To be irritated by the UK-centric assumptions on here

[saraclara]

Many posters here seem blissfully ignorant of the fact that the internet is a worldwide thing. Yes, this site is based in the UK, but that should be as far as it goes. Clearly there's somewhat of a UK focus which is fine up to a point. But...

Every second thread seems to end up with someone in the covid police trying to threadjack it because a hapless poster from a country that's not in lockdown, posts about being on holiday/vacation or visiting relatives, or doing something else that's not allowed here at the moment. Why do the threadjackers assume that everyone on here is British?

Seriously, the insularity here is really weird. I've not seen it on any other forum. I belong to two based in the US, but no-one assumes that posters on them must all be American.

@BolloxtoGender

OP, your post, in fact the whole thread, is in English. There is a world 🌎 of languages out there, how Ignorant, narcissistic and narrow minded of you to assume everyone can or are willing to converse in English on mums net.

There is absolutely no relevant logic to your post.

I am not from the Uk and none of my friends who use this site are from the Uk either, I agree, a lot of posters don't see past their own nose

It is not about seeing past your own nose, it is a British centric site, if they didn't want it to be I am sure it could be marketed a different way but they wouldn't do that, I.e with competitions, reviews guides as a majority of users are British at present.

To the op - there is nothing to stop you from starting your own site that isn’t U.K. centric. Then you wouldn’t be irritated.

Even Mumsnet 'News'is UK centric, I don't really understand the bewilderment over this.

@saraclara

OP you have made an assumption that anyone posting during the night UK time is not a UK user. Some of us work shifts, are up feeding babies, are insomniac etc. I regularly post in the small hours.

No I haven't. I've posted on here in the wee small hours myself. However, the amount of traffic indicates that it is likely that a fair few of the posters are likely to be American or Australian (for instance)

You said:

"It would be interesting to know. But it's pretty active when the UKers are asleep, and of course Australians and Americans (among all the other nationalities) have plenty of overlap time with UK prime posting time."

@StanfordPines

What would you assume about the posters on this website for example www.catsofaustralia.com/forums/

Or this forum?
www.racecafe.co.nz/forums/index.php

Clearly we can’t assume anything according to the op because all the internet is accessible from anywhere.

How is that the same?

CatsOfAustralia - Australia is in the site name.
Racecar.nz - NZ is in the URL.

Mumsnet is a .com site. If it were mumsnet.co.uk or ukmums.com, I could see your point.

You said:

"It would be interesting to know. But it's pretty active when the UKers are asleep, and of course Australians and Americans (among all the other nationalities) have plenty of overlap time with UK prime posting time."

Yes. That's what I said. And while it would be more accurate to say "when MOST of the UKers are asleep" that still doesn't mean that I assumed all the overnight posters were from other countries.

Goodness, the argument over .coms or .co.uk irrelevant, look at the content and then make your point.

Womencanlift
I would say it’s English centric not UK centric.
The amount of threads that say things like “that’s not the rules” - well it is in Scotland or “why are your DC not in school, they don’t break up until mid July?” - not here they don’t

@saraclara
Good point.

Did you assume most posters were English rather than British?!

@Goldenbear

Goodness, the argument over .coms or .co.uk irrelevant, look at the content and then make your point.

It's not irrelevant though is it, not when countries have specific domain extensions.

Boards.ie = .ie signifying an Irish domain.
News.com.au = .au signifying an Australian news site.

If MN wanted to be seen as a British site, they'd presumably be using a .co.uk extension. But they aren't. Not remotely in the same ballpark as the NZ race cafe site.

@saraclara

You said:

"It would be interesting to know. But it's pretty active when the UKers are asleep, and of course Australians and Americans (among all the other nationalities) have plenty of overlap time with UK prime posting time."

Yes. That's what I said. And while it would be more accurate to say "when MOST of the UKers are asleep" that still doesn't mean that I assumed all the overnight posters were from other countries.

But you didn't type that! Which is fairly similar to someone quoting UK law to a poster who didn't identify they live elsewhere. They are aware of other countries but the default is their own unless alerted otherwise.

SionnachRua If MN wanted to be seen as a British site, they'd presumably be using a .co.uk extension. But they aren't. Not remotely in the same ballpark as the NZ race cafe site.

