I've had a few people committ suicide over the last 10 years on my forum, one famously in a chat room of ours 'Ripper' as he was called.
Any community and all communities will face unstable people and its very sad that it happens. Its hard to put guilt on people over the faceless internet and anonymous chatrooms.
However this is horrible media sensationalism as it was for me when I had to deal with reporters over my friends suicide that became internet legend at the time. They could care less about anything other than getting a sensationalist story, all the while forgetting how it would affect the family and friends of the departed.
Its hard to discern as forum moderators/administrators what is a real threat and what isn't, I can't tell you how often people have faked suicide, claimed they were going to kill themselves and of course the few who have.
In our website we tell our moderators how to deal with such users, we get notified via emergency contact if the threat seems at all credible, if necessary we will do all we can to notify the ISP of the persons threat to kill themselves, albeit this is sketchy at best, ISPs will tend to do nothing for fear of getting sued.
The worst part is the family will get to see what these people said to their kid, and that will probably haunt them for the rest of their lives.
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