Arbitrary (pre-1890) displayed birth year

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Arbitrary (pre-1890) displayed birth year

Area:
accounts

Summary:
Creative projects and genealogical journals can have birth years outside the reasonable range for living humans. They should be allowed, if only as display options.

Description:
It's massively unlikely that a living human would fuss about the current restrictions on possible birth years for a journal (not born before 1890, not born after the current year), but fictional people, genealogical journals, SCA personas, and Captain Kirk might want to display their correct birth year, rather than an arbitrary birth year or the birth year of the person who is controlling the account.

One might want to keep the current restrictions in place for account creation, so that it continues non-trivial for children who are too young to register for Dreamwidth to actually create accounts.

This might make statistics-gathering on birth year much more entertaining to deal with, and might break something like birthday notifications somehow. It might make sense to split "system birthday" and "displayed birthday", so that journals with impossible birthdays don't break anything, but display the correct-for-them year on their profile.


[This suggestion inspired by ChemLa's SCA persona, problems therewith.]

Poll #4743 Arbitrary (pre-1890) displayed birth year

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 68

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
40 (58.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (7.4%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
4 (5.9%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (27.9%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[juliet316]

Perhaps if it's implented, there should be an option to perhaps make it clear that it is a creative projects journal, such as a RPS or what not?

[kyrielle]

I think it should make it clear that it's an arbitrary display date, not the real date - but not say the reason. Depending on what it's being used for, the term 'creative projects' might be inaccurate or uncomfortable for some (if, for example, someone uploaded the text of an ancestor's actual physical journal, or something).

I'd also like to be able to have dates that would violate COPPA in the display, for those of us who maintain journals about our kids (not by our kids; at under 2 years old, my son can't yet manage that ;).

[syderia]

I like the idea of splitting between real birthday and displayed birthday if this is implemted.

[dchan]

As someone who RPs (although not on DW), this would be a very nice thing to have. I usually register accounts RP accounts with the in-character month/day and my birth year in case I need to see adult content or something, which is sort of an awkward workaround.

Plus, if anything I think it'd increase accuracy of statistics to have a hidden system birth date, because the account holder could put in their real birthday for that and then display whatever birthday they want to the world. People who are paranoid about revealing their personal information the internet might still lie, but at least it reduces the incentive to.

[travelingmonkey]

This, definitely. I frequently choose random days/months because I very much dislike displaying my birthdate on the open web. It is one of the pieces of information people can use to get info about you, and I try to keep it from public wide-open internet as best I can.

[faithofone]

I think this is a brilliant idea. I don't RP, but I think being able to have an accurate date on there would be so cool.

[pseudomonas]

I think this might be a case for not displaying any date on the profile, and putting the date in the free-text section of the user info - this would additionally allow non-Gregorian dates, and so on.

[arethinn]

+1

[delladea]

I don't RP, but I don't see the harm in having this as an available option.

[exor674]

I +1 the "displayed birthdate", possibly as a free-text field -- which would mean that people could enter any form of date in there ( or other information, but there's really no harm in that )