Can Kids Be Safe on the SCP Wiki?

Probably not, but there are things we can do to make it safer, I think.

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All SCP wiki works are licensed creative commons 3.0 attribution/share alike.

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Channel art was created by TheVolgun

[Robocopnik]

To demand that everything not child-appropriate be banned from the site would essentially kill the site. Everyone would go somewhere else, and they'd be right to do so. Not all art has to be for everyone.

[Sean_P._OBrien]

Well it’s 18+ for a reason innit? It’s not on the writer to pander or conform to the "audience"/those who will read it. This feels like the argument people use for banning books. Why should we be these random peoples parents?

[asahearts]

Here's an idea: Children shouldn't be allowed to talk to strangers online unless it's a site specifically for children with real people monitoring interactions.

Edit: Just going to add that next to nothing on the site is suitable for an audience which isn't mature enough to hear about a BJ. The issue of kids being unsafe online will just be used to further censor the internet, and not just in regard to sexual content. We've seen the same thing happen time and time again throughout history. Just look at radio or television. "Won't someone think of the children." Make parents do their job of actually parenting their children, and if you see someone violating site rules, report them for it! By all means report underage users, because it could endanger the site if someone finds out a 10 year old has been reading stories about ritual human sacrifice on your website and you knew about it.

Edit 2 because I'm getting mad rn: If someone is insistant that they be able to interact with a child on an 18+ website, maybe the problem isn't with the content of the site but the creeps who want to talk to children.

[chiga]

Content warning on 18+ articles is enough. Like why are we acting like kids don't read fanfic and smut or watch porn and seek out adult content, thats like quintessential teen behavior. As long as they know something is adult content that's enough. I don't think making the wiki clean and sanitized does anything but make it more boring tbh.

[CMT_Crabbles]

Mature kids can decide what they can and can’t handle, and usually will pretend to be adults online.

The problem comes with immature usually 11-15 year olds.

[kafkaisnotdead]

I'm so tired of not having adult spaces online that not porn themed. You need to delete soooo many articles from the wiki if you want to make it kids friendly. It's better to make discretions more visible, from the start, for WHOLE wiki, so parents could see it from the start too. "But articles like SCP 999 are kids friendly" you know that kids come here not for wholesome content, you know it perfectly well. Visible warnings everywhere where needed, proper tags at the start of article, not the end of it.
SCP YouTubers also should be responsible and age restrict their readings of adult violent content, btw. A lot of children interact with SCP through YouTube so this discussion is useless if creators on other platforms wouldn't do anything.
Also to question about kids talking with groomers: I'm an adult and I don't want to talk with groomers too 👁️👄👁️ Kill this behaviour with fire

[JoeGrzzly]

Personally I'm not one for censorship, but if we're looking at things holistically, the SCP Foundation should not be available to children. It all comes down to the eternal debate of sex vs violence. Here in the U.S., violence is glorified and sexuality is villified, while overseas that often seems to be inverted. There are fun and quirky SCPs that simply explore a unique object or an anomalous location, but many more SCPs that involve some level of body horror, violence, mutilation, and infohazards that would cause horrible nightmares to an imaginative young mind, which ought to be considered as adult content far more so than sexual content. When you start talking about a Unified Morality, about all peoples being comfortable with what children are able to access, the SCP Foundation would be entirely restricted.

[darththork]

I was around... 14 I think when I first got into SCP. So 11 years ago. The only restrictions to be found was the way you registered in order to filter out people who don't read. As far as I remember, there weren't very many SCPs with 18+ subject matter. That's definitely changed. Only one that explicitely referenced it that I remember from back then was SCP-1004 (which is funny considering it's pretty close to actually existing now) and after going back to look at the article, there is a content warning. That in my opinion should be enough. It's up to parents to control what their children access on the internet, not up to the rest of us to sanitize everything just in case an unsupervised kid might happen upon something. The content warning is good for liability, and that's really all our responsibility should be.

