When all this has calmed down, can we have a proper chat about what MNHQ, actually want please?

Do you think outsourcing some of the easy moderating could work?

This is what I think (if anyone is interested).

I think that there are certain categories of post that are very easy to identify as inappropriate and are very damaging to be left up for even a small amount of time. I would include in this:

rape myths
disablist posts
racist posts
sexist posts (in the FWR area anyway)
post that actually contain the word troll in reference to another poster

There are many valuable sensible posters on here with a lot of experience in recognising posts of these natures.

I think MNHQ should give those posters the right to dump a post into an 'awaiting moderation' state. MNHQ would have the final say (as it does currently) but we wouldn't have to spend even a minute looking at obviously hurtful, malicious and in some cases dangerous posts.

Clearly as MNHQ still sees every decision, anyone overstepping their authority would have this privilege removed.

I can think off the top of my head of a handful of posters I would trust to do this (different for the different categories obviously).

So MNHQ, why not crowd source your moderation problem within a limited scope and entirely relating the post types that can cause active damage to MNers?

There are some very odd things going on at preset. On an xmas thread of all places there was a poster deliberately goading another, lots of deletions and MNHQ comment that they are dealing with it but nothing is done

Then you get posters like af suspended for a week. If HQ dealt with the instigators the good eggs wouldn't end up getting worked up. If you poke someone long enough they are bound to snap but moderators should not let it get that far.

I think the real difficulty with Mumsnet isn't the moderating at all but the unsustainability of its management wanting it to be both a supportive community website and a mass site that is flogged hard on social media and at every possible opportunity in the press -- often using women's heartfelt disclosures and profound concerns as grist for ever more publicity.

Twitter and facebook in particular, which Mumsnet rely on very heavily, are all about the endless outward ripple; and a community site has to be more about deepening inward communication so that there is empathy, shared values, shared exploration. Once that shared territory is lost thanks to determined expansion via social media and the press (as it certainly has been on MN) you can't reproduce the same level of mutual support by means of moderation rules. You have something different and poorer, which the moderators and the posters have to make the best of by clinging to the basic courtesy of not allowing personal attack. That rule really does make it still possible to talk and support in a worthwhile way. I suspect that things will continue to get worse and worse, but we might as well make the most of it before it sinks.

"the deliberate goady fuckers, whiners and foot stampers who appear from nowhere, whine and foot stamp cause tremendous upset and then disappear again, - only to reappear on a different subject but with exactly the same manner of twisty turning slippery sucker pa goady fucker posting."

THAT'S THE ONE, Wannabe!

You know her too, eh? (Actually there are two of them, but one is extreme)

I think if MN wants to maintain its reputation but make it a place where everyone feels included they're onto a loser. Part of MN was the marmite factor. If you didn't like it there were other sites out there, and that meant the people who were here were happy about the way it was run and the way conversation flows.

Part of that reputation is the perception that MN is where the witty, intelligent and opinionated women hang out - and that when their opinion is wanted MN is the way to get it. It's made MN a target and to prevent negative press the moderation has changed with the aim of making the site nicey-nicey. There are plenty of sites like that out there targeting parents. MN doesn't need to be another.

You can't have both. Either it's a nicey-nicey-there-there-hun site or it's somewhere you can actually have a discussion. If MNHQ took a stand and screw the bad press they'd gain a lot of respect for it.

I'm not talking about AF here - I don't now the ins and outs, it's possible she consistently went too far - but I want MNHQ to make a statement saying this is the site for real opinions and real discussion and sometimes that gets heated and we're okay with that.

I don't think goading should be deleted. But then, I think if it is obvious you have been goaded and post a PA, by all means delete the post, but don't ban the poster. No-one posts in a vacuum and reported posts should always be looked at in context and not on their own.

trolling/goading is very subjective though.

What to one is trolling is unpleasantness to another and is legitimate expression to someone else.

Not everyone has the same level of elequant posting style, not everyone thinks before they hit the post button, and not everyone feels they should keep away from some boards out of common courtesy.

