Mumsnet not paying staff disgusting

[stepuporshutup]

Just read that mumsnet do not pay their night staff.
This cannot be true can it mumsnet?
If it is true then what is going on at mnhq
Aibu to be shocked by this
Or do fellow mumsnetters think it is ok to work for free
If the story is true

I’m sure volunteering for the Night Watch gives a few people who struggle to sleep at night or new mums on night feeds a bit of beneficial focus.

Sure, but MN is a business with operating profits of over £800k in the last accounts I could find. So they could offer these people some money and have them do a slightly more professional job.

MN accounts 2020

So you do value not their labour.

HELP MEEEE!!!

We Night Watchers are being kept in a dungeon at M&S HQ (used to be at MNHQ but they moved us).

We are kept chained to the wall upside down and only turned the right way up if we hide five threads. That @YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet is a holy terror for the waterboarding too!

Seriously, I volunteered for NW because, although MN is a business, it's also just about the only place where women can come together to discuss issues around sex and gender. Debate can only be a good thing, imo, but there are those who don't want these discussions to take place and MN has lost advertising revenue because of this. So that's why I volunteered, to show my appreciation.

I do hope the nightwatch are reading all the comments from people who do not value their labour.
At least when you volunteer your input is normally valued.

I was going to say yes Reddit (from my limited understanding) is a highly profitable company that has paid admin staff who are like the ‘overall mods’ but each subreddit is set up and run by the users who don’t get paid and who can recruit mods who also don’t get paid.

Company* not complaint

From what I’ve seen they often live in different time zones. So they’re volunteering during their day time

tessari
Yes, they're basically only able to hide threads. I did more than that for my volunteer job at Babycentre.

So you do value not their labour.

I didn't say that. I'm stating a fact as to their role and limitations.

It's easier to make millions of profit if you don't pay people to work for you. (Having volunteers at night might have made sense in the beginning, but a mature business should not be using "volunteers", IMHO)

<rattles chains>
<demands more gin>

It’s certainly an interesting scenario. I spend a fair bit of time online at night (night feeds!) and it isn’t overly busy, and I do generally just scroll on past the trolls. (Or they provide some brilliant overnight entertainment). So I don’t think the “overnight” bit would be the issue. But I think the gap between people waking up and MN staff clocking in could be. (But simple solution there… getting some staff to clock in earlier.)

The PP who mentioned how dangerous trolls can be to vulnerable people raises an interesting point too. So I suppose it would depend what responsibility MN takes for those people. And I think they probably feel very responsible for them, even though that’s not the purpose of the site and there are probably better places for those people to seek help.

So now I’m conflicted. I don’t think hiding a few threads is worthy of being paid. But removing troll responses to vulnerable posts does probably warrant the sort of remuneration.

<adjusts body clock>

Wow ok so their job is very much needed then? I didn’t realise it can be like this overnight, so in a way they’re helping to keep MN’s ability to generate ad revenue going? So you could say they are helping to contribute to those huge profits. I’d say they’re very much needed then and should be valued. I want to say thank you to those mods and that you do an amazing job!

And subreddits can have very different views from each other and many are controversial. It would be if MN allowed users to set up and mod their own boards and you had a gender critical board, a pro trans one, an "exposing PP" one, etc. And as long as you follow some very basic overall rules each MN board could operate their modding rules. So the gender critical one could ban cis, and the pro trans one could ban TIM. And each control who can become members and can ban people from their board.

Reddit is very different from MN and apart from occasionally getting rid of whole sub reddit boards, the only overall modding I have ever seen going on is around doxxing. So the overall modding is incredibly light touch.

@ReeseWitherfork I think any labour for a business is worthy of being paid. If a business needs labour, the people providing it should be paid.

Ah yes back in my night feed days I would also have been a MN user too (didn’t know about it back then 🤣), so there’s probably a lot of mums on here at various times.

Yeah it’s definitely an interesting ethical dilemma isn’t it? It seems that it’s not that the work itself is hard or especially skilled, just the person’s presence at the crucial times. Anyone really could do it, but would they be willing to be there at those times? After reading a few posts and thinking about it, I think that the way in which the night staff are so valuable , just by being willing to be present.

Name changed to post this

I'm a mod in a now private Reddit group. You couldn't pay us self appointed mods as that would be stupid. Some of the mods you report to, outside of subreddits, are paid.

I find it really sad that so many of the posters here just see MN as a business. Have none of you benefitted from the support or advice of others on here? Benefitted from campaigns that they've run? And MN have provided the platform for this.

FB and Twitter make far bigger profits and employ a lot more people (especially FB). All three companies are running 24 hr businesses and IMO the moderation at MN is far better than the other far far bigger ones. Because believe it or not, some people do think that MN provide a valuable space online in a crazy sometimes nasty world and are willing to give their time to it for free.

@EineKleineNachtwatcher Thank you for keeping MN saner at night!

<tots up unpaid wages for the last 7 years>

<retires> Not really, I luffs my volunteering

Yep I do love Reddit for the sheer variety of subs and the freedom on there, it helps me to see things from different points of view and to make sure I don’t surround myself with an echo chamber if that makes sense?

I didn’t know much about how it’s run though so it’s really interesting to read about the structure of it all with the pay and mods etc.

I do think it's quite difficult to volunteering for the Samaritans or as a school governor. Those organisations are either charities or part of civic society. Mumsnet is neither, it's a profit making, profit driven enterprise. I don't really understood why someone would volunteer for such an organisation. It may seem like a community, but you could argue Tesco is part of the community because it provides food to the community. Would anyone expect Tesco to be staffed by volunteers at night, because Tesco has found a way of not paying it's night staff and using unpaid volunteers instead "for the good of the community"? If Mumsnet want to continue taking advertising revenue at night, they really should pay their moderators at night.

See my earlier comment about whether they do actually need it or whether it’s a nice to have.

Interesting that the Night Watch themselves don’t actually think they should be paid… seeing as they’re doing it voluntarily without being paid.

That should read *different, not difficult.

@antelopevalley are you serious? You're just showing you have no knowledge or experience of forums yet suddenly feel so incensed about how MN works - how ...odd that MN Night Watch is the topic that has piqued your interest

Reddit mods do $3.4 million of unpaid work. Nextdoor; Steam, etc, there are lots of companies worth millions and billions of dollars that use volunteer mods.
Volunteers often view it as a quid pro quo - they use the platforms for free hosting for their own discussions and communities; in return they modded those communities. But they're setting rules, editing posts, deleting posts, etc.

MN and the Night Watch isn't like that. It doesn't have those powers or responsibilities. It grew more from the forum tradition of using mods who know the community and want to contribute to keep it safer. When forums were first starting, we were all so aware of how easily they could be sabotaged by outsiders. You know, posters who suddenly appear to try to create hot button issues when they obviously have no experience in those areas. Or trolls who suddenly jump on 'issues' that they think they can use to denigrate a forum. Or gfs who try to get jobs so they can then dox members to TRAs and other groups that have issued death threats. Yy using internal mods was a protection against all of that.

They are amazing, it is a community and they absolutely do provide much needed support, care and help to so many of us. I love MN and have done for a while now, it’s a very positive and helpful environment in general.

Its also a multi million pound company which presumably enjoys those profits, which wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for people like us choosing to come here and engage, so that part of it can’t be ignored. It’s also a fact that they choose to pay some of their staff but not others. It’s just an interesting discussion I think.