I wanted to address the change in minimum age we've made to PonyCrush, explain how its been implemented, and why the change has been made. I apologize personally for having not put some form of announcement out to PonyCrush users ahead of time.
So now, PonyCrush accepts users 14 years or older.
To protect users under 18, any dating related capabilities are shut off, and all inappropriate user content is inaccessible. There are no settings or profile options to enable them either.
To protect our older users, Explore will not list underage users when you search for users by gender / interest. (They are in the full member list of course)
With the situation hopefully clarified better for everyone, I'd like to explain the decision itself. First and foremost, PonyCrush is a social network. It was never intended to be a "dating site".. not in the traditional sense. It's an experimental attempt at something new. It has the capacity to find users you may be interested in plutonically or romantically ...even professionally. It's an attempt at a universal social network. By that, I don't mean a bloated Facebook clone that has everything but the kitchen sink.. I mean, PonyCrush is intended to be a receptive community platform for a broad spectrum of users, leaving it to the user to use it to pursue friends, relationships, gamer clans, artists, whatever at their own liberty... all while remaining minimalist and easy to navigate.
Opening the site up to teens has always been an original intention of mine. The only reason it wasn't implemented at launch is that the site wasn't ready for it. There weren't solid measures in place to protect younger users, so it remained 18+.
With the news of BronySquare and PonySquare shutting down at the end of the month, I decided to finish what little was still required for the site to handle teen users and activate what's moreorless been a dormant feature.
In conclusion, I hope you all will rest assured that this was carefully planned out and built right, and the community isn't going to drastically change. Any users of any age who are seen as instigating drama, spamming, or any other trouble will be reprimanded as they always have. PonyCrush is to always remain a laid-back community.
Everyone's feedback, concerns, and ideas are welcome in this discussion thread.
With the situation hopefully clarified better for everyone, I'd like to explain the decision itself. First and foremost, PonyCrush is a social network. It was never intended to be a "dating site".. not in the traditional sense. It's an experimental attempt at something new. It has the capacity to find users you may be interested in plutonically or romantically ...even professionally. It's an attempt at a universal social network. By that, I don't mean a bloated Facebook clone that has everything but the kitchen sink.. I mean, PonyCrush is intended to be a receptive community platform for a broad spectrum of users, leaving it to the user to use it to pursue friends, relationships, gamer clans, artists, whatever at their own liberty... all while remaining minimalist and easy to navigate.
Opening the site up to teens has always been an original intention of mine. The only reason it wasn't implemented at launch is that the site wasn't ready for it. There weren't solid measures in place to protect younger users, so it remained 18+.
With the news of BronySquare and PonySquare shutting down at the end of the month, I decided to finish what little was still required for the site to handle teen users and activate what's moreorless been a dormant feature.
In conclusion, I hope you all will rest assured that this was carefully planned out and built right, and the community isn't going to drastically change. Any users of any age who are seen as instigating drama, spamming, or any other trouble will be reprimanded as they always have. PonyCrush is to always remain a laid-back community.
Everyone's feedback, concerns, and ideas are welcome in this discussion thread.
