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

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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%)