mn is a public website. We do not sign up to terms and conditions that say threads may not be discussed outside of mn, on twitter etc...

[wannaBe]

yep, thread about a thread... big deal.

so - thread started on mn. Another poster tweeted about said thread, came back to the thread and said she'd tweeted about it.

Subsequently posters called for her to be banned for tweeting about a sensitive thread, followed by lots of other nasty name-calling.

Thing is, the thread was public anyway. You don't have to be logged into mn to view it. You don't have to have a button next to each post to tweet about it - all you'd have to do is copy/paste the link into twitter. Once you put your private business on a public website you lose control over what happens to it/who talks about it/tweets about it/potentially writes about it in the press.

To suggest that a poster should be banned for talking about a thread that is on a public website, on another public website is ridiculous.

Mn has hundreds of thousands of hits a day. People are very naive if they think that their private, sensitive business is limited to the few people that post on the threads in question.

And people do discuss mn on twitter. Both in terms of threads/the potential genuineness of posters/the outcomes of threads. It's just that they don't come back on to mn to talk about having done so.

MN is public domain, messages on here are not private correspondences, so YANBU.

Sorry, not ignoring you, BoF, just trying to get some work done!

I probably put it badly - I suppose I meant justify, not defend her actions. It felt to me last night that she knew she'd done a pretty shitty thing, and she was coming back on the thread with all this petty justification for what was a very mean-spirited thing to do. Or maybe she's just that hard-faced and truly believes that what she did was ok and morally defensible. Who knows? :)

Wannabe, if I felt the need to tweet someone's personal problem across the interweb in order to garner attention for my own viewpoint on a thread that was asking for help, not a debate on the likelihood of men using porn, I'd like to think that, on reflection, I'd recognise my actions as being those of a self-seeking twat. And thus be ashamed of myself.

I would be surprised if anything I posted here was discussed elsewhere and probably wouldn't like it if it was of a sensitive nature but it is an open forum and so I suppose what do we expect?I would like to think that people could think about what effect it may have on someone though to have their posts taken off Mn and discussed before they entertain themselves with others misfortunes.

op, whatever buttons are on a page (or not), or what 'common courtesy' demands, I agree with you. a basic rule in life - if you don't want people to know something, don't tell them.

it's hard if you have a problem you want help with, but you can't put something on the internet and then expect it to be contained. it's like telling a friend 'a secret' and thinking they'll keep it quiet. if you tell even one person, that information is 'out there', so be prepared for it to spread. the internet is like the school playground times millions - people need to understand this. mn isn't a safe little support group where you can have a confidential chat. the daily mail used to do a 'round up' ffs.

riven's example should be a warning - even from the best of motives, other people can't and won't keep their mouths shut.

only put something on mn if you would be prepared to see it being in the newspapers. otherwise, keep it to yourself.

I don't think this issue is about privacy on Internet fora. As has been stated, we would all do well to remember that what we write is already in the public domain.

For me, this is an issue about poor taste and inviting users of a "fun" networking site (with an entirely different culture to MN) to gawp at another human being's distress - and all to further a personal agenda to persuade people that "all men use porn".

I was one of the most vociferous opponents to the original decision to have FB and Twitter buttons on each post and along with others, appealed to Mumsnet to remove those buttons from the "sensitive" boards at least. I was very grateful when Mumsnet agreed to do so, but I remember writing at the time that just removing the buttons wasn't enough.

I suggested, just as there is now a warning about DV issues on the top of the Relationships board, that there was a written steer from MN for people to desist from linking such sensitive threads on to those sites. I think MNHQ felt at the time that posters would use their judgement and compassion wisely, but if so, they seriously over-estimated the integrity of some posters.

The OP in the thread referred to has now posted on this thread and I'm glad that she has. Her distress was made worse by Alouiseg's actions last night and I think that those actions were indefensible and cruel.

I will start a thread in Site Stuff asking again for Mumsnet to make their policy clear on this issue, but my view on this is that they will need to be tough about what penalties they will enforce in the case of a reported transgression.

It's a shame there has to be a policy to request people to show judgement and common decency, but it is evidently necessary.

When it comes down to it alouiseg showed a huge error of judgement and more than that a lack of respect

lovecat the thing though is that by the time the thread was tweeted it was very much a debate on the rights and wrongs of porn use. So perhaps the rule should be that no-one should deviate from the op's distress - ever - and that debate on threads is just as unacceptable as off of them.

WWIFN realistically you cannot expect mn hq to enforce penalties (such as banning) for users who tweet threads. This is public domain. If users from here tweet threads you realistically have no way of proving who they are unless they blatantly come out and say so, and if they feel that they'll get banned for doing so they just won't say so. Plus anyone who is not a registered user here could equally tweet a thread - plenty of people tweet about mn off the back of press articles (mn hq retweet plenty of those comments both good and bad), so there's nothing to stop people from tweeting without being logged into the site.

