Trollhunters: The bane of MumsNet

[TaiShanShe]

Several regular users seem to make it their life's work to troll hunt on MN, even when posts are quite plausibly genuine. It's becoming a regular occurrence for posts to be taken down just simply because of the sheer amount of reports a post gets, rather than for genuine cause. But what is this doing to MN? How can we expect people to be open with their expressions/feelings/ life stories if they are questioned for being trolls and reported if there is even the hint of disagreement etc. (Thoughts here are from observing the Parishioner and the Hat thread, but are also based on many other threads I've followed here)

Trolls are worse, by far, followed by those who post shite like "I don't care if it's a troll, it's entertaining"... Read a fucking fictional book then.

Embarrassing seeing some of the bullshit people swallow on here, especially the obvious Daily Mail set-up ones.

Reporting is an odd way to spend your time.

A few changes have been made to keep disruption to a minimum and it's a lot calmer right now

Wouldn't know, I gave up after a few weeks of seeing people being slagged off for "the tone of their posts" or other fatuous reasons.

As a mature adult I didn't feel I fitted in there.....

Reporting is an odd way to spend your time

...but reading fake threads is an even more odd way of spending your time. 🤷🏻‍♀️

If I think a thread is a troll thread I always report. It takes a moment and hopefully helps reduce the number of fake threads. I also report troll hunting and overly nasty or goady posts. Again, it only takes a moment.

I was on the thread in question and was appalled at the poor behaviour of many.

I agree with others that it's generally a better idea to simply report a suspected troll OP rather than start an Inquisition in the thread.

Maybe the powers that be don't always get it right but I think more often they do because they can see things we can't. I've been an admin and a moderator of forums before, it's not an easy job and it was frustrating to be told we didn't know what was really going on when we could see more of what was happening then the self-appointed experts.

Reporting is an odd way to spend your time

It takes a fraction of a second to click on the report button, I don't imagine anyone spends a measurable amount of time doing it

I was on that thread and don’t give a shit if they weee a troll or not. I reported them because their attitude and comments were disgusting.

Yes Perf, it didn't matter to me that the OP wasn't a troll, her thread was definitely not in the "spirit of MN" for numerous reasons and for that alone it should have gone or at least had the nasty comments made by the OP edited. There's many threads that don't break talk guidelines but are deleted because of their content, this was one that fitted that criteria.

If there weren't so many trolls and name changers then there wouldn't be a problem.

I am won't be reporting anything from now on if MNHQ are going to pick and choose what gets deleted. There's little point.

Don't know where the errant am came from

And getting back to your original questions about the hat thread, posters weren't calling troll the whole way through. After Helen posted to say that the OP has been around for years and had posted a lot people stopped troll hunting.

However posters did carry on reporting her for her initial vicious and inflammatory post and her continued dismissive attitude towards posters with cancer. How anyone can defend her is beyond me. It makes you as bad.

Yes absolutely. What else other than favouritism would have MNHQ make the decision to allow such a thread to stand when previously much less has been deleted because it's not in the spirit of MN.

Absolutely @Freudian

I remember sometime last year where a long-term poster had their post edited rather than being deleted with the usual "see terms and conditions" message. There wasn't even a note to say it had been edited until someone showed a before and after screenshot.

I think that anyone with an @MN username need to understand how off-putting it is to see this kind of different treatment depending on your post count.

The "spirit of MN" is all bollocks.

It's whether your face fits, whether people decided to mass report you etc.

It's a forum for anonymous users - there's no spirit....

Ha! I've been name-checked on the sad Reddit forum!

Good job I don't have DDs with Instagram accounts or the MNtrolls would be looking at their photos and laughing about how ugly they are. Yep, they did that to a MNetter. That's the level of troll hunter you get over there