Daily Mail thread 5

i agree with you aitch about deleting all posts after a certain time (i'd say a year)

most advice is out of date by then.

not sure about editing posts, (i'd spend half my life editing) i think when you press the send button you have to live with it.

Aitch, sorry but I disagree. At least one of the threads I was reading yesterday was from 2002 and another was from June 2008. In fact I didn't read a single thread from my search that was within the last 12 months. On the strength of those (and due to a slowdown by the Audi factory) we are changing a car order, so yes, they're very valuable to me. I could have posted my query, but it may have got few if any answers - as you pointed out it is all a bit more Real Time and threads get missed.

Threads about specific destinations/schools/products don't always get repeated yearly. And of course there may be other threads with helpful information in them that don't come up because you haven't defined the search appropriately. But there is a huge wealth of wisdom on here that I value greatly. There are more "users" of MN than "posters".

There may be a case for certain other categories as well as chat to be deleted. It might even be interesting to go through the topics to see what needs to be deleted. I can't see anything contentious in any of the car threads that I read yesterday that would require them to be deleted, and they've probably saved a fair bit of money.

yes i did say that about Richard Littlejohn..

i agree with pretty much all he says.

If half as many people who claim to read The Guardian actually did read it their circulation would be double.

If half the people who claim to never read the DM were telling the truth - their circulation would be halved.

People can claim what they like - the stats tell another story.

Did you say that DP? Richard Littlecock?

I do think the Guardian is bought by alot of DM readers to hide the DM in when they're walking home from the newsagents.

ladymuck, i'm not arguing for the deletion of the archive, i'm saying that it should go off the boards after a year. i find it hard to believe that the information you require wouldn't be there in a year's worth of posts.

i really do want to know some of the data on the archive, i can't imagine that people are actually clicking and looking at posts that are three years old. even if we're in the DM under assumed names, someone searching can put in the quote and find the real person in an instant. i don't know why they would, particularly, but they could.

the idea that by submitting copy to the DM MNHQ would retain control over it, btw, is laughable, as any journalist will tell you.

and DP, did you really say that Richard Littlejohn was the only journalist speaking sense in this country?

the biggest racist i've ever met was a guardian reader.....he also abused his wife.

but he bought the guardian...so he's ok.

and actually, just another response to Pruners re small minded DM readers - I know plenty of small minded people who refuse to analysie issues from wider perspectives who are Guardian readers. Reading The Guardian tells me nothing nuanced aboit Israel/Palestine for example - quite the opposite.

I don't want to patronise you. Just your argument

If what you are saying isn't apathy or conservatism (and others can judge that for themselves) it certainly isn't progressive, is it?

That's 'do go', of course. You can patronise me about that, I deserve it

Oh FFS. I'd be DELIGHTED if a MN Trojan horse effort could change the DM's stance against BF, working mothers, all of it (without nec messing with the political slant; that's their business).

The fact that I don't believe it will happen is not apathy or conservatism.

I also don't think it is a valid reason to sacrifice Mumsnet's independent voice.

But go do ahead and patronise me some more if you're enjoying it, MrsE. Jeez.

Thats the spirit SF. Apathetic conservatism.

Stripey, the political ethos of the Mail has been exactly the same for my entire living memory. It will not change just because of a weekly column from MN. Particularly if it's about farking lunchboxes or 'shallow' mummies obsessing about school run fashion.

I think you have to discount the 'don't cares' actually. Its bad enough that there are essentially three ways of saying yes, without arguing that don't care is essentially approval.... But hey we've been over how badly designed this poll is a zillion times arleady...

so true MrsE,

i give up on here sometimes, all this "DM is the work of the devil" crap....i thought people on here were supposed to be intelligent.

you just can't reason with the unreasonable.

Pruners, re your post way back Fri 04-Sep-09 21:51:59 on the last thread. Who is the person to say what MN is then? And by the same token, who can say what it is not? Only MNHQ basically. So all this appealing to the MN brand is a bit of emotive rhetoric rather than concrete argument. It may well have started off as ?inclusive and supportive to women? but as it has grown the community spirit has dwindled ? its just in the nature of the beast. And there are many rivalries on here too. Looking at women, or women?s forums, though misty eyes isn?t to so them justice.

I am pretty sure that Guardian readers fall into a broad demographic, and would resist being pigeonholed in the way you do DM readers. I know some DM readers who are pretty small minded, I know others who are the opposite. I think there have been a few pieces in the Mail that probably are misogynistic, but not half as much as people claim ? misogynistic is a very overused term and often is used instead of ?offensive?. As for casually racist ? again ? this is a sensitive issue but I also think people tend to have an itchy trigger finder over this. Reasonable people must have a place to read about and debate issues such as immigration, without being associated with racists. The DM is not a BMP pamphlet. As for ?fearmongering? ? all the media does this. But maybe it also has it?s place in our society at this time to stop people being too complacent about the palpable threats to us. It?s like Orwell said, ?We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.? That?s a reality we should never forget.

I don?t know when the MN nadir was ? surely that?s in the eye of the beholder. I had some problems adjusting to the changes. But that was my problem. I go over them. This connection could be a force for the better ? mothers, women having a voice in The Mail. I think that is fantastic!

The poll is a complete waste of time, because you can namechange and vote again..... Like I've just found out for myself.

ATM the lead is No not under any circumstance. But quite a big lead.

And agree with Soupy, journos have been using MN in various ways for years. The DM debacle may be novel in that it is weekly, or current, or regular, or implies collusion, or they're getting nicknames wrong, but MN threads appearing in newspapers and magazines is not new.

I can't get too excited about the poll, but I would have been more interested to have a poll which tried to identify precisely what MNers were objecting to, since far more people have responded to the poll than have posted on any of the DM threads. Other than we now know that a column will appear in the DM (as opposed to not knowing about articles in the Telegraph or whatever), nothing else has changed (not even the number of MN readers).