Disallow comments that hint or suggest at committing suicide.

[Sloth]

Simply put, this kind of talk doesn't belong on a Minecraft Sales Forum. It goes to help absolutely nobody and will more than likely cause problems from insensitive members within the community.

This is also regardless of whether or not the comments being made are true or are done for attention.

 

[Lotus]

Suicide is a touchy subject. It's serious and our words literally could drive someone over the edge, it's not something carelessly handled. It's natural for humans to seek attention and want someone to 'pick them up'. It's a real problem affecting real people with very real consequences.

When it comes to suicide, if it's directly involving an individual, we direct them to a suicide hotline or support website where they can get some professional help. What is definitely a poor move on our end is punish someone if they are mentally distressed to the extent of having suicidal thoughts. I can't agree with your suggestion in that regard.

Otherwise, we already do most of what you are suggesting in this thread. Content that is considered disrespectful, such as suicide jokes, or controversial topics depicting such extreme content is removed. It's a topic that we do discourage for discussion.

 

[Sloth]

Suicide is a touchy subject. It's serious and our words literally could drive someone over the edge, it's not something carelessly handled. It's natural for humans to seek attention and want someone to 'pick them up'. It's a real problem affecting real people with very real consequences.

When it comes to suicide, if it's directly involving an individual, we direct them to a suicide hotline or support website where they can get some professional help. What is definitely a poor move on our end is punish someone if they are mentally distressed to the extent of having suicidal thoughts. I can't agree with your suggestion in that regard.

Otherwise, we already do most of what you are suggesting in this thread. Content that is considered disrespectful, such as suicide jokes, or controversial topics depicting such extreme content is removed. It's a topic that we do discourage for discussion.

In light of the recent events on here it's become abundantly clear that most people within the community aren't going to take a situation like this seriously. Mainly because there's no way to tell if a user is genuinely telling the truth about how they're feeling (including staff members.) At the very least this can start with just a friendly verbal warning in which staff members can advise seeking actual counsel and potentially calling a Suicide Hotline. Continually bringing it up after this point might as well be inviting harassment and jokes and it should result in warning points.

 

[Polarbears]

It would be hard to place a rule in this matter due to the members of the site not being able to determine if the person is serious or not. Of course we want to punish the people who use it in a joking matter however, if this rule is enforced incorrectly by someone who really needs help and gets a punishment for talking about the topic it would not do good for anyone.

 

[Kram]

In light of the recent events on here it's become abundantly clear that most people within the community aren't going to take a situation like this seriously. Mainly because there's no way to tell if a user is genuinely telling the truth about how they're feeling (including staff members.) At the very least this can start with just a friendly verbal warning in which staff members can advise seeking actual counsel and potentially calling a Suicide Hotline. Continually bringing it up after this point might as well be inviting harassment and jokes and it should result in warning points.

Staff members will sometimes say MCM isn’t the place to look for help and we encourage anyone going through these things to get the proper help they need.
If there’s proof that the user is lying to get attention or cause problems, yes we could warn them but otherwise it’d be a bad idea. The only real proof I can also see being provided is if someone admitted they were lying sometime later.
And you’re right, the community’s response to these things is honesty sad to see. The jokes are inappropriate and the way some respond is truly sad. It is why the comments regarding these things are taken very seriously and the punishment reflects that.
The best to do is to report the message so a staff member can handle it and message the user. If anything else is done, it really should only be saying to go to the national hotline.

 

[Ted]

I know this is a little off-topic, however earlier I experienced pretty much first panic attack. I had questions about why it happened, and how so I asked in SB because I know there are some other people out there that are knowledgeable, and there was. A lot of people were concerned and asked if I was okay, even people who were banned from SB pmed me through Discord. I appreciate all the love and thanks, but I think this moment helps me focus more on the whole situation of the "suicide threats".

For people to quickly jump from being concerned to hating iSource for commenting, I think it's apparent. As a community, we care if users proclaim they've attempted suicide. However when it's essentially the boy who cried wolf situation where it's constantly happening, then that's what spoils it. I guarantee you if another user were to proclaim they've attempted, the community would do they're best to help that user. But as far as iSource's case, people have deemed it as an attention situation. I feel though, that due to iSource's case, it has caused people that would/could come to mc-market for emotional help to stray away due to the drama that has been caused.

I think we should empathize this discord, because it seems to really help people with hardships.
https://discord.gg/5E3FrvF - Deep Help

 

[Satan]

Personally I've employed 2 ways to deal with this, though on a discord server.

1. Create a space for people who wish to express these terrible subjects in their toxic manners. Restrict this kind of talk to only this space and disallow it in any other areas of discussion. This lets people build up their toxicity into an area where they can "be allowed" to post such remarks, but overtime will receive less attention from people simply muting or ignoring it.

2. Create a space for people who wish to treat everything seriously and maturely. Everywhere else is free game due to the belief of "This is the internet. Get off if you're going to cry" kind of mentality. This is essentially the vice versa of the situation #1, where a safe space is created instead of a danger space.

I find it impossible to censor out all "touchy subjects" such as suicide and be able to efficiently and "fairly" moderate discussions around them. Doing this allows a small compromise to both sides that I am sure everyone can deal with.

 

[JosephXYZ]

You could post the Crisis Text Line somewhere, it's a more millennial version of the Suicide Hotline, and some people, for instance, those who are using Discord or a forum to talk in place of voice communication may find it more beneficial than the Suicide Hotline, the link to their site is here https://www.crisistextline.org/ but you can text "Help" to 741741 and a trained Crisis Counselor would assist them. It is also worth noting that Lotus stated that your words may drive them over the edge... That's actually true and not true at the same time, asking someone if they are going to kill themselves or commit suicide directly will not cause the idea to be planted in their head. In fact, it will have the opposite effect most times. (data on this can be found from both the National Council for Behavioral Health, the NIH, and several studies conducted by Johns Hopkins and Walter Reed National, as well as the Crisis Text Line) but back to what Lotus stated, words can hurt, and people have been talked into suicide before, that said, asking if someone is going to hurt themselves, kill themselves, or commit suicide will not cause the idea to be planted in their head or cause them to act on it solely based off of a conversation. It is also worth noting the Crisis Text Line allows a community or organization like let's say MC-Market to partner with them and create a unique texting phrase i.e. text "mc" to 741741 and they would track how many times that particular phrase was used to start a conversation, it's a way communities and organizations are able to see if they are making an impact, a lot of this information is posted at https://crisistrends.org/

Anyhow, just thought you all might wanna know some more information from some scientific/medical sources.

P.s. the Crisis Text Line can be used for any kind of crisis, not just suicide...

 

[JosephXYZ]

Someone should really tell Mick about this...

 

[Mick]

Staff members will sometimes say MCM isn’t the place to look for help and we encourage anyone going through these things to get the proper help they need.
If there’s proof that the user is lying to get attention or cause problems, yes we could warn them but otherwise it’d be a bad idea. The only real proof I can also see being provided is if someone admitted they were lying sometime later.
And you’re right, the community’s response to these things is honesty sad to see. The jokes are inappropriate and the way some respond is truly sad. It is why the comments regarding these things are taken very seriously and the punishment reflects that.
The best to do is to report the message so a staff member can handle it and message the user. If anything else is done, it really should only be saying to go to the national hotline.

As has been said a few times on this thread, many of the things stated in the OP are already the case. As a staff team it is incredibly difficult to handle this sort of situation whenever it occurs, but we are pretty harsh with our punishments for joking about suicide/other serious issues and try to help the victim as well as we can.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion.