So Mumsnet ignored our request to have something to do with 'feminism' or 'women' in the name of the 'naughty step' subtopic

That said, thank you for the clarity on your position @MNHQ.

You have just told your entire audience our legal rights and protections as a sex class are up for debate.

Yep, nice to have it spelled out so clearly.

A bit concerning that the support thread for transwidows has also been thrown to the wolves, mind. I thought we were all supposed to be exhorting ourselves to "be kind"?

Moving a support thread to a debate board, and signposting it to attract aggressive confrontation doesn't strike me as particularly kind. But then again, the meaning of words keeps changing, so perhaps kindness now means exquisite cruelty?

Just To be clear, I’m GC, Spartacus etc. I lurk A LOT and rarely post but regularly do share the wonderful analysis of so many of the FWR regulars who I admire and respect enormously.

Maybe we are looking at this the wrong way round? How about if we approached it like this:

• Feminism Chat has always been our space and still is.
• MNHQ have created a new board called Feminism: Sex and Gender debate.
• We will ignore this new board because we don’t believe Women’s sex based rights (which permeate throughout all feminism) are up for debate and as a rule, we don’t believe in gender anyway.
• We will continue to post in Feminist Chat, centring women and girls, fighting for our sex-based rights to single sex spaces and services as we have always done and anyone wanting to debate what is being talked about can be encouraged to start a thread in the shiny new “Debate” board created exactly for that purpose.

Wouldn’t this work for everyone?

I don't google FWR, I have the board bookmarked. Users having FWR as a landing page was a pretty high number, too.

There is also entry via links from other sites including social media. When I was webmaster of various busy sites, Google search entries were typically our lowest percentages.

However, I would not expect FWR to make up the majority of traffic for MN, given that it's a site for so many different topics. Top 20 board and one in 40 entries from Google search for a website with millions of users is bloody impressive though.

Something else I’m curious about - in the spirit of quality over quantity, do you know which forums have the highest conversion rates for people joining MN?

How this can be justified that using uncontextualised stats I'll never know. A fundamental rule of research/data analysis is that a hyper focus on quantitative data makes your findings limited and even misleading especially in reference to complex human beings.

That said, thank you for the clarity on your position @MNHQ.

You have just told your entire audience our legal rights and protections as a sex class are up for debate.
You have your line, we have ours. When the world wakes up to this batshittery, I wonder what imapct that will have on reputation.

I totally get the transwidow concerns and I think that needs addressing.

Aside from that issue, and now that 'feminism' is in the name, I'm not too bothered about 'debate'. In fact after all these years of being told there was 'no debate' seeing it up there feels like a tiny little 'fuck you'. But then I am a bad person and not at all kind.

My question is: in terms of advertisers, does this mean there are more people who would buy from the advertisers, if FWR was shut down, than potential customers attracted by FWR?

If they closed the feminism section then the feminism would just leak out elsewhere. It pretty much does that anyway.
What the hasslers ideally would like is no site at all.

I can't really get in a tizz about this. I think we need to be kinder and more understanding re Justine and team, after all they could have just said 'sod it's and closed down the feminist boards due to all the hassles.

Please change debate. It's designing conflict into the board.

And given that TRAs position is "No Debate", who is the debate with?

Just a few nitpicks.
Debate needs to be changed to discussion, otherwise it's implying a hostile environment (and I thought the rationale was to make it easier and less daunting for certain types of people.)
Both sections need a drop down from feminism in the main site shortcuts, or one will get more traffic by default.
Capitalisation is all over the shop in terms of titles. Not necessarily the most important thing, but it's been bugging me.

And you wonder why people are so pissed off? Who were you trying to please?

I’m struggling to get my head around what goes on at advertising companies. They’re prepared to give up advertising on forums with 97.51% page views of the entire site, because a bunch of bullies on Twitter complain about what gets posted on a forum with 2.49% page views of the entire site?

To use a football analogy, given the Euros, and assuming full capacity for Wembley, it would be like pulling billboard advertising for the entire stadium because some people watching on TV at home didn’t like what section 139 in the corner were singing. Just bonkers .

The lived experience of women is not up for “debate”.

I was under the impression that FWR was the third most popular board, in terms of people's first experience of mumsnet. In other words they came to look at FWR and then looked at the rest.

And that traffic to the board had increased 12 fold in one year? Which would imply an increase in popularity?

But I'm not tecky, and can't grasp the implications of some of these stats.

Landing pages from search are obvs a big thing but I’m also curious about how you compensate for forum size - do forums with more pages have an advantage here or are you specifically talking about the index page for each forum?

And finally, where did FWR rank for landing pages from all channels?

Debate = two or more points of view, discussed.

The trans widows threads are support threads for a very particular type of domestic abuse.

I do think that needs to be addressed.

@JustineMumsnet, could you answer themiserychick's point please?

As a trans widow, I'm quite uncomfortable with our threads being in this section. This is what I posted on the current thread:

"Our situations and struggles are not a debate, and I don't think that it's really part of the "debate" even though it does involve sex and gender. This thread is for support. Just imagine if a new woman who is struggling with her partner's gender issues finds this thread and sees that it's under "sex and gender debate" she may well back away thinking that it will be discussions about whether she should be supportive or not.

Feminism - about us.
Sex and gender debate - about them."

It kind of feels like we were shunted here because we mention TW often, but it's always in the context of our struggles, our feelings, and our reality. It's not a debate.

So everyone is free to post gender critical threads on the 'chat' section unless they are specifically looking for a debate MNHQ? 🤷‍♀️
The new board is specifically for debates?
Seems appropriate to me considering GC chat/discussions are still feminist chat/discussions.