To want your input over whether to cancel mumsnet premium over this?

[agonyauntie2020]

Note, this is not about whether or not you agree with paying for mumsnet premium, there are plenty of threads on that (just search on premium). I have loved and benefited from mumsnet (mostly humour) for years, and was happy to pay when told they needed help.

I noted as part of the debate on premium posters talking about MNHQ having 100 employees and a huge monthly wages budget (despite very few updates ever being made to the site) and questions about what those employees were all doing. I didn't think much of it. I don't know what goes into maintaining a site like this and I posted that I trusted MNHQ to make their own business decisions/no-one could have predicted COVID-19 and subscribed.

Watching my words carefully now, because this is not intended to be a thread about a thread (TAAT) and therefore subject to deletion by MNHQ.

Recently, I got very invested in two threads. Please, no-one post speculation about which ones or MNHQ will delete this thread. I gave a lot in terms of emotional support on one of them. I then found out from posts that were swiftly deleted by MNHQ that they weren't genuine, and that MNHQ had known that for a good while. I can't say more, because spelling out the details has been given as a reason by MNHQ for their insta-deletions of posts and threads on this.

I read a theory that some of the highly addicting threads with frequent updates are actually started and maintained by MNHQ employees as part of their job to keep traffic up on the site/appeal to advertisers etc.

I have not been able to get this out of my head. If I'd read this a few months ago I would have thought "paranoid, much?" and laughed, but now I keep wondering...

YABU = Don't be stupid. MNHQ employees don't manufacture threads and then swiftly delete posts that draw attention to trolls/non-genuine OPs for that reason? Don't listen to the cynical posts. Don't cancel premium for this reason.

YANBU = Yes they might be doing this. Deleting TAATs is a good excuse for them to use, along with troll-hunting. They care about ads and they don't care if you give your time and emotional energy to fake posters. Cancel premium. It's not the site you thought it was (sob).

I never get invested in threads, I couldn't waste so much emotional energy. Sometimes I do shake my head in sadness over the complicated lives some people lead, or the awful situations some people find themselves in.

I am very naïve though. I never spot a troll and believe everything. Your idea that MNHQ might actually be creating some of these threads has never crossed my mind until now. Why would anyone? If it is so, I am horrified, MN isn't what I thought it was after all. And no, I wouldn't pay for it. In fact, I wouldn't pay for MN even if it wasn't true; I use MN as a casual browse every so often and it does open my eyes to life, but I can live without it if necessary.

I don’t think they’re actively making them up personally. It’s frustrating when they then disappear. If they were making them up to drive traffic surely they’d find a way to leave them up?

I definitely live in the world where 350k wage bill per month for 100 staff seems a lot.

They don’t need to do this given the daily mail and other “news” outlets regularly (outside of pandemic times) quote mumsnet threads directing thousands of hits to the site.

Wow! This really buries the lede.

I've been a professional writer for years. How do I get huge monthly checks for posting BS on the forums? It'd be like how I spend time now, just with a much looser grip on reality.

on the threads where the OP seems vulnerable and everyone wades in with their best advice and help, and you feel for the OP, and worry about them, and take ages to carefully write any help or advice you can offer, it feels like a big let down to find out oh that was fake and MNHQ knew... a waste of your mental energy.

I agree, I’ve spent time looking up information for what I thought was a woman in trouble. I’ve also spoken from the heart, to someone I thought was struggling with the same painful issues I had been through. Others have done a lot more, using their professional expertise in the law or social services. If the OP was all lies, I feel we’ve been scammed.

But on the threads where the OP seems vulnerable and everyone wades in with their best advice and help, and you feel for the OP, and worry about them, and take ages to carefully write any help or advice you can offer,

I have a couple of thoughts on this.

Firstly, I have learned an incredible amount from Mumsnet about emotional abuse and complex relationships. So even if the OP was not real, then women like me who may be in similar situations may still benefit from the time you take with your reply. So even if you’re not helping the person who created the thread, you may be helping others.

Secondly, one thing I have learned in life is that whatever you choose to give to anyone else, you should never give away anything that you can’t afford to lose/that would cause you significant pain if it turns out the person you gave to wasn’t the person you believed they were. This especially applies to people you’ve never met, posting on the internet.

I might lend people money in good faith if I believed they were is desperate straits, then find they used it badly or didn’t really need it. It would annoy me, but I would only give such help if I knew I could afford to lose it without it being too painful. In the act of giving something I can afford, I mentally accept that sometimes I will be taken for a ride. My “reward” is knowing that I acted in good faith and my intentions were genuine. I mostly give help because it makes me feel good and I suspect that’s true of most people. Finding out you were taken for a ride by someone who seemed genuine doesn’t make you a lesser person.

All that said, it’s perfectly possible what you surmise might be happening is happening. If you enjoy the website and its content, to an extent that doesn’t matter. You will probably be helping people if you’re giving good advice, even if it isn’t the person you thought you were helping.

If suspecting this spoils your enjoyment of the site ... well then cancel the cheque, as it were. Only give what you can afford to lose easily, and that you can bear losing without too much pain if it turns out not to be as you thought, is a life lesson that I find serves me well.

I don’t believe that MN secretly generate any threads.

Back in the day both Justine and Carrie used to start loads of threads but it wasn’t made up Stuff and it was under their mnhq names.

Well if we're really going for conspiracy theories, then the op is HQ so they can subtly give reasons why "members" feel premium is worth paying for.

