To be annoyed by the volume of deleted comments which are merely mildly provocative or robustly stating an opposing opinion, rather than being unacceptably rude or offensive?

[auserna]

NOT a TAAT.

Does anyone else find it highly irritating when threads end up having more holes than Swiss cheese due to so many posts having been deleted?

Much of the time the person at whom the contentious comment was aimed has replied (obviously before the deletion) in a manner that suggests they weren't in the least offended or bothered by it - but now you can no longer see what they were responding to.

It sometimes feels a bit like being back at school, with everyone running to the teacher and gleefully exclaiming, "Reported!" as if they're going to earn a gold star for doing so.

It's not actually injurious to one's health to be mildly ruffled by someone having a different opinion or viewpoint on a particular topic, as happens all the time in real life.

I may be an outlier here, and am happy to accept that if it's the case, but I'm curious to know how others feel.

Nitpicking which isn't adding anything to the topic
Posts designed to belittle and shame
Aggressive posts which have the effect of discouraging posters from seeking support

That's my interpretation anyway.

Not at all.

There have been quite a few instances where an OP has posted, obviously in distress, and then gets piled on with numerous obviously unhelpful posts that, while not being outright attacks, are clearly just intended to have a dig.

If you don't agree with the way a forum is moderated, you're more than welcome to start your own...

Ok, that does make sense. Thank you.

They can only look at a post if it's been reported.

Your third paragraph is not very helpful😅

Hard to tell really, as once they are deleted, I don't know what they said. I did once have a comment hidden that was never unhidden. It was about phonics, so no idea what was so contentious!

Perhaps someone didn't read it properly (seems to be de rigueur on here) and thought you were accusing someone of being phobic of something!

Absolutely agree. Whoever has the inclination to report a post on a forum in 2026 because they simply dislike a tone or point being made (unless it’s incredibly attacking/derogatory) is in my opinion a jobsworth. Also depends heavily on who is moderating.

I posted on a thread where I disagreed with the OP (not rudely, I hope). She decided that as a couple of other posters had also disagreed with her, we must all be one person posting under different accounts. Then she kept posting that we were clearly a troll and that it was a plot to discredit her thread. That was weird. And unhelpful.

Just another form of Click bait following an algorithm?

Is the change because mn might be getting sold?

Hence I have never reported a comment nor been offended by one. I think some people have nothing better to do than go looking for comments to report as some sort of game. We don't all subscribe to a moderators opinion.

In fairness I remember reading threads that were more hole than content years ago.

Yes I find it very irritating. I had comments deleted once, I had no idea why as I didn’t say anything remotely offensive. Someone reporting me and Mumsnet kept removing every thing I said. It was very weird. I feel like a lot of the time if someone doesn’t like the way their thread is going they will start reporting comments they don’t agree with. Same as threads kept being deleted. It’s annoying

I was expecting the poll to be roughly 50:50, but it's currently over 80% in agreement

Which means absolutely nothing.

I have the voting thing turned off so I never see the buttons or the % breakdown, but I have lost count of the number of times I see "oops, I pressed the wrong button", and so many threads make it obvious that a poster hasn't even bothered to read the OP, so their "vote" is worth .the square root of fuck all.

Good.
I find people correcting grammar unbearably condescending and rude.

So do I.

Imagine being unlucky enough to be poor at spelling and grammar, in a day and age where so many of us hardly go a day without texting or posting on the internet.

And then imagine being corrected by insufferable twats every time you do.

If it’s so important to them they should’ve taken up teaching.

Just experienced this today. The post I was replying to was an absolute screed of misogynistic insults to the women on the thread and women in general. Word for word the sort of thing you see on "Alpha male podcasts" so I suggested the poster had been absorbing too much red pill content (can't remember my exact wording)
Deleted for a personal attack. Yet the horrible post I was answering was left up.

I have an anti vaxxer stepson who sent me a load of crap with the guise of being concerned for my baby before his first jabs. I ignored the message completely and told my husband to tell him to stop because I won't engage with him on it

You need to report it. MNHQ won't look through a thread for context unfortunately.

This is the bit I don't get. They can't possibly trawl through everything but if someone reports a post as a personal attack they have to read it to decide if its appropriate to delete or not. So they read someone saying 'you are racist / sexist@username ' usually quoting the offensive post. Yet they can't be bothered to read a few extra lines. I am all for free speech but I think most people agree there is a line that can be crossed. I think it suits MN to have extreme and controversial / provocative views so they increase traffic for advertising revenue. There is absolutely no moral compass here, they are happy to cause distress or allow misinformation spread. They also choose to not pay more staff to police it better, they are no better than the other grabby tech companies. Yet they market themselves as a helpful and supportive platform, that's what really annoys me.

When I have an actual problem, I do not mention it on MN. I think it’s more for trivial grumbles than serious problems.

I suspect that the MN crew don’t read threads for context because so many threads are a bit of a rabbit hole. There are long running threads with in jokes that seem fairly unintelligible at the outset. Some threads are a bit niche.

I wouldn't dream of posting about a serious problem on here. I wouldn't expect to access any meaningful support and I don't think this is a secure place to talk about anything important. I'd expect MNHQ to be able to look at reports in context but I suppose it depends who's on duty and how busy they are.

a) many of the deletions are not farcical - there's been a big rise in racist posts, for example
b) many of them are because they are personal attacks or deliberately goady
c) increasingly MNHQ are deleting those which are deemed unnecessarily aggressive or unpleasant, as there's a recognition that the tone of the site is much the worse because of this
d) many of them are being started by trolls/bots/PBPs

I doubt there are many, if any, truly "innocuous" posts that have been deleted (although it's undoubtedly true that some get deleted by mistake). Unless you're someone who thinks that 'free speech' means you can post whatever racist or homophobic or misogynistic or ageist shit you like?