Why we temporarily banned Anyfucker and what next

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,
So as many have pointed out there are an awful lot of threads about AF from last night and today, many of them repeating the same stuff, some of them including misapprehensions.

So we thought it best to state our position on the matter fully here and to lock the other threads so anyone with stuff to say can say it here and it's all easier to follow. (Apols for any difficulties you've had in following all this because of multiple threads - we don't normally allow them but in this case, as there was a fair bit of MNHQ conspiracy theory floating around, we thought it best not to start deleting things today).

So first why did we ban, or more accurately suspend, AF for a week?
As already stated AF did break our Talk Guidelines a lot wrt troll-hunting, PAs and generally aggressive behaviour.

We have looked back and found we've sent her nine mails of the 'please stick to Guidelines or we'll have to take further action' variety and we've banned her once before. There have been c. 600 reports of her posts - and there are 1100 cases in our system concerning her one way or another (not including any name changes). We've deleted
posts under the name 'AnyFucker' 185 times (some of those reports will be duplicate reports of the same post, so it's not that we've deleted 185 out of 600 posts reported).

It is not the case that most of these posts were in response to trolls, plenty were against folks most would agree were regular posters. Others were against folks she thought might be trolls but we could see were not. Some were against folks who were subsequently banned.

We haven't actually been able to forensically analyse each of the 600 cases - it really would mean going back through each thread - but we will over the next little while if folks think it necessary.

Some people have been calling for an auto-ban mechanism for posters who are multiply reported - if we had one of these AF would have been likely banned a few more times than she actually has.

We wrote to AF a couple of weeks ago after deleting some of her posts warning that if she crossed the line again we'd have to suspend her and that's what we did yesterday. She wrote back to say she knew it was coming.

We don't take these decisions lightly wrt Mumsnetters who've been contributing for so long and whom we know so well. We agree AF's a fantastic poster who goes out her way to help others but we're not talking isolated incidents here and it's very often not directed at actual trolls. Often we're talking about aggression/personal attacks/accusations of trolling against other Mumsnetters who AF disagrees with.

Plenty of people today have cited examples of this type of behaviour. Some have also spoken of an orthodoxy on the relationships board which is difficult to diverge from and which puts them off posting there. And of course, plenty of others have cited examples of AF's kindness and support on those same boards.

But what would you really have us do? Ignore the PAs against Mumsnetters? Ignore those posters who report such PAs to us? We are not talking exclusively PAs on trolls here. If you've been following today's threads you have to accept that. Believe me, we have not been trigger happy here. The last thing we want is for AF, or posters like AF who offer so much to Mumsnetters, to leave MN. But we have a few rules for very good reasons we think. Without them, Mumsnet would be incredibly insular and one dimensional and very unwelcoming to newcomers. We have to accept that if folks can't live with those rules then, ultimately, that's their decision.

I think it's worth saying what we do believe in, here at MNHQ, because although the site has grown, these values (if that's not too aggrandising) really haven't changed since it started.

We believe that the pooling of knowledge and advice makes parents' lives easier.
We believe in tolerance of differing opinions and in letting the conversation flow wherever possible.
We believe in listening and engaging and being transparent as much as we can.

We do have things we don't tolerate (which have been honed and refined over the years by collective user experience) because we think they are less likely to promote the things MN values. Namely personal attacks, deliberately inflammatory posts, posts that break law/hate speech.

We will also delete things that are downright mean and obscene (though clearly this is a matter of judgement).

We have never billed MN as a safe haven. It is open and searchable and public so can never be as safe as a closed, heavily moderated or pre-moderated environment would be.

It is a largely female space and we think that is incredibly valuable in a male dominated internet/ world. But it is not an exclusively female - it's by parents for parents and it always has been. Men are welcome to post and to express their opinions and we've had many valuable male Mumsnetters over the years.

Quite apart from anything it would both be impractical and possibly illegal to have it otherwise.

Obviously there are things we at MNHQ can do better. We are never going to be entirely consistent in our moderation as we are human and it often come down to fine judgement calls. And we apologise in advance for inconsistencies but can only say we really do try our best.

In the case of this ban/suspension, as many have pointed out, we could have communicated what had happened and why more quickly and more clearly.

Some people have suggested a clear, more widely known "sin bin" procedure and we'll certainly look at that.

