to feel that it's quite nitpicky here these days?

[SherlustHolmes]

I've been a prolific poster on here for seven years under various names (Cod. Lavender. Moldies. Shitting elves. Pirates. That fucking bat.)

In the last few months I've been nipped at for so many things - posting style, choice of words, posting in the wrong place... And today I made a mistake and got pulled up quite rightly but then got pulled up again when i tried to rectify it and didn't do so exactly as one poster had suggested. Their point was valid but it kind of eclipses the issue in question.

I've always loved that Mumsnet posters don't allow inaccuracies and are quick to correct them. And I've always tried to take criticism on the chin. But it's been so frequent recently that I've committed minor infractions of unwritten rules, I feel pretty fed up and got at. In forums I've always tried to ignore or overlook errors - I suppose it's easier to ignore them than to go out of my way to correct people, and for what purpose? It feels like there are plain clothes posting police in here.

Has anyone else noticed this or have I randomly become hypersensitive?

I think it was the joke threads that night, that kept everyone so calm, heartbroken. I have no other explanation!

Ha ha! Well spotted lying - I thank you!

pagwatch I don't consider it bad manners to point out when someone else has made a mistake. I just don't. We obviously have different types of friends, and different ideas about socially accepted norms. I personally would be a bit pissed off if I was continually making an error and my friends weren't correcting me.

I was brought up and educated to have the mindset that spelling and grammar are of the utmost importance. Proper grammar makes you look more intelligent. The ability to speak and write properly makes a person appear to be more intelligent and better educated.

Knowing the difference between who and whom, or that and which, definitely signals a higher intellect to others. Do people not care anymore about intelligence?

Proper grammar helps you get your point across. Sometimes a small grammatical error can change the entire meaning of a sentence. If you wish to be understood, it is essential to have a good working knowledge of English grammar rules.

Proper grammar gives you credibility. If you are writing or speaking to someone about your area of expertise, but your speech is fraught with grammatical errors, it will make you appear ignorant, even if you are, in fact, quite knowledgeable.

This is, of course, how I feel about it, and I absolutely respect that some people don't care. I don't understand necessarily, but I respect your differing opinion.

Explain how I didn't understand???

I got off lightly from whom the bloody mafia

My dd ears are pierced get over it!!!

You didn't understand that ear-piercing isn't a "meh, okay" issue.

To be as blunt as possible, we fundamentally feel you are boasting about having ill-treated your child. Try and think of something you find wrong or disgusting. Fox-hunting? Animal cruelty? Toddlers and Tiaras? Voting for the BNP? Picking your nose and wiping it on other people's food? Not washing your hands after changing pooey nappies?

Would you just say "oh fine" when someone told you they did it in an internet discussion thread? Try reading through some of those links I gave you.

You have that attitude to differing opinions and you complain that people are being rude to you

Are you 12?

Of course proper grammar is important and especially in a work situation but on an online forum where you are typing as fast as you can to keep up with conversation it isn't a big thing IMO and pulling people up for a simple typo/bad grammar/ bad spelling here makes other people think that person is a twat quite frankly. JUNO77 I am presuming that if you are happy to correct people in a face to face situation you don't really care what other people think of you on an online forum.
I am what you would probably call highly educated but I don't discount people's opinions on here because of how they write their posts. I know a few scientists/mathematicians whose grammar and spelling is appalling.

Unabashed graciousness there, Juno...

Juno: as someone who does know the difference between who and whom and that and which and who agrees about correct grammar and spelling being important in many, if not most cases, I still believe that good manners trumps literary correctness on chat boards.

Pedantry has its place, but perhaps not on a chat board (unless it's the pedants' thread of course

Her ears have been done for 8 years no problem,no infection,perfectly inline and she doesn't hate them or want them out!

I can see your issues why you don't like it but to keep going on and on!
Each to their own
Like I said there's probably things you would do that I don't like!!

I am a bit loose on whom and who.

TheBigJessie Wed 08-Jan-14 16:35:12 You didn't understand that ear-piercing isn't a "meh, okay" issue.

I understand and agree with this too. There are some posters though who post inflammatory things just for the hell of it, to get a reaction. I won't give it to them if I can help it. I think the worst thing for posters like that is just to ignore them and everything they post on the subject.

Ok, first off: this thread is not about you getting your daughter's ears pierced, so please stop that argument because we're not having it again.

Secondly: can you understand how you keep contradicting yourself? You say 'each to their own', but you don't like someone disagreeing with you. In my case, the 'each to their own' is that I dislike what you've done. I'm allowed to have that opinion. It's an opinion - it doesn't warrant name-calling, which is what you did on the other thread.

Thirdly: you seem completely unable to have a discussion without resorting to 'ner ner' type responses. Basically, your argument is 'I do because I do'.

