........to not feel happy about children posting on here?

[sallyandherarmy]

Just that really.

I thought this was an 'adult' site.

Kids posting makes me feel rather uncomfortable.

I have replied to a 'child' on another post, although something tells me that it isn't really a kid posting. Which also feels not right. :(

As are vulnerable adults. Should we ban them from posting too? How about people drunk posting?

Straw man. All the other types of vulnerable people who turn up online and the ability or lack of to protect them or reduce their risks online does not mean we shouldn't protect another vulnerable group (children) from the risks of potentially taking advice from people they are likely to trust based on the simple fact they think they are speaking with mums, women etc or being an easy target for someone grooming under the disguise of a mother type figure.

Worra I didn't realise this was a site full of hairy truckers. Now that I am aware, a lot of the posts make a lot more sense, as the poetic irony and humour those hairy handers obviously intended them to be!! I have to say that is a relief! When I took them at face value as written by actual woman, quite a few of them made me weep with despair.

Pai the internet is obviously full of trolls but Mumsnet - mostly due to ease of name changing and the odd invasion from MRAs, really does seem to attract them like a great big magnet.

I don't think MN is the 'safe space' a lot of adults seem to think it is, let alone a safe space for children and then there's the aforementioned sex topic issue as well.

Straw man

It's really not. Why is protecting one vulnerable group for mumsnet more important than protecting another. Besides young people are actually likely to be more aware of the potential of people not being who they say they given that they have grown up.with the internet and have been taught about internet safety.

When it comes.down to it, it is not possible to stop young people using mumsnet anyway, so the question is kind of moot.

young girl who wants to explore her entry into adulthood among people she trusts

The young girl should get out there and find some people she can properly trust.

Yeah, I do actually dislike the ease of name-changing. I've done it a few times, just for the sheer hell of it, and now when I look back at my posts on the AS, there is no continuity of viewpoint.

It isn't the hairy handed trucker aspect that worries me. I'm just more surprised by how awful and abhorrent I personally find a lot of the views expressed on here (and that is obviously totally biased and subjective....it doesn't mean those views are actually awful, but just the extent to which I personally disagree with them rocks me a bit and makes me sad. Especially all the trans-related stuff) The stuff I totally disagree with seems to be the majority viewpoint though, and I would hate it if my kids came to hold some of those views too....

Lying the inclusion of a checkbox does not mean the absence of teens, so it does nothing towards ensuring you don't need to have "special regard" to the fact that teens might be posting. Any open forum (and a large number of the closed ones) you post on on the Internet can and will have teens on them. With some sort of checkbox system you can pretend otherwise, but that's all it will be, a pretence. If you are worried by the thought of teens reading things you post you need to choose groups with an appropriate age limit that verify user identity.

Why is protecting one vulnerable group for mumsnet more important than protecting another.

It's not about importance. It's about ease. It's hard to establish a measurement of how drunk a person has to be in order to be considered vulnerable due to drink in relation to posting on a forum. The same with vulnerable adults. It's a lot more simple to establish how old someone needs to be to post on a site where they could easily be manipulated or targeted and to set that age at being an adult.

And obviously mumsnet can't stop young people using it completely. They have the power to close threads where a poster is identified as being a child though and to ban the account so the child can't be sent messages by any people with not so nice motives. The child might rejoin and be more savvy about hiding their age but that means they are more protected that time round.

Boom, I'm not going to change the way that I post. This isn't a site for children, if they insist on posting here then that's on them - or their parents. It's not my job to keep them safe and I wouldn't even know where to start. The tickbox would protect MNHQ perhaps and would give me some kind of assurance that the person I'm posting alongside has declared that they're 18 at least. If they're not then that's on them.

I think we're going round in circles now. Some posters (myself included) do not want to post with children, other posters don't mind - and a worrying number seem to be actively encouraging it.

So now it's MNHQ who are protected? And what are they protected from? This whole protection thing is just FUD to try and make the whole thing sound semi-legal when it isn't.

MN can (and do) focus on people's behaviour on the boards and they market towards mums, so there's a lot they do that keeps things focused on the adult side and ensures it won't become teen central. But you can't keep kids off a site like this, they'll always be there.

Boom, I actually don't care. This site is not my life, it's a tiny part of my free time. I don't want to spend it posting to children and I'm not going to keep explaining that. Any measures that MNHQ can take to minimise the likelihood are welcome as far as I'm concerned.

I really haven't anything new to add on that.

BoomBoomsCousin, whether you personally believe that any poster who isn't you has a valid point, HQ acknowledge that users on both sides of this discussion have raised valid points and made good suggestions. I'm sure that as they've shared this via email, it won't be a secret; there will shortly be a meeting at HQ in order to discuss whether there's a better way to handle this issue, taking all suggestions made here to the table.

There really is no sense I'm continuing to browbeat posters who disagree with you.

mainly what I’ve done is ask for clarification, Shapely. I don’t disagree with with MN taking a different approach, necessarily. And I thought their response above was measured and very reasonable. I also understand the desire for the site not to become a teen stomping ground with an expectation that older posters play agony aunt. I’ve mainly just countered the idea there is some kind of ‘protection’ to be gained by engaging in a box to ticking exercise, and expressed annoyance at the possibility of having everyone jump through hoops so that some users can stick their heads in the sand.