We will look at resources and response times generally to reported posts and are working on empowering all HQ mods to post on the boards and to be transparent as possible. (NB this would be easier if HQ mods felt they could post in an atmosphere of tolerance and understanding .)

We do put a lot of energy into investigating and banning trolls. We don't make a fanfare every time we ban someone for obvious reasons - trolls are here for the attention. But I concede that maybe that adds to the atmosphere that we are tolerating/ignoring/doing nothing about trolls. So we will think about that.

We don't have any auto suspend in place but we might look at that based on a large amount of reports of a particular poster.

And as suggested by someone (apols have forgotten who) we'll hold an MNHQ mods webchat with me, Rowan and Rebecca on Friday 8th at lunchtime and will open a thread in advance, so anyone who can't make the chat can post their question.

Please, of course, post your thoughts and further suggestions here before then, or whenever suits.

Sorry for the very long post - thanks to those who've read to the end.

(We'll be locking all the other threads in the next little bit.)

I think the biggest problem with just reporting is that, in the meantime, the horrible post stands unchallenged. So the OP (or whomever the horrible post is about) might see it and see that no one has said anything against it and be more upset, because it looks like no one is disagreeing.

I tend to report, but I do also challenge, although not usually in a manner that gets me deleted (sometimes though!)
So while it might be feeding the hairyhanded, it's still better in respect of the feelings of the person on the other end of it, to challenge on thread as well, I feel.

Surely challenging on-thread is ok if the challenge remains within Talk Guidelines. But there lies the rub.

What I'm saying is definitely - report. But you don't ahve to advertise it. I didn't see the stuff on charityfunday, so I don't know who people came to that assumption, but very often you get people coming onto a thread and going "I've reported you, so there".

Why? Why is that necessary? Why not just report and leave it at that?

Yes, I agree, that is very aggressive and intimidating.

Do you remember BBC future a few years ago about censorship? It got very silly that people called for certain documentaries to be cancelled, on the basis that the people interviewed were vile or dodgy.

I believe that vile or dodgy arguments should NOT be prevented, or deleted, but taken issue with by posters.

However, not when it derails personal threads.

And not when it is personally abusive.

Rowan
I do think that CFD was being deliberately inflammatory on that thread (I am feeling rather guilty for having invented GF), but was doing it in a way that s/he knew would stay within the guidelines.

These, that Fenton posted earlier, are in no way helpful to the OP. The OP was very upset about the state of her marriage, and CFD posted these comments to others on the thread. This wasn't on AIBU, it was a woman worried about her marriage, and these kind of posts are simply unkind and inflammatory.

Now, I know they are not delete-worthy in themselves, but perhaps looking at them and other posts by the same posters, a pattern would emerge. I think it was said that CFD had been on MN just 2 months, and had already been deleted 11 times.

She shouldn't have risen to the bait, but I can understand AF's frustration, as we have been talking for some time about how MNHQ deals with GFers, and we don't seem to be getting anywhere. I think a lot of people don't even bother reporting now.

I also think that there should be some kind of an early warning, if a person has 10 deletions within a month or two of registering on the site, so that MNHQ can take a closer look at their posting style and posting history.

***

'This is why I say trust your own instinct.'

Presumably, you also lay bets based on 'hunches'.

Are you rich yet?

--

'You can't articulate what it is, you can't put your finger exactly on the problem, you can't find evidence to back up your suspicions. But you know.'

So a 'suspicion' is the same thing as 'knowing'.

You're not a police officer are you, by any chance?

With all due respect, MmeLindor, I think you are right to repent of inventing the term GoadyFucker. I think it has done MN a huge amount of harm.

Milly
I had no way of knowing that it would end in this.

Saying that, just because I put a name to it, didn't mean that it didn't exist before. And hopefully we, as a community, can find a way of dealing with this kind of provocation better.

MmeLindor did not invent or create GoadyFuckers, she just came up with the term to describe them.

Agree there, Milly. It really was a shame that MN added "goading" to the talk guidelines.

Though surely you didn't actually invent "goading" as a term of abuse, Mme? You are doing yourself down a bit there. You just had a big thread proclaiming a hostility to what you called goady fuckers. Not very helpful, though.

Er, just place marking

Yes, Quint, that's what I said.

No, I coined the term GF. I think it was 'AIBU to be fed up with the Goady Fuckers' or something similar.

