[WikiEN-l] "Suicide methods" article

[Bryan Derksen]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 4/19/07 12:01 PM, Bryan Derksen at bryan.derksen at shaw.ca wrote:
> 
>> I'd have no problem with including a few links to support services
>> somewhere in the article, but this is not really Wikipedia's
>> responsibility and the information content of the page shouldn't suffer
>> as a result.
> 
> It it the very information content of the page that I'm in dispute with.

Then the dispute is likely unresolvable. Wikipedia is all about
providing encyclopedic information, which I consider this to be. It's
not censored.

>> Should web sites dedicated to depressing poetry or handguns
>> also blank their content and replace it with suicide prevention counselling?
> 
> C'mon, Bryan, isn't that reaching just a bit ;-).

My point is that those sites are also likely ones for suicidal people to
visit and may even provide information that ends up facilitating the
act. And like Wikipedia, they're not responsible for what their readers
do with that information.

>> Bear in mind that a good many people who consult this article are not
>> necessarily themselves suicidal. There are people out there who are
>> writing school essays or reports that cover the topic, or people who
>> heard about some celebrity suicide and are curious about how others have
>> done it, or people who are writing works of fiction and need some ideas
>> for how a character might kill himself, etc. Wikipedia is here to serve
>> all of these people too and what they need is a high-quality
>> encyclopedia article packed with useful NPOV information about the subject.
> 
> You make a good point here. Right now I don't have an answer to it. I just
> know that a "how-to" article on suicide seems very wrong to me.

I don't know what version of the article you last saw, but the current
version
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Suicide_method&oldid=123975812>
doesn't look very much like a how-to article to me. There's a lot of
information here about the physiological effects of various suicide
methods and about their prevalence in various populations. Perhaps
you're interpreting the description of physiological effects as a
"how-to"? I can see that happening, but I don't see any way to avoid it
without losing the descriptive aspect.

And Wikipedia's all about that descriptive aspect, so impasse.