While there will always be posters who deliberately set out to cause offense, I think that we ought to be careful not to head down the route of presuming that anyone who voices a particularly vicious opposing view is a troll or deliberately goading. some may be, equally some may not.

Not everyone agrees with the tone of some of the posts on the feminism board. I don't and have feminism hidden for that reason and I don't feel the need to go in there and voice my opinions. But others may feel more strongly than that and feel the need to express them. And if you round on someone for those views it is going to cause conflict. But is there really any difference in aggression between calling someone with strong feminist views names, and that person calling the oppoer a c?

Not everyone agrees with the views on relationships. In fact my personal view is that while there is a lot of good advice on relationships, it has become a very one-sided viewpoint where women are very much given the impression that any behaviour beyond what they want is abusive and that they are all victims who should be seeking red flags at every turn. I would be more inclined to voice my views on a relationships thread, and many of those views would not be along the trend of the threads themselves. would I then be considered a troll? quite possibly, or at the very least ops would be told to ignore my views (such as poster yesterday who has been snooping on her h to prove his infidelity even though she has found nothing and he is being very up-front about things).

The risk you run when silencing opposing views with shouts of "troll," is that those boards to become a very one-sided view not because the views on that board are all the same, but because anyone with an opposing view is shouted down, and so eventually people stop posting and in fact ignore those boards altogether.

I had one of those a couple of years ago curlew - turned out 'lots of complaints about your robust style of posting' was ONE goady fucker who had been targeting me.

I was sent a warning email recently. There had been "lots of complaints". I've asked for details and had no reply.

Take a look at "discussions o the day" thats what they want

Excellent post there from ButThereAgain. The term 'goading' is really problematic in itself. It's also being used as an excuse for people making personal attacks, which simply isn't on.

I was thinking the same thing as Artex, it's all gone downhill a bit since Helen left.

Bad decisions being made left, right and centre.

So AnyFucker is being made an example of, but there is a bigger picture here about the deliberate goady fuckers, whiners and foot stampers who appear from nowhere, whine and foot stamp cause tremendous upset and then disappear again, - only to reappear on a different subject but with exactly the same manner of twisty turning slippery sucker pa goady fucker posting.

Do MNHQ know this? Because it's glaringly obvious to many of us and we don't even have the benefit of the inside info of IP details and TSSDNCOP.

They must know, so why do they allow it to continue and allow the persistent targeting to inevitably lead to the good eggs of MN being banned and fucking off?

sorry if this has all been said already, - I have only caught up with this this morning and after the bullying threads nonsense, Christmas cheer spoiling this really is the last fucking straw.

There are some seriously goady people, who when they are retaliated against, report with speed.

One such person I responded carefully to by saying 'I find you so irritating' [she was ponitificating about s/thing she has no experience of, because 'a friend' blah blah].

Now, that isn't a personal attack. I was owning an observation.

I got deleted and warned.

It would be a lot easier for MNHQ to moderate the site successfully if posters did two things. One is to avoid clear personal attacks. It isn't hard, for goodness sake, even in the most pressing cases. You can easily make very trenchant points very frankly without personal attacks. Then you don't get deleted, suspended, banned. The other is to call a halt to the dangerous business of demanding a wider and wider moderation of "goading." Though there are unacceptably provocative posts (often from men who want to piss on a women's space), especially unwelcome on support threads, they can generally be characterised as personal attacks or trolling and dealt with as such. The term "goading" is an attempt to disallow a much wider category of posts -- it is often used just to mean "stating views that make me feel angry and self-righteous." The logic of requiring MNHQ to take a stand on "goading" is movement in the direction of censoring real and profound disagreements. It is part of a wider dynamic that is leading to the deterioration of online conversation. See this comment piece in the Guardian for a good account of it

Last night on MN was aggressive, over-the-top, and silencing of dissent. I felt it wasn't even worth posting because the atmosphere was such that anything against the general trend of posts would have been attacked as "goading", or even "MRA." I really do think that it is posters who are suppressing high-quality discussion, not MNHQ. I'm sure they need to improve their moderation by higher staff levels, but moderating conversation and thought is very very hard and I think the trend of the site at the moment is to make it harder.

Excellent idea.

I'd be very interested too.