SuttaCentral
To be clear, I am not working there as a journalist now, but I used to. And yeah, one of my great-grandfathers was executed as a Japanese spy in the Baltic fleet, no less, because he had the courage to say to a Pravda reporter back in 1941 that the war would take a long time to win.
No worries, no differences ofopinion can change my respect and fondness of you 
You have no idea what you are talking about. You can’t reason with depressed person. Logical arguments just don’t work, because depressed person can’t think logically, for whatever reason.
Once a journalist, always a journalist. 
I worked for a year (20 + years ago) as a journalist…one of the best working years of my life. [quote=“Vstakan, post:63, topic:5115”]
No worries, no differences ofopinion can change my respect and fondness of you
[/quote]
It’s mutual! спасибо Большое !
Man, please stop this. If you had any idea about what depression is you wouldn’t write this utter gomaya.
tuvok, I tend to agree with the general point you are making, but I personally am not sure that replicating questionable ideas helps. I’m pretty sure that being curt does not.
I’m sorry, I just can’t stand people who speak as if they knew everything, when after reading few sentences it’s obvious they know nothing. And in this case it is spreading dangerous views, probably as dangerous if not more than what LXNDR did.
It is very easy to fall into an extreme and overestimate the power of words. Just as it’s easy to undervalue their power. The problem with those of a more “progressive” nature is greatly overestimating the power of words, to the point where it becomes ridiculous.
Censorship comes as a natural reaction to overestimating the power of words. While progressives, like all other people, have good intentions, their good intentions can lead to bad results because of a wrong understanding of how things work. It’s not good to overvalue or undervalue the power of anything.
The internet, however, has become a vehicle that does need to be managed with care, and with an eye toward protecting the vulnerable.
Fundamentalist christians have argued about this ever since the internet was invented. Every time a new invention, a new progress happens in the world - most people initially are afraid of it. But with time, people get accostumed to these new inventions and they cease looking so threatening.
“Protecting the vulnerabe” sounds great, it’s a truism nobody can argue about. Who doesn’t want to protect the vulnerable ? The problem is, the nazist and the communist also wanted to protect the vulnerable, but their methods lead to 25 million deaths in the case of the Nazist, 100 million for the Communist and a repressive athmosphere that made life a living hell for everybody.
Censorship or any other repressive actions have always been justified as being for the sake of “protecting X”.
You have no idea what you are talking about. You can’t reason with depressed person. Logical arguments just don’t work, because depressed person can’t think logically, for whatever reason.
No, not at all. Very few depressed persons are like babies, people beyond reasoning that will just see something on the internet and commit suicide without thinking twice. This 0-1% of depressed people that are like that should be institutionalized. Nobody is going to clean the whole internet so that an incredibly small minority of people that should be institutionalized but are not is going to stay safe. This is now how people deal with this world. Like it or not, this world is designed for adults, not for imballanced children. You can’t re-design this whole world to be mentally-imballanced-children-friendly. And it’s foolish to assume a huge majority of adult people have baby-brains. They don’t.
And second, the huge majority of depressed people are not like that. Being suicidal, they already have the suicide idea in their head by deffinition. What they are looking is something to refute that, a serious argument against that. Otherwise why would they be browsing a buddhist forum ?
Censoring this idea will not take it out of their head. I repeat, censoring this idea is not going to take it out of their head. That is not how you take out ideas from somebody head. Try this how much you want, you will see it never works. You can only change an opinion through argument. You can not change an opinion through censoring it and making it not appear. It’s not that easy. Never in history has somebody changed an opinion without arguments against it.
A common complain against progressivism is that such censorship attitudes come from narcissism and self-righteousness. The person feels self-righteous by behaving like everyone else are children. By behaving like everyone else are children, we are “protecting the vulnerable” witch is so noble and pure. We are doing a very low-effort activity (speaking like everyone else are children is easy) and drive an important amount of self-righteousness with basically no money spent and little effort.
Sure, I completely understand. It’s just that I think entering into futile argument is quite a good way to give more fuel to unhelpful contributions.
Reading this, dxm, and I don’t mean to be unkind, my already limited IQ just dropped 20 points…
I noticed it too. You’re doing a good job with it. It’s difficult to read different opinions without being unkind. But it’s good that you are careful with that.
my already limited IQ just dropped 20 points…
My apologies, I am wrong more often than I am right on many issues. But please, dxm, some of what you have written on psychological issues has just no foundation in the science or anything I am familiar with in this area. Be careful with this. I am unsure if you are trolling, or just confident in your views from wherever they may derive, but I can only suggest caution. I’ve been guilty of overstating some things on more than one occasion, but over time, have tried to be more careful, more circumspect. I am often upset by some of the crap that I write too, so I haven’t applied a standard to you that I don’t apply to myself. My apologies for any offense.
