To wonder if MNers average IQ has dropped by at least 10 (if not 20) points since Penis Beaker, Jeffrey etc.

[AVirtuousLife]

It used to be a good place.

Now it's full of posters with long drawn out, multiple threads about boring banal shit.

Cheeky Neighbour thread Number 20.

My Boring Life Thread Number 100.

My Blossoming Heart Throb (who happens to be a gardener) Thread Number 90.

My Awful Life In General Thread Number 200.

And if anyone dares to challenge the OP of a multiple thread they must be a harpy or troll.

The fact that the multiple-thread-starters might be trolls themselves seems to escape the attention of the fans.

'assertions'......doh. Ahh, the irony.

Go and read one of the "life was better in the olden days threads" 😁

I do agree that there are a lot of professionally offended on MN nowadays though.

YANBU
long time poster and name changer (joined in 2006). Have been reading and posting a little bit recently, and it does seem completely different to when I first joined.

Inevitable I know, everything changes, but I think it's a victim of it's own success in a way. I think those big threads drew in a lot of newcomers that might not have otherwise found mumsnet, and adding the 'share' button to posts changed everything tbh.

It isn't what it was. Less humour, but more people who spit their drink over the screen. Less insightful opinion, but more people who seem to seek offence.

What I meant was if you don't like it do
Something better instead

There is no shortage of better things to do

don't you develop a radar after a while and notice the threads that fall into the categories that irritate you ? And avoid them

I have learnt so much recently from reading threads on here ! There are some pretty intelligent people here and I like reading different views and opinions to mine

I get more from this site now - as I ignore the threads that irritate me and I have stopped arguing with people . That's been key to enhancing my MN experience !!!

Family law
Feminism
Books
Race issues
Current affairs
Parenting (a bit)
Mental health

I just wanted to give an alternative view

Well said, AVirtuousLife. There's been a massive change here particularly in the last few months. It's getting trolled to fuck and is now a pervs paradise as users provide wank fodder by sharing school uniform stories, details about how wet they get during sex or what kind of underwear their kids wear.

There are way too many pervert trolls who are allowed to solicit wank-fodder, seemingly unchecked. Sorry, but I will judge the IQ of any poster who rushes to share their experiences with an obvious fetishist. Some people are so desperate to be cool and popular, that they abandon any intelligent thought.

X-post - intelligent minds obviously think alike 😉

If you want to see how the IQ level had dropped, just take a look at the thread about pretentious song lyrics. Literally about 1 poster in 10 understood the meaning of pretentious and what was being asked for. Tiny thing and a light-hearted thread, but it really stood out for me...

I'm still here because there are still good threads (sometimes). But the Daily Mail brigade has dragged in some deeply thick posters. As for the trolls, I maintain the policy of report and hide, and look at something else.

The troll hunting and banning, while it is needed for obvious reasons, has also stifled a lot of fun. Many of the funniest early threads were light hearted trolling which drew people in for a few hundred posts and then revealed as a regular poster and everyone laughed. A shame that these have gone.

Yes, I thought there was a new low recently (I won't name a particularly vacuous thread recently, as I don't want to be unkind)

Because you see, you're not allowed to be 'unwelcoming' so the old MN norms cannot be explained to newbies. The distinctive quirks of the site are diluted.

A certain amount of change/evolution is inevitable. But there comes a time when something important is lost.

Until a couple of years ago, I thought the ''twas all fields' threads were a little OTT. Now I really can see the difference in the site.

I still like it, but I'm here through habit and in the hope that there'll be some interesting threads. Before I knew there would be interesting or thought-provoking threads. I haven't seen though-provoking for ages, possible because political debate here has vanished (dhouting down until you get an echo chamber isn't debate. MN is not particularly representative of the population and can no longer attract as many big names for web chats)

Apparently you can get banned for '' nowadays as well.

Yes, I've been on and off MN for a good eight years or so. Chronic name hanger. Had my arse handed to me on numerous occasions, but it was usually deserved and I could see the other point of view by the end of the thread.

There has been an increase in pious, lemon faced fuckwits who virtue signal all over the threads. And trolls

I'm with you OP.
I used to come here to be informed and educated, with some emotional support on the side.
I've been here for about 7 years I think. I used to be the poster with a name referencing a piece of fruit divided into small pieces (from a bloody hilarious thread about toddlers).

