What's the deal with 'Guest Posts'?

[PlentyOfPubeGardens]

• Who are these people? Who invites them and why? What are the criteria?
  

• What's the basic aim of having guest posts on MN at all?
  

• What is the understanding wrt responses? Are guest posters encouraged to read our comments and respond? If not, why not?
  

• How much input does MNHQ have in these posts? Titles? Standfirsts? Editing suggestions? Images? Sometimes the post gives out extremely mixed messages.
  

There have been a few 'guest posts' lately that, if posted by a normal MNer, would probably be reported as post-and-run goadiness, including the current one.

[Enormouse]

Yes I agree with pubegardens and have commented so on that thread.

What is the point of them? Is just to create traffic for their own blogs?

Some are very insightful and interesting like the beds in the orchard one but on the whole they are just a platform for publicising a blog.

[seventiesgirl]

I tend to avoid them. There are so many other discussions on MN of interest and importance. I avoid blogs full stop though.

[26Point2Miles]

Do they get paid? Or pay a fee themselves?

In other words, is dosh being exchanged?

[bucketofchicken]

If viewing on mobile app it never says who the post is by. Really annoying.

[bucketofchicken]

It just says 'mumsnetguestposts'.

[KateMumsnet]

bucketofchicken, sorry about you not being able to see the guest post author on the current mobile app. Tech are working on a new one as we speak - in the meantime, the mobile site (rather than the app) displays them better.

Guest posts are a way of showcasing a variety of voices on the site, whether that's politicians or public figures we think have something interesting and relevant to say (eg: Marie Stopes' Dawn Purvis, when Bernadette Smyth was sentenced; or Jo Swinson on Shared Parental Leave), or our own bloggers. Very rarely, they might come from large organisations as part of a commercial partnership, but we'd always make it clear if that were the case.

More often, guest posts are from 'ordinary' Mumsnet bloggers and, we hope, highlight issues which might affect or interest MNers (eg: Tuesday's guest post on Pathological Avoidance Demand Syndrome). Sometimes the guest poster approaches us, and other times we spot something that we think will make a good one, and approach them ourselves.

Guest posters do occasionally respond to questions on the thread off their own bat (as with Tuesday's post) - thanks for the feedback, though, we'll try and encourage them to do so more often (though obviously we can't make them do so!).

These are all relevant questions, so what we'll do is put a page up on site explaining how we do things, and link to it from future guest posts.

[LoofahVanDross]

There are far too many of them IMO. I skip the top third of the page practically as they all look so boooring.

[PlentyOfPubeGardens]

Thank you Kate.

I think it does make a big difference when guest posters come back and join in the discussion and I wish more would do so, especially when their post is a bit contentious.

[PlentyOfPubeGardens]

I just noticed this from the OP of a recent guest post: Actually I didn't call myself a victim. The mumsnet team wrote the title. I think part of the problem with guest posts is that the titles sometimes don't really match the tone and contents of the post. Other examples I can think of:

This thread where the OP wrote: I believe that attachment parenting is the most genuinely feminist ‘parenting philosophy’ out there

... yet in the standfirst this became: MN blogger Chrissy Chittenden argues that attachment parenting is the only genuinely feminist 'parenting philosophy'

Or this thread - OP says: It's about creating an environment in which staff have the confidence to talk about mental health every day.

... but in the title this becomes: teachers must talk about mental health every day

So I think sometimes people are reacting negatively to these posts because the titles are a bit goady.