What is this ‘You might also like’ clutter?

The last post on that thread is 13/2/21 so only MNHQ can have put it in Trending and 'revived' it?? I'm really not getting this.

@MadelineUsher I remember that thread. It contains multiple accounts by women of being raped. Jesus.

Why is a thread from early February 2021 in the trending box? It's an upsettting topic for those whose answer is "not by choice", and there it is, pointlessly revived, but not accepting new posts.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4155934-at-what-age-did-you-lose-your-virginity

This place has gone to the dogs.

Absolutely agree. It’s one of the worst thought out ideas from MN in a long time.

How anybody could think they are sophisticated enough to cope with a site like Mumsnet just by picking up on keywords in thread titles is beyond my comprehension.

Agreed. And I've got a feeling that one of the 'tweaks' that might have been done is that the algorithm search also scans the opening post, as now there are 'Similar posts' where the titles have absolutely nothing to do with each other (and the threads don't either), but there's a common word (or synonym) in the text of the first post.

And as we have seen, this is all extremely clumsy and blunt, so you get a cluster of 'Similar threads' that don't share title congruity and actually only have, say, the word 'fan' or 'book' or 'end' in common in the opening post.

So glad to see this thread! @MNHQ really the worst thing you've ever done to fuck up mumsnet.

Completely ridiculous, annoying and unnecessary new "feature". Get rid of it MNHQ.

@fdgdfgdfgdfg Yes, women use AIBU for traffic in urgent situations, sometimes very sensitive ones.

These algorithms don't even work when it's a relatively simple matter of trying to nudge people towards something they might consider buying. You buy a sofa say. That's that for another few years! But not as far as Google's concerned. You get lots of ads suggesting other sofas you could buy.

How anybody could think they are sophisticated enough to cope with a site like Mumsnet just by picking up on keywords in thread titles is beyond my comprehension.

Agreed! It's all well and good saying its just a few links but these posts are made by actual people. The other day I saw and clicked on a link below a thread about hospital wards which was a women detailing her mother's stay in hospital where over the course of the thread she sadly passed away.

Imagine how horrible it would be for that women to see the thread suddenly back in active because someone clicked on the link, read just the OP and then resurrected the thread to respond!

Closing off certain sections to the algorithm won't stop sensitive and emotive posts being resurrected.

The new feature is not needed, not fit for purpose and not sympathetic to the fact these posts are not just light entertainment to be revived as anyone desires.

Just scrolling through AIBU and the first 4 threads I opened were all at least 3 months old.

I'm done.

That's my main issue with this. All the rest is just irritating. But getting a notification about a topic that you just want to forget ever happened? That's bleak. And those conversations were often had outside of the specialist branches.

I am still concerned about the OPs of zombie threads on sensitive subjects suddenly getting notifications about new posts on them. Bringing up past events which were traumatic is hardly going to encourage people to feel MN is a safe place to come and get support when they are struggling. And lots of people post only on chat or AIBU about difficult subjects, so just taking this feature off ‘sensitive’ topics does nothing to address the problem.

But it’s a few additional links on the bottom of every page
It not just that. People are posting on the old threads which then reappear at the top of my 'I'm on' list. I don't want to see some ancient thread about tv characters thanks.

This isn't just irritating.

It's breaking their site.

It's bumping up threads that are months old, are no longer relevant, have already had an outcome for the person starting the thread. It's possible that raking over old coals could in fact be harmful to whoever might have started the discussion as they may have wanted their post to disappear once they got the help and support they needed at the time.

This was implemented without being thoroughly tested. If it had been tested, it wouldn't require so many tweaks to get working.

I love how people think I don’t understand the issue 🤣 Of course I do, it’s irritating. But it’s a few additional links on the bottom of every page which might be insensitive / intrusive to a small percentage of people, but realistically have no impact on most people.

We see this pretty regularly - do you remember the uproar of font changes / colour changes / AS changes / replatforming etc etc. Users say they don’t like it, MNHQ thank us for our feedback and make a few small amends or do nothing then life goes on.

if MNHQ choose not to listen to users then it’s their own brand they’re harming and we can all find somewhere else to go. But realistically we will gripe about this for a bit then find something else to gripe about and forget about this

I posted on a thread about Christmas and I opened another thread with a Christmas theme. Both threads were last posted on back in 2021 and NEITHER of these threads had any indicator that they are ZOMBIE threads if they were to be bumped up in 2022.

MN is self sabotaging their own site.

This is the second thread (I didn't post on this one) but if you open it and scroll down to the "Add your message here" box, you will not see any reference to it being a zombie:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4672910-to-think-future-christmases-are-going-to-be-a-nightmare

This one on mediums - I mean, wtf?!

Ah come on @MNHQ this is getting very old literally

If the new feature is to help random people who find MN though a Google search then there's no need for it to be in place for those users who are logged in, as it doesn't improve their experience.

@YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet But that also means they don't know it's there and how their posts are being recycled.

There's a big consent issue here. The recommender may not technically violate the original T&Cs but MN also has customs and people who posted under the old set of customs may not feel they have agreed to have their posts resurrected.

yes, they could change the algorithm to say exclude any thread that is <60 days than the OP for example.

More bewilderingly dissimilar ‘similar’ threads this morning if you you are on The Royal Family board (which is fairly niche, let’s face it) reading about the Kerry Kennedy statement about the Sussexes winning her award.

You will be directed to ‘Jack Monroe off Twitter’, and a thread in FWR about Lia Thomas the male swimmer who says he’s a girl/woman now.

What’s the connection? Is it simply, ooooh controversy?

It does make you think about the purpose and value of MN now, as pp have said.

Many MN posters over many years have started their threads based on the practice at the time. Even if we didn't post in "Chat" or "30 days only" our threads would go out of date and die down after a while and they were not very likely to be resurrected - and if people do resurrect an old post they are usually told to start a new thread of their own. People can quietly dig about but publicly re-exposing old threads isn't the usual MN practice.

So MN could reasonably run the recommender over new posts from now on, now we all know it exists, and maybe with options to remove our own posts or threads we started from it. It's unethical to deliberately dredge up old posts and highlight them again without first asking the originators if they would prefer their old posts to be removed or hidden or excluded from this new process. There's a question of consent here not just what's officially within the terms of service but also what posters thought we were agreeing to when we posted over all these years.

MORE RESURRECTED THREADS THIS MORNING

That is so true @CorporateBull. I’ve been on here for about 15 years. Seeing all the repetitive threads does make you realise how much time you waste reading the same stuff over and over. I have thought that before but this really brings it home. I have a few regular threads I’m on and I think I’ll just stick to them now and avoid Active.