to REALLY hope this man's partner joins Mumnset

[MmeLindt]

Why I hate Mumsnet

First, I would like to congratulate the blogger on the forthcoming happy event. I wish him and his partner all the best for the birth of their first child.

If his partner decides to join MN, she will learn:

The Vernacular
that we use abbreviations as a time-saving tool, so that we have more time for discussing banalities. These are not only common to Mumsnet (MN) but to almost all fora.

"My DH is working away tuesday til friday. DH rang PIL and asked them if they could come and mind DCs (x3)". Another example: "AIBU to be annoyed that PIL agreed to mind my DC and then went back on it??"

• the first poster states that her husband (DarlingHusband = DH) is working away and that he asked Parents-In-Laws (PILS) if they could come and mind the three children (DarlingChildren = DC). She then asks if she is being unreasonable (AIBU = Am I being unreasonable) to be annoyed that my parents in laws agreed to mind my children then went back on it?

hth (Hope this Helps)

The Banality
If she looks a little further, she will certainly find posts about dishwashers, and pearl barley, but also intellectual discussions about feminism, foreign affairs, literature (and we are NOT talking chick lit here). Even the most highbrow of poster wants to slum it on AIBU sometimes though.

I would hope that blogger's partner never has problems with their children - since his response to a woman enquiring about her child's (DC) incontinence problems is to suggest that she spends less time on MN.

The Stupid Suggestions For Campaigns
she might wonder about the anti-JL MN campaign since most posters have never heard of it. Just because one poster has an idea, it does not mean that the whole board takes up the cry. There are always discussions about the merits of any campaigns, particularly the official ones.

Lack of Reply
If the blogger's DP (that is DarlingPartner, by the way) does post on MN she will hopefully be relieved that MN does not allow their posters to be spammed by companies. There have been a few instances where posters have complained about a product, and the company has posted a message apologising and requesting that the poster contact them. I have never seen these offers being deleted or discouraged by MNHQ (that is Mumsnet Headquarters)

The blogger's DP of course would never have to do this, as she has her DH available to ensure that she does not misunderstand the instructions of the product.

Lack of Moderation
The blogger's DP will hopefully enjoy the lack of moderation - or rather the advantages offered by self-moderation. There may be times when a poster gives out of date advice, but this is normally noticed by the other posters. And if not, anyone who relies on the advice of strangers on an internet forum in order to make decisions such as those posed by the nuchal fold test, they should not be in charge of a puppy, much less a child. Most posters will link to websites such as NHS24, or other sites that are checked for accuracy rather than spouting inaccurate advice.

I am very glad that he is not calling for the site to be closed down. His DP may well be in need of it in the not so distant future, when she starts a thread entitled,

"AIBU to think my DP is an idiot?"

Graeme!

I think you're a real cutey and people are being jolly mean about your brand.

Hully

Graeme - brave of you to come on here.

Yes mumnset can be very negative at time (usually when there has been something in the press and we get a lot of newbies coming on here with no idea what the site is about) but there is a hell of a lot of support, whether the more serious (domestic violence, abuse, actual or suspected, affairs etc), more light hearted or letting people know they are not alone in whatever crisis our families choose to throw up at us.

I and many otheres also look for advice on products we have seen knowing that we will get a genuine response from genuine people, yes they may be some compnaies lurking out there but not the case in my experience. How is it different to reading a bad review about a product on Amazon?

Anyway, I would recommend Mumsnet to anyone for support, fun advice and laughs

Hello Graeme, just wanted to comment that your white type on black background blog is quite hard to read.

Companies do have the right to reply, there have been many occasions when they have posted.

Graeme

It was good of you to reply.

My earlier post about a friend who works for a consumer goods company was designed to be constructive and not an adverse criticim of you or your blog.

The friend I mentioned is in charge of a number of well known household brands that are aimed at parents with new born and very young children.

He is a father himself but most of the young executives working on the brands are not parents themselves. What he finds is that these young executives (and more broadly his own managers) do not know or understand what parents are looking for in a product. For example, advertising a baby care product with a new perfume smell but failing to ensure that it actually does clean the baby's skin and at a price comparable with a similar well established competitor brand is likely to lead to failure to gain market share. His executives have a tendency to blame the consumer or competitors rather than the product and its price position.

As a parent he finds he has to explain quite bluntlly to childless executives and senior managers why parents will reject the product.

When you are a parent you will begin to realise that many produts aimed at parents and babies do not work or are very hard to use or just plain expensive compared to an alternative product. First hand consumer views such as you see on MN are powerful and authentic. It takes time and effort to write a post and most importantly you dont get paid for writng them. We moderate each other and compare our experiences. A consensus view emerges.

You said "Perhaps it would be better to describe what we seek to do as educating consumers about brands?"

Yes I would be interested to hear that.

I am a father myself. There are only a very small handful of men on MN. I hope you will keep reading MN and enjoy it as a parent. I have found it invaluable and wish I had joined before we had children.

Hully dear, no use flirting. I have it on good authority Graeme doesn't do big feet.

I do love you all. Thanks from me, too, MmeLindt!

I wonder if he is jealous of us for having this internet space just given to us, whereas he had to set up his own blog. That space is his, so he gets to say whatever he likes. However, that lack of reply (hahahaha) has probably resulted in the ethical and intellectual shortcomings so eloquently analysed by you all here. Ironic that he wouldn't be guilty of so many of these errors, if he had "trained" in AIBU or its like... as all those who have contributed to this thread evidently have.

Mwah to all.

I think when Graeme does become a parent his view on "unofficial" advice will change because as new parents you get so much of it. At least one of your parents is guaranteed to tell you that breastfeeding should be 4-hourly and any less means your "milk is bad", and that you should "put that baby down or s/he'll be spoiled". It's then you need Mumsnet to reassure you this is in fact, all bobbins, parental bobbins or not.

