Why shut down the paracetamol thread in OD? I was hoping that guy updated us. It was pretty serious. Closing it was not HR.
^He took a dangerous amount that required immediate medical attention. Closing the thread and directing him to go seek immediate treatment was the most "HR" thing we could have done.
Exactly, as clearly stated in the guidelines, we are not healthcare professionals and if any thread we sense is headed to a point where emergency services are needed, it is indeed the most HR thing to do to immediately close the thread with hopes they seek immediate medical attention, you would be surprised how many people/threads/incident's occur where someone posts thinking they are overdosing for example, and the longer they are wasting time on the internet looking for reassurance could be time wasted.
Leaving threads like these open would be reckless because we do not have the resources to tell a person whether they are in mortal danger or not and be able to direct emergency services to their house,
Bluelight is not an emergency service. NOT closing these threads, is not looking out for the best interests of anyone, the moderators use a better safe than sorry simple logic here to decide to close threads like the ones in question, it's not something that is done without thought, but this policy is not likely to change.
Besides, given the time I have to watch a thread progress and someone reached/reaches/is reaching a point of no return so to speak, or if I have any doubt whatsoever, I close the thread, telling the OP to let us know how things go, and prioritize hoping the OP takes my advice out of fear of casualty over the way the OP lets us know that things turned out okay. Or we don't ever hear back from them, and never really know what happened to them.
Anyways, if you think that a thread's unfairly closed or that you doubt their need for medical attention, that's a situation where it's easiest to simply PM the moderator who closed the thread. And if anyone ever sees a thread where the OP needs emergency services, they should immediately report the thread using the report post function so that a member of staff can close the thread.