Even at the bigger cons which have enough staff to police it, it’s a damned difficult thing to do. You can’t card everyone at the door, panel rooms have to be turned over as quickly as possible (and you can’t force that kind of liability onto your volunteers), people are in costume or just look really young, and that’s even ignoring the seemingly infinite technical issues that every convention is plagued with, etc. etc.
Not saying you’re wrong, it’s just not as simple as “telling them they can’t”. The kind of people that would bring their kid to a hazbin panel aren’t the kind of people that will give a shit about the inconvenient convention rules in the first place.
Which brings me to my suggested solution: Make a rule about it and give every volunteer a cattle prod.
Eeh, more complicated than that. Enforcing age restrictions is an obnoxiously complex issue, even though by all reasonable measures it shouldn’t be.
The #1 priority of a con is protecting its panelists & volunteers, and while keeping the panelists comfortable is a critical aspect, enforcement of the conditions they need for adult panels can be a logistical nightmare. It’s why so many cons are moving away from having any adult oriented panels at all, and it’s really sad to see that the most reasonable solution is to just not have them.
Yeah, at the end of the day though you have to set realistic expectations and if you can’t round up the staff with that then you can’t have it. Trying to card check everyone coming into the room would just take too long.
Make a rule at the conventioans and prevent them from entering …?
Even at the bigger cons which have enough staff to police it, it’s a damned difficult thing to do. You can’t card everyone at the door, panel rooms have to be turned over as quickly as possible (and you can’t force that kind of liability onto your volunteers), people are in costume or just look really young, and that’s even ignoring the seemingly infinite technical issues that every convention is plagued with, etc. etc.
Not saying you’re wrong, it’s just not as simple as “telling them they can’t”. The kind of people that would bring their kid to a hazbin panel aren’t the kind of people that will give a shit about the inconvenient convention rules in the first place.
Which brings me to my suggested solution: Make a rule about it and give every volunteer a cattle prod.
Wait, you think they care if the teenagers get in? We’re talking about the elementary school kids.
Eeh, more complicated than that. Enforcing age restrictions is an obnoxiously complex issue, even though by all reasonable measures it shouldn’t be.
The #1 priority of a con is protecting its panelists & volunteers, and while keeping the panelists comfortable is a critical aspect, enforcement of the conditions they need for adult panels can be a logistical nightmare. It’s why so many cons are moving away from having any adult oriented panels at all, and it’s really sad to see that the most reasonable solution is to just not have them.
Yeah, at the end of the day though you have to set realistic expectations and if you can’t round up the staff with that then you can’t have it. Trying to card check everyone coming into the room would just take too long.