I can see where the direction is at Satine but banning people beyond trolls/spams and the usual is counter productive for a self help site, and says alot about the methods in use.
That depends on how you define trolling. A troll is somebody who disrupts a forum. Pavlina is for people to move forward, to better themselves. It is clear from BlueRose's posts that she had no intention of doing so. Depression may be a big factor in that, but one has to wonder why she joined a forum for people to better themselves if all she was going to do was come up with reasons why she shouldn't. And that is what she did.
Cutting off "depressive" people to save members the time of reading a little (which is by choice anyway) is as effective as ignoring such problems (depression) exist in life, which looks like is the idea, to minimise negative thoughts prehaps.
No, it is not. Different forums have different foci. This one is for SA, another might be to help people learn how to grow vegetables, another might be for critiquing ameteur prose and poetry. To have someone come in and start their own (very different) agenda disrupts the direction of the forum and ruins it for the people coming for specialist knowledge. Either a newcomer obeys the rules (which are there for BlueRose to read, and they do cover the way she behaved over there) or doesn't join in the first place. There are forums for depression if that's what she wanted.
Then again I cannot be bothered to check out the posts or forum personally. Self help books and their authors direction is usually aimed at one thing only, $$$.
The members there are supportive of eachother and keen to pass on knowledge, which kind of renders Steve's book redundant.
For you maybe, everyone is at a different stage and on different roads. Sometimes simply discussing it is remedy enough.
Discussion should point the way to truth. BlueRose did not make use of the extra information given to her in the discussions she started. She only wanted to moan. It didn't seem to do any good.
A site that encourages a positive mindset is really good, but I think it's ultimately silly for a mental health forum to try to prevent and ban people who whine or complain. It shows a lack of understanding on how everyone deals with anxiety and depression and its hypocritical. I wonder where the people on that site go to whine? It's not exactly an all-encompassing support forum when you have to go somewhere else just because you are at that point in the cycle where encouragement does absolutely nothing.
That said, there is still responsibility on the individual to manage their mental state, at least to a degree. BlueRose admitted at one point that one of her moaning responses had been ill-judged. If she knows she tends to do this, why not just... not reply? It's within any person's capability to not respond to something, and if she knows it'll help in the long run to stay schtumm, then why not, until she feels in a more constructive mood?
For as long as BlueRose insists there's nothing that can be done in her situation (and her words on Pavlina pretty much amount to saying that), then what is the benefit in joining Pavlina?
