Is there a DV policy?

Battleax I share your concerns - it's hard enough for those suffering EA/DV to reach out for help as it is. I worry that posters have left threads and stayed in dangerous situations because they are already vulnerable and then get a hammering on a site they thought they would be safe on.

The thread you've referenced is particularly awful. I try to be charitable and assume those posting 'he will kill' are lucky enough to have never experienced abuse, but it's getting hard to keep myself in check.

I don't engage them in a discussion because I don't want to derail the thread, but as a lot of EA/DV threads pop up at night, the Nightwatch need their modding remit expanded urgently.

Battleax I know exactly what you mean and I have noticed a similar trend recently.

I suppose it is just a part of the site getting larger and moving faster. But time was that the DV related advice on here was fantastic - a mix of serious and supportive, friendly and encouraging and coaxing. There was a generally outstanding understanding of DV and it was treated sensitively. Posters would sit up all night to talk through a woman's distress - I've done it myself from both ends, as I learned from the wealth of experience here and left my own situation. And I think you're absolutely right that in the past it was common for poor advice to be drowned out by the reasoned majority but the problem is that this is not a majority any more.

There have always, unfortunately, been these extremely distressing posts on occasion where a poster has recently been victim of serious violence, and they do attract a much more shocked response - which is fair because it is shocking! But the difference seems to be that lately there is a trend for respondents to either post and run - add the shocked/judgemental comment and never come back which makes it difficult for posters who are actually trying to support the OP over a sustained period to get their comments seen. Or the other trend I'm much less a fan of is posters who just keep posting the same, can I say goady? responses as though they expect the OP to simply have a change of heart immediately and go right then, I'll leave, I've obviously got this all wrong - it doesn't work like that and when you're working with DV victims it is really unhelpful to keep hounding them for results as though they are a character in a soap opera you want an update for!

I don't know how a MN policy could actually address this issue though. Perhaps a topic for a thread on Relationships, and if any of us old-timers have any suggestions we could come back and share them? You can't, unfortunately, stop people from using others' distress and hardship as entertainment, and it would be difficult to know where to draw the line - because sometimes such "encouragement" is well-meaning but misinformed, whereas sometimes it seems almost vampirish.

I do wonder if restarting the old longer-running threads about EA support would be of any use? I used to find them quite useful to refer posters to who did not feel ready to address their own situation and perhaps felt a bit attacked on individual threads. Perhaps a few of us could volunteer to keep those threads going?