Another data scrape from academia

So true. There was a poster the other day who posted an endless ChatGPT word salad (of Canadian origin if I recall correctly?) They appeared to have the mistaken belief that women on here, who've been educating ourselves for the last decade, would suddenly collapse in a puff of smoke and say "OK guys, we're wrong - welcome to the undressed women and girls"

It was very funny (albeit also a bit sad)

“Like ChatGPT on a cocktail of valium and gin.”

oh yes. We are starting to also see more and more people using ChatGPT here on FWR to inform them when they haven’t taken the time to actually read deeply and widely for themselves. It is remarkable when you see it.

Okay but you cant control what the researchers conclude from their study. You can criticise their methodology if you feel it didn't accurately interpret the data. Their paper is still up so anyone can do that at any time.

I think you are being very generous in your thread title, @ArabellaSaurus to use the word academia. This article is academic in the same sense as a Fisher-Price toy phone is a phone.

It seems to have been written by someone who thinks knotting fashionable jargon together and peppering it with correctly styled references actually counts as research. It is laughable and depressing at the same time. Like ChatGPT on a cocktail of valium and gin.

"share their views here with absolutely no consequence"...

I'd really like my views and posts to have a consequence, I'd like people to read them and realise that they were wrong to think that Gender Ideology is harmless, and that it is fundamentally detrimental to women and children. This is the majority view on FWR, but the authors reached a completely different conclusion (that we're far-right nutjobs). This suggests that they started off with preconceived ideas and didn't do a proper academic study at all.

Did you read the other thread? Admin didn't seem to feel they could challenge their assertion that they could scrape the data based on this exemption.

The people who post in FWR are well aware that their discussions are public and are very grateful to Mumsnet for allowing the space to discuss women’s rights (on the whole) without censure.

Yep, Jade doesn't understand.

Text and data mining for non-commercial research
Text and data mining is the use of automated analytical techniques to analyse text and data for patterns, trends and other useful information. Text and data mining usually requires copying of the work to be analysed.
An exception to copyright exists which allows researchers to make copies of any copyright material for the purpose of computational analysis if they already have the right to read the work (that is, they have ‘lawful access’ to the work). This exception only permits the making of copies for the purpose of text and data mining for non-commercial research. Researchers will still have to buy subscriptions to access material; this could be from many sources including academic publishers.
Publishers and content providers will be able to apply reasonable measures to maintain their network security or stability but these measures should not prevent or unreasonably restrict researcher’s ability to text and data mine. Contract terms that stop researchers making copies to carry out text and data mining will be unenforceable.

Wrong quoted post

I dont think thats necessary and I don't think you should need a license to mine the data of publicly available posts. It seems more like people are worried about others knowing what they think about certain topics and thought they could share their views here with absolutely no consequence.

Image currently under review

The lead author seems to be at the University of Alberta. I checked their ethics pages and I would imagine they are relying on the exemptions in my screenshot.
But I would question the reasonable expectation of privacy bit and the anonymous bit - user content is publicly available but it is generated with the expectation that it will be used in line with the MN terms and conditions which prohibit data scraping, or they did at the time this research was done, and say that research needs MN site owners’ permission. The dataset created by scraping is against the T’s and Cs and is certainly not the researchers to give away.
And I think people can be identified as we know from the many threads of ‘have you ever identified someone you know on MN?’. There are identifiers associated with the user generated data in the form of user names which can be cross-referenced with other posts should someone be so minded. So it’s not anonymous data with no identifiers. I mean, the authors may not have a clue sitting in Alberta who someone is, but I know at least one poster IRL by what they post because they live around the corner from me and some of what they post is identifiable if you know the area.
It’s also unethical to use forum data with no ethics approval or consideration, as the UK research councils guidance makes clear.

Considering MN were very clear last time that scraping the site was against the T&Cs, I don’t think there has been a change in T&C s since then.

I've read (skimmedl) it, bless them.
I mean if you're writing for the journal of applied transgender studies - best not to ask what the research impact factor of that is - you're not exactly on the cutting edge of science are you

Apparently as well as not believing males can actually be female (so backward of us!) we complain we could get into trouble at work for that belief, and that the media ignores our viewpoint What silly little ladies we are to imagine these things.

Also among our crimes is to "denigrate sex workers" by saying 'prostitutes'... Or another way of looking at that could be that we respect their humanity and empathise with them too much to gloss over their systematic financial exploitation and sexual abuse? Potato/pot-ah-to innit.

I mean sure they're breaking the T&C's, but to me coming from a science background it's quite funny that you can call something like this research. Also funny/appalling that for all the care we take not to be biased in our work, your Humanities guys can just pile on in there without questioning their basic assumptions in any way. I mean if Phipps wrote something equally waffly and conjectural in 2022 it must be correct, cite it and move on, right?

That’s very naughty of them. Be very interesting to hear what their ethical approval from their institution was. Especially bearing in mind that as previously pointed out on the Aston thread Mumsnet posts are pseudonymous, not anonymous.

The issue is, I think, that data scraping is against MNs terms and conditions; indeed any data use from MN is against the T’s and Cs. Therefore users have a reasonable expectation that their data (and I include user generated data as data) will be used only on research or projects MN have agreed to.

I don’t wish to rehearse all the arguments made on the Aston thread, where, to be fair there were also examples given of excellent research on MN as well as academic papers on how to do this ethically. Data scraping three thousand odd threads from one sub forum without consent from the site owner, is not how to do this ethically. Especially as the scraped data is being offered to other researchers as well.

Personally, I would have no objection if someone wrote a paper on FWR with attention to the particular UK political and social context of the content looking at it over time, and as a poster on the thread on this paper on FWR said, with reference to the kind of issues posted by women (the biological kind) over the rest of the site, that is to say, with some understanding of the lived day to day experience of women and a genuine desire to understand why there might be strongly held views on the importance of single- sex spaces for women’s privacy and I would argue, full civic participation as well as other aspects of gender ideology especially relating to children.

Bumping this for all of us

Thank you @ArabellaSaurus

I think any site on the Internet should be up for academic critique. If you don't like their paper, academically refute their findings. Other people will peer review everything written.

Alas, a couple of twits have been scraping the site, again.

10/10 for restraint.

”Yo Mumsnet, are you down with us ‘borrowing’ your data for our totally legit academic research? Cards on the table, we may refer to you as ‘anti-trans’ or a ‘hateful community’ but that’d be cool, right? Lol”

”Sure, fill your boots lads.”

I have my doubts that this conversation took place, but we’ll see.

@HonoriaBulstrode not necessarily. It can be done to thank those who helped you write the article, either with their work or funding.
@Boiledbeetle I have posted before on MN having an extremely high number of trackers who use our data for ad biding. With so many companies (more than 17) having access to MN, it could well be an indirect approval via a third company.

Until MNHQ comments on this, we can speculate as much as we want.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5057903-mumsnet-corpus

Previous data scraping debacle