Online communities and ethical issues

This post is in reference to the three online communities that i have previously added.

There are many ethical issues that would have to be considered when setting up or using one of these online blog communities for mental health.

privacy seams to be one of the most common ethical issues between all the sites. Users of the online communities are all to be confidential. For reasons such as keeping location, age, sex and family name confidential and that relationships between users stays an online one.

Conversations on these online communities has to stay on topic. When i say this i mean it cannot evolve into conversations about HOW to commit suicide, they can only talk about suicidal thoughts or feelings. never what they will do or when. If these sorts of conversations happen then other users become involved and try to intervene, and this putting many people at risk.

The lack of accountability for what has been written. There is a certain amount of anonymity on these web sites, individuals might end up posting things they would not normally say in person.

Intellectual property rights, things posted on these sorts of web sites can be copied and copied again and the owner of the image or information is lost and re used over and over.