I'm sorry, let me rephrase that question..because it didn't quite get answered:

How are you to know, before you PM someone, if they are a minor or not?

blueshift,

You may well not know at all. That's one of the drawbacks of the system as we have it. We know problems may arise, but we just ask that in general adults should let minors get used to the public parts of the site first. Many of them come here terribly traumatized and we need to look out for them and make sure they feel especially safe here. It's not that we are "babying" them, but it's important that they gain a certain degree of trust in the site in its public form first.

Much love,
Larry

you can't PM minors?

That really is too bad. I understand the motive, but it makes me feel pretty uncomfortable using PMs at all. I doubt that I will be using them anymore except to contact a mod if need be. I also feel a lot less comfortable sharing my story in the forum for sharing your stories when people have to PM me to give me feedback. I shared my story on another site last week and it was the accepting and validating replies that made me feel OK about sharing such personal information.

No.

why not?

Can the site come up with a tag or something like the mods have so we know who is a minor?
It's kind of difficult to know unless they are identified as such. maybe use a different color for their names. Most of us are in blue, minors could be a different color. I don't think that would be too difficult to accomplish.