I wouldn't make that assumption. There are lots of British based businesses with a British business focus which use .com. Its to do with availability of domain names and business branding, but not necessarily a desire to appear international.

I think it's people like to pile on.

On my very innocuous kids bike page on FB there was some ridiculous comment about if someone went into a cafe for drinks or just bought a takeaway. Completely unnecessary.

Reddit is very USA centric - generally people preface if not American. I think both English and Americans can be a teensy-bit self-centric. I say that as an English.

SionnachRua, but the 'content', the 'content' is what speaks for itself. Please explain how this is not aimed at a British target audience?

It did make me laugh that changingmine posted several times on this thread complaining about mumsnet being English centric and then I read a thread about names on the Chat board and someone used HER post as an example of that thread being English centric

@Goldenbear

SionnachRua, but the 'content', the 'content' is what speaks for itself. Please explain how this is not aimed at a British target audience?

The site is aimed at mums, is it not (and dads too, even if they aren't in the name)? That content could come from anywhere around the world, the target audience is so broad.

The fact that the site is dominated by UK posters is a bit like the situation with Reddit and Americans. Although I find that Redditors tend to be more mindful of internationals than MNers are - purely basing that on my own experience with both.

@TulipsDaffodils

It did make me laugh that changingmine posted several times on this thread complaining about mumsnet being English centric and then I read a thread about names on the Chat board and someone used HER post as an example of that thread being English centric

I am English 😂

I think you ar being disingenuous, the content includes, discount codes aimed at people that use Stirling as currency, promotions aimed at British, competitions allude to British prizes, reviews, pregnancy guides which are based upon the British medical system. Yes, the 'Talk' section in theory could include references to non British health care systems, non British politics, non British education but it hardly ever does and it is stated in the title.

It’s hardly shocking that the assumption is most posters on here are British. It’s a London based business, so they initially set it up to appeal to the British public.

Of course if they envisioned it to be international then they would have been over the moon, but it’s roots were mainly British posters.

I would have assumed that different countries would have their own equivalent. I wouldn’t have imagine many Americans/Australians etc would have heard about this site, in the same way I couldn’t tell you if they have something similar.

Obviously anyone from anywhere can go on an open site and the more the merrier, but it’s ridiculous to be ‘put out’, because people don’t know the location each poster posts from...

Even the fact it has a ‘Brexit’ board would suggest it’s predominantly a British site. Can’t imagine a Canadian site having a Brexit area.....

wouldn’t have heard of this site I mean

Allelujah for a thread like this, at last on MN!

I don't know what it is about the British (of which I am one) that assumes the rest of the world gives a shiny shit about what goes on here on our rather small, Northern Hemisphere island.

All through the Brexit shenanigans, I kept reading threads here saying the world is looking at us, mocking us, etc The truth is the world doesn't care for a moment about UK politics. They have better things to be concerned with. Their own countries, governments, economies, personalities and people.

Mumsnet is so woke it's not even funny. Posters here wring their hands at 'the Tories', 'racism' 'misogyny', patriarchy et al. They loathe everything to do with the UK being a colonial power in previous centuries (when large swathes of the planet did actually take notice of what was emanating out of London) and yet they still somehow think the billions of people living on this planet in all 196 modern day countries, many of them with greater populations than the UK, care remotely about anything we do or say here?

Reality check people! The rest of the world doesn't care! In the same way we have little to no interest in what's going on in Botswana or Libya or Columbia or Thailand or Myanmar or Kazakstan or anywhere else.

Brazil is a huge country in terms of land mass. Many times the size of the UK. It has a population of 214 million compared to our 67 million. What do you know about Brazilian politics? Does it even register on your radar?

Well that's the same for those Brazilians who simply do not care for a single second whether we are in the EU or not in the EU. Who is our prime minister, how we are coping with lockdown, what is on our TV, what a certain politician is saying in government etc.

They don't care! No one cares! The Americans, Australians, Moroccans, Bolivians ... UK politics are of absolute no interest to them.

It might be the centre of your universe but it certainly doesn't apply for the rest of the world. The UK is small fry.

'Mumsnet is now the UK’s biggest network for parents, with around 7 million unique visitors per month'

This is something they state about their own website. It doesn't talk about its ranking in the world, that's not to say it doesn't want a global presence but it does indicate the UK centric nature of it.

Fontella, how is any of that relevant to the target audience of Mumsnet?