Increase the Minimum Required Age of Your Members + All Ning Mentions in Terms of Service Now Removed

[Eric Suesz]

Hello, again, Network Creators. Seasons greetings!

We made a few changes today that I think most of you will be happy to hear about. You now have more choices about who can sign up for your network — specifically around the age of new members.

FIrst, you now have the choice to increase the minimum required age of your members. Is your network only meant for Baby Boomers who are over 60? You can now change the minimum age to reflect this. And your Terms of Service will be automatically changed to reflect your new age requirement.

Second, you can now do away altogether with asking for birth dates during sign up. Your new members will still be required to accept your Terms of Service (with a minimum age of 13), even if you turn off the birth date check.

You'll find these new options in the Members > Controls section of your management dashboard.

We also updated your network’s default Terms of Service to add our standard DMCA notice guidelines and to remove the last few mentions of “Ning.” There is no longer any mention of Ning in your default network Terms of Service.

I know that most of these have been requested in the past a number of times, so we’re happy to be giving you these new options.

Hope your holidays are looking bright!

[Evan]

This feature was 100% opt-in and it's rollout shouldn't have changed a single thing on your Ning Network. For features like this, we'll try to provide notice, but if it doesn't affect your Ning Network we're typically not as tight about warning.

/Evan

[Chris]

Eric - I'm not sure Celina was off topic. This release caused problems with sign-ups yesterday, as shown in the ticket I submitted (ref:00D8cCLt.5004DXRvF:ref), and in other discussions here. Celina's concern appears to be that she's selected 25 as the minimum age but fears that it won't be enforced as she's also selected 'no' for requiring members to give a birthdate.

 

Thank you for your respons Evan. However I bumped into several comments today about new members not being able to sign up due to the age thing whilst the NC's didn't even know about it. Therefore didn'r activate it either. So it makes me wonder or even worry I might have missed out on new members as well without knowing it. Minimum age on my network has always been 25+ which is stated clearly on the signup page. I did change it in the control panel but checked the "no" button afraid it won't work the way it should

 

[Chris]

@celina - it appears to be ok now, but I'd test it by activating it, then signing up yourself.

[celina[D]]

Thank you Chris. I will test it

[Janettee McCrary]

Nope, this doesn't sound off-topic to me either!

[Janettee McCrary]

I'm very frustrated that this was announced after "the cat was let out of the bag" so to speak... And also very frustrated that there has been no response to my posts about this, which were posted this morning:

New "Ask For Birthday" and "Minimum Age" Features

We Need 48 Hour Advance Notice Of Changes and Tutorials Of New Feat...

[JFarrow]

thanks eric....i appreciate the update but I am having trouble with some age old existing ning features..most notably the DISAPPEARING KEYWORDS SITEWIDE, non validating Video and Photo RSS feeds to be honest i have stopped contributing to the creators forum until these things are fixed.  Theres nothing like driving a ton of traffic to a site which no longer has the essentials...please speak to your fellow ningers as I am not alone in thinking that it would be better to fix what is broken before adding any new features

[JFarrow]

how else can you get the attention of a higher-up?  probably the first "off-topic" post i have EVER made...frustrated

[Eric Suesz]

You might want to open a different discussion or a ticket, JFarrow, so we can take a look at your issue.

[Patrick Chappelle]

The age thing I could take it or leave it (I took it just because), but the removal of "Ning" from the TOS is huge! Thanks a million Team Ning!

[Dave99]

Hey Thunder X, it is "huge" for Ning to fulfill its promise to become fully white label in return for NC's paying for their social networks using the Ning platform. I believe Ning is now acting in good faith in this matter.

Please remember that if your networks don't allow members to add Ning Apps, they still let  all visitors or members see "This Ning Network doesn't have any Apps yet." when they click on any member's profile page.

Ning's Phil McCluskey promised to fix this soon (see here). In the meantime, I've used the language editor to change from "This Ning Network doesn't have any Apps yet" to "This network doesn't use custom apps" on my networks.

[Eric Suesz]

That is saying something coming from you. Glad to hear that this is a welcome change for you.