[I haven't seen this topic covered anywhere else, so a new thread seems appropriate.]
How can RHP be made a better site for younger children, and a site that their parents will feel more comfortable letting them subscribe to?
I'm thinking of this in the context of offering accounts to chess students through organizations such as America's Foundation for Chess, where RHP could both help thousands children and have the opportunity to increase its subscriptions. I would like to be able to recommend this site to the fifth grade chess class at my children's school, but feel that RHP is too adult-oriented.
I think this deserves careful consideration, and I'm sure this community has many good ideas. I think that any solution must support most current uses, and must take into account that all users are anonymous and that good behavior is basically voluntary. This may be an issue for some adult users as well, so I think any selection based on age alone is too simplistic.
Any changes suggested here must be feasible for the site operators.
forums
I think it is likely that younger site users do not want to use most of the forums. As a parent, I would like my 12 year old to be able to freely use some of the forums and parts of other forums.
One possible solution is to allow a user to select whether they want to see general content only or all site content. Then have all threads and posts flagged by the poster as either general or restricted (for more adult topics). Everyone would have access to general content, but content flagged as restricted would not be delivered to users who opted for general content only. Hopefully, such a flag would be enough. However, a moderator should be able to change this flag for any post.
messages
I expect that abusive messages are rare, but I would like some controls that my child could use to help maintain a more comfortable experience.
I would like a method for a user to complain to a moderator that an abusive message has been sent. It would also be nice to have a list of users whose messages are automatically filtered. This list could be maintained in the same way as the buddy list is.
games
I see nothing about the game format and play that requires changes.
Personally I think there are worse things kids could be doing then playing chess, no matter the site. . .
The reason why this is kid unfriendly, or even young adult unfriendly, is because you simply have to pay dollars, using a credit card, to fully benefit. Parents do not like the idea of having to pay ANYTHING for their kid to play online games, even if it is chess. We live in an UBER capitalist society where everyone hugs their money like it's their first love, I'm afraid. The game is even unfriendly towards ppl in their young 20's, because many of us never even bothered to get credit cards, because with college and our SUCKY JOBS (only old people nowadays are allowed to have good jobs), we are straped for cash, and it's just not financially responsible to bother geting a credit card.
BTW, this site is a lot better for children, then say, Yahoo. I used to play on Yahoo, but after hundreds of games with only 1-10 min games (nobody will play you if you have anything over 10 min) and seeing nothing but scholar's mate, I realized this is a terrible site for me, or any child for that matter, to ever improve his/her chess game.
BTW, Yahoo is filled with testosterone filled teenagers that simply go too far (it's chess guys, meet girls somewhere else), and porn in general. In yahoo it's not uncommon for someone with a supposive female handle to jump into the fray and say, "Any sexy nerdy guy chess players wanna f*** me", and other rediculous stuff. The place is filled with whores, and even has sex/dating ads (created by bots of the users and even ads of the site itself), and some of those sex ads are even under age girls, it's SICK, and Yahoo has done nothing to clean it up.
The players on Yahoo are also generally unfriendly, and their forum, if you can even call it that, is such a joke, again, it's filled with sexual innuendos, and Americans and Arabs posting posts wanting to genocide each other (I'm not kiding here).
The Yahoo rating system is also rediculous, my rating is very low, only 1450, yet I have beaten 2000 plus raters before in games where we have an hour to think each. Safe to say, I seem to be underated and everyone else overated, the site is not very accurate in player strenght, I have also seen rediculous ratings of 3000 plus, and I haven't seen anyone with a rating lower then 1000. RHP rating system seems a lot more realistic to where you stand.
RHP seems a lot more friendly to children, then say, Yahoo, that's for sure.
What could be done, is if the site ever generates a huge surplus of $$$ a year due to subscription, Russ could offer, say, a free month to the users equivalent to a subscription account. This would be good for the kids, and once the budget is balanced, Russ should then offer subscriptions again. Although this may be hard to implement and may mess up others current accounts. . .
Originally posted by zucchiniExcellent post!
How can RHP be made a better site for younger children, and a site that their parents will feel more comfortable letting them subscribe to?
Seriously, I agree that a few of the threads or posts on the forums are of a sort that I might rather not have a kid read, but most are fine. I don't want to take anything away from the enjoyment of everyone else, but I also do think it could be wonderful to encourage kids to play chess, not necessarily instead of, but at least in addition to, some of the other games that seem to be popular nowadays.
I like zucchini's suggestions for flagging threads and for an "ignore" list. I recommend the ideas heartily.
Best Regards,
Paul