As far as I can remember, it is always posters who bring up the legal side. TPTB bring up the humanitarian argument. Is there any evidence that Ed Zotti et al are so concerned about the possibility of being sued that giving medical or legal advice is against the rules for that reason? Because the mods’ responses here would indicate that that isn’t the issue.
ETA: And Ed’s response in the link above doesn’t mention legal issues.
May I make an observation that seems to be oft overlooked in the medical advice request threads? It IS illegal in the US to dispense medical advice if you are not a physician. It IS practicing without a license. Just because someone on an anonymous message board tells you s/he is a doctor, it ain’t necessarily so.
Quibble: A great decision of another mod.
The super-ultra-hyper-uber-sensitivity about anything remotely resembling medical advice was one of the sillier rules that had…what do barnacles do? encrust?..encrusted here. The idea that medical advice is different from any other advice from a stranger on a message board was nuts. There’s precisely as much chance of the SDMB being sued from someone saying “Toddlers should be allowed to roam freely. Cars will avoid them, so let them run wild!” as there is from “Y’know, the best way to treat your baby’s fever is feed him bright shiny mercury! That’ll cure the problem!”
Like the idiocy with the quote box prohibition (a single dipstick threatened to sue because a poster changed (something like) the word “Republican” to (something like) the word “Jew”*) so now the board is hyper-uber-sensitive to it.
Same thing with the “wishing death” thing. Someone told a poster to “drop dead” and the poster had a hissy-fit screaming that his life was being threatened. So, for a while there, everyone was ultra-vigilant about anything even remotely resembling anything regarding death and another poster. (This has really eased up and I, for one, truly appreciate the relaxation!)
I really appreciate them loosening this rule (I never understood it to be a GQ only prohibition either). But in any case, kudos folks! 
*This is grossly overstated, but it’s been 9 years and I don’t remember the details. It was as if the post read “Yeah all those damned [del]Republicans[/del] Jews are subhuman animals. Everyone hates them and that’s why all [del]Republicans[/del] Jews should be hunted down” (note the poster didn’t make threats–I’m using hyperbole here.
No. You’ve said too much! :mad:
The goon squad will be arriving in the blue van in the next 15 minutes. Please say goodbye to your family and loved ones. You know what happens when you give Mod Secrets away.
It’s not though.
This. I also need to point out that if we had received legal advice, we couldn’t reveal what it was or we’d waive attorney-client privilege. So I’m not at liberty to get into that. Sorry.
This is a good argument for a change in the existing policy, and I’d be willing to discuss it with you, but I don’t think I want to do it in a thread where I’m being accused of circling the wagons and covering things up. If you start a new thread, I’ll participate as time allows. I’ve already cited the relevant rules and **Ed Zotti’**s November 2008 explanation of board policy on this topic, so I’ll leave the thread open, but I doubt I’ll have much more to say here.
Okay, but this response typifies one of the problems: Mod over-sensitivity to criticism, even valid criticism. Know whut, G? You’re being accused of circling the wagon and covering things up because that’s what you’ve been doing, protecting your and Ed’s exposed butts with a lot of fancy language, quibbles, fine interpretations of vague wordings, legalistic buzz words (luv that attorney-client privilege ploy–good one!) when all you needed to do was to thank Alice the Goon for raising a good point about medical-advice threads, acknowledge that you’ve been applying policy inconsistently at times, and solicit advice (if you want any, and why wouldn’t you?) from Dopers for making a new, more consistent and more comprehensible policy.
Instead you’re still bawling us out for trying to make sense of your current policy, and stalking out of this thread in a huff because we hurt your widdle feewings. Here’s a lollipop–suck on it until you feel better, ok?
You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Alice said we recently changed the policy. I’ve pointed out that we’ve had the same policy on the books since November 2008. If this is a “cover up” it’s pretty elaborate. I mean, apparently we’ve been preparing for this for years. Until you show me where I’m “covering things up” I don’t see any point in discussing this further with you. Simply repeating the phrase doesn’t make it so. Pouring gravy on cotton candy doesn’t make it mashed potatoes.
BigT is the only one who seems interested in discussing what the rule ought to be. I’m willing to do that in another thread. All are welcome to discuss it there.