The only way to stop that happening would be to make mn ungoogleable, and there's no way mn hq would do that as the site is their income and the number of hits has an impact on that.

Well my answers have been made about the general issue of tweeting or lnking to facebook of threads. I do not know or care which thread Alousieg is meant to have tweeted about.

If her tweeting has upset the op then yes an apology and explanaition is fitting. But i also agree though that the only area of the site that should be exempt from linking to should be OTBT, as that is specifically designd for things that people do not want "out there"

thought obviously i suppose it depends just what is tweeted

wannaBe When there is a reciprocal arrangement between sites, as there is between MN, FB and Twitter, I know that there is a lot they can do to help eachother enforce each site's policies and procedures. However, there is currently not even a policy about this on MN, or a visible statement about why the link buttons are not available on sensitive boards.

As evidenced by this thread and the one that spawned it, many users were oblivious to the fact that there were no buttons; they have become the screen version of White Noise.

Hence, I am asking for MNHQ to clarify their policy, part of which will presumably include whether compliance is capable of monitoring and enforcing. It is evident however that trusting the membership to do the right thing, isn't working.

I had no idea we even had twitter/facebook buttons.
so wouldn't have noticed that sone topics didn't.

Now you're just being obtuse, wannabe.

The thread may have degenerated into a debate about porn, but it doesn't mean that the whole thing - and the OP's problems - deserved to be tweeted for ALG's sense of self-importance to be shored up.

As I asked in my first post here - what exactly do you want MN to be? Do you want no-one to post anything about their lives at all? To have nowhere to go to ask for other opinions? I really don't get what you're trying to achieve here.

I'm with JLC and Lady In The Radiator on this one.

Yogi - no one is going to start a post in Off The Beaten track to garner general opinions - it doesn't show up in Active Convos so really gets hardly any traffic. Its a great topic for groups of people to discuss things privately.

"It's a shame there has to be a policy to request people to show judgement and common decency, but it is evidently necessary." Couldn't have put it better myself WWIFN.

You can write as many policies as you like journos/Matthew Wright/the Daily Mail will all ignore them.

Lovecat it appears that since people don't show respect for other people, that MN may well become somewhere where posters don't post about their lives or ask for opinions on sensitive areas. Several posts already on this subject have said that.

I've been really surprised how many people are of the opinion that it's ok to forward on sensitive threads recklessly.

I think ALouiseg was wrong to do it, and was also at her posting this is the funniest reply on the original thread and on here stating she was alerting other Mnetters on twitter to the fact a thread was kicking off, which all has a touch of playground 'fight, fight' to me.

Pathetic imo. Its nowt to do with whats 'allowed' and what information is in the public domain its about being a childish fool expecting people to come and berate someone else who posted on a site they know others for some help and advice- not for all and sundry to slag them off/laugh at their situation.

I think:
a) It's reckless and daft to post things on here that you don't want to get out in to the public domain. This is public - however 'sensitive' the topic. People are watching and people talk.
b) Rounding up your mates to back up your 'side' is pathetic. You stand or fall on the intellectual merits of the situation and that's all there is to it.
c) Twitter is the work of the devil and it's a shame people hadn't learnt better from the Riven debacle. Her child's face on every newspaper front page should have been enough of a lesson for every incontinent twitterer on here to learn to shut the fuck up.

I see posts on FB regularly that link to MN very very regularly - I have long before the tweet/FB appeared on threads.

Yes - I've shared threads on my MN, or at least hinted at them in my status updates. Just the same way I sometimes tell my off-line friends about stuff that we've discussed on MN.

I'm not sharing the links with "everyone" - I'm sharing them with my friends.

A policy on stopping people sharing links is just ridiculous - not to mention unenforceable given how many bloggers and journalists link to here, not just on twitter and FB but across the web

Don't think this is about stopping people from sharing links though Baroque.

social networks - all create a huge passive, dull, bulk of mostly utter garbage, that gets recycled between all of them. About 5% is worth paying attention to IMHO.

FWIW I don't know MN didn't have Twitter an FB icons not being on some topics. You could still copy and pste the url into something like bit.url to put it on to twitter though, if you were inclined to do so.

Northernlurker c) is a very good point

dittany I am NOBODIES 'porn' mate and resent the implication. I am a follower of Alouiseg on Twitter and she me.

Dont tar everyone with your brush

The op doesn't gave the full facts, the person who tweeter did so because she thought it was a troll and that she had renamed Sunday as shit stiring day. Both these things were tweeter by the person in question and that's why there were calls to ban.

You can 'ask' people to do whatever you want - not tweet threads, not troll etc. but there is nothing you can do about it. By banning someone you ban one IP address. Most people have access to more than one IP address, through work or someone else's computer or their phone. Plus, you don't even need to be a member to read every thread and distribute the link wherever you like.

I know MN can be a great source of support, but it's really worth considering whether you want to post your private life on here. If you do, at least namechange and also change key details to put others off the scent.

It beats me why the wider world would be interested in a stranger's marital drama, but apparently they are...