Hi all,
It’s been roughly a year since we published our statement on moderation with regard to trans rights. Back then we felt that we needed to put in place some parameters to facilitate debate on the important issue of trans rights. We think this approach has improved things over the past months, but it remains a thorny one to moderate.
There have been several threads voicing concern about our approach and it’s probably worth addressing them systematically.
We’ve obviously noted some concerns about posts that are being reported from Twitter and by email (as opposed to reporting direct from our Talk boards). We don’t actually get a significant amount of reports from offsite (under 0.1% over the last 3 months) and the huge majority of concerns are directly reported posts from Mumsnet members. But whatever the origin, when we receive a report on a post, our standard approach is to assess the context, and then moderate it against the guidelines.
Many of you have posted to say you disagree with our language guidelines, particularly concerning the use of TIM in preference to transwoman. Our view is that this is an inflammatory term which trans people find offensive and therefore not conducive to creating and inclusive space for debate.
Another thing we’ve noticed when applying the guidelines is that they often support the case for keeping a post on the boards -- for example, we often say, ‘Thanks for the report, we’ve taken a look and the post doesn’t break our Talk guidelines’. And if we do receive a number of reports that result in no action, then we politely draw the reporter’s attention to our rule about vexatious reporting.
Concerns have been raised about our awareness of coercive control. We know that people are worried about this and our team have had training in recognising coercive control. In general, we always take context into account when taking any action.
Several folk have wondered why our three strikes system is used with regards to the FWR board. We’ve found it to be a useful moderation tool and in fact we now use the approach across all our forums. We don’t want to summarily ban people (apart from trolls) and we will always give members a chance to discuss our moderation decisions. It’s a useful indication of where you are with regard to the guidelines - if we’ve been in touch with you a couple of times, then users get a clear idea of where we are drawing the line.
One thing that might be useful to know is that it’s often generalisations that in our view create a hostile atmosphere likely to prevent civil debate that result in posts being taken down.
We’ve also picked up that some Mumsnet users feel it can be difficult for them to contribute to discussions around this topic. Our aim in hosting this debate (which most other media, sites and platforms have elected not to do) is to promote freedom of speech, which means allowing all perspectives to be heard. That means maintaining an environment that isn’t offputting to those with opinions outside the consensus. Labelling folks as ‘handmaidens’ or trolls purely because they have a different point of view isn’t conducive to this and if we see it we will step in and take action. We’re not asking everyone to agree - that would clearly be ridiculous - but we think it’s crucial that people with a variety of perspectives feel able to post.
In short we are trying our very hardest to maintain this important space for discussion, despite considerable and fairly relentless pressure and criticism and we firmly believe that those abiding by the spirit of constructive and civilised debate won’t be deleted or banned.
It’s a challenging issue to moderate and we apologise for occasional inconsistencies which are somewhat inevitable but we’ll continue to do our best to stick to our moderation principles and to make fair decisions.
Thanks as ever for your input