MNHQ have removed the term 'goading' from their book of roools. I think it is 'being deliberately inflammatory' or some such now.

The behaviour was and remains the same and needs to be dealt with better.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1672965--to-be-tired-of-the-Goady-Fuckers

You're right - goading is no longer in the Talk Guidelines. Wow. Great progress, common sense prevails.

Oh, here is a good bit from that OP. I wonder how many people report, and if they say 'this poster is being a bit of a GF' or similar.

Maybe we need a 'This poster is being deliberately inflammatory' button so that MNHQ can collate evidence. If it is the same person being reported again and again, they can ban for going against the guidelines.

'Who wants to join me in an Anti Goady Fucker Campaign?

I vote that when someone tries to derail a thread that we all ignore and do a mass report to MNHQ. They are fed up hearing from me in the past weeks.'

I agree with Quints - MmeLindor did kind of come up with the term for posters who are inflammatory, but the real blame lies with the people who are deliberately inflammatory. Nobody has a gun to their head

But calling someone a xxxxxFucker is in itself infammatory, isn't it? It does nothing to promote reasoned debate.

Gah, inflammatory. But also usually infamatory as well, in practice.

Yes, but please note that I said we should all report the GF. Not tell them that we find them a GF.

If they are a bit obtuse and lacking in social skills, they will wander off if no one replies to their bizarre posts.

If they are GFs, and no one rises to their goading, then they will get bored. Or banned, when MNHQ catches up with them.

It is the discussing on thread that gets decent posters into trouble.

Just seen this on your old thread, MmeLIndor:

"I do agree with you that there are people like this. But I wouldn't like an anti-goady-fucker initiative because I also think that often people are charactierised as "goaders" simply for having a view that goes against the grain for a lot of posters. In so many different areas of the internet, MN not least, there is pressure to police the reasonable expression of opinion and come down on controversial views.

It is difficult to know how to react,because of course there are plenty of truly unacceptable, abusive, etc things being said that do need to be cracked down on -- and unacceptable suppression of opinion comes in on the tailcoat of necessary suppression.

It's shocking, really, that we needed Keir Starmer to come out and issue guidelines preventing the legal suppression of certain categories of offensive talk. I think that we all need to develop our own inner Keir Starmers (and MNHQ needs a KeirStarmer app) to restrain ourselves from orthodoxy-imposition.

I hate the word "goader" in fact because I think it represents a kind of mission creep of troll policing into a more oppressive kind of policing of conversation."

That makes sense to me.

As I think I said in another thread (or maybe this one!), the ignore and report system could work really well if mn had more mods. Not so that the site could be moderated more, but so that the site could be moderated more quickly.

At the moment is not unknown for posts, that are blatantly against the guidelines, to stand for hours, if not days. If reported posts (that were "correctly" reported) were consistently zapped within say 5 minutes, then there would be no issue with just ignoring (and reporting).

Perhaps if the volunteer overnight modding works well, MN could look at introducing day time volunteer mods too, so that posts can be zapped quickly.

I agree with that, too.

For me, personally, there are three types of Goady fucker, and I will happily continue to categorise them as such.

1. The person that joins a thread and says something that adds nothing to the thread except upset (post usually starts with "FFS")

1. The person that continuously posts the same type of comment on a thread, despite having lots of posters explain themselves, or prove the person wrong, does not listen to them, does not acknowledge them, just posts the same shit over and over again.

1. The person that states something (generally against the previous tone of the thread) that is so at odds with the rest of the thread that you can hear the SIOB across the net. Then when asked to explain or prove what they are saying, just ignores or leaves.

In fact, two and three are pretty much the same now I have thought about it. But all three can be covered by the inflammatory heading. Number one I will just report and not react to, but two and three I tend to try to speak to, in case I have read them wrong - but funnily enough, I haven't as yet!

Yes, I would add to that

1. The type of poster who posts something deliberately cruel on a sensitive thread, with the intention of upsetting the OP.

It might be a 1b actually. I think that it is worse when it is on a thread where the OP is upset or worried, and instead of showing compassion and empathy, the poster is nasty.

I don't understand why people do this. If someone is obviously upset about something, even if it is something that I think is ridiculous, and I am rolling my eyes so far that I can see my own arse... I either tactfully suggest the retrieval of a grip, or close the thread.