Threads about threads......

[BertrandRussell]

Should they always be deleted- regardless of content ?

What if the initial post is a post about a thread, but the following 400 odd posts are not?

[bibbitybobbityyhat]

I think discretion should be used about taats.

Sometimes a separate conversation evolves on a thread. It should be possible to take that on to another thread (to avoid derailing the original one) without being deleted.

If a taat is a thread about a troll thread which has been deleted, it should be allowed to stay so that everyone can see the news that trolly thread has gone, and should be locked if it just becomes a rehash of the original.

If a taat is a "Look what happened to me on this thread, I don't like it and I want you all to sympathise with me" thread then it should be deleted.

In short, I would like mnhq to do quite a bit more moderating on their own site. For years they have relied on moderation by membership but that really only worked quite well when Mumsnet was significantly quieter and not a constant target for malicious trolls. Imo.

[SilverBirchWithout]

I don't mind MNHQ relying on their membership reporting problems. But they do need to respond more quickly, particularly out of hours.

More action is needed with persistently GFs and deleting other posts once someone is found to be a Troll or GF on a specific thread.

[IonaMumsnet]

Hi there BertrandRussell. It's a bit of a grey area, this one. If it's a straight TAAT then yes, we usually do just delete as there's generally not a lot to be gained from these threads. If it's more of an 'inspired by' another thread and the OP isn't dissecting the details of one particular thread, then we do sometimes leave them. It really is looked at on a case-by-case basis.

As an example, there was a TAAT tonight that we took down, which you might have seen. There was a really interesting discussion going on, which we didn't want to quash. OTOH, it was a blatant TAAT, plus the original thread had been deleted, so folk weren't even sure that it had been genuine, and the TAAT itself had had a lot of reports that it was turning into a bunfight, then the OP of the original thread turned up to boot. We decided the best thing was to delete it but we did contact the OP separately to let her know we were doing this and to make it clear that she was welcome to start another thread on the same discussion, but it would be best to leave out the references to the original thread.

It is a shame though, we agree, when we have to lose lots of interesting posts to a TAAT, and it's something we'll continue to think about. Perhaps if the only mention is in the OP and the thread is otherwise trouble free, we could look at just editing mentions of the original thread out, with the OP's permission.