Comment on Open Thread, February 1-14, 2013

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:59:00 GMT

It is ok and not at all inappropriate to seek help here.

I think it is. We are not suicide experts, we know nothing about how to help, and our attempts to help can easily backfire. And this is assuming that we are not being trolled, attacked, or drama queened (anyone can say that they have contributions under another account). Let us recall that pdf23ds asked for LW help with his sleep problems which did nothing, and LWers attempting to follow up on his posted suicide note apparently did not solve the problem.

The big sites like Wikipedia generally have a policy of:

1. not encouraging amateurs to engage in therapy-over-the-internet and other-optimization

2. having the admins escalate to looking up IP addresses and contacting locals

3. providing the concerned user with a suicide hotline number

I don't see any reason that this should not be implemented on LW as well.

Discuss