war topic

AlternativePerspective makes a really good point. I read several threads yesterday by what appeared to be first time posters, quite obviously just whipping other posters up into a frenzy and attempting to panic everyone. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I swear every third thread on AIBU, regardless of the topic, is by a troll.

I think a War topic (though ideally not called that) is a good idea.
It's not that I want to read hysterical, fear mongering posts but some threads have been interesting and informative.

It's the inverse of early pandemic times...it took a long time for most people to realise it really was going to affect us and accept that it wasn't all exaggeration and hyperbole.
This time around the hysteria has come first while others are watchfully waiting.

Maybe we could have a temporary rule about accounts having to be 90 days old to start a new thread on the topic, like on the Sex board, to help weed out the threads that are started by new posters just to wind people up? I doubt it could be automatically enforced without creating a separate board but it might encourage more people to report them. actually I think it would be a good idea t stop all new sign-ups for a period, maybe 14 days or so, to let this one settle.

Ive just reported one which is so blatantly spam it’s unreal. First time poster, flooding the thread with posts, becoming incredibly aggressive towards anyone who has asked questions etc and accusing them of bullying and posting #beKind etc. I’ll admit I have openly stated on the thread that I’ve reported it.

If we could stop this kind of posting, and here MN HQ need to be on board, then we could probably cut the number of threads by about 99%.

@psychomath

I agree with everything @saraclara says, but I also think it may be worth waiting a week or two first to see if some of the more, er, 'out there/wacky' threads die down of their own accord. If the military action stays within Ukraine for now then people are probably going to calm down with the alarmism fairly soon, and we can have a few long-running sensible threads in the main boards like we do with US politics and other major current affairs topics.

I really do sympathise with the people who don't want to be confronted with 'the end of the world is nigh posts' every time they open the site - neither do I, frankly - but if that's only a brief phenomenon it would be a shame to have the worthwhile threads shunted to less active boards because of it.

@AlternativePerspective makes an excellent point too. Reporting and removing obvious troll/agenda-driven threads would be a good way to both help the people who are feeling particularly anxious and also make room for informed discussion about what's actually happening within Ukraine, without it getting drowned out by floods of "do you think we'll conscript women and children too" nonsense.

Very good post. Yeah, let's leave it a wee while (a few days/maybe a week,) and then maybe consider a separate topic if the AIBU board becomes overrun with ludicrous click bait threads like the sort @Sparklingbrook mentioned.

A also think it would a good idea when something huge like this happens, to put a temporary block on mumsnet to stop anyone on AIBU posting threads unless they have been here 3 months or even just 1 month..

And no-one can do it with a name change either. I am sure usernames FannyMcFlutter and AnyPlucker, can go 3 months without having to post about their neighbour's car encroaching on their land by a single inch, complaining about the plumber having a number 2 in their precious downstairs loo, or their mother-in-law making a negative comment about their shoes!

I saw that one @Samcro , I was hoping for a discussion about possibility of snow. I see that ones been taken down now.

Maybe we could have a temporary rule about accounts having to be 90 days old to start a new thread on the topic, like on the Sex board, to help weed out the threads that are started by new posters just to wind people up? I doubt it could be automatically enforced without creating a separate board but it might encourage more people to report them.

I don’t want a separate topic

It’s easy enough to avoid what doesn’t interest you, or hide the thread

Yes the 'Do you think.....' threads where everyone has a good guess and polishes off their crystal balls.

I agree with everything @saraclara says, but I also think it may be worth waiting a week or two first to see if some of the more, er, out there threads die down of their own accord. If the military action stays within Ukraine for now then people are probably going to calm down with the alarmism fairly soon, and we can have a few long-running sensible threads in the main boards like we do with US politics and other major current affairs topics. I really do sympathise with the people who don't want to be confronted with end of the world is nigh posts every time they open the site - neither do I, frankly - but if that's only a brief phenomenon it would be a shame to have the worthwhile threads shunted to less active boards because of it.

@AlternativePerspective makes an excellent point too. Reporting and removing obvious troll/agenda-driven threads would be a good way to both help the people who are feeling particularly anxious and also make room for informed discussion about what's actually happening within Ukraine, without it getting drowned out by floods of "do you think we'll conscript women and children too" nonsense.

That's a good point @AlternativePerspective, and something that should have happened on the Covid topic a long time ago.
Especially the ones with deliberately scaremongering titles. There's a lot of posters with agendas on here these days.

I feel that people are already off to the shops to panic buy as we speak.

Actualy rather than a separate war topic I think that MN HQ need to firstly be more on the ball with how many of these posts there are and who is posting them.

It does mean extra reporting on our part but honestly the amount of threads I’ve seen on here which have been started by first time posters it’s very obvious that most of the threads aren’t being posted with genuine intent but are fuelling the fears and anxieties of some which is why they then get out of hand.

Advance search is your friend. Perhaps if people did a quick advance search and reported any post started by first time posters HQ could concentrate on that and perhaps weed a lot of threads out on the basis they’re obviously being posted by bots trolls and journalists.

Bearing in mind the trolls and bots wouldn’t post on a war topic anyway so they’d need reporting to get them moved if there was a topic, why not just start by doing that now then the majority of them would IMO be deleted anyway.

But they can filter this out anyway if they hide the general boards and just focus on the topics that are relevant to them.

There is more traffic on the general boards so if you hide them you miss a lot of Mumsnet.

The point is not to stop serious and informed discussion, but to make it possible to filter out threads that are unhelpful. I don’t think that somebody struggling with a recent miscarriage or worrying about their child’s health or money problems needs to see threads about the imminent end of the world.

Maybe things will settle down in a few days, but I think it has been very helpful to have a separate Covid board.

I guess there will be a separate topic quite soon, as there was with Brexit and with Covid - that's my prediction anyway

I agree that the problem is the number of threads on Ukraine that are just wild and unhelpful speculation.

A separate topic shouldn’t make much difference to those who want to have a discussion about what’s in the news, but the nature of MN means that it isn’t the best place to actually learn what is in the news.

It isn't the creation of the topic that is the issue. It's the thread police who believe that existence of a topic means that they're entitled to dictate where other people should post.

There are lots of topics in Chat and AIBU that I don't find particularly interesting. I don't complain that people have put them on the wrong boards, though. I just accept that other people want to talk about them and scroll on.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/3834778-Can-we-have-a-Coronavirus-topic

it didn't take too long between asking for the Covid topic and it happening TBF

People post about relationships in AIBU. They don't get asked to move it to Relationships. They post about TV programmes and are not asked to move it to Telly Addicts. They post about schools and are not asked to move it to Education. I have no objection to the creation of a particular topic per se but I do object to the attempts to control and censor the discussions on every other board that will inevitably follow.

It's petty and offensive that people want to just tidy it out of view so that their entertainment isn't disrupted

Covid has it's own topic. Up until the last few weeks it was probably the busiest topic on the whole site. Covid wasn't 'tidied out of view' there were loads of posts on it every day. And if people didn't want to see the threads they could hide the Topic. it would just be like that.

@saraclara, I know it's annoying you but it's annoying me that people are shallow enough to get annoyed by trivia like this when a sovereign country has been invaded and innocent people have been killed. It's petty and offensive that people want to just tidy it out of view so that their entertainment isn't disrupted.

No need to open threads