i was a global moderator and the moderator for the substance abuse section for a forum that went for about 7 years, it was for mood disorders but often depression and lonilyness were at the fore, it had literally 300,000+ active members and thousands of posts per hour sometimes, the samaritans would give the url out on their website as a place for emotional support and our forum was even mentioned in a high profile documentary on depression by BBC1! as there was a section about online services that may help viewers in the documentary and we got a mention!
we also appeared on the bbc news website in their top 10 list of resources for those with depression a good while back, it got disbanded by the soul administrator who was disabled and just had no energy left to run the place, it broke my heart that it was gone it was my home away from home and i met the love of my life there.
i was a global moddy keeping about 300,000+ people in order and also was the substance abuse moddy for the drug abuse section for my extensive drug experience and geeky habit of reading doctoral level neurochemistry, psychology, medical, addiction, philosophy, interpretive/verstehen sociology books. pharmacology, organic chemistry and clinical pharmacology and a few other subjects books...i have a racing mind with a high iq i always have to be doing 'something', im one of those people. and with being unable to work i munch up information
oh by the way it started off being called trapped minds or TM to members and admin then changed it to the boring mundane name of 'touching minds' 'gags' yeach, by the way i think this forum is perfectly named kudos for that.
ok the serious point i post for today:
we had a 'show us your photos thread' on our forum and found that in a forum of alone, sensitive possibly mentally ill people, people very soon got hurt at the start when comments were allowed, none of us know what others are insecure about visa a vie their appearance, face, body, age, hair etc and we had an extremely well enforced rule after that (more than any other rules) that no one not even a moderator can make the slightest comment about someones photo within in the photo forum and we did police it a good bit with discretion and knowlege of how good friends the members were outside the photograph forum but people were welcome to pm someone to compliment them.
you never know what effect a comment to someones appearance may have...someone may be a rape victim or find sexuality or being desired for the way they look unpleasant and say a member of the opposite sex or same sex and that person is 'their type' and means well and comments 'wow you're really hot/good looking, go you!' the person who put their picture up may find that disturbing, i would put my picture up but im a rape and abuse victim, have gender issues and am for the moment not sexually active by choice and am scared of comments, pm's from friends would be fine but im not sure about stangers
i'm just saying out of aaaaall the threads in our HUGE forum we found the most triggered, hurt, panic attacked etc people and the most complaints we got was about the 'show us your picture thread' before we created the ban on never ever ever commenting on someones picture within the picture thread, when we put the rule in place far more people felt safe posting their photographs just so people could put a face to the name and thousands more that wouldn't before then posted
i was a global moderator of a forum with hundreds of thousands of active members for about 4 years so i've seen the trouble it can cause
just my suggestion from experience, its up to you guys of course.
i also cannot work and rarely sleep and am on here all the time, i volunteer my experience as a moderator now or in the future when you know me better, again your call ^_^
but i ask you to seriously think about my main point, people here are lonely, may be hiding a troubled past and we cant know what effect even the most innocent comment on someones body, hair, age, dress sense etc may have....our forum was very easy going except when it came to that rule
i leave the elders to ponder ^_^
we also appeared on the bbc news website in their top 10 list of resources for those with depression a good while back, it got disbanded by the soul administrator who was disabled and just had no energy left to run the place, it broke my heart that it was gone it was my home away from home and i met the love of my life there.
i was a global moddy keeping about 300,000+ people in order and also was the substance abuse moddy for the drug abuse section for my extensive drug experience and geeky habit of reading doctoral level neurochemistry, psychology, medical, addiction, philosophy, interpretive/verstehen sociology books. pharmacology, organic chemistry and clinical pharmacology and a few other subjects books...i have a racing mind with a high iq i always have to be doing 'something', im one of those people. and with being unable to work i munch up information
oh by the way it started off being called trapped minds or TM to members and admin then changed it to the boring mundane name of 'touching minds' 'gags' yeach, by the way i think this forum is perfectly named kudos for that.
ok the serious point i post for today:
we had a 'show us your photos thread' on our forum and found that in a forum of alone, sensitive possibly mentally ill people, people very soon got hurt at the start when comments were allowed, none of us know what others are insecure about visa a vie their appearance, face, body, age, hair etc and we had an extremely well enforced rule after that (more than any other rules) that no one not even a moderator can make the slightest comment about someones photo within in the photo forum and we did police it a good bit with discretion and knowlege of how good friends the members were outside the photograph forum but people were welcome to pm someone to compliment them.
you never know what effect a comment to someones appearance may have...someone may be a rape victim or find sexuality or being desired for the way they look unpleasant and say a member of the opposite sex or same sex and that person is 'their type' and means well and comments 'wow you're really hot/good looking, go you!' the person who put their picture up may find that disturbing, i would put my picture up but im a rape and abuse victim, have gender issues and am for the moment not sexually active by choice and am scared of comments, pm's from friends would be fine but im not sure about stangers
i'm just saying out of aaaaall the threads in our HUGE forum we found the most triggered, hurt, panic attacked etc people and the most complaints we got was about the 'show us your picture thread' before we created the ban on never ever ever commenting on someones picture within the picture thread, when we put the rule in place far more people felt safe posting their photographs just so people could put a face to the name and thousands more that wouldn't before then posted
i was a global moderator of a forum with hundreds of thousands of active members for about 4 years so i've seen the trouble it can cause
just my suggestion from experience, its up to you guys of course.
i also cannot work and rarely sleep and am on here all the time, i volunteer my experience as a moderator now or in the future when you know me better, again your call ^_^
but i ask you to seriously think about my main point, people here are lonely, may be hiding a troubled past and we cant know what effect even the most innocent comment on someones body, hair, age, dress sense etc may have....our forum was very easy going except when it came to that rule
i leave the elders to ponder ^_^