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Please can you clarify what you at MNHQ construe to be a goady post?

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BIWI · 21/06/2014 10:11

I reported a thread yesterday because I thought the OP was being deliberately inflammatory, aka 'goady'. My suspicions were also aroused because it was a one-time only poster (or a name-changer), and then you also advised me that the OP had since de-regged.

To me, that confirms that the post had been intended to be inflammatory.

Yet the thread itself still remains. The view has been taken, I presume, that because it provoked 'interesting' debate, that the thread has been allowed to stay?

Yet the post itself seemed designed to stir up homophobic reactions.

I went to read the Talk Guidelines, to check for myself what MNHQ say about this, and I was really horrified to see that homophobic posts are not even mentioned:

"Swearwords and offensive language
It's not our policy to delete swearwords (we're all adults, after all) but we do draw the line at obscenity, racist, ageist and disablist language, and wording that is truly beyond the pale.

So a first time, now deregged poster can post something goady and homophobic and this doesn't seem to qualify as against MNHQ guidelines?

Given the way that some of HullyGully's posts were deleted for being goady I'm really shocked that you would have construed this one as being acceptable, and thus allowed it to stay.

(And I'm not linking to the thread because MNHQ know which one it is)

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MNHQ

KateSMumsnet · 21/06/2014 17:56

Hullo BIWI,

Thanks for raising this with us. We try not to get too bogged down in what exactly constitutes a goady post, as so often things depend on context. Our Guidelines do prohibit "deliberately inflammatory behaviour".

Whilst we're talking about the Guidelines, we feel we should point out that homophobia and sexism are mentioned: "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."

In regards to the thread, we didn't remove it because we felt it wasn't homophobic, but rather a discussion about whether the word fag is homophobic. However, if there are homophobic posts, please do report them to us and we'll take a look.

Sometimes it's obvious that someone has started a thread to inflame, in which case we remove it, and others less so. In this case, we have no way of knowing if the poster was trying to cause trouble, or if they took a battering in AIBU and fled. We can't know their motivation, and the subsequent discussion seemed to us broadly valid and interesting (we can see that as a result of the discussion, a poster has changed their mind about homophobic language) so we've left.

We hope this makes our actions a little clearer - if there's anything else we can answer do shout, and as ever please do report any posts that you would like us to look at.

MNHQ

IonaMumsnet · 21/06/2014 19:04

Hi Biwi, we'd hope as homophia and sexism are mentioned so close by that section, people wouldn't miss it. We assume you all refresh your memories on the TGs at least once a week and recite them before prayers and cocoa each night! You DO, don't you? But it's a good point and one we'll make sure is raised at MNHQ.

WRT making calls on whether something is inflammatory or not, it really can be just that - a judgement call. We try to get it right and think most of the time we do, but as well as depending on tone, history and context, it's often a subjective thing, which is why we welcome reports as they can help give us a flavour of how Mumsnetters generally feel about a particular thread or post.

Hope that helps?

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