´óÏó´«Ã½ iD on C´óÏó´«Ã½
As we approached the Bank Holiday, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's community team heaved a huge sigh of relief as we entered the final phase of roll out for C´óÏó´«Ã½.
The ´óÏó´«Ã½ ID system is already being used on numerous ´óÏó´«Ã½ services aimed at 'grown-ups' like message boards, ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer and Lab UK - wherever a sign in is required.
But migrating existing Children's services presented its own problems and a fair bit of head-scratching in the last few months.
With over 12 large scale games and activities (aimed specifically at 6-12s) already using the old SSO sign in system, the C´óÏó´«Ã½ site represented the largest number of active SSO users in the ´óÏó´«Ã½.
So it wasn't as simple as just turning on one system and pulling the plug on the other.
From audience feedback we know some of users have invested weeks, months and often years playing these games, nurturing their Roar safari parks, building up reputations and contributing UGC. It would be a hard man who would turn round and say all of that was for nothing. But more importantly we wouldn't want their enduring memory of ´óÏó´«Ã½ online services, during their most formative years, to be a sense that we just didn't care.
So the team had a double challenge to ensure that the data our users have amassed within their SSO accounts eg game points scored, saved submissions or progress within games would be follow with them to the new system whilst also protecting their safety.
Big challenge 1: Keeping user data
As SSO for C´óÏó´«Ã½ did not require an email address to be provided during registration it was commonplace for users to open different accounts for each game or activity. The styling on individual games also seemed to confuse people that one sign in did not fit all. At one time we estimated there were 3 million active accounts amongst a potential available audience of just 4.2 million children.
By contrast the 'adult' full-fat ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD sign up requires users to provide an email address and limits users to one account per email address.
This gave us an important decision to make - do we ask users to select just one of their accounts and to resign themselves to losing all other accounts and the data saved against these accounts? Or do we allow users to transfer the data from all their accounts into their one new ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD account?
As recognition of the loyalty and commitment of our users, we decided to create a system by which they could keep their accounts.
A 'transfer' or 'coalescence' tool was built and users are passed through this (ably guided by a one-eyed bunny character) as part of the registration process. C´óÏó´«Ã½ is unique within the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in offering this coalescence.
Challenge 2: Safety
As always safety of our users is paramount and, as such, with the launch of ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD, we have also taken the opportunity to add another layer of safety by introducing a Display Name Generator.
Whereas adults signing up to ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD can use any username they like and repeatedly change their display name through their account settings, this feature would create a major undertaking for C´óÏó´«Ã½ in terms of additional moderation. Profanity filters can be used to ensure offensive screen names are excluded but we have an extra duty of care to guarantee kids don't inadvertently reveal their identities to all and sundry.
Consider an innocuous screen-name like MarcW127RJ. With a first name and postcode information like this, that child could be easily identified. (The astute among you will have worked out that's my work address).
So to help C´óÏó´«Ã½ users keep themselves safe when signing up we also ask them to create a unique Display Name from a pre-filled word generator of random colours, adjectives and nouns. Expect to see a RedFieryLobster or ChocolatePancakeDude appearing on the messageboards anyday now.
Inevitably, some long-term regular users have objected to having the previous naming freedom restricted but when delved deeper we discovered most of these had actually outgrown our age band. And the children we've met in user testing seem to appreciate the safety benefits this system brings.
And it appears that our worst fears that children could just get confused by the whole process have been confounded.
In the first 10 days of offering the chance to coalesce data we have had over 45,000 users visiting the transfer tool and close to 72,000 users visiting the Display Name Generator (both old and new).
Any thoughts on how we can improve the process would be gratefully appreciated.
Yours SaphireSingingSamba.
Marc Goodchild is Head of Interactive and On Demand, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's.
Comment number 1.
At 4th May 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:"Consider an innocuous screen-name like MarcW127RJ. With a first name and postcode information like this, that child could be easily identified. (The astute among you will have worked out that's my work address).
..//..
And it appears that our worst fears that children could just get confused by the whole process have been confounded.
In the first 10 days of offering the chance to coalesce data we have had over 45,000 users visiting the transfer tool and close to 72,000 users visiting the Display Name Generator (both old and new).Any thoughts on how we can improve the process would be gratefully appreciated."
Stop being paranoid for starters and start thinking the problem through (just like NASA did with Apollo 13...), surely the UK postal code string has got to be the most easiest charter strings to spot via a server-side program, so why not just reject any user-name that contains such a string, then why not reject all user-names that contain a text-numeral string (that would catch any Postal codes that that slip through, perhaps were a kid might split it such as "W12Marc7RJ") and where found suggest suitable alternate user-names - most kids in the target age group are likely to accept a suggested 'name' if their first choice fails for what ever reason.
Also, can you tell us if the originally suggested age restriction remains (you blogged about it last year, and had quite a number of comments against it), there are parents who will want to use there own ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD's [1] to check on what their kids have - and perhaps are doing, in real time, on a different computer - whilst anyone up to no good can easily just lie and set up a kids C´óÏó´«Ã½ iD anyway...
[1] and if so, making them read only perhaps when used on any content needing a C´óÏó´«Ã½ iD log-in perhaps?
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Comment number 2.
At 5th May 2010, Alex Cockell wrote:Oh - how about this issue as well? It'smore related to the adult ´óÏó´«Ã½ IDs... but I had to obfuscate my surname on my ID... as it hit the profanity filter.
Please could you consider whitelisting words that are in the name fields when someone is registered... my surname "Cockell" for instance.
Just a thought..
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Comment number 3.
At 5th May 2010, Mark Stickley wrote:Really sorry about that, Alex! You'll be happy to know that we have seen the error in our overly restrictive profanity filtering ways and will soon release a new version of the code that will see a less stroppy swear-stopper.
And yes, you will be able to use your real name :)
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Comment number 4.
At 5th May 2010, Hyperstar wrote:Im a adult so I cant get on to C´óÏó´«Ã½
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Comment number 5.
At 5th May 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:#4. At 6:58pm on 05 May 2010, Hyperstar wrote:
"Im a adult so I cant get on to C´óÏó´«Ã½"
But that's the point, with a bit of lateral thinking anyone can get on any age restricted website, kids can get on 'adult' sites (bar those that take and verify credit card number strings) and adults can get on 'kids sites', not only should the ´óÏó´«Ã½ NOT be acting in loco parentis (via the websites back-end scripting) when kids use the ´óÏó´«Ã½ websites but their current policy is lulling the child, parent and ´óÏó´«Ã½ in to a fails sense of security.
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Comment number 6.
At 6th May 2010, Keith wrote:I think the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should consider altering the restrictions on the C´óÏó´«Ã½ sites so that adults have 'read only' access (ie. can view the boards but not post). This would still still provide some safeguards whilst allowing parents to view what they're children are posting.
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Comment number 7.
At 6th May 2010, Hyperstar wrote:It should be read-only access for adults
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Comment number 8.
At 25th May 2010, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:The ´óÏó´«Ã½ have gone very quite in this blog...
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