I’ve got an uncomfortable problem as the owner of this board which I’m going to try to explain and then ask for your understanding as I create a new policy for the board.
We all now know that communities develop on the web that allow for a kind of mutual support, information-sharing and other good stuff. We could debate the wisdom of that, but we all know it’s here and not going away.
Threads about mental health and medical topics make me uncomfortable. First, it’s not really where people need to go with this category of problems. People can give good advice and people can give crappy advice. Sometimes there’s a lot at stake.
If someone is ill and seeking support, and not advice, I think it’s fine to post. But, inevitably, some people are going to start chiming in with advice. It’s perfectly understandable and even laudable, but it needs to go to email.
The best way to avoid this is to respectfully insist that people not post about mental health topics, in particular, and not ask for or give advice on medical topics in general.
Also, obesity is a medical topic. Everybody agrees with that.
If we cannot discuss individual apathy, I respectfully demand that the obesity threads currently in existance be deleted as well. They, too, have had tons of advice on a medical issue, namely that of obesity. Delete them now, please, and redirect everybody to private email conversations.
You (Dale) will have to be consistent in order to get respect and be taken seriously with this matter.
I think Dale’s concern is especially with psychological discussions, as he is a mental health professional, and there are issues of professional ethics which put him in a very bad real-world situation when his discussion boards are used for dispensing advice on these matters.
Ordering Dale around doesn’t become or endear you. It’s his Forum and he has spoken and taken the actions he sees fit. I see no way you (or any chiffster) can “respectfully demand” anything in this context.
Then replace “respectfully demand” with “humbly suggest” if it better pleases you. I used “respectfully demand” because I wanted to convey (respectfully) that this is a very serious issue and I am not raising objections lightly. Of course I know this is Dale’s board and he could make it pink and purple and allow people to write only in Russian if he wanted to, but just because something is possible doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the best way for it to be.
In the end (whichever words you use or don’t use), the underlying issue here remains unchanged: inconsistency is being shown. It’s inconsistent to disallow posts discussing apathy (in Flyingcursor’s case) or other physical health issues (in my case previously) and yet at the same time allow such posts that deal with BOTH personal physical and mental health where much medical advice is given and taken (the obesity threads).
The policy makes perfect sense. Even if you don’t agree, this isn’t a democracy and your opinion (and mine) count for nothing unless we are explicitly asked.
When a new policy is instituted, it will be in conflict with what happened before. Those who run a board are under no obligation to go back retrospectively deleting everything inconsistent with the NEW policy. New policies entail that things that used to be acceptable no longer are. That makes sense to me.
I hope we will exempt musician-related problems,
that come up on local boards, as in ‘What shall
I do about my aching pinky?’ I’ve benefitted
a good deal from info on the fluteboard
concerning icing, rest, heat, improving
technique to stay out of trouble, references to
websites, and so on..
A lot of this is helpful lore that musicians
actually know a good deal about.
This doesn’t affect me much one way or another, as I’m not really that big a contributor on medical-related subjects, anyway, but I can see how it would take some getting used to for a person accustomed to posting on a particular subject to suddenly find it off-limits.
I don’t think that you are well positioned to give advice on this topic. I respect Dale because he thinks before he posts, for one thing.
There recently has been a big and at times ugly episode on this board—and the issue was constant advice and haranguing by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. That sort of thing gets tolerated for a while, but then forces those with more experience and deeper understanding to stand up and say: so-and-so doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. An unpleasant thing for all and easily avoided if we all try to restrict our posts to what we can actually say something useful about (useful to others, mind you). At the least I think everyone should think about what they post, especially when the topics get touchy. Here for example you might have considered the fact that Dale is a clinical psychologist with years of practice and you are not. Or the fact that Dale owns the board and you don’t. Or the fact that Dale gets the pms and emails when people are worried or offended or unhappy on the chiffboard, and you don’t. Or the fact that Dale might in some way feel responsible for what people take away from the chiffboard, and you don’t. Or the fact that you can just blurt it out and walk away, and Dale can’t. How long do you think Dale thought about it before putting this new policy in place? You should have thought about it at least that long. Thinking about something, by the way, involves effort and not just putting down the first thing that pops into your head.
If Dale or a moderator wish to lock or delete my thread, I have no problem with that.
It’s their board, and it’s their right to decide what is allowed. This is because they pay the money that provides this environment for the rest of us.
If you don’t agree with their decisions, you can always pay the money yourself and start your own board. It’s been done before.
Not always. Often a policy is a distillation from current practice. Also, much new policy is often a development or refinement of an existing policy but not to an extent that it conflicts with the status quo. Your assertion is over generalised where even generalising is perilous.
…
New policies entail that things that used to be acceptable no longer are. …
Please see my above comment. Policies often are not this drastic. Policies define how discretion will be exercised and discretion implies choice for the policy maker. Choice itself may be informed by democratic processes of consultation and the fact that this topic is NOT closed by Dale implies that it is isn’t the end of the story as you say.
Even Genghis Khan consulted. Do have a History Faculty at Wollongong? What about a course in public policy? How about a course in legal versus ethical obligations?
OK, I overgeneralised. So what? Look at the post I was reacting to and you’ll see that the complaint is about explicit inconsistency. This needn’t happen but here it does happen. There is nothing wrong with that. That was my point. A bit of charity would have got you there.
