Anti-Religious Trolling On Mumsnet

At the risk of being accused of disingenuousness, I still don't understand what sort of things people want deleted. I presume as a prolific poster on threads about religion I have posted lots of them myself, but I don't think that I have spewed hatred or derailed. And this thread has really not helped to show me where I have.

On websites I've moderated the behaviour I see on MN is called crusading rather than trolling. Pointing out that someone is taking their usual hobby horse out for a canter is not troll hunting but engaging in classic conflict resolution techniques. Of course if M NHQ wants to make religion threads a no go area for people of faith it would be helpful if they could make that clear.

Ah, I see and agree, thegreenheart.

I'm not suggesting troll hunting which I'm well aware is against MN rules but pointing out common derailments. We can have a part of MN where people of faith and no faith can share, comment and discuss matters of faith and spirituality or we can say that on MN that isn't possible because of a small number of posters who consistently derail threads.

nooka but what if the criticism was aimed at you regarding beliefs which weren't even Catholic (as per the beliefs you used to hold) and were aimed at you just because someone identifying a Christian, somewhere, holds them?

If moderaration, is unworkable, as you fell, what is the answer?

Personally, I think there is a huge subjective element to moderation and this might help this issue. If there was an official guideline people might pay attention to it. I rarely report anyway and usually deal with comments addressed towards me on the thread but I can see a guideline being useful.

Given that troll hunting is one of the few things that are specifically against MN rules I can't imagine that would work. Mumsnet is only very lightly moderated, mostly in retrospect through posts being reported. Sounds like the sort of things people want here would result in far more things being reported and the possibility of very subjective deletions. Any rule changes would have to be site wide too, so I can imagine derailment type reports all over the place. Some might be very legitimate (I know that it's incredibly annoying having to field all the MRAs in feminism, and hurtful having to face all the babysnatching trolls in adoption for example). But others will simply be differences of opinion, all in the eye of the reader.

For example I'm an ex-Catholic, went to a church run school, took my catechism etc but never really thought about quite a lot of the major tents of Catholicism until I met my anti-catholic dh (brought up as a non-conformist) because they really weren't a feature of my upbringing.. Looking back I was a member of a club with some very unpleasant beliefs and actions, should I not feel accountable at all for things done apparently in my name? That seems a bit of an abdication of responsibility to me.

But 'troll hunting' is not allowed in MN? So you can't call it out as 'trolling'.

I think calling it out as trolling is going to be most effective, since trolling is explicitly not allowed on MN.

Yes, we have to be careful not to slip into actually 'troll hunting', as per MN guidelines, though thegreenheart. But overtly stating 'off point' or 'that subject is not what this thread is discussing' might help. Sometimes just ignoring, I feel, can allow to much of a free reign to continue posting on whatever subject the derailleur wants, without challenge.

We could certainly try flagging up the derailments and ignoring them. On ship of fools we used to have troll warning comments 'trip, trap, over the bridge' or similar. I'm not regular over there any more so I don't know if they still do that but that place could get very lively at times. So 'thread wreck alert' or similar could give posters the heads up that we have a derailment going on and we ignore the white noise of disrespect.

BigD, regarding 'interesting tangents', I agree and it is a shame, in a way, that diversions are used to derail and shut down conversation. Natural conversation is diverse, tangents are often creative.

However it might have to come sort of moderation or other kind of self operated moderation defensive tactics, such as 'calling out' every diversion, when people are starting to feel they cannot discuss what they want or contribute to threads because of this.

You don't have to like them or agree, but clearly tolerance is fundamental in our society.

So you would tolerate homophobia? If a friend was blanking a neighbour because they were gay?

And it's not a case of tolerating all views but the very worst. It's a sliding scale. I've challenged people's views calmly at a dinner party for example. I didn't flip the table over and instigate a riot.

itsmine you are being disingenuous.

It was Jankf and Sunny's posts I was referencing as offensive Trollery

I am tolerant of people, I don't have to respect belief.

Shakey it gets very difficult to get back to what issues an OP raised when a thread subject matter is diverted on numerous occasions. What you wanted to say probably did relate to a conversation between several posters up thread. If there were the possibility of moderation and deletion, digression would more obviously something to avoid and what would be seen as what should discussed would be the issue the OP raised. As is is now digression and potentially derailment is more accepted (even if reluctantly).

This thread was started because some diversions have a purpose of shutting down discussion or pushing individual posters unique agendas, as observed in the religious threads.. BigD you are correct anyone could be guilty of this, atheist or people of any religion - I never said they couldn't. If moderation was a possibility perhaps there would be less opportunity to divert conversation away from some of the more controversial issues.

itsmine I don't have to be tolerant of beliefs. Especially if I think they are nonsense.

Someone asked earlier why Muslims were not subject to the offensive posts like Christians were, here is a particularly bigoted example of how Islamic teachings were portrayed:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/philosophy_religion_spirituality/2562580-Can-someone-explain-the-differences-between-Judaism-Christianity-and-Islam

Maybe the people who don't want a thread derailed could post "Ignore the Dawkins troll" and be rigorous in not responding to its taunts. Bloody annoying though.