**Please note that the following article was written BEFORE youth email. That program and the high degree of safety that it provides has answered the question. What is described below is the youth email program, the ideas I had for it and how it is designed. It is now in effect and has proven highly successful :)

Now in fact, our Jr Members are even included in a special safe meeting room.

For safety, email addys are now clipped from all posts, including adults**

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One thing which saddens me terribly is that email for those under 18 has had to be shut down. Likely some of you have noticed that the email links do not work for those whose last initial only is shown, indicating that they are minors.

I've been criticized for requiring truth from our junior members as well as from adults. Truth breeds order. Anonymity is what causes people, adult or child to behave like animals. That is the major reason for our inviolable policy. The Board also upholds this decision.

I just got an email from one junior member who is quite sad that her work is not getting comments. It needed some work so I helped by correcting one of her posts and carefully showing her what was wrong.

It is understandable. Few care to make a public comment which might be critical. That is one of the major reasons that authors have email links. But at the moment, except for myself, one cannot email a minor.

Unfortunately there are those on the web who would stalk children. That is why this our no-email policy is in effect. But this policy is harming many young, would-be writers.

Since our membership system gives a high degree of control, it is possible to have our cake and eat it. What I have in mind is adult mentors who would enjoy working with kids. The emails can go through the site and neither would have the other's email address. The return address would be something like Kids The emails could be checked before being forwarded and they would simply appear to come from the site. They could, of course, contain the author ID of each person so the child and adult might know each other a bit better.

The ultimate protection, is that if any member abused this system, they could be booted. The fact that we have address info on everyone would also make a member think twice about any untoward advances. Booting would cut the cord entirely since only members can email each other. Frankly I believe that if members are aware of this, the threat will be sufficient to stop any problem.

What do we need? First I need to get the system to handle this type of email. Not a huge project but will take a few days. Next we need a person(s) who will scan the emails to be sure they are safe. They would be sure that email addys are not in the body and that the email doesn't contain anything which could be a problem.

Lastly, we need people who like kids and wouldn't mind helping guide a young writer. Better yet, people who love kids and would jump at the opportunity.

As you can likely tell from my tone, this upsets me very much. I love kids and help them individually when time permits.

Is anyone else interested? Please consider this: It is very rewarding to watch a young mind bloom and such a terrible thing to see one who could be great, give up in frustration.

If so leave a comment and/or email me.

One other item associated with this is that we all need to be vigilant. The site uses age-filtering to keep it safe for children. It is totally transparent because it uses YOUR age to determine what choice of literature you see. It does the same for children, but it clips out anything which is rated higher than their age. Being transparent, it is quite easy to overlook. PLEASE check the age rating found at the top of ALL works you read. If you feel they are inappropriate (I found one today and changed it), Please email me with the article's number. Obviously, I can change anything on the site and will when needed.

Also, please check our Junior Member's works. Sometimes they include an email addy. That needs to be brought to my attention so it can be removed for safety.

Added 8/9/2002: The email system is just about ready. One other thing which has been done is that the child's last name is clipped from any post, comment etc. they make automatically. They also cannot enter any email address in any post or comment. Those are also automatically removed.

bob