PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT
The Internet has opened a whole new world of possibilities for countless millions of people worldwide to share information and entertainment as well as to communicate with one another.
But, not all information and entertainment venues may be appropriate for all ages. In the same way that there may be establishments in your town or city that you would not allow your children to patronize or areas that you would not allow them to visit unattended, there are sites on the Internet that you might object to your children visiting on-line.
In our opinion, parents should be actively involved in their children's travels on the Internet in the same way that they, hopefully, monitor what their children watch on television and where they wander in their neighborhoods.
In addition to providing an effective screening mechanism for parents, this kind of involvement can lead to mutual discoveries and adventures for parent and child, the development of a bond of shared experiences.
Please take the time to review this site — and all other sites on the Internet your children might visit — to determine whether you feel that the content is appropriate for your children before allowing them access to it.
CONTENT GUIDE
The entertainment programming on this site includes material for audiences of varying ages and reading ability.
The StoryBooks section contains stories that are written and illustrated for the enjoyment of people of all ages, young and old. The reading is generally easy, though young children will still need the help of an adult to make out some of the words. Hopefully, parents will enjoy this section as much as their children.
The Online Comics section contains stories which will appeal to older audiences, mainly teens and adults. The storylines are more mature, the characters are older and the reading level is more difficult. As these are adventure stories, they contain some occasional violence and dramatic situations similar to what might be found during primetime television viewing hours.
RATINGS
As early visitors to our site will remember, we initially included a rating system somewhat similar to that employed for movies and television shows to guide parents regarding the content of our stories. Our system was already a simplified alternative approach to some of the complex and convoluted rating schemes being proposed for on-line content by a variety of competing companies and organizations.
The feedback we received clearly indicated that, given the nature of the entertainment programming on our site, ratings weren't really helpful and only served to add unnecessary complexity and confusion for the reader and casual web surfer.
As a result, we eliminated content ratings from later incarnation of our entertainment section, opting instead to heed the advice of our readers who suggested that we continue to provide quality programming and allow the visitors to our site to use their own cognitive faculties to judge for the appropriateness of our stories for themselves and their children.
We invite you to drop us a note and weigh in on this issue. We'd love to hear what you think!
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