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Original poster

Can we talk about the giant loophole in the talk guidelines, please?

4 replies

LRDtheFeministDragon · 28/05/2014 20:56

At the moment, Talk Guidelines say 'we'll remove posts we consider to contain personal attacks, to break the law and/or to be obscene, racist, sexist, disablist, ageist or homophobic, once they are brought to our attention, we will also delete any posts that we think are just seriously unpleasant.'

That means, if someone posts 'LRD, I really hate you, you men hating looney. You are utterly pathetic,' you will delete as a personal attack. In fact, if I'm lucky and you're feeling generous, you might delete it for disablism too.

If someone posts, on a thread where it is perfectly clear who is intended:
I fucking hate the men hating loonies on here. You are all utterly pathetic, if you truly believe you are equal to men then it can't affect you.

Then you won't delete that. Because it's not a 'personal' attack, and doesn't count under any of the specified exceptions like homophobia or ageism.

I'm getting so tired of seeing this get exploited. It just results in nasty, antagonistic, aggressive threads and I think it drives posters away from MN. Is there any chance the policy could be changed, maybe to include that you'd delete personal attacks aimed at groups when it is obvious which specific MNers are meant?

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MNHQ

IonaMumsnet · 28/05/2014 21:47

Hmmm... It's an interesting point. It is very difficult to tell sometimes what is a VERY general 'you' as in 'you, the rest of the world' or 'you lot on this thread' and what is a veiled insult at a particular poster. It's often more obvious to longstanding MNers who are regulars on certain boards than it is to us.

Expanding 'personal attack' to 'any attack', would probably end in us deleting half of AIBU in a single night, but certainly, any real nastiness we would consider 'not in the spirit of Mumsnet' and would delete.

But if you can report actual incidents (and don't be shy - the more info we have the easier it is to make a decision), we will ALWAYS look at those, I promise. And we can usually use Special Magic to winkle out any sock-puppety shitting on feminist types.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 29/05/2014 09:20

Hello

Just to follow up, we realised last night (after we posted) that this thread was partly prompted by a particularly egregious generalised attack - we've dealt with that one now.

Tbh our overall thrust with the Talk Guidelines is to get away from specifics where possible and head towards the general, so we're unlikely to add this change. We'd rather consider a post overall - is it making a genuine contribution to the debate? Or is it just plain mean/inflammatory with no other merit?

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 29/05/2014 09:34

We would definitely delete 'that lot in S&B are shallow bitches' - for being plain mean and contributing nothing to a debate

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 29/05/2014 09:58

@LRDtheFeministDragon

Ok, but rowan, I've reported loads of 'you feminists ...' posts over the years and you have always said you can't delete because they're not personal attacks. It may be partly because you felt the rest of the post was important, but you don't say so.

Sorry LRD - we will try to be clearer in our responses and explain why we're not taking something down (if we're not)

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