Knowledge

Although the subcommunity name says, "Safety & Knowledge" it's difficult to find much knowledge here, it seems to me. Knowledge is information that has a basis in fact, and I don't mean Wikipedia, someone's blog, or any form of advertising.

I understand that some listeners love to give advice, spread rumours and promote evolving Internet memes. I understand, too, that these forums are a great place to do these things.

But I also feel that amateur advice, rumours and memes are a dangerous way to approach online safety.

• One risk is that the advice, rumour or meme is simply false. I've seen this in these forums.
  
• Another risk is that, even though the advice, rumour or meme is true, it tends to makes vulnerable people anxious or fearful. And at 7 Cups, where people often come because they are struggling with something in their lives, they can be more vulnerable than the rest of us to anxiety and fear.
  
• And a third risk is that bad advice, false rumours or misleading memes about safety might make some people simply ignore all safety information, so they end up less safe as a result.

Safety advice that looks like this (fill in the blank) is most likely harmful advice, in my opinion:

"Be more anxious about ____________, because safety!"

Ideally, I'd want knowledge about safety issues to include factual information about how many people have actually been harmed, what actual harm they suffered, what they could really have done to avoid harm, and how many other people were in the same situation without being harmed.

Maybe we could have a classification system to help everyone understand the information posted here:

S – Someone's personal opinion.

A – Amateur advice.

F – Fact, with actual numbers and links to the original source of the data.

E – Evolving Internet meme.

R – Rumour.

I think this would make these forums SAFER

[This post classified as S – Someone's personal opinion.]