Nowadays it's like picking up Take A Break in the doctor's surgery - slightly titillating the first time round but actually depressingly predictable and repetitive.

I would have gone for paying a membership fee rather than this pandering to the gutter press that has brought us here.

However , I do recall the occasional 'I remember when all this were fields' threads, even back then in the halcyon days of yore.

I'm with you OP.
I used to come here to be informed and educated, with some emotional support on the side.
I've been here for about 7 years I think. I used to be the poster with a name referencing a piece of fruit divided into small pieces (from a bloody hilarious thread about toddlers).

Nowadays it's like picking up Take A Break in the doctor's surgery - slightly titillating the first time round but actually depressingly predictable and repetitive.

I would have gone for paying a membership fee rather than this pandering to the gutter press that has brought us here.

However , I do recall the occasional 'I remember when all this were fields' threads, even back then in the halcyon days of yore.

This site has never been perfect. At times it was pretty frustrating, but at least it was witty and a bit scary. Now it's just very normal.

Hmm. I agree, but there's 3 reasons for it.
Firstly, when I joined 7/ 8 years ago, the old school M'netters were setting up a new site for themselves because they thought the place was going downhill. That caused a bad feeling that still exists today.
Secondly, all the really interesting controversial people eventually get banned, so you're left with a sea of blandness.
& lastly, people eventually grow out of posting on MN everyday, so of course it's going to change. But I agree, mumsnets hey day ( in terms of entertainment for users ) was 7 or 8 years ago.
It's still great though. Just different.

"This shite about having to be here three months simply means that the newly registered (not new, they are definitely not new) posters post in relationships and aibu where seemingly normal people are happy to jump all over each other to overshare"

Wasn't the rationale of having the sex topic to deter trolls? With the idea that the newly registered (with the idea that you couldn't just register and perve).

And that sex threads in other topics would be pretty much ignored.

And the sex topic was introduced by popular demand Because people were sick of AIBU sex threads and the number of trolls.

And MN would do this, and keep it under review to see if it work or if it made MN perve-troll central.

Well, I think we can see that, now that even things like the zombie thread warning has gone because it's 'unwelcoming', that the original purpose of the topic is not being fulfilled, and that MNHQ are happy with the level of trolling provided that they get the clicks.

"Secondly, all the really interesting controversial people eventually get banned, so you're left with a sea of blandness."

Lots of bans recently, weren't there? I wonder if that's made a difference to how many and what sort of reports are made about posts. Do people still bother?

The user community warned MNHQ about the likely unintended consequences of no longer replying to post reports, but MNHQ did it anyway and only rolled it back when the (entirely predictable, because it was predicted) unintended consequences came to pass. At the same time, it lost a number of longstanding and quite prolific posters.

Not because these people don't use the internet to chat any more. But because of actual noticeable changes to this site. It is losing its distinctive features. There is no USP now other than size.

I've just gone to the last page of AIBU and looked at threads from 2006, and they look bloody boring too. I think I've just about read everything before so nothing seems new. Isn't that just getting old?

The heyday of MN was definitely about 7/8 years ago. Back then you could leap from thread to thread and be shocked, saddened, outraged, hysterical with laughter and educated in a few short clicks. Whereas these days it's mundane, followed by troll, followed by begging, followed by troll, followed by perv.

I used to post more in a day than I do in a month now.

Many threads are pedestrian, then and now. That's not the same as being vacuous.

And there's a big difference between pedestrian interspersed with funny/thought-provoking/brilliant threads, and pedestrian interspersed with vacuous/troll/pervert

"Isn't that just getting old?"

Could you expand on that. Because I first read it as stereotyped ageist bollocks, and hope that you didn't mean that liking or disliking something is an age-related characteristic.

' another one of these shitty offensive threads. Nobody is keeping you, nor the 1000 other posters that have started a thread to complain seemingly at least once a fortnight how shit MN is..steps away from why is MN so shit in 2017 thread 30'

This ^. I've been here years and this gets trawled out constantly.

The thing is we outgrow things, once you've had the same argument over parking, mils and ndn there's not a lot else to say. Just accept you've reached saturation point and fuck off without all the hand wringing and analysing it all.