Lastly: I completely agree that there are bound to be things that I do that you don't agree with (such as not getting DD's ears pierced when she was a baby) but the difference with me is that a) I am able to articulate valid reasons for my opinion and b) I am aware that other people won't agree with my choices but this doesn't then lead to me going 'well, I'm completely right just because I am and you're a bitch', which is essentially what you're doing.

But please, continue with your 'lol', and 'ohhhh, they're all picking on me!'. If you can't enter into a debate without all the nonsense you've displayed on this thread (and the original one) maybe you're better off on NetMums.

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe that's a very good judgment for internet life. When I think about it, hand on heart, recently I have encountered such posters and been enmeshed in their web, although I didn't realise at the time.

Let's have .

Juno, I am happy to accept that we have different views on what constitutes bad manners but I am not sure I know you well enough, nor you I, to comment upon what our friends may be like.

I am reasonably intelligent. I express myself well enough to have held down a city job which involved talking for a living in spite of a crappy education. I simply don't believe though that the person with the best grammar is the most intelligent and the idea that one should persue a mastery of English in order to appear so is odd to me.
In particular the need to appear intelligent and credible on a chat forum when discussing Peter Andre or breast feeding eludes me.

Me too, TheBigJessie, much as I try not to. It happens sometimes. Cheers!

bella yes - you put 'n' & even after you explained you were dyslexic people began to be seriously rude to you,& derogatory about your post? If that's the one, it was so nasty I came off the thread. There's just no point dealing with some people. I think they don a suit of armour and switch into Keyboard Warrior mode before logging on here. There are threads where you can tell who is spoiling for a fight. Madness.

Good communication takes context into account. The inablility to do this is one of the factors involved in my DS2's ASD diagnosis. He spoke like an extremely well-educated adult in Year 3 and had no understanding of why this made his peers go . It's the 'little professor' flag.

While having a group of friends who are ok with having their tiny errors corrected (an idea which I'm struggling to believe tbh) is ok, crashing someone's thread on an internet forum to do the same thing shows a lack of understanding of what constitutes appropriate communication in that context....

And makes a person look a complete twat.

Cimbs down off own twatty-sounding pompous-horse.

OP YANBU

Sometimes I do wonder whether some people open a thread and read the first post thinking, 'What can I find to have a go at here?'

Ok for the first time I have just seen someone corrected for a typo and have inwardly cheered. It's the on the thread about the correct terminology for Ireland.

It can be really amusing if someone is being a dick.

I've been here 10 years (get me, eh) and I think the new system of moderation has changed things - people now know they can report comments and they will be deleted so that no one will ever be able to look upon the evil words ever again.

I know SM has been here a long time too and I recall the days of Cod and co and there was a bit of a sixth form girls school atmosphere - newbies were pretty much ignored, people tried too hard to be cool or funny.

I dislike the self righteousness of so many posters these days. There are things I would love to post about but fear the mob mentality. One poor poster had all their previous threads dragged up, was told she was obviously uncaring and crap at her job etc - and she had only asked for advice on employment.

I do remember what a breath of fresh air mumsnet was back In 2002/3 when all you had were those awful parenting magazines, obsessed with prams and weaning. It was great to be treated like a grown up at last.

I recently deregged after receiving a finger wagging from the PO - but re-registered because I have no life

If anyone finds another forum could they PM me, please?

I think that the stupider Mumsnet becomes, the more posters like to insist on the kind of little details that are supposed to protect against the stupidity label. Years ago, plenty of people would "lol" here, for example, because it was obvious that the place was smart and funny and that "lol" was just being used as a shorthand expression of amusement. No one picked them up on it because pretty much everyone was confident in their articulacy, and the articulacy of the site they chose to post on. But these days posters get irate about "lol" and suchlike precisely because they don't feel confident in how literate or articulate they are, or how literate or articulate Mumsnet is, and so they like to reassure themselves by insisting on the roolz.

It reminds me a LOT of the etiquette handbooks that apparently became very common in the late nineteenth century when middle-class types were keen to perform what they saw as their profound difference from the hoi polloi, and tried to do that by aping the social rules of the aristocracy, including many rules that the aristos themselves didn't give much of a fuck about because they, unlike their bourgeois imitators, felt confident enough in their status not to have to assert it in petty ways.

How about this as a plan?

If you don't mind a robust atmosphere and won't sulk/accuse the whole of MN of being bitches when people disagree with you - post in AIBU

If you want to lark - post in chat

If you want sensible discussion/advice - post in the relevant topic

If you want to troll - fuck off

(And if you want to lol/hun/hubbie/txtspk/anything else twee - try a different site)

larking?

On mumsnet?

Surely you realise that having a laugh is the work of the devil