[charlung]

this is actually a huge issue on most fanfic sites as well, namely ao3. theres huge tags, u have to consent to the 18+ stuff if u want to read it, but kids will anyways. i actually disagree w u. i dont think that adults have to change their behaviour to acommodate children. as long as the tags are specific (just saying 18+ to a story w SA isnt enough) a child will decide themselves if its too much. i read fanfic as a 12 year old, and i did disregard the warning and tbh, i dont blame any of the writers for that. also, thats just another way for children to find out new things about the world. maybe theyll find out about sex through fanfic, maybe through the scp wiki, and if not from that, defo from scoolground friends. its just what happens
edit: for context, ive never read any other sex fic on the wiki except scp-6969, and skipped one that had huge SA warnings over, so idk how heavy it gets

[Orosukimasu]

Honestly, it depends on your viewpoint. Historically, children's tales from the brothers' grim and other folktales are quite brutal. I have some nephews who are all below the age of 12 who consume SCP content. I've told their mother to monitor their content.
On the ability for children/adolescents under the age of 18 it's best that no one should be able to contact or interact with them. Any forums, discords, chat sites or the like should have real world verification before even being able to login with chats being moderated for prosperity.

[xenbaker]

I’ve seen this question many times before and I’ll always say my opinion on this: I think it’s always important to monitor your kids if you want them or if they want to be interested in something that they’d enjoy. I think with most of the content on the wiki, yes it should be restricted to 18+. If your kid has an interest in SCP, then I’d recommend to start off with the safe, friendly, and wholesome ones like SCP-999 (Tickle Monster of course) SCP-131, SCP-5031 (Chef Monster), SCP-1762, SCP-2295, SCP-3092, also SCP-529

[SpacePatrollerLaser]

I can pretty much GUARANTEE that in the 1950's that If I, my friends, and my male cuoisins were between 9 and 17 we would eat this stuff up

[SonicCam]

I want to say specifically that in situations related to these sort of things, education is usually the best solution.
A younger person is much less likely to be a victim of this sort of abuse when they are actually allowed to be informed on what to look out for, and know who to turn to when things go bad.
Grooming tends to happen the most in communities that shun education related to 18+ materials.
I speak from experience that had I been educated on these things prior to encountering them in the wild, I wouldnt have fallen victim to bad actors.
On a website such as the SCP Wiki, I dont believe anything should be prevented from publication outside of legality and quality. but it's also on those that consume the works to self exempt themselves from consuming stuff they shbouldn't.
However, thats a broader societal issue of not letting younger people have agency and education, so perhaps keeping 18+ content off the site will prevent these sort of things in future.
As someone who was groomed in an environment that was entirely kid friendly though? i entirely doubt it.
Kid's and Teens are always gonna want to consume stuff relegated to adults, making these things harder to find will only serve to guide these people to even seedier corners of the internet.

[emilygordbort]

Just because kids come to the wiki doesn't mean we have to accomodate them.

[rusta]

Imagine asking if children are safe online, that's pretty much what you are asking.

And not every place should be made to accommodate those who don't belong. We do not let children adult bookstores for a reason.

[rinkyrosey]

I've heard lots of really old, uncategorized fanfiction websites back in the day used to have their smut/other miscellaneous adult content locked behind a password that only verified members could access. I think the SCP Wiki could benefit well if it implemented something of a similar ilk. However it's important to note that our only frame of reference for this working is because it was mostly on really small scales, mostly because the most traction these sites would see were probably upwards of around 1k-10k clicks. I'm not sure how mangable it would be on a website that exists not only just on the internet day, as opposed to two decades ago, but with the large amount of traffick the SCP Wiki sees everyday.

I still have my hopes, and I completely agree that we as a community need to do better in protecting children from harms' way. Protection that extends further then just condemning it when it inevitably happened. It's an awful truth, but I do think as the website exists now, combined with the very laid-back position people hold on taking a stance against it, that children being made victims in anyway in this fandom is an inevitability. There is so much more we could be doing, I don't understand how people can't see this.

[hailesabab]

Nah I read Scarlet King as 13 and it was awesome

[Deqster]

Ramen is more safe for kids, when not lava hot.

[dr.j.redacted]

Could one of the reasons for the high percentile of children be that they have free time most adults simply lack? Writing for the wiki is hardly the most time consuming hoppy one can have. but its up there. Pair that with the "relative" recency of both the advent of the internet aswell as the wiki itsself, its morbidly fascinating in a way.

[donaldkeith]

No. Now quit wondering and go parent your children 😂