They weren't 'cheering'. They were seeing some humour there. Humour is an individual thing.
"How do you work out that the target was women, when the attack was directed at a foreign, boys name? I'd say thats reading too much into it.
The more simple explanation, is that the target was the foreign name, which makes the pathetic troll a racist as well as spiteful."
That explanation is neither simple nor logical, nor is it based on any of the known facts about the trollery. It is extrapolation and putting the cart before the horse.
Mumsnet is a site primarily used by women (and called Mums-net because of that?). The readers and users of the BNF are also primarily women, I'd be willing to bet the farm on that. Male trolls who 'invade' Mumsnet are usually men who have a chip on their shoulders against women -- I have encountered some on various threads, and they are usually offensive in a sexist way, a bit like flashers online, iyswim.
HelenMumsnet has stated that she is going through the vandalism of the BNF page and it's taking her ages. The 'humour' on the Jugurtha entry was clearly not an isolated incident where someone directed his spite at a Berber name and only a Berber boy's name that is highly significant from Berber history, or even at other 'foreign' names exclusively, but rather it was an incident where someone directed his irrational anger or fear of women against a resource used by thousands of women.
There is absolutely no evidence that the troll knew anything about the name, even that it was 'foreign'; there is plenty to indicate that he was an equal opportunity basher of the BNF and therefore MN in general.
What if an Italian called you a racist for using a name associated with the death of more than a few Roman soldiers? Would that make you a racist?
What if I decided the name Jugurtha was offensive to me as it incorporates the Irish term for famine (gorta, pronounced 'gurta'). What if I considered the Irish potato famine of the 1840s a cataclysm in Irish history that reached genocidal proportions, since it was essentially a man-made disaster, and food was exported from the country while people starved? Could I call you a racist for proudly using a name that brought that tragedy to mind?
Yes, that's ridiculous.
Could I call many a poster on the MN baby names thread a racist for pooh-poohing names that are very popular in African American families (obviously unknown to them, unless chavvy is a code for African American, which I doubt); they really go to town on them, using them as by-words for lack of taste or good sense in naming a baby -- they would be mortified to think they were being racist, and imo they shouldn't be called racist, because they have no idea the name has a different association elsewhere.
Most people, including those who are crying racism here, simply don't know what they don't know.
What's sad here is that when the word 'racist' is bandied about casually it loses its meaning.