Part of my daily routine is to go to stackexchange.com and see the hot questions. Today this hot question was up:
The question itself seemed like it might be a problem but my curiosity got the better of me, and I was not expecting to see quite so much graphic detail about the nature of the abuse -- to the extent that it ended up giving me a panic attack.
I feel like this question (especially in detail) is likely to cause a lot of emotional grief for a lot of people, and it would be beneficial if it could be flagged with a content warning and, ideally, if questions like those would not show up on the "hot questions" list.
The question itself is legitimate and I am glad the user asked the question -- and the answers they received are, also, quite beneficial. But it certainly isn't the sort of thing I was hoping to be confronted with, especially as a "hot question."
Thus, what I am proposing:
- Have the ability for the community to flag such comments with a content warning
- Prevent such posts from appearing on the "hot network questions" display and sidebars.
Edit: It appears that the question has since been deleted. I have mixed feelings about this (the answers which were given would have been very educational for the person asking). Regardless, I still feel like a content-warning mechanism would be helpful; sometimes there are questions that are important and valid but which are also troublesome for some people to see.
The use of CW-based partial-hiding is well-established in communities such as Mastodon, where people can put things behind a structured spoiler/CW tag that indicates what lies behind it.