To not understand MN's rules?

[Lotus90]

Does anyone else feel at a loss when it comes to MN's posting rules?

I commented this on a post about a woman wanting to give up work to seek benefits for an easier life

'Bloody pathetic. Where to even start?'

My comment was removed and I received a condescending email about 'breaking the rules'

Are mumsnet becoming more like a dictatorship by the day? Whatever happened to freedom of speech mumsnet?

This is what I don't understand about the talk guidelines.

It says.... "No trolling, misleading or deliberately inflammatory behaviour"

And yet reverse threads which are deliberately misleading are constantly left to stand.

In fact the other week, MNHQ even helped a poster out with her reverse thread, by adding to the OP that the poster had admitted it a few posts down.

I think they just delete whatever gets reported

To be fair, I don’t find them very consistent or helpful either.

What they delete and let stay are pretty arbitrary. I agree with pp it depends on the amount of reports. A fairly innocuous post in an inflammatory thread will get deleted whilst a breathtakingly nasty one in a thread with little traffic will be left to stand. I'm also inclined to think they have favourites and certain posters won't get deleted whilst less favoured ones will.

'I got a shirty email for troll hunting when I questioned something that didn’t make sense. I couldn’t understand the situation and asked for it to be clarified (and I wasn’t the only one it didn’t make sense to) I didn’t even know what troll hunting was before I got the email. '

Aww mintymabel you didn't know what troll hunting was before your MN calling email?

The thing is, it’s not actually within the definition of troll-hunting to question someone’s version of a situation, or to highlight inconsistencies in their post. MNHQ treat it like it is, but it’s not. Troll-hunting is openly suggesting that someone has made up the whole thing for attention.

I was told off by MNHQ back when I was new and it was thoroughly deserved.

In RL you would say if you found something far fetched or even unbelievable. You would question something that didn’t feel right.

That isn’t allowed here. The majority of the time something that doesn’t feel right turns out to be a troll. 🤷‍♀️

But we still get deleted for questioning things that feel afoot.

I agree about the inconsistencies.

I once had a thread deleted which I thought was an interesting subject and had some replies. Apparently it was a thread about a thread. It wasn't really just something in a previous thread had made me think, as a side, link was quite tenacious and I wanted to discuss it more. It was deleted!

I have seen less tenacious TAAT left to stand.

I have seen less tenacious TAAT left to stand.

Maybe nobody reported them?

Hi there, OP.

This wasn't actually the post we originally emailed you about. That one, we won't repeat here as it feels a bit unsporting, but it was a very clear personal attack, which is against our talk guidelines. Looking at our correspondence with you, we mentioned in the same mail that you'd had other posts deleted, you asked for examples, and we sent you two, one of which was the one you quote here. Had your only deletion been for this post you mention we would likely have simply assumed you were having a bit of an off day or had strong feelings on the issue and left it there.

So although we do believe it was still a personal attack, we did only delete that one on this occasion. You were sent the email following another personal attack (and more deletions), and we mentioned that it was not your first deletion so you'd know it wasn't an isolated incident.

We're all for free speech and we don't mind the odd comment that's close to the bone, but when it looks like a bit of a pattern, it does become a bit of an issue and we need to be upfront about that. Our aim is to help conversation flow freely and repeated comments like this don't help. It's honestly not our intention to be condescending but we do have to apply the rules fairly. We aim to give everyone a few chances, but when someone has had a few deletions for the same sort of thing, we feel it's only fair to let you know why it's been an issue and what the deletions were for, otherwise, how would anyone know?

We're very happy to chat to you about it further off the boards if you'd like us to reconsider any of these deletions or you'd like a bit more info on why we decided to delete them originally. Honestly, the last thing we want is for anyone to feel like they're at a loss. That's the reason why we send out mails like this.

We hope that helps explain it all a bit more but do drop us a line if not. We really just want to help threads flow well and let everyone have their say without threads turning into bunfights. We don't intend these mails to be a big deal at all, we just think it's best to be upfront about these things and hope we can have a frank conversation with Mumsnetters.

So did that help @Lotus90?

JesusinTheCabbageVan
I've a funny feeling that Lotus90 won't be back 🤷‍♀️

I had a post deleted a couple of weeks ago. There was only one person defending the subject so I presume she reported me. I did ask the mod what I’d done (asked if the poster defending the subject of the thread - a high profile public figure - if she was the person.

I’ve seen loads of posts asking exactly that so still don’t know what I did! It felt pretty heavy handed tbh. The reply from. MNHQ was ‘you were troll hunting ‘ I wasn’t - I wanted to know if the one defending the individual WAS the individual. Bah!

Oh flipping heck, I wondered how long it would take mumsnet hq to make an appearance.

Anyway, I completely agree with the many other posters who seem equally baffled by the rationales often given by hq for their interference on threads and in response to specific comments.

For anyone wondering one of my other hanging offences (being referenced above) was for replying to a thread 'oh god you sound awful' in response to a poster who had written that she can no longer look at her DP because he'd had a haircut she didn't like.

Imo, the original post was questionable in itself, the poor bloke (imagine the uproar if a female had posted on MN 'my DP won't look at me since I had my hair cut).

However it doesn't seem to matter to mumsnet how many hundreds of posters subsequently chime in to similar posts with cries of 'your DP is a useless fat lazy prick' and the like - it's the marginally shirty post calling out the OP that gets deleted.

I don't know, I just find MN a very very strange place and perhaps I need to think about saying my goodbyes

@TwoBoxers why not?

@Passthecherrycoke yes, perhaps I'll try reporting their post on this thread to see whether they'll delete it

There is a flouncers corner if you need it.

👋

@Lotus90
Why? Your original post was disingenuous, I really couldn't see how you could defend your self righteous op.
You've tried and failed.

Oh flipping heck, I wondered how long it would take mumsnet hq to make an appearance.

They have provided an explanation for you.

FYI op if they think this is a TAAT it’s likely to be zapped too (I don’t really get that rule)

That's a very pointed response by HQ

You should probably think about doing fewer to zero personal attacks from now on

I mean, come on, 3 is a LOT

I do agree with you OP in some ways, I have seen some ghastly comments made by other users on threads. Some have been posted on threads I have created.

When I had asked for a thread to be removed due to horrible comments I was told that it couldn’t be removed as not to upset the users who had commented. Found this rather backwards, I was getting upset with the comments (some IMO were personal attacks but were not removed by hq) but the consideration was placed with the users who wanted to follow the thread and at times, especially on the AIBU board, it’s like a competition to see who can be the most mean. If you have something to say about it then it’s usually communicated back to you that you shouldn’t post on AIBU if you can’t take users being ‘blunt’.

You need to have rhino skin at times.

Under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, “everyone has the right to freedom of expression” in Britain! Freedom of speech is trumped by various other rights, such as the right not to be racially abused, the right not to be slandered, and other principles such as not inciting to violence, not inciting to terrorism.