> Nick Lo

> a. because the business wants to filter out minors > required for  
> legal reasons
> b. to plot the site demographic > required for business reasons
> c. to help in matching age groups > required for a more productive  
> use of the site.

IMHO, out of those, only a. is a valid reason for forcing a user to give their 
age.

b is useful to the business, but doesn't give anything to the user trying to
sign up. Going down this rationale opens up the floodgate for asking all sorts
of questions not directly related to the service the users are trying to sign up
to (why do I have to give an indication of my yearly salary if all I want to do
is sign up for this newsletter?)

c is an added value option, but only if the user wants to go down a 
personalisation
route...some may well be happy with a one-size-fits-all service.

Just thoughts,

P
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
________________________________
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
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