Would it be possible to make some form of a trigger warning for new threads? It's not a huge deal or anything, more of a quality of life kind of thing. Just a red "Triggering" or something by the title. I'm not sure how it could work, maybe have the creator check a box like how you do with the anon forum? Or have it automatically do it if key words like suicide, rape, self harm, or things of that nature appear in it. I feel that it might help some of us avoid threads that might possibly trigger us. I'm not sure how much of an impact it would have but it's just a suggestion
I am not sure about the software they are using, but I think that we should just make that a part of the forum culture. I have been trying to get more into doing that myself. Peeps, please consider prefacing triggering threads with *Trigger* or use the SPOILER tag. EDIT: Not really too excited to rehash debates on whether trigger warnings are good.
One problem I can see is that there would be so many different triggers, I understand what you are saying and in principle I can see that it might be a good idea, I just wonder if there is a way to do it that covers all topics, being that if its not a trigger to the creator of the thread they may not realise its a trigger for others. But im no computer wizz so there might be a way.
It is true that we all have a different range of experience, but I think some things are just obvious to warn over. For those which are not, they will have to be argued for.
Yeah, and there are different things that might trigger people. For example, I am a recovering self-injurer, but I am a moderate social drinker who has never struggled with any sort of alcohol addiction. So I might not think to mark an alcohol-related post as TW or trigger warning, but it might be very triggering to someone going through AA. And at the same time, someone going through AA who had no personal experience with self-injury might not find an SI-related post to be triggering, and wouldn't mark it, but someone like me might find it triggering.
Just to add onto ^, I have a very strong irrational aversion to alcohol from my past, but even though it causes me massive discomfort (like more than my sexuality), I've never self-harmed and I try and remind myself that for other people, the topic of alcohol is totally fine. Would I mark it triggering though? Sure, if someone told me it was, but I wouldn't know otherwise... it may involve re-teaching the majority of the community. I think the other concern I'd have is where we draw the line on what's triggering and what isn't. It's great to cater to people, but what if we get someone who finds something like "dogs" triggering? For the vast majority of people, it'll seem really silly to work on censoring (for lack of a better word) those kinds of topics. For pretty obvious ones like self-harm, suicide, rape, etc., I think it's reasonable though. Definitely something worth discussing though. Maybe a post-report-like feature? People could voluntarily mark their posts as triggering, and if a lot of reports came in on one particular posts, staff could go in and modify it accordingly.
I love the idea of a check-box for the person posting, kind of like the anon checkbox, as someone said above. Maybe also a "report as trigger" button where other users could click to flag something as potentially triggering. If enough such complaints are made about a post, then maybe staff should maybe investigate and mark the post as triggering.
Or if it could be considered triggering, add the kind of trigger to the title, like *SI trigger* for self injury (or SH for self harm, SU for suicide, SA for sexual abuse/rape, ALC for alcohol etc..)
This one is greyer, but I actually see the argument for not even having the kind of trigger because that could itself be triggering. For example, consider a person who recently survived rape. I put up a post that says *Trigger for Sexual Assault*. The kind of trigger that it is reminds that individual so that I have kind of defeated the purpose of it. Now, I am not trying to say, I'm right and you are wrong. But it is something to consider, and I prefer to err on the side of typeless trigger warnings.
Typically, one sees "triggering" notifications on specialized psychological self-help sites, such as for cutters, abuse survivors, addicts, and so forth. So in those circumstances, it's pretty easy to notate something as "triggering" because, presumably, the majority of people on the site will have similar triggers. But EC, while it is a support site, is a very generalized support site; in fact, many of our members don't so much seek out support for coming out as for socialization, depression, self-harming behaviors, shame, and the like. So if we were to identify triggering posts or threads, nearly every thread posted could potentially be triggering to someone, and if we were to aggressively promote the idea of marking threads as "triggering", then probably 3/4 of the posts in the help and support section could potentially be triggering to someone in the community. It's a good question, but personally, I don't think there's a good way to implement any sort of triggering warning without adding a lot of verbiage that would be unnecessarily for 90% of our audience; for example "triggering-self-harm" ,"triggering-sexual abuse", "triggering-addiction"... some posts could have all three, and there are dozens of other triggers as well. I'm sure the staff would be open to ideas, but my first thought is I don't see how we can do it effectively, given the diversity of members and issues here.
That's a good point. Maybe if we had a way for members to specify what could count as a trigger for them? Like under your account settings there'd be boxes you could check or something. Could be a page you see when you're making an account, or a test or what have you. Then only the warnings you've specified would show up, and you wouldn't get flooded with 'trigger spam'. It sounds super complicated, so I don't really have high hopes for this
Always worth asking for But... yes, it would require some fairly major work on the "guts" of vBulletin so probably wouldn't be high on our list to implement, given the complexity of implementing it.
Ya, I didn't think it was well-supported by the underlying software, and I think that we're relying on a more fundamental change in the culture of the board than an EC implementation change. I think that those who know about triggers and warnings should simply try to put those up voluntarily, and maybe use spoiler tags when they are responding to threads with posts that may be triggering rather than posting their own new threads.
