I spent an afternoon trying to teach my cat Java… trigger warnings: Java, animal abuse
I lol’ed at the idea that teaching a cat specifically java constitutes animal abuse!
However, I am wondering whether LW really needs trigger warnings as part of a standard set of article metadata. IMO most trigger warnings are infantilizing, and I’ve never seen anything on LW that would benefit from a trigger warning. I suppose that if someone is putting forward an Roko’s-Basilisk-like thought experiment and feels so inclined, he/she could add a “memetic hazard” warning. But making it a standard part of a recommended set of metadata is a bad idea IMO.
I think “content note” has overtaken Trigger Warning as the word-of-choice, for good reason: trigger warning originally referred to a particular bad thing that might happen if someone read something that ywas psychologically triggering, but there’s a wide variety of reasons you might want to warn people about your content beyond literal triggering in the classical sense.
Then, “standard” shouldn’t mean mandatory, only “if you want to express something like this, use this keyword; also look at the list of keywords to find things that may be useful for your article”.
So, if your articles doesn’t need trigger warnings, don’t use them. The word is there because (1) it is sometimes useful, (2) it may be useful to remind authors to consider whether it is useful, and (3) so that all authors that want to express this kind of idea use the same label for it, making it easier for readers familiar with the convention.
I lol’ed at the idea that teaching a cat specifically java constitutes animal abuse!
However, I am wondering whether LW really needs trigger warnings as part of a standard set of article metadata. IMO most trigger warnings are infantilizing, and I’ve never seen anything on LW that would benefit from a trigger warning. I suppose that if someone is putting forward an Roko’s-Basilisk-like thought experiment and feels so inclined, he/she could add a “memetic hazard” warning. But making it a standard part of a recommended set of metadata is a bad idea IMO.
I think “content note” has overtaken Trigger Warning as the word-of-choice, for good reason: trigger warning originally referred to a particular bad thing that might happen if someone read something that ywas psychologically triggering, but there’s a wide variety of reasons you might want to warn people about your content beyond literal triggering in the classical sense.
Then, “standard” shouldn’t mean mandatory, only “if you want to express something like this, use this keyword; also look at the list of keywords to find things that may be useful for your article”.
So, if your articles doesn’t need trigger warnings, don’t use them. The word is there because (1) it is sometimes useful, (2) it may be useful to remind authors to consider whether it is useful, and (3) so that all authors that want to express this kind of idea use the same label for it, making it easier for readers familiar with the convention.