On 4/16/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 4/16/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
An article on how to commit suicide is, in my opinion, irresponsible, regardless of whether or not there are other such guides already on the Internet. But it also has no place in an encyclopedia.
This is a moral judgment. There is an entirely reasonable moral position that suicide is a perfectly valid option for any human being to consider, and that providing information on how to commit suicide safely without crippling yourself or others is better than pretending such information does not exist. In fact, suicide hotlines here in Germany tend to answer these questions just as calmly as they give reasons why one would want to avoid suicide (my mother has done training and supervision of suicide hotline workers, so I know a bit about the topic). A strong bias against suicide as an ultimate rational choice betrays an American cultural bias; Europe has a much more developed philosophical discourse on the morality of suicide. (Many here prefer the word "Freitod", or "free death", to "Selbstmord", i.e. "self-murder".)
We should not be in the business of making such a moral judgment, but we should structure our information. Wikipedia is not a how-to. A purely descriptive, well-referenced listing of methods, their safety implications, and their cultural context would make a fine article. The current article suicide methods is awful, but not awful enough to be deleted. Unreferenced content should be carefully culled. A more detailed description of methods would be reasonable Wikibooks material, together with a discourse of reasons to commit & not to commit suicide. In fact, I would not be surprised if such suicide manuals have already been produced in the context of professional aid work. -- Peace & Love, Erik
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"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
That's exactly what I've been trying to say. It's all relative. ~~~~