AIBU to hate the way MNHQ delete threads

[UmbridgeD]

You get threads with hundreds of thoughtful posts. People sharing their own experiences and giving thoughtful and heartfelt advice which can be useful to anyone else in the situation.

Then suddenly it disappears because the op might not be real. Everything else is real but all gets flushed down the toilet.

Then there are clearly silly threads which provide comic relief, funny witty replies. Also deleted.

Why not instead highlight the Original Post and OPs replies in red or something and have an MNHQ warning saying ‘we have reason to believe the op may not be genuine so please bear that in mind in this thread.

While they’re at it, lock threads after 3 months so Zombie 2011 guff stops popping up.

However, if they claim ‘it’s outing’ or whatever they want to peddle to have it removed, what can MNHQ do? Under those circumstances, they don’t have many options.

Well they could see it as an opportunity to educate people about how the internet works and explain that the onus is always on the poster to avoid ‘outing’ themselves.

As I suggested, they could make clicking an agreement that this is the case part of the thread starting process. Then an OP would have to accept they’d agree to it. And some people might think a bit more before starting a thread.

because there were some interesting points made on the thread

Do you genuinely think that there was a worthwhile and educational discussion to be gained from that? Other than ‘don’t make fucking assumptions about people based on the country they grew up in’.

If Mumsnet highlighted a thread as potentially a troll post the thread wouldn't carry on as it was. It'd probably require a heck of a lot more moderation than they're prepared to.give it.

YANBU!!

It's the most annoying thing about this website, and has made me think about leaving quite a few times. The ones I hate especially are when, as has been said, the OP decides that they do not like the responses and begs 'identifying' then the entire thread is wiped out even if there is 600 pages of useful info. I completely agree with the idea of a 'your responsibility' tagline.

I will add that a lot of convos that make the 'Active' thread end up being shut down, likely because they may tend to be more controversial, heated discussions. But if you are an occasional MN user, who clicks in now and again and uses Active, then its entirely possible to have 2 or 3 threads you're watching or involved in shut down in a given week, or simply almost every time you use MN no matter how far apart those times are.

So despite having months with no MN use for me it feels like it happens a lot.

I also feel free speech is clamped down on far too often and people should be encouraged to use the hide button more, but I do understand that they are primarily supposed to be a parenting site so are balancing competing ethos.

I completely agree with the idea of a 'your responsibility' tagline.

It could put people off joining MN though. Whilst of course we all know that when you write on the internet, you might as well announce what you’re saying to a room full of people, the people who write here are asking a specific group of people. The trouble is, what you think is ‘just on MN’ can suddenly end up in an online newspaper - so if you’re moaning about your MiL who definitely doesn’t use Mumnet, too much information and she may well end up reading it in the Daily Mail. It doesn’t even always start as outing information, bits dripped in over a thread, put it all together and suddenly you see you’ve given far too much away.

Again, probably not MNHQ’s responsibility. However, it would only take one instance of an op asking to be deleted, it not happening, they get outed and there’s a big fall-out - then people will start asking ‘why didn’t they just take it down? I’m not risking posting there’.

Good point Edmund

I think they ought to tackle the newspaper lifting stories thing. They seem very blase about it and I think it is wrong.

There was one deleted today about Meghan Markle, presumably because a couple of posters started to attack each other personally. It's frustrating because there were lots of posters trying to make sensible points. Also in the past, I've reported threads which I have found offensive as islamophobic but MNHQ have said they were fine. It feels very arbitrary.

I don’t think it would necessarily put people off joining. But it might encourage them to think more before they post.

People should simply be aware that their thread may end up in the newspapers, or discussed on twitter or anywhere else. If they don’t want to have that happen, they need to not post it on the internet.

I do think that’s a perfectly fine position for MN to take. And, if they make people click to show that they understand that’s the case in the process of starting a thread, then the answer to ‘why didn’t they take it down?’ is very obviously that the thread starter agreed that they were fine with the fact that they were posting publicly on the internet and knew it was their responsibility not to post any identifying information that didn’t want in the public domain.

Because the other side of the coin is that lots of people may get very cross and stop using MN (other sites are available) because of the ever increasing number of very frustrating tantrums from OPs who then claim the thread is ‘too identifying’.

There are some forms I’m on where you can ‘highlight’ certain users and only you can see that, so they are flagged in yellow or whatever with a note ‘troll’ or whatever. That could be a useful feature.

Thanks for letting us swear but please stop deleting the fucking threads.

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I think sometimes troll-hunters to force more information out of the OP than they were comfortable giving to begin with. IN the case of threads not going the way the OP expected. Actually I hate those pile ons, even if OP posted something a bit silly.