to wonder if deleting troll threads is the right thing to do?

[HaveringWavering]

Yet again I’ve spent a chunk of time and effort replying to a thread with advice based on my own experience, only to find that it was deleted minutes after I posted for “breaking our talk guidelines”. There was nothing in the OP’s posts that was racist, personally abusive or the like and it hadn’t descended into argument, so I can only assume it was a troll in the simplest sense of being a fabricated story.

Thing is, about 100 other people had also expended time and effort that went up in a puff of smoke. Even if OP was making it up, the advice was most likely genuine and may have helped a real person in a similar dilemma. After all, didn’t newspaper problem pages do this for years-make up letters to use as a platform for giving general advice?

We can’t tell if anything anyone says on here is true, so is there any good reason to impose very high standards of truth on OPs? What is gained by deleting hundreds of posts of useful advice? From my perspective it just deters me from answering anything, and if enough others feel the same then genuine OPs will start to lose out.

So, AIBU to say that allowing a fantasist thread to remain is more respectful to genuine Mumsnetters than deleting it?

I'm with you @HaveringWavering and wish MNHQ would just lock threads rather than delete them. Just because the OP is a troll doesn't mean that the thread is a waste of time; it could have lots of useful information for other posters or lurkers, or have triggered a debate. Seriously, we're all adults here (or hopefully mature enough to be allowed online unsupervised) so we need to take personal responsibility about what we share and only share what we are comfortable with, and only engage in threads we can handle emotionally.

Personally I don't care if people are offended or triggered, if they don't like reading about a particular topic then don't engage. If they find a thread "triggering" or "offensive", or having a negative impact on their mood, then simply get off MN and go and do something more enjoyable.

I already replied to this upthread but repeat my comment for ease of reference:

“The scenario in that OP was perfectly plausible though. Would you also have objected to that thread if the poster had been real? I’m pro choice but I don’t see anything wrong with the topic being discussed online.”

There's been lots of iffy late term just on cusp of legal limit for abortion threads on other forums I use too and I used to sort of hope it was pro choice people trying to highlight how hard roe V wade being overturned will harm women but it could also be anti choice people making up shit so that late term abortions look way more common than they are.

If you don’t see anything wrong with lies @HaveringWavering then I guess we won’t agree.

Trolls do post plausible situations - about still birth, leukaemia, PND, to name just a few that I can think of. It doesn’t mean it’s somehow acceptable.

how strange to not see that threads being posted by people for shits and giggles about lies should be considered trolling and thus deleted.

trolls always nearly - post about - awful life situations. To get people to share their child bereavement stories, or their childrens puberty stories, or late term abortion stories. They get off on it. This is considered trolling and deleted, quite rightly.

I hate wasting my time with fake posts, but I am aware some posters will have to put in incorrect information to protect their identity esp as some threads end up in the newspapers. I have never understood why anyone would waste their own time posting fake stories. It is a poor reflection on them. I hope the advice helps others.

I agree with you OP.
I don't really care if some of the threads aren't true. At the end of the day, this is just a chat forum. Entertainment, essentially. It's not a counselling/advice service. There are charities etc for that.

How come 78% of voters thinks the OP is not being unreasonable to suggest we should leave Troll posts? Most seem to be saying she is being U

Omg no way!! I was following that thread as felt so sorry for the op.

Feel like such an idiot now 😪

But these things do happen. Why does it matter that they are not happening to the OP? As I said, problem pages for hundreds of years have been based on fake letters as a springboard to offer advice, raise awareness or sell magazines/newspapers.

Surely nobody would think it was legitimate to extrapolate statistics from frequency of posts on an Internet message board?

Raising a topic gives both sides the chance to make their points, and usually exposes the idiots for what they are. Can’t really see the harm.

So you are saying you would be okay with someone trolling about cancer, because cancer happens to some people, really?

Nah it's shitty of someone to troll about cancer.
But a thread full of advice about cancer would be useful to many people. So no need to delete it just because OP is a creep. If they got some kind of kick of out it well, who is it really hurting I suppose.

I think people who get upset that it turns out that the OP is a troll are those who have become overinvolved. As MN says, never give more emotionally or financially than you can afford to lose if OP is not genuine.

I’m not saying that it is to be encouraged, but the fact is that it is absolutely impossible to fact-check things that people say on this forum. So everything has to be viewed with a degree of scepticism anyway. And if I reply to a cancer troll sharing my own stories about my Dad’s battle with leukaemia or my Mum’s death from lung cancer, I’d be genuine and would like to think that others coming to the thread might benefit from my sharing. Instead my contribution disappears and I think twice about bothering to post in future.

I've lost relatives to cancer. I'd prefer not to read made up threads about cancer.

You might not care, but other people do. Why is your need to give your good advice greater than their need not to read upsetting made up threads?

Why have they deleted the 'Did this ever happen to you' thread? It was pretty depressing to know so many of us had encountered such experiences but is it not something that we can discuss here?

Probably a perv wanting stories as wank fodder.

So have I.
If you’re fine to read genuine threads about cancer, then surely it’s only the fact that threads are made up that upsets you? If they are not deleted as trolls, you’ll never know that they are made up. For every troll that is “caught” there will probably be at least one other that is never detected but you are blissfully ignorant of those ones.

And it’s not about my personal need to give advice. It’s about a policy that results in deterring people generally from contributing to threads. Or makes them feel stupid for caring, as a pp demonstrated earlier in this thread.

So what? Some people wank over shoes. The solution is not to stop selling shoes.

Yeah we have one of those, too. MN take down threads where he gets posters to describe their kids school shoes to him.

They’re really heavy handed on this site. Constant deletion of threads (deleted my thread once when it was true) and just a overall feeling of over policing but will allow all the swearing in the world.

I have not forgiven them for deleting a really informative thread about the Jewish community in the U.K. Nothing about it was disrespectful and there were many Jewish contributors on that thread.

I like Mumsnet but it is a childish site. You also get those bored busybodies reporting to feel important/have a job.

I agree with your sentiments 100%, OP.