Posted by Larry Hoover on March 15, 2006, at 10:13:21
In reply to Please don't make posting more difficult, posted by itsme2003 on March 15, 2006, at 2:14:08
I'm going to edit hard.
> I feel compassion for those people who could be triggered by something contained in a post. I really, really do.
Then please listen, again, to what is being asked of you. What I propose might possibly never affect you, as an individual poster. I feel like we've drifted off the target to such an extent that a lot of energy is being misdirected.
> You might ask why I don't post here much. It's because of those arbitrary and whimsical civility rules.
Please don't lump this valid issue in with Bob's poorly implimented civility rules. No one but him has ever grasped that he uses the operator "could". {hyperbole} I'm as confused as you are. But, I have/had every intention of making this implementation different than any rule that has come before it. There would be no doubt, when I am through with it. Trust me, the whole process needs another look.
It is a challenging issue to define. I will commit myself to seeing this through, to the satisfaction of all, Babble willing.
> I'd hate to be subjected to a constant nagging because I failed to imagine every possible way that something could be triggering to someone.
I, the main proponent of mandatory flagging, did not ask for that. I asked for protection from core and obvious triggering posts. Believe me, you would not be in doubt of what they are, when I am through with working at each stage of the process. Nor do I believe you would question why I would have them so designated.
Perhaps I was in error, placing the mandatory/voluntary issue first. Let us set that aside, then, and face the other aspects of the challenge directly.
> I obviously fall into the can't be triggered / don't care group.
So obviously, that you didn't even need to say it. Truly, I knew, even before I got to that specific sentence in your post. Not meaning anything negative by it. Just saying.
> First, you could set up a filter that would look for certain words and phrases and if they exist in a message, then you could turn on a flag within that message. Secondly, your moderators could also turn on the flag for any post that wasn't caught by the filters.
The fact that you might even make such an unwieldy suggestion demonstrates to me that you have not grasped what I should have made very clear....I thought I had, but I thought a lot of things about my earlier posts, which have turned out to be in error.
I only seek protection from explicit and graphic depictions of trauma (I'm collapsing all the listed concepts into a single term for convenience of debate).
The mere mention of the word suicide, or cutting, is not triggering to me. Word screening could not possibly target the posts with the vivid depictions in them, without inevitably picking a vast number of false positives, as well. Word screening protocols are the worst possible solution. I'll try to give an illustrative example.
I went through a bout of psychotic depression, in which I was locked into profound suicidal ideation. (No triggers so far). I found that I could not cast my eyes on an object without seeing it as an agent of my own death. (Still not a trigger, by my definition.) I could not look upon a tree, without seeing its branches as places to suspend a rope. (trigger) I could see the nooses hanging from the tree. (trigger)
The keywords suicide and death are not triggers here. Yet branch and rope are, because of the way they are used. Word screening would have flagged the wrong posts, and missed the right ones altogether, unless noose was on the list. I can't even think of how you'd manage words like pills. No word screening protocol considers context. Our brains do, and they do so automatically.
In a typical day, of the hundreds of posts I read, I have never found more than 3 trigger posts. And most days I find none, except when we've had certain individuals among us, or when I'm reading specific boards/threads.
I am not looking for boards awash in red trigger flags. That would quite defeat the purpose. Nor am I looking for anyone to feel like they are in trouble over this. But, without consequences, there is no real protection offered. That is the only reason I seek a mandatory designation. I feel quite safe walking out of the bank with cash in my wallet, confident that the considerations of my peers will keep me from being robbed. But that may only be so because there are policemen, and consequences, backing up my faith, and that of my peers. Robbery still exists, but no other system could keep its incidence as low as it is.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:614568
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060225/msgs/620573.html