[B0T.ikillyou]

Steam has a User Agreement which states all Steam "Subscribers" (basically, anyone who purchases a game on the steam store) must be at least the age of 13. Which is honestly probably just for various legal reasons.

However, I think its a good guideline for the server to maintain an age rule ourselves to the best of our abilities. Obviously I'm strongly against asking every player that comes on here their age as that would be really unnecessary. But I think it would be a great idea to not make our server become a place where children can become impressionable by the players on here. (no offense, but some of y'all say some mad inappropriate shit.) 

Currently we have no rules on our !motd or forums that say a player must be 13. This is totally fine in my opinion. Many things should go without saying and the !motd should be kept brief. I think any staff with some decency though should stay aware if they hear someone really young using the voice channel. There has been times where I've heard players that sound no older than 11, and I've kicked them without the smallest warning. This seems like common sense to me at many times at night when players are talking about god knows what, drugs, crimes, mental issues, the latest deviantart trends, chris chan, the list goes on... (on the other hand I've heard some children curse out our players harder than any adult ever could)
I personally think that if we are unsure of a players age, but they seem mature enough or keep to themselves enough, we should allow them on the server without intervening. We should never second guess or question what age a player says they are. This age rule should be loosely enforced in a sense, just pay attention to the obvious and never dig.

So in my opinion staff should kick children whenever a bell rings off in their head that they can avoid causing any trouble or letting someone get trolled. Even if this rule is never formalized I'm going to keep enforcing it loosely because frankly I am uncomfortable with the way some people treat really young players that pop into the server and I just think it's best for everyone. I can even recall back to my days of being a Regular and seeing Upper staff kick children when it was obvious they didn't have a clue what was going on in the game. So I've always just upheld a similar ideology

To add on to this:
According to COPPA (Federal Law in the US), if someone is using online services under the age of 13, we have to terminate their usage of the service if we collect information when they visit our service. This blocks us from bringing anyone to the community when they are under 13 without a COPPA form filled by their parents and sent to the owner of the site (AKA Dink). I used to be part of an old community that had to deal with COPPA and its a pain. I would just recommend avoiding it and not allowing anyone under the age of 13 to be part of the community. 

Now for the server though, there isn't a clear guideline in COPPA around handling of players that are under the age of 13 playing on our servers with permission from their parents. Garry's Mod Terms of service, on the other hand, state that the user must be 13 years or older to use the service. This means that if we do not get rid of someone under the age of 13, we might be in breach of Garry's Mod Terms of Service. 
In the end, there is no way to verify someone's age unless they explicitly tell us. If they don't tell us they are under the age of 13, we can't prove it. We also cannot assume someone's age because they do not want to tell us. Someone can sound 11 and be 13 or 15 or even 18. Someone can sound 30 and be 17, 15, or even 11. You never know. I would say we would need solid evidence or something darn close to it for us to get rid of someone just because they sound young.