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Hey Lego! It's Chowderhead here, with a simple idea.

On a few other forums I go to, at the bottom, it shows when a user's birthday is.

So I'm thinking, maybe, on the bottom, when it's 2 days off from a person on your friends list's birthday, you could pop something down below the Users Online box about it?

It' a bit silly, but eh. Worth a shot!

I was going to be a nae sayer until i read this:

Chowderhead wrote:on your friends list

In that case, it would be a very warm addition to the site. Might frak with the bandwidth though.

It'd have to be a function that you can opt into rather than out of, mainly for the sake of younger users. Since being on a friend's list only requires an invite to be sent, it'd still be relatively simple for some pervert to add a bunch of users and stalk their profiles for their birthdays.

There are inherent risks that can only be fully mitigated by disallowing the function completely; the only other option is only having it available if the birth date you entered puts you at 16-18+, but even that is far from foolproof.

It may be a nice addition for users who are internet savvy, or who know what they're doing, but some younger users may not realise the harm showing their birthday could do, and i'm sure Lego would agree that the safety of users is paramount.

It would only be for the people that you have friended, not that friend you.

Sorry if I'm not being specific.

It's still not going to be hard to convince a young kid to list you as a friend.

"Hey, you play Ultramarines too? Cool! Let's be friends!"

Incidentally, does anyone here play Ultramarines?

...My ignore list is feeling lonely.

I played Ultramarines at one point.

Perhaps something informing you of your friends birthdays?

Would be cool.

Wouldn't it just be easier to add eachother on Facebook?

I already have added most of my dakka friends.

corpsesarefun wrote:I already have added most of my dakka friends.

You could see anyones birthday just don't include the year, then no one will know how old they are unless they reveal it themselves

While it would have some advantages, I purposefully left it out (compared to other forums) as I want dakka to be as anonymous as possible. The constant privacy loss from social networks, search engines, etc annoys me, so I like having this little corner of the Internet where I dont have to worry about it.

While you might counter that argument with 'only allow opt-in', I'd still prefer to avoid it as adding any new feature to the main forum page adds overhead that I'm eager to avoid. Only features that are useful to everybody qualify as being main page worthy.