GOK WAN: Live Webchat - Friday 11 October, 1.45-2.45pm

[RachelMumsnet]

We'll still be sweeping up the biscuit crumbs left from the Jennifer Saunders webchat as we prepare for the return of Gok Wan to Mumsnet Towers on Friday 11 October at 1.45pm. Since his last visit in Summer 2010, Gok has produced 2 cookery books and his latest, Gok's Wok is published this week.

Gok shares many of his family's traditional recipes but gives them a modern twist as he teaches us how to cook, simple, fast meals with flavour and a splash of Gok originality. Chapters cover all occasions from lunches to dinner parties and include curries, stir-fries, noodles, salads, soups and desserts.

Join Gok on Friday at 1.45pm or post a question to him in advance to this thead and you'll be entered into a draw to win a SIGNED copy of Gok's Wok.

We have also teamed up with Gok and Sainsbury's to host a live cookalong on Google+. On Wednesday 16 October at 7pm Gok will be making two super-delicious dishes from his new book and he'd love you to join him in cooking them. Find out more here.

Sarcasm? Really?

Better add that one to the webchat rules then Justine. Cos we were never told that...

To be honest he didn't actually even answer my food related question, which was genuine.

I've always loved the webchats, but agree that this was horrid, I didn't post again, and felt sad really, I love Mumsnet but agree with Justine that it was overly confrontational and rude

@Valpollicella

Sarcasm? Really?

Better add that one to the webchat rules then Justine. Cos we were never told that...

Well, yes you were actually, in the webchat guidelines at the top of every webchat thread! i.e. be polite/civil and treat webchatees as you would a guest in your home. If I started making sarcastic asides to you when you popped round mine for coffee I doubt you'd think me polite...

I'd think you were sarky Justine, and then bat back quite frankly with more

C'mon. Really? This webchat is no more that others have descended into.

Has there been some kind of push from his PR/publicists/etc? In all my years here I have never seen this.

It's rally interesting that a big name came on, who has backing from other big names, and now the threat of being BANNED for asking a bit of a bantery/bad/cheeky/rude q is being propositioned as the way forward for w/c?

Hi Corporate Person

HI MN People!

Do you feel you espose you values

HI! Will you be bring out a range in pink and blue?

YES! Yes we will!

Aren't pink a blue a bit steroetyped? Why would your org do that?

Hi X company, I've read you have shares in Slavfes XL. How do you feel about us knowing about that?

thats not what the chat is about

And so on

What everyone wants to know is...

Who won the book?!

What we really need are two MNs:

The polite corporate acceptable middle class face one

And the one where a bunch of disparate funny intelligent ne'er do well women cavort and disport with a startling irreverence for anything and everything.

Maybe we could keep the second one entirely secret?

I don't know: there was quite a lot of harshly expressed hostility (as well as n'er-do-well letchery) on the Alasdair Campbell webchat which wasn't deleted, even though some of it stretched the webchat rules a bit. It isn't really very hard to play the game and express severe criticism without breaching the webchat rules. It just seems a bit self-indulgent (and self-defeating) to stretch things to the point that the whole webchat breask down.

Alasdair Campbell obviously wasn't upset by it.

Perhaps there needs to be a red amber or green traffic light by web chatees names:

red: delicate flower
amber: frost hardy
green: GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT YOU BASTARDS

Or a red or green light next to chatters names:

red: Ignore her, she just likes to post a lot of distracting garbage

amber: Sometimes worth answering. Check to say if she's actually asked a question

green: Treats webchats constructively

yes, that would work too. Good plan.

I got deleted! My first time!

Didn't think mine was bad comment. Am off to read guidelines.

Are we not allowed to make judgements post webchat either?

I've mulled over this again on my walk back from school and I think it's this;

Walking into a thread/webchat like this, where a few posters are mucking about/being sarky, it can feel excluding/intimidating. Because I know Hully (and others who got deleted) I just know that that's her/their humour. We are, generally, a dry-witted lot and a lot of our humour comes from ribbing each other. But a 'new' person might not 'get' that. I think that's why a lot of those "MN is full of vipers' threads are started by newbies. But, as most of us know, we are a nice bunch inclined to doing nice things for each other a lot of the time.

Also, I think that GW could have been a bit more accepting of that, seeing as he himself has a "brash and crude sense of humour" (am quoting verbatim) The model that I referred to in my first question was on the receiving end of it and felt bullied and harrassed. But GW put it down to his humour. The link is here if anyone wants to see where I am getting this from. [[
www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-557940/How-feel-BAD-naked-A-model-reveals-fashion-guru-Gok-Wan-vile-scenes.html It is a DM link]]

It's all in the perception, I suppose, isn't it? Throw into the mix that when he did arrive for the webchat, he wrong-footed himself by referring to a bunch of intelligent women as 'guys'/'gals'. I think if maybe he'd said "Hi Mumsnet, thanks for your questions am going to attempt to answer as many as I can etc etc", things would have settled and taken a more polite and civil turn.

