Afternoon all,

So we've spoken to Mind and the Samaritans about this and they both suggest that we continue to allow threads in which users talk about feeling very low and having suicidal thoughts but remove threads that are clear statements of intent ('I am going to kill myself'), suicide notes, 'live' suicide threads. ('I have taken an overdose and am waiting for it to take effect'), or anything that involves a description of methods.

Looking at the this thread, this chimes with what the majority of Mumsnetters want us to do also, so henceforth that's what we'll do.

In cases in which we remove threads, we will post to explain to the OP that we are going to delete it, and signpost the Samaritans; PM the OP (supportively, obviously) to signpost the Samaritans; and explain our actions in the deletion message.

In cases where we leave the thread up (the feeling low threads) we will post links to our mental health webguide and to the Samaritans' online and telephone support.

We know there are some who feel extremely strongly that threads that express suicidal intent should be allowed to stand, and we do understand your reasons, but the consensus was so strong on this one - from both MNers and from experts in the field - that it really did feel there was only one way forward.

Brilliant, thank you. Our time stamps (GMT in this case) say we got your report at 5.37pm and replied at 7.30pm the same day.

We don't have a record of you reporting the same thread again in the evening - you did report a related PM that evening (at 5pm) and we replied the next morning (at 9.50am), is that the one you mean?

With both the extended time replying to you about the PM, and the deletion message - we were in a really tricky position. We had (and still have) no proof that the second poster was actually the first poster, so we couldn't openly accuse them of that. And the thread was on a particularly tricky topic, and one where it would be a bit disastrous to openly conclude that someone was a lying troll - there was (and still is) a possibility that both posters were telling the truth, and we had to make a decision on balance of probability and the amount of distress the threads were causing.

So the delay in replying, in this case, wasn't because of understaffing so much as because we were weighing the risks vs benefits of allowing the second poster to continue posting, and these things tend to become clearer over a passage of time.

We couldn't use the deletion message 'this poster has already been banned twice already' because we couldn't link that poster to the first at all. In the end the deletion message mentioned both TAAT and troll-hunting, which seems fair in the (very murky) circumstances?

Sorry you had to wait overnight for the reply, though.

yy PM reports come in to the main 'priority' reports stream. We can see if PMs from the same user are being reported multiple times. We can also see the first line of the PM in our reports list, so if it's utterly grim (as in the case you mention) it's pretty obvious.

(PS don't know if you've mailed in but still not quite sure which thread you're referring to - not the PM stuff, the other stuff. We'd like to take a look at what happened so do please tell us here or via email which case it was)

Too late, Chilling. Too late. OH MY EYES

Tbh there honestly aren't many things about this job that are genuinely really simple. Even flat out PAs ('Fuck off you cunt' stuff) can sometimes be in response to endless inflammatory posting from a troll or someone who needs banning - and having a vol mod delete the PA before the staff can get around to looking at the thread as a whole is liable to massively annoy people. (We know this from bitter experience.)

So one of the things that some reporters might be finding frustrating - the fact that a seemingly simple PA isn't being deleted immediately - is actually the result of our policy of trying to look at the overall situation before making a move. This is itself a policy we arrived at after LOTS of feedback from users!

And access to the back end really is essential - can't really explain why fully without giving too much away, but (for instance) knowing that a 'fuck off you cunt' is actually a cheery greeting between two users who know each other well (and who are posting under namechanges) is very useful sometimes. (That's just one example!)

Don't mean to knock back all your suggestions without considering them - we will certainly have a look at what's happening in the evenings, maybe do some analysis of how long it's taking us to respond to evening reports vs daytime reports, and see whether there's something there that needs to be addressed.

We've always resisted auto-responses to reporters (other than for spam reports) because we do look at and evaluate every single report and we think this is an important part of the way we run the site - and sending individual responses (albeit occasionally based on templates) is, we think, one of the things that enables us to have a different sort of relationship with our users.

Reports do already get sorted into a few categories, with boring commercial spam and the like being accorded a lower priority. Reports of trolls, PAs and isms seem to us to be much the same in terms of how urgent they are, so we're not sure that sorting them into categories would help much - and of course not everything necessarily fits into a neat category anyway.

We do have auto-alerts for threads, posts or posters that draw a lot of reports in a short space of time. This is fairly recent but we're finding it useful.

The Night Watch is our experiment in vol mods and so far we think it's working really well. There's a difficulty in allowing vol mods to rule on things like personal attacks because often these are judgement calls and with the best will in the world, it's difficult for posters who are well dug in to the community to judge these dispassionately - what if the PA being reported is an attack on one of your mates, for instance: or one of your mates is involved in a right old ding-dong with another poster? Even if the vol mods made a good decision, they'd be open to the accusation of favouring their friends.

And our job also involves lots of access to people's personal data (being able to see the back end is essential), which isn't something we'd be very comfortable sharing with volunteers (and we're guessing lots of MNers wouldn't be comfortable with that either...)

Well we haven't, honest - but yes the evening cover is less full than the day cover. Maybe we need to look at that and reshuffle a bit if lots of people feel that evening reports aren't getting responded to.

@BeyondPreparedForHell

Rowan, you know i love you but i gotta disagree with that. When the woman was on asking if she had been raped by a friend the other day (and the first two threads had already been deleted so you were already on the case at hq), the third thread popped up, it was reported at about midday by others and early evening by me, and the first response i got from hq was at 11am the next day.

