Is it time to discuss the 'crime in the news' type threads you get on here

[ElizabethHoover]

And if they should be allowed whilst investigations are still going on. I am thinking of the McCann ones in the past, the Bristol murders one, the Karent Buckley one.

Should Mn not just have a policy where at the least people cant speculate on the crime until there is a conclusion - and its normally a tragic one - a bit like the restrictions on reporting during a criminal trial?

Personally I can't quite see what the point of them is and they do sometimes smack of sensationalism with a strong undercurrent of les tricoteuses thrown in.

The current one seems to have just degenerated into a slanging match.

sparklingbrook

Hysteria would be a word best used to describe.

Hard for us to make a comparison, but I'd say the number deleted exceeds the number that stay for the big stories.

And unless you're here a lot, you'll miss them. For example, did you see yesterday's short-lived thread about Becky Watts' funeral?

Why is it legally dubious to speculate on MN? Why is it different (as it is a forum of people with their own opinions rather than say a news site) than people speculating over the photocopier, or over a coffee? Jurors are under strict instruction to not search the internet for anything relating to the trial so although I see why it may be vulgar to speculate why would it be illegal? (I'm not being goady, I really would like to be enlightened!)

On the RW thread a local posted and sent a pm. They named the person due to face trial.

Sometimes people are interested as a case strikes a cord. For me my friend was murdered aged 16.

But deleted posts have been dealt with so why would they be a problem? Surely it's the ones that remain which prompted this thread?

Oh god, my spelling and grammar are atrocious on this thread, nonetheless I stand by what I said, glad others feel the same.
Sparkling it was spectacular in its awfulness that dream thread, I think they'd be run off the boards as a troll now, but I think the lady in question was deadly serious. Absolutely crackers!

When someone's missing they're just missing. Why two hundred odd posts need to talk about every single police line of enquiry i don't know. It's just ghoulish.

Obv mnhq don't mind.

Yy Arks and posters on the thread were also finger pointing at her poor father, while she was still a missing person.
They were careful to keep it just below the wire of acceptability. That whole thread was completely indefensible, people seem almost obsessive, placemarking and wailing and posting conjecture.

The Contempt of Court Act 1981 sets out what is and isn't permitted when a court case is pending.

And lack of action by police etc may only mean MNners have got away with their speculations and declarations so far, not that there was nothing wrong with them. Plus MN does delete the worst as fast as they can. Which doesn't make posting those things ok in the first place.

Some of these posts seem to imply that MN is the only place this happens though? There are many more internet forums where this happens too.

So banning it on MN won't help a jot.

I'm frequently astonished by what MN allows on these threads. I've so often seen posts that are in contempt or court or libellous. They're the sort of thing that would get a newspaper into serious trouble if they published something similar, yet MN seems to take a casual attitude to it all.

To be fair, when it is pointed out to MN that something is in contempt or libellous they do deal with it, though sometimes they're a bit slow. But they probably need to police at least the forums which are most likely to attract this sort of speculation more actively and not leave it to posters to draw problems to their attention.