Oh I Googled 'chelping'.... its what DS does innocently, but lets go into the loo all down the walls

Oh, no, I missed the Reply! (see, there does exist that right on MN)

I can't help thinking of some of the more deranged trolls we have had on here who, when rumbled, claim to be getting paid for starting their invariably peculiar threads as a way of increasing some kind of brand awareness.
Graeme, do you know anything about that? Because I have never understood it in the least. As you haven't spent much time on the site I can sort of distill a sample of such threads which would be 'Help, help, my baby has grown an extra head and my husband's having an affair with the dog' or somesuch, only a bit more plausible; people reply, someone works out that the story's poo and calls the troll, but the troll never seems to reach the point of saying 'Oh, in all this agonising malestrom of my awful life, the one thing that keeps me sane is X Brand Pantyliners' or whatever. So are we getting the failures in this line of work or is it all as implausible as their original stories?

Graeme,

Good on you for braving the lions den.

When you refer to "uninformed consumer generated content" are you talking about people giving their views on a branded item or relating an incident with which they are unhappy ?

If I have a problem with a product it will either be resolved by the retailer/manufacturer satisfactorily in which case I won't need to post about it or will post a positive story. Or, it won't be resolved and I will post a factual account of the problems I had.

Yes, I will reach a wider audience than just telling my friends but that's the world we live in now.

If your brands live up to their promise you don't have to worry.

Graeme
Might you consider the possibility that the reason Mumsnet is influential and has such a vast number of visitors is because it is unmoderated?
I would have thought that was screamingly obvious. Perhaps not to a brand manager
Love
Freshmint

dear graeme, i am WILDLY irritated that you think that we daft women can't tell the difference between shit advice and good, but YOU can.

1. if you see innaccurate advice on here, challenge it. a lurker who doesn't bother to correct dangerous advice is morally reprehensible... and yet i have never seen your name before.

1. when did you get your medical degree? do you think that people on here DON'T have medical degrees, just because they are mothers? you seem to think that we are all unqualified in our fields, what an odd assumption. did you not have a mother? was she a stupid person?

1. i have personally saved a number of lives on here, as it happens, because i know more about ectopic pregnancy presentation than a lot of doctors (because i learned the hard way). if we were reliant only on doctors and not on the collective of experience on here, god knows what would happen to us.

let's face it, your article is a pat on the head, fgs your entire INDUSTRY is a pat on the head to women, and thank god for forums when it comes to dealing with all the bullshit. but as it happens, when companies do come on here to right their wrongs, they are ime treated very much with a sense of fair play.

PS i don't suppose you'd be bitching if you had been working for waitrose body butter, babyliss big hair or jillian michaels, to name but three products that have caught fire on here and become well-nigh impossible to get hold of for periods of time.

Graeme, how do you stand on mashups and hi-jacking adverts? Those are now recognised marketing techniques. Infiltrating forums to spread inauthentic information, even multiplying it for an echo chamber effect: that pretty certainly goes on here, too. Marketing learns from the market, if it is clever. Of course it has to be backed by a good product, as has been pointed out, but on the other hand, a lot of crap gets bought/consumed (who the hell commissions things like The Only Way is Essex?).

You should not have been complaining about this forum, for doing things in unexpected an inconvenient ways, when it is really teaching us all about one another and humanity and about marketing and, yes, about how to get around marketing to a more trusted opinion.

As for your medical argument, posters have been known to shout at OPs (original posters) who ask for medical advice - telling the OP to stop dithering and get to A&E. There are also extremely motivated posters on various special needs posts, who have a special knowledge that a GP might not. I have also seen posters access free legal advice (backed up by links to official documents such as the Shelter website for housing law and ACAS and directgov for employment); that can be a vital first support in giving someone the courage to fight for something s/he was entitled to but too intimidated to claim. I totally stand behind what other posters have said about inaccuracies' generally being challenged.

P.S. chelping sounds a lot of trouble to go to, for some dubious benefit.

Yes, Aitch, I was thinking of that EP thread, too, but didn't want to give it airplay again because of the fallout for her (though it was amazing) - hope that's all right?

ah but you see it wasn't just that one thread, plup, i can think of four occasions in my time on MN where posters have come back to confirm that their doctors had told them they were lucky to be in the A&E waiting room when their tubes burst, because had they been at home there is a good chance they would have bled out altogether. and i know for a fact that the only reason they were in A&E was because we had all leant down hard on our keyboards to make them go.

The thing about moderation is that in order to ensure absolutely accurate advice you'd have to have a medical doctor, a lawyer, current affairs specialists in every corner of the world, social services staff etc etc ad bloody infinitum to remotely cover the topics discussed here - all these people would either have to be paid to act as moderators or agree to volunteer to do so. Then, you'd have to realise that (say) not all doctors agree, so you'd need a few more, and posts would be held up while they bickered behind the scenes, and maybe went to do more research.

Yes, it's a marvellous idea. Onto it, MNHQ.

I didn't know about the other ones, but - there you are - we experience things through this community which are real even though mediated.

Fascinating thread.

Graeme - come back!

I once saw someone's life saved on here - she had an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy. I think that's happened more than once in fact. The incorrect medical advice came from the professionals.

and that's only the things in 'my' niche. this kind of stuff happens week in, week out, but big swinging dicks like graeme like just to complain about how we posl about Per Una once a season.

anyway, seriously graeme. you came on here to have your 'right of reply', so reply. engage. tell us where this innaccurate and dangerous medical advice is, we are keen to have it removed.

because if you don't have this information to hand, i presume you will be retracting your blog and apologising for acting like a twat?

I should read first - sorry Aitch. Twas you!