Risker wrote:
At best, this should be a guideline, and only when the
language is watered
down so that it says things like "encouraged but not obligated" and
recognises that editors are not *required* to carry out any specific
actions.
Ideally, IMO, something like this should be informative rather than
prescriptive. Quite a few years back I had a nerve-wracking night on IRC
talking with someone I knew who lived in another country and who was
threatening to commit suicide right then and there, and it would have
been really nice to have had a website at my fingertips that had a list
of phone numbers I could use to contact authorities in various places.
But I didn't need a page telling me I _should_ call someone. :)
(In my particular case things worked out fine anyway as we were able to
talk the person down without any medical emergency. In hindsight it was
obviously an attention-getting mechanism, if you seriously intend to
kill yourself you don't bring it up with friends before doing it, but of
course one should never treat it as such.)