White H.

It's 2016, everyone. Time to take a step away from the past.
Be aware that I am biased. I have played this game for over four years and I'm quite fond of it. Keep that in mind when I say the following;)

Alright, so, MMO for kids, what could go wrong?
Well, LOTS! I want to make this quick, though, so I'll just go through some of the issues parents have had with it in the past...

1) OMG NO MODERATION! MY KEEDS'LL FIND THE STALKERS! 11!:(
Hmm. Fair enough. There are a few people of an older crowd here, including myself- but that's not to say we're old! I'm a bit old for the game, and I've started phasing out of it, but is 13 years old too old to enjoy something innocent? You can decide that for yourself, really, but there are no 20 year olds playing this.

2) SECURITY?
Here are the updates that involve Safety that have been made in the past few years:
-Chat filter upgrades (Two. You can't even say regular things anymore, it's that good :P)
-Username Verification (The New Jammer status is now applied for longer so that your username can go through an upgraded filter. This takes around 2 weeks because of the server load. Old usernames that violate the rules were changed to Jammer[random character sting])
-Undercover moderators? (I can't confirm this. But I have lots of evidence)
-Community improvements (Not an upgrade in code, but an upgrade in togetherness :) )

3) OK FINE BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MATESS?
People used to "mate" on this site apparently? You guys must be reeealllyyy unlucky to find that because I have never seen it happen, nor have any of my friends. Or buddies, for that matter. I mean, it's a different story if you try and seek that out... but moderation has improved so much, I cannot fathom something like it in the present day.

Alright, adios.

I've seen my parents use this site before for the purposes of "checking on" games before I play them, and the results are laughable. The main reviewers on the site- those who are paid to do review the games, are terribly biased.
The main premise of the site is a place for parents to talk about and review media (as the name suggests) and share the ideas to the public, which works on paper, but everything has become terribly colluded.
I once read an article on their site about the "Top Ten Worst TV Shows For Kids" and Nick
S Fred was very high on the list. Fred was notorious for his YouTube career in the past, but the Television Show was quite tame. Most parents hated it for how annoying the character was, and though I agree with them, the site had no reservations when it came to bashing every single thing that was "bad for kids", when it truly wasn't.
(Spongebob was on this list. Are you kidding me?)

This goes for the game-by-game, website-by-website reviews as well. For example- there are two similar games called Animal Jam and Club Penguin- two MMOs that are built for kids and can be perfectly safe when used properly. As someone who has had experience with both games- one is obviously better than the other (coughanimaljamcough) but the parent who reviewed the site gave Club Penguin the better rating in Safety and Learning. This makes no sense to me as the Disney team hasn't updated their filter in years- you can say shiiiiiittt and other variations of swear words, but you can't say 'war', lol.
In the Learning category, it was given a 3/5, even though it has no educational content whatsoever, even Animal Jam has more educational tidbits than the Disney game. One of the selling points is actually the "education" aspects lol

I realize that turned into a bit of a rant about two reviews, but this circumstance applies all over the site.

There are, though, positive aspects, as there are negative ones. There are a handful of genuine reviews on the site, if you're willing to dig for them.

I also understand that this is a site built for concerned parents of young children, but really, take everything you see here with a grain of salt.

Thanks,
Whitehat

UPDATE:
I forgot to mention that I saw someone from the website commenting on an article about how to use a Proxy Server, haha. The typing style was very similar to one on the site and it drove me up a wall just reading it- the user using the official Common Sense account was ranting about how kids shouldn't have freedom on the internet. It made them come off as very standoffish. Not really the way to represent your website;)
But a good read if you like comment flamewars!