Posted by Dinah on December 19, 2003, at 0:42:29
In reply to A Suicide in an Online Peer Support Group, posted by Dr. Bob on December 16, 2003, at 17:58:57
I had this bizarre reaction to seeing the slides. I thought that the letters for people's names wasn't much of a disguise. You name your site, I'm sure. You give the dates. Anyone could easily see who sar was. And then I slapped myself aside my head. It's all open here on the internet anyway. Countless new people have heard references to sar and looked up the archives. What you're doing isn't more public than it already is. It can't be more public than it already is.
It still feels odd to see it presented so clinically though. It was so real here and it doesn't seem real in the slides. Maybe you should include the post you made, where you quoted a post of sar's and told how it made you laugh. I'm working from memory here, so forgive me if my facts aren't quite right. It really impressed me at the time though. As if you were sharing in the grief. As if you saw us as people. As if maybe you cared a bit. It was much more personal than the quote from yourself that you did use.
I'm not sure I like the concept of using the tragedy of sar's death, not that *that* matters on whit. :) Nor, I suppose, is it unprecedented, as the copious post 9/11 research shows.
Have you done any research comparing Babble to other online communities? I often wonder how much applicability your research has to the online community world in general. I've always thought that Babble is Babble for better or worse (depending on your viewpoint) because you are who you are. And that because of that, in many ways from the content of our posts to the community culture to our self selection as posters, any research you do here might not be able to be meaningfully generalized. Have you factored that in?
poster:Dinah
thread:290698
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20031120/msgs/291515.html