Pointless raiting restrictions... - by lost_soul
Shadowcat on 21/7/2009 at 07:19
<rant>
What royally fucks me off about those birth date selectors is how unnecessarily onerous they are.
Sure, have an "age check". That's fine. The user claims they're old enough, and you're covered (I guess). But don't make me pick a day, and then a month, and then a year out of your select lists. That's retarded. And you all implement it that way, so you're ALL RETARDED.
And if you absolutely must do it like that, there are still ways to make it less annoying. I've only ever seen a single case where the three select lists started at the first actual value, rather than some kind of "please choose a value" or blank default. You bloody know that everyone will pick "1" for day and month (unless their mouse moves a little further than they intended), so at least start those lists with that selected so that I don't have to. And similarly with the year... could you maybe sort it chronologically so I can choose the first value, instead of having to scroll it down 20 years or more?
But absolutely none of that is necessary. All they actually want to do is get the user to say "yes, I'm 18 years old" (or however old) before continuing, so your form should consist of precisely two submit buttons, one of which says "I am <n> years of age, or older", the other says "I am under <n> years of age", for whichever <n> you are concerned about.
The user clicks the button they feel like clicking, and everyone is happy.
HOW IS THIS NOT OBVIOUS TO YOU, YOU IRRITATING BASTARDS?
It's not as if you're stopping people from lying by asking them to enter their birth date.
SubJeff on 21/7/2009 at 08:05
More like pointless time learning spelling at school.
Come on people, the number of these errors in thread titles is embarrassing now. What if the Eidos forums Thief lot come over? How will we look? Eh?
june gloom on 21/7/2009 at 08:11
I think if we just took away lost_soul's right to make new threads posts, that would cut down on the spelling errors some.
Matthew on 21/7/2009 at 09:00
The one that annoys me is Steam's version. OK, it's good in some ways that you don't store my information, but incredibly fucking annoying that the flipside of that requires me to input my date of birth every bloody time.
Koki on 21/7/2009 at 09:52
Especially since they keep your information anyway.
Matthew on 21/7/2009 at 10:40
Exactly! If I've asked them to keep my info to assist with purchasing, the damn thing should store my age rating too.
addink on 21/7/2009 at 11:45
Having built and implemented the damn things, all I can say is it's all the fault of the legal department.
They insist that people are required to enter their full birth date. Apparently 'some countries' require this by law. The completely valid argument that a button stating 'Yes, it it legal for me to view the content' is as effective and certainly less frustrating, doesn't count for anything at all.
Also, the age may not be stored in a cookie or some such because in a lot households a single user account is used by all. Thus possibly not querying the age of a minor.
Nameless Voice on 21/7/2009 at 17:51
Hands up, all those who were born on 01/01/1970!
Speaking of which, check the TTLG birthdays for the 1st of January - you'll be surprised at how many people will be 40 on that day next year.
I think I got forbidden from using a site once for putting in 01/01/1900.
jay pettitt on 21/7/2009 at 18:38
Yup - utterly pointless. I might think game related sites might have a leg to stand on if the entire game related industry didn't equate 'mature' with free license to flog inappropriate and amoral crap to children with impressionable minds.
On the up-side, those little age verification things are fair warning to grown-ups that the content is going to be banal, childish, fighty-fighty tosh that some rather sad men who should know better are hoping to use to deprive adolescent boys of their pocket money and we can go elsewhere without having to sit through the whole embarrassing performance.
