Would you agree or not that MN has a predominantly friendly, welcoming community?

[ResilientMog]

I have seen a few posts where people have said MN has become an increasingly hostile and unfriendly site. Is this mainly confined to AIBU? I tend to rarely venture outside the gentle, welcoming confines of Chat, Relationships, Food/recipes, Holidays, The Doghouse, and Relationships. I very seldom see any hostility. It's largely been the opposite for me. I find most interactions on the site to be friendly and respectful. No other site or social media platform can compare to what MN offers. It's been brilliant for me.

I see some hostility on a lot of different areas of the site, not just aibu.

I’ve reported many times. Sometimes it’s taken four times to get an offensive post removed.

I was looking at an old saved thread the other day about urine leaking, and eating pumpkin seeds for it. Someone came on and said something about apricot seeds or kernels (it’s deleted, I can’t remember the details) and how it was a cure for cancer. People reported it, and said they had done so on the thread, it took over two days for it to be deleted.

I see threads derailed so much that the original OP has only a few useful responses and the rest is bickering and one upmanship.

I see vulnerable women come here clearly struggling and they’re spoken to like absolute shit. They post more, trying to explain, and more shit comes their way.

Or maybe they get helpful responses. If you were feeling vulnerable would you want to play that game of roulette? I wouldn’t.

I’ve emailed mumsnet about it and they reply saying ‘blah blah, guidelines etc blah blah’.

This site will get a reputation of being for lighthearted shite about last nights tv only, and not a place for help or advice or a non judgemental helpful ear to listen and I don’t care enough to engage with it any more.

Mumsnet HQ, you are ruining this site. Fuck the women who come here needing help, right?

Anyway, want to talk about last nights tv?

No, heavy disagree I’m afraid. It’s brutal on here.

"When it's good, it's very, very good but when it's bad it's horrid" sums up MN perfectly in my opinion

I have seen some excellent, supportive posts where PP's have been so helpful to an OP in need of help, advice and support. MN at it's best

I have also seen some horrible posts (some of which were deleted by MN). It's such a shame that some PP's feel the need to write objectionable posts

I'm surprised you rarely see it in Relationships??

I think overall it's friendly if you avoid AIBU, Relationships and FWR.

But there is a handful of posters who are just nasty for the sake of it on various boards.

Massively disagree. MN is the most brutal place on the internet!

My experience of it has been ultimately negative. I don't post as often as I used to and I don't bother starting threads anymore.

Having read, back to back, a thread on AI cartoons and one on the phrase 'Fall pregnant' I conclude people get a bigger kick from posting negativity than anything supportive or light-hearted.

Although some boards are amazing and I will never forget the kindness of strangers when I was trying to breastfeed DC1 in the wee small hours 12 years ago. I feel tearful thinking of it now!

I think it depends where you go, and what you’re talking about. For example, I think a pregnancy loss thread is generally exclusively kind responses.

Aibu, politics and relationships are the wild west 😄

I think that there's an increasing generation gap between users. The original cohort who are still around (and more likely to be grandparents) often seems to be in conflict with those presently parents of young children.

There are lots of cries of ageism (which I don't deny), but the claims of ageism are almost always one way (ageism against the old), when I see just as much ageism against the young.

It's not a new or unique problem to Mumsnet. But if the proprietors wants to keep the money flowing, they need to consider how they attract and moderate these matters.

It's very hit and miss. I feel like I could post a thread about something vulnerable and there's a 50:50 chance as to whether the first posters would be kind and want to help or be posters that enjoy kicking a person when down. The first few posts tend to set the tone.

Anything outside of Aibu tends to be Incredibly friendly, Aibu tends to be a bit crazy, rude and a dogpile. but relationships is particularly helpful. Through being on mumsnet on and off over the years, I’ve had posters be very kind and helpful, great advice through my cancer and all sorts of other health issues.

The few times I’ve asked for advice, some posts have been useful and kind. The majority are either people not reading properly and giving completely irrelevant advice (eg something I explicitly say I’ve already tried/explained why I don’t want to do it) or someone seizes on some small part of my explanation to derail with criticism. And in both cases, they do it in a really nasty or condescending tone.

In AIBU it seems like people will go out of their way to find a way in which OP is being unreasonable. And if there’s no way to portray them as unreasonable, they’ll start implying that it’s still somehow their fault that the other person is being unreasonable to them.

Some posters look for posts to stir and make the OP feel bad for sure, it's entertainment for them.

FWR is an echo chamber, always has been .

Suprisingly one of the most friendly/supportive/non judgemental sections/forums is Work

I'd post a work problem on mn but never a friendship one

I’ve been using internet forums for over 25 years and I’ve never come across anywhere with such a high proportion of unpleasant posts and posters, or anywhere with the extraordinary level of hatred towards men thst you find here. I realise there are some nice friendly corners and threads on Mumsnet, but they are few and far between.

On the whole it's okay, but unfortunately there are some right fucking trolling bitches on here too, who love to get stuck in

It depends.

If a new poster arrives and posts looking for support following a diagnosis of breast cancer, Mumsnet is brilliant.

If however a new poster arrives and their first post is criticising the govt or expressing a strong view on transwomen or the IDF, people will judge the poster as being provocative, and will (not unreasonably) wade in.

They'd be made to feel very welcome on fwr with strong views on transwomen.

Unless the strong view was that transwomen are women.

My comments are not based on what I’ve read on fwr, and are not to do with trans women/sport etc.

You don’t need to look there to find unpleasantness.

No. There's some really nice people on here but generally I think its awful

I’ve found decent debate and others who think I should not post because of my age, my lack of a degree and my inability to be clones of them. It’s like an echo chamber with whiffs of superiority. I pull out of threads where the accusing posters turn up and some seem to follow me. Somewhat bizarrely. It feels targeted and nasty though. Just like real life I guess!

Not.

This!
Some people just love to be mean behind a screen.