To think it's time MN becomes a closed forum?

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So:

The bastard Daily Mail cuts and pastes very personal stories from MN, discouraging others from opening up and seeking support.

Trolls come on and waste everyone's time, increasing our cynicism in genuine cases and discouraging others from giving support.

Spammers jump on any related (or unrelated) thread and post a link to their crappy product, wasting MNHQ's time in weeding them out.

Hairy handed truckers come and get their weirdo jollies from MNers seeking sexual or physical advice.

Isn't it time we became a closed forum?

I appreciate that wouldn't completely solve all these problems - but it would surely reduce them.

Otherwise, I'm worried the site is going to die, or become limited to the most bland and anodyne threads (lentil recipes and so on).

This is a genuine AIBU - I am not at all techie so there may be downsides I haven't thought of.

Open to debate...

What does that actually mean? I agree about the DM it's becomming beyond a joke now.

How do you decide who can join and who can't?

How would that work?

How would it work though?

You can't close it to be a private forum

There are people needing advice all the time. Why should they lose because people are twats?

I do think Mumsnet should check if they're a PBP before they get to post IMO. It would solve a lot of trolling and hunting

How would that work and how would it help? Nothing to stop trolls joining a closed forum.

Wether I agree is besides the point.

A closed forum will not stop daily fail reporters from creating an account just to trawl for stories but what it might do is give some users the false impression that it is private therefor safe to post things with details that they would think twice about on the forum under this format.

Which in turn would then give these reporters even "juicier" stories to report.

This has been raised before.

MN would not exist in current form if not "open".

Having a "closed" forum would not keep out trolls, hairy truckers or DM.

This is the internet, it's how it works.

Never going to happen. MN is a business and wants to maximise ad revenue. You don't do that by closing off a forum. I bet it gets a lot of its hits from Google referrals.

Closed to who (or whom??) It's an anonymous forum, nobody knows who anybody else is...

By closed forum I suspect you mean members paying a subscription fee?

So if we were to go down that route - imagine a vulnerable person with no or limited funds needing help, what would they do?
And how would you ban a Daily Mail journalist paying for a subscription?

It would be more heavily moderated.
Like a certain amount of posts before it goes 'live' that type of thing .
No option to name change.
However,no links to Facebook would be kind. I think that makes posters nervous ,and they name change.

What about needing a phone number to confirm account?

I do think Mumsnet should check if they're a PBP before they get to post IMO.

How?

Oh. I may have misunderstood the significance of "closed".

By the way that they do it now

closed forum, how would that work ? there has been some bad stuff on here recently but i think most mners are real, honest and like myself try to help others in a positive way ,it's a great way to let off steam, get support and have a laugh, imo the nasty delete stuff seems to be on aibu but that's possibly because of the amount of traffic.

What about needing a phone number to confirm account?

How would that work?

How would it stop trolls/Truckers/DM?

Some people might remember Bad Mothers Club..it introduced fees and a 2 level membership system and killed the site stone dead within a couple of years

No way would I pay a subscription fee,BMC did that and it folded pretty quickly afterwards, although it was a much smaller site.

I think posters should just be aware that everyone isn't who they say they are, and post by the principal that anyone could be a troll or DM journalist. Posters should never give away too much of themselves.

I'm a member of more heavily moderated sites. It is slightly more boring , but there is less swearing & being taken for a ride..

It would stop a lot of PBP, surely?

downside? given this is a commercial site the owners main interest is in making money and profit, they don't really care about privacy given they copy and paste threads to twitter and facebook. there is no such thing as bad publicity for a commercial organisation - they aren't going to make this place private.