On SE it's very simple. You can be as young as 16 in the EU, or as young as 13 in the US.
Otherwise your account gets nuked.
But fundamentally, there's nothing stopping you from just lying. Mods only have to escalate things if they know you're underage. Also don't do anything stupid.
I managed the server for a few sites, including one that contained naughties, and access logs actually showed a drop when it added an 18+ disclaimer. I've always since wondered why in the world anyone would actually have obeyed that.
There's no custodian of records for website users.
That would be horrific.
I think there actually have been a few underage mods on SE that were found out.
I wonder how many simply haven't been found out. Probably not many, since they'd likely give themselves away by virtue of immaturity (childish immaturity at least).
@forest Age and maturity really aren't linked that well. SE's had some great mods who were under 18 (before it was against the rules of course), and also plenty of not-so-great ones well above that age.
@NobodyNeedsNames No, same limit, but I'm a mod on Crypto.SE and I'm required by the moderator agreement to tell staff of anyone I know of on my site who is under 16. Escalation just means I tell staff that you're underage and they'll check if you live in the EU, and if so then they'll ban you if you're under 16. But if you don't live in the EU, you can be as young as 13.
@NobodyNeedsNames Eh, just to make it easy for my report... How old are you? I think I need a link to the comment where you say you're underage but I can't find it in the scroll log.
If it's moved, then for some reason it doesn't remember that you starred it (so it shows as black), but if you try to re-star it, it realizes that you already starred it. And maybe it's a bug.
you can ping someone who hasn't visited the chat room before or hasn't been in the room for too long
you can actually ping someone who doesn't even have a chat account; superpinging someone by their main profile will force create a chat profile for them IIRC
it immediately goes to their inbox instead of waiting for 15 minutes like usual
They probably won't notify you unless they deem you to be in the EU, in which case you'll be notified because your account will be deleted. I think they check based on what IP you're using, but I'm not 100% sure.
I may or may not be notified. If I am notified, they'll probably juts say "we've handled it".
There's a mod agreement you have to sign. It's kinda like an oath, I guess.
@NobodyNeedsNames Yes. It's a lot of math.
You're the first kid who signed up to the site as far as I'm aware.
Speaking of which, you can probably ask Dalmarus about how the system works. I think he's the judge of this (he's staff). He'll probably be the one nuking your account if it's determined that you're in the EU. I'm not privy to the details.
But presumably, if you're not in the EU, then they'll just make a note on your account that you're underage but not in violation of European privacy laws. Not sure how it works (first time I've done this).
Here's a great introduction: moserware.com/2009/09/stick-figure-guide-to-advanced.html (that's AES explained with stick figures, it's both entertaining and enlightening, and explains both the simple concepts using pictures as well as the math for those who want to know)
Fun fact if you're reading the AES stick figure page: The cipher called Lucifer was named such because the program they used was called DEMONSTRATION (it was a demo cipher), but old-fashioned filesystems limited the length of the filename to 8 characters (5 in the name plus 3 for the extension), so it became DEMON.EXE. Thus the name "Lucifer" was born.