[quote=“Gfactor, post:25, topic:549617”]
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. If you had taken legal advice, you wouldn’t be able to tell us what it was. But if you hadn’t, then I presume you could tell us you hadn’t. But as you won’t, I infer that you have. But you’ve said that the problem isn’t legal, so there would be no reason to take legal advice, so you presumably haven’t. Unless the legal advice was not so say whether you have or haven’t.
Or something.
PS. As must be obvious, I have no idea how to edit multi quotes.
Aha! You’ve caught me in a cover up! 
You’re right. This does seem inconsistent. What I meant was that I agreed with your comment that we’ve never claimed that the reason for the rule was legal. Of course, you are also correct that we probably wouldn’t go into much detail if it was. The law is indeed a fickle mistress.
ETA: Inconceivable!
Now I’ve got to get to work, so I may not respond for a while.
[quote=“NineToTheSky, post:28, topic:549617”]
This will do for starters, G. Hiding behind the skirts of some maybe-fictional, maybe-not attorney to explain why you can’t discuss policy decisions is circling the wagons, in my book, obscuring any reasonable discussion among adults on the dubious grounds that discussing with us things you’ve (maybe)discussed with your attorney (somehow) violates attorney-client privilege. No one asked you disclose anyone’s sacred trust here–you could discuss reasons to apply medical-advice policy strictly, or loosely, or not at all, whether you’ve discused these subjects with your attorney or not, and simply not bring him/her/it into the discussion. “[x issue] has been discussed, and the possibile liability the SDMB will bear, but others in the discussion have pointed out…” All I’m requesting is some clarity, and you keep complicating a relatively simple discussion, so as to make it seem that no one has ever made a mistake in deciding policy around here. That’s circling the wagons, protecting Mods at the expense of common sense or clarity. You may not like my calling it that, but that’s what you’re doing with all these unnecessary diversions and partly coherent explanations.
Ok. Let me clarify this for you, and then I need to go to work:
Here’s a thread I opened last December, to which C K Dexter Haven provided a rather detailed response.
If there are no legal concerns, then I don’t see any confusion. TPTB should make it clear: either legal and medical advice is OK - primarily, I’d say, because if someone is allowed to *ask *for advice, it’d seem a bit strange to prevent people answering, or it isn’t OK - for whatever reason; it’s their board: they make the rules. If it isn’t OK, the rule should be that you can’t ask.
Clarity is what’s needed - as always in these cases. And the clarification from **Gfactor **seems to be that it’s OK. Again, as always, of course, the mods should be consistent.
**Colibri **said:
Not necessarily. It could possibly be the best advice you’ll ever get. The trouble is that there is no real way of telling whether it’s good or bad. But, as I said before, the person asking should be aware of that.
What I would like to know is- if threads asking for medical advice, and “severe pain”, “what is wrong with me?” clearly constitutes asking for medical advice, are okay now, why are most other threads like this not moved from GQ to IMHO, but closed, with the admonishment not to ask for medical advice here? (Do you really need cites for this?) There was a recent thread that was closed down because someone was asking for medical advice about their dog, but asking about humans is okay? I see a real lack of consistency here.
The staff is discussing whether a rule change or a clarification of the existing rules is required. The discussion will take a while because some folks aren’t available for a few days. I’m leaving this thread open so y’all can continue the discussion. I’ll make sure that any comments or suggestions are part of the discussion.
Thanks for keeping us informed and thanks for the courtesy, G. Sorry if I got all up in your face before.
You are probably right that we’ve been inconsistent about where these threads go. That’s going to be part of our discussion. Regarding the dog thread:
You’re welcome. No problem.
Something I don’t see mentioned here regarding the rationale for distinguishing between asking for med/legal advice in GQ, rather than IMHO… Isn’t it due to General Questions advertised as being for factual responses, while In My Humble Opinion is patently intended to be opinion, and clearly labeled as such?
Someone expecting correct, factual advice re: legal and medical issues could be probelmatic.
Someone asking for opinions is hopefully more aware that said opinions are worth pretty much the pixels they’re composed of.
Is this it?
Yeah, that’s pretty much the distinction we’re discussing on the mod loop at the moment.