Deconversion and/or telling the folks sticky thread

[Welsh cake]

I've noticed we at AF get a lot of visitors and members who ask us for help and advice when they feel they're coming "out of the closet" and considering confessing to their religiously devout and controlling parents or relatives that they no longer believe in god(s) despite the all-too obvious consequences.

The problem is, we get these requests, these appeals for information all the time and the advice being dispensed from one atheist to another is, well, at best inconsistent, and at worse, horrible. Sometimes the author of the OP is impulsive and will immediately follow up the response of the first two posts.

I'm not naming anyone in particular, but some of our members in the past upon reading the opening thread are blatantly angered or riled up by the account of how religiously convicted the poster's parents are, the injustices that person may have been subjected to, and rather unintelligently reply along the lines of: "Tell your mom and dad to fuck off, and their god too, that'll learn them. Yeeeaaah."

They're not in the position to comment - we don't all have the luxury of either being independent and/or having tolerant family and relatives who accept our lack of belief in god concepts. There are some fucking insane people out there who when feel threatened by someone having a different world-view to them, will seek to quash out the "threat" with domestic violence. They cannot think rationally to save their own lives. We can't continue like this, giving out sound advice and then misadvice to every single person who comes onto the boards when this can and often does lead up to a potential domestic dispute that results in the young person being disowned, thrown out of house and home, and having to fend for themselves with no friends, capital or savings to turn to.

I strongly recommend we create a sticky thread here, the DO's and DON'Ts list of how to handle reporting de-conversions to family and friends, just like with the rules page.

However if you turn around and tell me, we are not experts, professionals qualified to give out such advice, that's fine. I just ask then that the moderating staff close and lock every such thread that occasionally crops up from time to time to prevent bad advice being given to the potentially vulnerable of us out there.

[Tiberius]

Good idea. I don't think we should stifle conversation by locking down threads just because someone posts bad advice though. Usually someone comes along and posts good advice, and if the OP decides to just take the first advice he/she sees, that is their bad decision. Indeed, closing a thread might limit that person to the advice already given (which could all be bad).

Rather, we should encourage people to ask "What are your circumstances?" and then point to the relevant thread on the "DO's and DON'Ts" that you mentioned.

[ohh EPiC FAiL]

i think it's a good idea, especially since it would be helpful to me by now. as long as there is a "disclaimer" stating that the advice being given is just advice, not professional counseling. it could be a place where people can post their coming out stories, and post how it went over and what they learned from it and what they feel could have been done differently to make the outcome better.

[jackman]

this op seems very ironic to me, because welsh is one of the one i thought was like this. of course, i'm not knocking you. everyone has an online persona and i really gathered from your posts that you were a fairly disgruntled guy. gladly, it appears i was wrong. well i agree, i always think communication is better than argument, if only for civility's sake.

[Angrboda]

I understand the concern, and think it wise. However, and yes this is something of a stretch, but I come back to the maxim that the remedy for bad speech is more speech. You may be protecting them from reckless advice, but you might also be depriving them of words, wisdom, or support that is valuable. So like Tibbers, I disagree with locking or otherwise censoring such threads, but agree that there is a need there. Perhaps modding the first response with a short boilerplate with a link to a sticky, and then a response containing a longer boilerplate (but which of course will end up later in the thread). Short and concise being watchwords, as people will ignore links to stickies, and tune out overly long... nagging? I don't mean that, but you know how people react, no matter how neutrally and respectfully you word things, there will always be people who take things the wrong way.

Anyway. My two cents. (Not adjusted for inflation)