MN oldies, what do you wish HQ would do differently?

[bibbitybobbityyhat]

I'm not putting this in site stuff because I'm not addressing it to HQ, I'm addressing it to people who've used the site for a few years. By oldies I mean people who've been around for a bit - maybe a couple of years?

For me - it's still that they will NOT housekeep AIBU so that the site doesn't look like nothing but AIBU for everything.

Some people post really serious stuff in AIBU (paraphrasing but AIBU to be upset at this devastating cancer diagnosis/violent relationship/being made homeless/dire poverty/dog poo on the streets/state of the NHS/genocide in x country/shall I abort or not) etc. There is nothing unreasonable about what they are posting.

I've moaned about it for years and years and, yes, I'm still here - there aren't many alternatives and I enjoy the food, travel, S&B, TV, property and chat boards and have received and given loads of useful info over the years. But I probably missed a lot because threads on those topics were posted in AIBU.

And also, I think outside of Mumsnet it makes us a bit of a laughing stock.

So that's my biggest petty gripe. What is yours?

Bonus 100 points for every "if you don't like it you can fuck off" post.

I've just come back to regular MN posting as a kind of methadone to manage the withdrawal symptoms when I deleted my twtter account.
I find that the place has become much more vicious. There are more people who just want to post the nastiest possible comment and then run, rather than treating threads as an opportunity for discussion.
I guess this is because of the influence of social media platforms, which aren't really set up for discussion and instead priritise tribalist polemics.
It is hard to see what MN could do to improve this, tbh.

One respect in which the site has improved is that it is much more honest about its advertising activities, and much better at separating and flagging promotional content. I understand that adverts are now much more intrusive (if you don't use a blocker), but this is better than allowing advertising content to bleed into threads that weren't clearly flagged as promotional. MN is now quite clearly an ethical advertising firm, rather than some kind of campaigning group with ads bolted on to finance it.

omg I wish.

I would like it to be smaller again. I feel sure that very old posters like the school shoes troll MUST still be around, but just lost in the melee 😢

Also @Cod I miss the days when mumsnet was small enough that we could help each other get out of speeding bans without a 1000 post judgey thread about it like there would be now 🤣🤣

But we can’t do without name changes. I must have had hundreds since I was cooking my first sprog (who is now old enough to take spiders out for me and fix things).

I also love the threads where somebody is moaning about one of their friends, like we all do, and they say “well you’re not a very good friend are you?!
As if nobody can ever be slightly disgruntled about anything ever.

Also love love love those threads where someone says I’m 5 foot two. I weigh this much. I don’t want to show my arms legs, neck ankles, upper chest or knees but need something to wear to a wedding. They are fabulous.

Then someone recommends some FUCKING AWFUL wrap dress thing from a 50s vintage store Lol. Im awful and I dgaf

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn I was Orangechewit

Ooh, I see someone upthread has raised the idea of an Elon Musk takeover. I would SO like to see the Musk version of MN.
Just imagine a Musk/Justine face-off,the little-dick energy he would bring to an office full of laydees.

Just remembered we’ve not had a trigger alert for ages.

I’ll post one

Also quite like the troll posts. That golf in Portugal was hilarious .

I was an expert in making up absolute bullshit threads back in the day and they entertained us.
Nowadays they’d be banned.

I seem to remember one I invented about a Tesco club card statement from my husband with condoms on it and was he having an affair Etc. and then about two weeks later there was the same story in the Mail with real people!!

My favourite was the one where the poster was baking, and throwing out all the cakes not up to standard, and then her husband was eating them out of the bin and she was furious.

I think it was Greensleeves. Might go have a look.

I also wish it was smaller again, and more like a community. I walked the Mile for Maude with my youngest in her pram. I sat for hours refreshing the screen for updates on Pink Peter. So many times I felt really connected to people I'd never met.

I also liked that this was a forum where intelligent people could have a debate without resorting to name calling, and where people used proper SPaG. I hate the attitude that it doesn't matter, when lack of punctuation and poor spelling means you can't understand what the post is saying.

Yeah it was funny but I was pretty badly behaved, I’ve got to admit.

People who hate me - it’s okay you can sleep well knowing that I was a bit of an arse. But god it was funny

Best ever was the office party photos. Thought I would die.