I'm waffling now and if I'm not mistaken, I think Justine invited us round for coffee.

I have only just read this..
Fwiw I also think that had he not been trying to talk about recipes when it was completely obvious that he would be receiving huge numbers of questions about styling - because the majority of people have no clue he has branched into cooking - it might have been less ridiculous.

And I genuinely think engaging about the role that has made him a person mn would ask to do a webchat would have altered the tone early on.

And btw Alistair Campbell was marvellous.

I presume he was trying to stay on the topic of cooking to promote his Mumsnet Cook a long thing but we all know MN doesn't work like that. He did answer a quick question about his TU range so he didn't stay completely on topic himself.

Reading it back it is disappointing how few questions he answered and the depth of them. His answer to the poster who was a midwife sounded quite genuine and I think it's a shame the rest of the webchat didn't come across so well.

Yes. More like Alistair, please.

If you do have Alistair back in, and he requests a shoulder rub whilst he types, I can help. I'll pay all of my own expenses and that.

Told you you were going to get into trouble though, dint I, Hulls?

That first main paragraph of yours Marmelade ( at Wed 16-Oct-13 09:11:20) just makes it seem like the few posters "ribbing each other" (and being, in their view, dry-witted) is legitimately a central part of a webchat, albeit offputting for inexperienced posters who don't get MN. But I would think that loads of posters who do get MN very well might think that isn't legitimately a central part of a webchat. It is instead a defeat of the webchat's central purpose which is to put questions to a guest. You don't have to be a newbie to find all the distractions a pain in the neck. The letching on the Campbell thread got a bit annoying too. Not really much better than the biscuit question.

It looks like Gok Kwan was not a very good participant in any case, but that doesn't really detract from the other problems with the webchat.

butthereagain

who decides what colour a chatter would be?

btw I didn't get insulted by guys, gals etc, it's and his style.
I called him Girlfriend and was delighted that he called me Dolly Chops.
and thatvis my sense of humour.

Hullygully Wed 16-Oct-13 08:44:50 You little tinker.

But I am always surprised Marmalade.

I am no different than I have been in seven million years on MN (as I think just about everyone who "knows" me would agree), but these days I get told off all the time.

So if I haven't changed...

I just read the Alistair Campbell webchat-that was fab.

The best bit about this one was the limericks and they've been deleted.

The limericks were funny.

I don't think that Gokky liked them. :(

I don't know Justine.
I think it depends how far you want to push the 'guest in your house' analogy because it seems to me to set up a really problematic imbalance.

If even Scherezade Goldsmith came to my house, I would be utterly lovely to her. I would make her cups of herbal tea and ask her questions about keeping geese and totally stay off the difficult questions like 'How do you seriously think someone who is stinking rich and clueless about how normal people live their lives can seriously give us advice about being more environmentally friendly?'

But if she was in my house it would likely have come about because she was a friend of a friend or something which would imply a certain equality between us and set up responsibilities on both sides. If she said 'Can I come to your house to advise you about saving energy and sell my book to you?' I would say no thank you. Same with Gok.

If you say 'the rules are that you must treat them like a guest in your house' when they haven't actually come on those terms, you are basically saying 'you must put them on a higher plane than you'; they can ignore our politely-expressed questions all they want and once we've asked our question-plus-a-follow-up we must humbly stay quiet or get banned. I am really uncomfortable with this because it's part of the thing I hate about modern celebrity culture, where celebrities are treated as a higher class of individual just like the Victorian aristocracy were a higher class of people and the common people were not allowed to engage on equal terms.

By doing this, you also cannot avoid the fact that by inviting people you are giving them a Mumsnet stamp of approval. I would suggest this gives you a greater responsibility to be selective in terms of who you ask. Personally, I much preferred the set-up where Mumsnet said it wasn't implying approval because the posters would hold the guest to account if they felt they were unacceptable. But if you go with the guest-in-the-house rule, that will not be how it is any more.

Obviously it's your website and as webchat organisers you see a side of it and deal with problems we don't know about, but one thing I have always loved about Mumsnet is how seriously it takes its posters. So I would say that if the rules are going to be enforced this strictly, you absolutely MUST set the terms of each webchat more clearly, because it is not fair on posters not to do that. If Gok is only going to answer questions about his cookery book then fine, but you need to tell us from the off so we don't waste our time hanging around here waiting for him to talk about the thing we are actually interested in.

I don't disagree that this thread went too far, though I am detecting a whiff of hypocrisy here given how bullying Gok himself can be in his interactions with women who are at his mercy on tv. But I AM very uncomfortable with what your post implies about the new regime for webchats. It doesn't really seem to be in the spirit of the Mumsnet I know and love.

yy Tunip

If I could do calm and articulate, I would have said exactly that.