Thread tags

Hey,

It's an interesting idea, but I have doubts on the feasibility of it being implemented. If anything, I suspect it may end up opening a whole can of worms, and the consequence is that things end up getting inadvertently muddled up and confusing.

The labels you suggested alone immediately cause us to run into problems, as EC's membership base has a diverse gender catchment within it. As we don't operate under fixed gender norms, we wouldn't realistically be able to categorise particular issues based on gender identity. For example, if a cisgendered female posts about a concern regarding their menstruation cycle, we can't necessarily label this as being potentially applicable to all identifying females, as a MTF member may feel the label is inappropriately excluding people on the grounds that it refers more to sex usage than gender usage. At that point, you then start having to make tags that are distinctive between supportive issues of biology and social within their respective identity categories. Once you've solved that barrier, you then have to take into consideration both the shifting hormonal and social changes of a transitioning member, at which point you need particular inclusive labels to reflect the empathic support needed for this (as it going to be of little supportive benefit to a cisgendered male like myself). That's before we even get into the categories in which people operate outside of recognised or lesser represented identities.

I'm not trying to go through the process to bamboozle anybody, but more trying to highlight the thinking process that we'd need to think about in order to have thread tags that are appropriate and inclusive to EC's broad and flexible catchment of support. The risk becomes that if we wander down that road, we could end up with this inclusive list that isn't really compatible with the emotional mindset that many questioning people will want to see and/or fill out when posting. If somebody's having an emotional crisis and wants some peer support, the last thing they really want to be doing is making guesses on which particular tags are relevant to it, and whether or not it falls into a subjective area of NSFW content.

I do agree that there are many occasions when thread titles should be made clearer, both for practical reasons and for basic etiquette. Saying that, I don't really think there's any quick fix solution for that issue, simply because we are collectively supporting people within varying degrees of crisis. There have been occasions when I've been at uni checking in during my lunch, and I'll see a thread title or post that makes me think "phew, i'm glad nobody was looking at my screen then", so it would be great in theory to have something that helps minimise that type of thing from occurring. In practicality, I can't really think of anything that would balance this issue equally alongside the circumstances and needs of those asking for support and advice. There are things that can be done, but I suspect it would be at the expense of placing a potential posting hurdle for those who really need the process to be as straightforward and quick as possible.

Those are my immediate and individual thoughts on it. Other members of the staff team and community may feel differently or may think of something obvious that I've completely overlooked.

Martin.