Dammit! I hid a thread because I thought it was a troll, and now I want to look it up and see if it was deleted. Can you search for your hidden threads?

@Thinkingabout1t look at it this way - even if the OP is a pile of shite, your heartfelt advice might just be exactly what someone else reading the thread needed. If you think of it like that, it makes it much easier to not get upset.

I doubt MNHQ has to generate content. I worked on a famous women's magazine and we were always inundated with letters about everything. Since it's even less effort to write a post than a letter, MN won't need to supplement it.
As for trolls, gfs, and the increasingly tedious planted by political parties' threads, you respond for the lurkers who are reading in good faith.

I don't know if it's true, but I'm sure all sorts of nasty stuff goes on behind business walls.

I'm useless as spitting trolls etc. I can't grasp how this is relevant though. Some of us are much more naieve than others. What on earth has that hit to do with whether or not you pay the premium?

Gingersausage and AnyoldPrion — good advice, thanks! Publicising useful information is never wasted.

"Recently, I got very invested in two threads. Please, no-one post speculation about which ones or MNHQ will delete this thread. I gave a lot in terms of emotional support on one of them."

"But on the threads where the OP seems vulnerable and everyone wades in with their best advice and help, and you feel for the OP, and worry about them, and take ages to carefully write any help or advice you can offer, it feels like a big let down to find out oh that was fake and MNHQ knew... a waste of your mental energy."

I have done exactly that many times @agonyauntie2020 - invested time and emotion on threads where it later transpired that the OP was a troll. The difference for me is that I DO NOT FEEL LET DOWN. Even if MNHQ knew it was a troll. The reason I don't feel let down is that I am aware that many people lurk and don't post, and through the years I've seen posters mention they were helped by past threads they took no part in. I always feel that even if such a thread is fake, it will help someone. Not the OP/troll, but the lurker who is in a similar situation, not knowing what to do and hesitant to post.

You feel let down because you offered help to someone who didn't want or need it, someone who was playing with you. I don't feel let down because I feel my perspective may help someone whose situation is so overwhelming to them that they can't write it down even on an anonymous forum.

You can choose to feel let down, or you can choose to offer help to those too helpless to ask for help. Your choice.

Oh, and I don't think MN write such threads. There are many reasons they may let a thread run even when they know the OP is false. I would also expect it take time to establish that it is false, and I would rather they let it run whilst they check it out than kill the thread of a potentially troubled person. Now that would be shit.

And, I've worked in corporate IT, it's no surprise to me that people who don't/didn't would be shocked at how many people it takes to keep systems running smoothly.

This is why I love mumsnet. You're right of course PPs who have said even if the OP is bullshit, the investment of time, energy advice might help someone else on the thread. Thank you! I don't know why I didn't look at it like that.

And thanks also to the people who "got" the feeling of erk, I've been all worrying about this OP and it's been fake... and for letting me know I'm not the only one who can't spot a troll.

Bottom line, if posts help someone that's the main thing. Still on the fence about subscription. Note a clear trend to "don't" on the votes...

I've felt this more in recent times. If a thread is getting loads of interest and replies l now tend to feel its not genuine and stay away.

The damaging thing of all this is it feels more vocal users point score by picking holes in ops and the aggression on threads by successive posters digging further is higher than it used to be. Its bitch validation and to my eyes has attracted a swath of posters who just enjoy bitching and being validated for nastiness. No debate, no challenge just out right point scoring bitchyness.

I fear many genuine OP's aren't able to get the support that the site used to provide and some are possibly made more vulnerable by the lack of humanity by the got to make a comment and score a cheap point posters. Its a dumbing down of what has been a brilliantly challenging environment with good open passionate debate.

Use of the site over the years has provided me with enormous support and I have great respect for MNHQ stance, and ever ongoing deliberation, on freedom of speech. I love that posters can be direct and sometimes cutting without being deleted.

I guess every business has to balance what its aim is - It is possible to have integrity and make money but the need for money can distract from ethos/ business goals and create a money-making beast.

Morning all.
The job of the community team is to moderate the boards. We mod according to the Talk guidelines and we try to keep things civil.
We absolutely don't start threads on Mumsnet - we've no need to - the site is super busy and we've got enough to do answering reports, dealing with trolls and troublemakers etc.

We've had some pretty awful trolling recently (especially on subjects related to Coronavirus) and we've taken down several fake threads where we've checked behind the scenes and are convinced that the poster is just here to cause trouble.

There are other threads on the site which cover similar topics and these also get reported to us - we check these and report back to let members know whether we have concerns about the poster. We usually have a good idea if someone is posting genuinely and that's when we let the threads run.

@AnyOldPrion 's post above is very wise on this subject.

As always, if you have concerns about any poster or post on the site, then please send us a report and we'll take a look.

I thought it was common knowledge that the admin team are also content providers

I've been a member for quite some time and have never seen that suggested, do you have any evidence that it's common knowledge?

That is one smart post, @AnyOldPrion. Says it all, really.

I think there is so shoddy business going on. One thing I’ve noticed is that I use my valuable time to write something erudite and pertinent, and afterwards it turns out I was abrupt and the Op was about something else. Maybe someone is changing the thread.

I’ve always thought this OP.
Yanbu

I dont think its particularly a smart post
The problems with fake posts is they give a distorted view of the world ,
I also dont think helping on those posts help anyone really other than making themselves feel good about themselves because they feel they have helped without actually haivng to do anything.
Most of the long saga threads are full of someone baying for blood and revenge on the CF even if its in the quise of "supporting " the OP