But please, dxm, some of what you have written on psychological issues has just no foundation in the science or anything I am familiar with in this area. Be careful with this. I am unsure if you are trolling, or just confident in your views from wherever they may derive, but I can only suggest caution.
Then show me some evidence to support your opinion. Some studies, some data, etc. If my opinion is wrong, I will change it. Indeed I am not an expert in the field. So feel free to contradict my arguments where you feel they are wrong.
Are there any studies supporting censorship over debate when it comes to suicidal people ? If so, to what percentage of suicidal people does censorship work better than debate ? Does censorship or debate work at all in this case?
Dxm, as you said, you’re not an expert in the field. Fortunately, there are experts in this field, and their work is not difficult to google and discover. I will leave it at that. You can do the work and compare your thoughts on these issues with what the experts have concluded. As I mentioned I am often wrong on issues, and am glad that there are experts in many fields willing to share their publications and expertise. Maybe both of us can take a step back, do some research, and re-approach these issues in 30 days and see what the evidence shows. I might even gain back the 20 points I lost. 
Cheers.
I have researched it already. None of these studies suggest that censoring or debating these ideas is something important. Suicide treatment and prevention is concentrated to a whole different area. If you know of such studies supporting the censorship opinion, please do not hesitate to quote them.
Being a buddhist forum, if there are suicidal people roaming around this means they are capable of abstract thinking and are looking for opinions and arguments regarding the problem. Otherwise, what would they be doing on a buddhist forum reading long posts ?
I posted a link in the Water Cooler recently The Backfire Effect I really think it could help with this topic if everyone involved would take five minutes to read and take it to heart.
Best of wishes for all!
As it has been mentioned: My perception is that Dhammawheel was a far better forum under the last admin. The site is, in my perception, very (right wing) agenda driven. Hate speech is enabled. No doubt some people like that. I could say plenty more.
I would qualify that to not characterize the entire forum; rather, at least part of the “leadership” there appears to relish inciting discussion of hot political issues, and baiting them with references to extremist literature. The sad part is that the moderation function appears at times to be skewed by this personal bias. The guidelines encourage relating political issue to dhamma, but that’s rare, and largely ignored by the more vociferous participants.
One justification offered is that a participant can choose to “turn-off” access to, visibility of that part of the forum – roughly equivalent to the “Watercooler” here.
If though, the context is truly to focus on Theravadan, or EBT, or the like, I find that the presence of extensive amounts of political invective tends to poison the whole atmosphere – when the sila goes south, what’s the point of samadhi (other than the kind of concentration of a safe-cracker or a sniper)? How is panna possible?. In recent months as this has intensified, the amount and quality of dhamma discussions has markedly deteriorated over there. (Not that this couldn’t reverse in the future, as I’ve seen possible in various forums – in the course of being around for in a couple for 3 or 4 years now).
In the recent thread discussing the “Watercooler” forum, I was reassured by an apparent decision, or leaning, to NOT permit that kind of political discussion. Unfortunately, it’s popping up again and again, right here in this very thread, for instance – same topics, same language, same biases, (and same identifying quirks of expression) as these personages have extensively displayed in at least two other forums , albeit behind shifting, often multiple “avatar” personas. For those of us with as yet not perfected equanimity, it’s a bothersome challenge – like a beginner meditator trying to master jhana while sitting in the middle of Times Square (or Piccadilly Circus, or maybe more like the current battle for Mosul).
The treatment by the moderators here has been admirable in many ways; some of it, though, IMO, tends to “feed the trolls” by trying to have reasonable discussion with them (to which they respond by going on and on…).
Btw. An opinion on the OP issue here: I think the manner of that mention of suicide could create legal liability in some legal systems / countries. Something serious happens and can be linked to the website – lawyers and judges could cause the administrators of the website major grief. Like what happens here with reference to potential copyright infringements, immediate and decisive action is prudent.
There is a this problem with judging a forum administration: those who are on the same side in terms of views (buddhist, political) rarely get to experience their might and understand what is actually going on.
The Gestapo administration changed in 2016 has banned 1/3 of users with over 1000 posts, to say nothing of those less important. They banned and deleted topics like nobody business. Censored topics were: any type of criticism of goenka, any kind of criticism of mahasi, any kind of non-progressive opinion in the news section.
And what is strange is that they cared more about the political side than about goenka criticism censorship. That is how politically invested they were. I was actually friend at that time with them and had no strong buddist opinions so caused no troubles in that area. I had no idea about western politics, it was the first time I learned about “PC”. I got perma banned for making a point homogenity is better than diversity in a country demographics and the whole topic was deleted 1 month after the incident.