And that actually leads me to another question re troll hunting. If hq have already deleted a thread for trolling and they pop up again, how is it wrong for people to point out why it was deleted? I started out on the "we believe you applies to everyone, even pbps" side, so am genuinely curious how this is decided.

Oh dear, that doesn't sound good. What was the poster name? (It's not ringing bells with me but we have four or five people dealing with reports on any given day/evening so we don't all see every reported thread.) We'll have a look into what happened.

@PacificWerewolf

Nice as it is to be listened to ( MNHQ), you'll never please ALL of us ALL of the time, so just grow a pair be brave and Tell Us How It's Going To Be

We will do, don't worry Not long to go now.

We're not lying. We have paid staff on, seven days a week, until very late in the evening. (We're being deliberately vague because we don't want to tell trolls exactly when we knock off.)

It's simply untrue that there's no use in reporting after 5pm - as the many people who have reported after 5pm and got responses the same day would hopefully attest.

That's not how we see it tbh (though we wouldn't would we ). Although we're busy, we very rarely overwhelmed - usually only when something ridiculous (like Heartbleed) happens. Most days/evenings we clear almost everything that's been reported to us, and the Night Watch deal with egregious trolling and spamming overnight.

It's not about the topic - in that case it was because the OP had a history of starting threads on hot-button topics, and also various things that we can see behind the scenes linked her to previously banned accounts.

Morning all

Yes, this, basically. It's totally fine to say 'sorry, maybe I've misunderstood but xx and yy about your story don't seem to make sense'.

What's not fine is if this seems to be straying into a deliberate attempt to heavily imply disbelief/trolling while just about staying on the right side of the rules.

Of course it's not always obvious which is happening, which is where the headaches can come in from MNHQ's POV.

Equally, there can be an innocent explanation for xx and yy not quite adding up - people can disguise details to remain anonymous; the OP may not have perfectly understood a piece of information herself.

We can see that, yes and we do have something like this in place - yes, we're being

Thanks all for your feedback, we are still reading through and will be back with more comprehensive responses to some of the issues raised after we have met at the end of the week.

What would you like to see change usual?

We do see a difference between a nasty troll who is here to cause upset and hurt and a stupid troll who is here for half term the kicks but is harmless, mainly because they are so blatant.

Both will be banned when they are reported to us but we would probably deal with the aftermath slightly differently.

To be clear on this one, we always say no to trolls, regardless of how funny they may be.

If they are a troll, we will ban them. We may leave threads up for varying lengths of time but we always ban trolls.

It can be a judgement call sometimes though Usual and we can see things at HQ that posters can't and can make better informed decisions on whether or not someone is a troll.

It's not always the case that if it looks like a troll, it is a troll.

It's not that simple at all. Our jobs would be considerably easier if that was the case.

Please do report and let us have a proper look from our end.

We are hopeful we we will hear back by Friday truffle, but can't be sure.

Hello everyone

First off, on That Thread: to be honest it was a cock-up. The replies that were sent and the post that was posted shouldn't have been. And we should have gone through the thread more thoroughly following early reports of troll-hunting.

(MNHQ is of course The Borg, as you all know, and we assume collective responsibility for both our brilliant decisions and for our cock-ups, so this isn't to cast nasturtiums on the MNHQer concerned.)

It is true that - as lots have pointed out - marbles has a lovely and engaging writing style; that the arc of the thread was very neat and satisfying; and that in her penultimate post there was a material discrepancy between the two different versions, which marbles didn't address. So we do understand why some posters were cynical - but as ever the only thing we ask posters to do in these circs is to report to us, and to not use the thread to accuse another posting of trolling or making the entire thing up.

The poster has been around for some time, her previous posting history completely backs her up, we can see no banned or troublesome posters associated with her behind-the-scenes account details, and we have absolutely no reason to think her account was substantially untrue.

We realise we haven't covered ourselves in glory on this one - apologies.

BTW - please don't use this thread (or any other thread) to accuse her of lying or making stuff up.

Hi all,

We are reopening this thread now to continue the discussion.
Please do post your views.

We are having a meeting later on this week at HQ to have a look at what everyone thinks from this thread and others and talk about the advice we will have by then from outside specialist organisations, all being well.

We will pop in and out of this thread over the next few days and follow up on the more recent posts but we won't have any kind of definitive policy changes until we have a chance to sit down and meet with all of the information we have asked for.

Apologies this is taking a while but we hope you can see that it's an important issue that we'd like to address and this can sometimes take a while.

Have good weekends all

Nerf it's our goal (always) to deal with reports and threads using the Talk Guidelines and the spirit of the site as our lodestones (can you have two lodestones?) but with discretion, humanity and common sense. If anyone breaks any rule persistently we will deal with them. But the people we aim to come down on hardest of all is people trolling/deliberately trouble-making in this lovely and unique corner of the internet.

Oh no, it's Ellen on tonight. Who is ALSO very scary.

OK folks - we're going to lock this one soon for the weekend.

Please don't start new threads on this topic over the weekend; we won't be able to monitor them closely and we're aware lots of people feel this debate has been going on for long enough already. Feels like everyone's had a tough week, one way and the other, and a massive bunfight over the weekend with lots of accusations and hurt feelings isn't what anyone wants.

Plus Olivia's on duty tonight and you KNOW how scary she is.

Crikey. That's quite an accusation.

We said we'd close the thread a) because it was suggested by and agreed to by a few posters on here, many of whom thought this was dragging on for too long; and b) because we won't be able to monitor it closely over the weekend and we don't want it to become a bunfight.