Found it! 10 years - feels like longer https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1664850-to-be-furious-with-dh-for-eating-cakes-he-knew-were-destined-for-the-bin?flipped=1

I’ve been a MNtter for around 8 years and don’t think there’s anything that quite matches MN, I think it’s fantastic.
My only concern is that there appear to be more mysoginistic posts, I’ve noticed it more in “relationships” so perhaps has been infiltrated somewhat by incel trolls which is sad but I suppose inevitable.

Aha - yes, that's a name I recognise. Nice to see you again.

There's a TalkExiles thread here if you want to stick your head in and say hello to some other ex-GUers.

I'm one of the old, old timers.

Loathe AIBU. Think it should be called WTF . A LTB title would cover a multitude of partner's sins

@NowZeusHasLainWithLeda . Interesting. I was there and don't recognise that at all. My experience is being piled on like a ton of bricks for expressing what seemed to me like normal feminist views! I remember it happening every time I objected to adult women being referred to as girls, for example. The worst was when I objected to a woman police officer killed in the line of duty being referred to by her senior officer as a "bubbly girl".I got a whole thread of abuse for that.

I wish they'd be stricter about posts that are plain mean, homophobic or misogynistic. I used to love that MN was full of women who would listen to someone talking about struggling with a newborn or struggling with their marriage, and try to help. I get that 'LTB' became a bit of a joke but it was a really useful counterbalance to all the sites out there that will tell women to put up and shut up, and tell new mothers they should be doing everything.

I'm also really sick of never being able to read threads on certain topics because it is absolutely guaranteed they will be twisted into a lecture on trans issues. I can't post about my (born female, lesbian) DP without someone aggressively turning it into a trans debate; I can't talk about my donor-conceived daughter without someone deciding it's an opportunity to rant about how donor conception is immoral and surrogacy is worse and oh look, trans issues again. I know if I click on what might be a really interesting discussion of how children learn gender roles, it will invariably have been taken over by people who want to shoehorn in a post about how it's all the fault of a trans agenda.

I know that there are people who get off on being loudly anti-trans, but it ruins MN for everyone else who would rather, just occasionally, discuss other subjects. And I honestly think it's opened the gateway to the homophobes, too. When I was first on MN (in about 2008?) I really do think that MNHQ would have deleted posts that were openly homophobic.

Menopause?

Me too

YY, this is exactly it.

Oh, I don't mean on the feminist boards, I mean in general. Though I can well imagine it was even worse over there.

Yep

id guess I’ve been here 20 years, but regularly name change and have always been more lurker than poster. It was fab when it felt smaller, but was a little more cliquish. Posters took each post at face value and didn’t attempt to derail. I hate when someone posts about an issue and the responses focus on the wrong thing. Ie. I’m driving to sports direct to get my child football boots, shoul I get adidas or Nike? Responses ‘why are you driving, you should walk’ ‘sports direct is an evil hell holes yabu shopping there’ ‘dc should get a part time job and buy their own’ drives me fucking mad.

I do wonder why I’m still here, I don’t even have dc at home any more, but I’d miss the place.

I find some of the content annoying, particularly long obviously fake sagas that to go hundreds of posts and people start writing poetry.

But for me the best improvements would be updates that clean the garbage out of threads and make them easier to get through:

1. edit button for typos
2. prevent people from quoting OP
3. allow reporting and deletion of any post which is completely irrelevant because the poster hasn't read a subsequent OP update OR they completely misquoted or misunderstood the OP. It always sends the thread off course.

I've taken a step back (a bit!) from the Feminism boards for similar reasons - even though I agree with a lot of the viewpoints, many discussions do have some sort of dig or return to the same kind of points. Dyou know though, the best thing is for everyone that wants a sensible discussion to carry on posting and ignore the goady people. There are similar stripes in all boards (you can't say there aren't people with gongs to bang on AIBU or Relationships etc).

I'm still interested in gender (in the traditional sense) stuff and legal matters and real-world consequences of entrenched gender roles so happy to stick around and talk about those if people want to. And I think the FWR boards ARE largely still sensible, focused posters, but it only takes one successful goady post to bring on a pile-on or a derail, and/or a few louder voices to make it seem like they're the dominant opinion when they're not.