While being banned, there was a topic about victims of communism where the problematic mods started denying the communist holocaust. I posted a msg that only mods could see about how life was for my parents under such brutal dictatorship, famine, 1500$ pib per capita, etc. They changed their avatar pictures to the URSS flag for that day as a response and they closed the victims of communism topic, thinking they are gona upset me by doing that. Really I felt like a Jew on a Nazist forum over there.
They were so disturbed my messages that I was posting and only other mods could see (first msg need aproval) that they made the whole forum have problems logging in because of it: https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26571
That is how thuff censorship was. They banned the whole forum cause of messages posted from time to time by me, messages that only other mods could see.
In regard to dhamma censorship things were the same. For example they even edited posts containing “gradual training” suttas cause that contradicted goenka “boot camp” understanding of buddhism. Direct discussion of goenka or mahasi was of course strictly forbidden.
There are pages I could write about the Gestapo administration. The level of censorship and lying was just like e-shanga. The problematic mods were also mods on e-shanga and they imported those great tendencies to DW.
This is why when I came here to StC and saw that the mods are progressives, I expected the worse. This is what I understand by “progressive”: Gestapo type of moderation. I am still surprised that mods here are not like that. I mean for a topic critical of moderation like this, the Gestapo mods on DW would electroshock you through the computer if they could. Such a topic would be unthinkable on DW pre-2016. But in my opinion there is always the risk with progressives turning into full fledged communist because the ideology is there. The idea that censorship can be justified is there. All it takes is enough time for the “ultimate power corrupts in ultimate ways” to take effect. The Gestapo mods on DW were not like that from the beginning, like all moderators they became like that over time. And this is why I have been so critical and did my best to rise alarm bells right now while it is still possible. I know that mods here, at least at this moment, honestly care about doing a good job so my words are not written in vain.
The huge advantage of this forum is that most here are sutta followers. I’ve never seen censorship of buddhist opinions over here, a thing that is still happening on DW when it comes to Nanananda or Thanissaro (but I still have a lot of respect for the new mods cause of their free speech and fairness commitment). This is because when you actually are in the right, there is no fear of hearing other opinions. When you have something to hide, when you’re convictions can be easily contradicted, it is much more necessary to delete posts and ban users not in line with you’re interpretation of buddhism. When you are in the right, the attitude is pro-debate, eager to show the other you’re argument. When you are in the wrong, the tendency is to ban anything critical of you’re opinion. This is why this forum is pretty much totally safe from censorship of buddhist ideas, witch is by far the most problematic part on other forums.
I may have made a big case about mods enforcing a too PC language over here, but honestly I am not that upset about it as I might appear. I have been so critical in order to stop something bad from happening while it is still possible, but that is not something incredibly important. The most problematic aspect of all buddhist forums have been censorship of buddhist ideas. On every forum there is a buddhist interpretation that is beyond criticism. That is by far the nr 1 problem. Nr 2 problem is censorhip in the political discussion section. And only Nr 3 comes the enforced PC way of speaking.
Suicide and guidance to media:
"Over the past few decades there has been significant
research into media coverage of suicide and how it
can affect behaviour. The research shows that, when
the media has applied caution in the reporting of
suicide, there have been positive outcomes, potentially
reducing the number of deaths.
This academic research has been conducted mainly
around ‘mainstream’ media, including television and
print newspapers, but there is growing interest among
researchers to investigate the possible influence
of digital media on suicidal behaviour.
Media coverage and suicidal behaviour
A World Health Organisation (WHO) publication on
media coverage of suicide in 2008, Preventing Suicide
– A Resource for Media Professionals, verifies universal
links between media coverage and imitative behaviour,
it states:
“ Vulnerable individuals may be
influenced to engage in imitative
behaviours by reports of suicide,
particularly if the coverage is
extensive, prominent, sensationalist
and/or explicitly describes the
method of suicide.”
In 2010 a comprehensive global review of the scientific
literature carried out by Jane Pirkis and colleagues of 97
studies on suicide and the media concluded:
“ Irresponsible presentations of suicide in news and
information media can influence copycat acts.”
The Pirkis et al report also stressed:
“ The findings of the current review should not be
interpreted as a call for censorship of the media; it
is acknowledged that the media has a role to play
in raising awareness of suicide as a public health
issue. Rather the findings should be interpreted as
an indication that media presentation of suicide
should be done responsibly, and balanced against
the public’s ‘right to know’ in order to reduce the
potential harm confirmed by the evidence.”
with metta
Yes, thanks cjmacie.