Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk

Back to thread
MNHQ

OFFICIAL MNHQ THREAD on posts about suicide, troll-hunting and related matters

84 replies

RowanMumsnet · 23/10/2014 10:10

Hello

There have been so many threads about this over the past few days, and so many divergent points of view - and so much upset - that we'd really like to have the discussion in one place rather than in many different threads all over the boards.

For those who haven't heard yet: we are actively reviewing our policy about threads regarding suicidal feelings and suicidal intent. We are seeking expert input from outside organisations including the Samaritans. Once we have that we will come back and have a further discussion with MNers about the way forward.

We'll be here to talk on the thread throughout the day, but do please note that we WILL delete troll-hunting posts for all the obvious reasons. So PLEASE do not use this thread to make insinuations about identifiable posters - keep it general please.

Re: Wombat: we understand that some reporters had concerns, but at the same time this poster had been around for years with a very consistent posting history. We absolutely do not have any concrete reason to disbelieve her. However, her thread had been immensely upsetting and triggering for many users, and has prompted a site-wide discussion about how we handle these threads. Once her husband had posted that she was at home with him and under the care of RL professionals it really seemed best all round to delete the thread.

We contacted Wombat at the time to explain our deletion and we still feel that for many very good reasons this is best sorted out off-board between us and her; we've asked her again to reply to our email and we will happily take it from there.

We also think that this whole case is a very good illustration of why we have no-trollhunting rules. We understand that some of you find them frustrating, but for every correct troll-call, there's an incorrect one. Being called a troll in public when you're giving an honest account of deeply upsetting real-life circumstances can be devastating for people.

Equally, we do 'get' that there are a lot posters and threads at the moment that seem deeply suspicious. We are on the front foot with this and have been being pretty pro-active at closing things down when they are reported to us and when we can see that things aren't adding up, particularly if they are new users.

So we need you to keep reporting and NOT break troll-hunting rules on the boards unless MNHQ itself has said publicly that we are confident that someone was a deliberate trouble-maker.

The namechange/sock-puppeting thing is extremely easy for us to spot when it's reported. It's not a judgement call - it's black and white and it's the work of a moment for us to spot it and deal with it.

Go to post
MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 30/10/2014 10:27

@PacificWerewolf

Nice as it is to be listened to (Thanks MNHQ), you'll never please ALL of us ALL of the time, so just grow a pair be brave and Tell Us How It's Going To Be

We will do, don't worry Grin Not long to go now.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 30/10/2014 10:45

@BeyondPreparedForHell

Rowan, you know i love you Wink but i gotta disagree with that. When the woman was on asking if she had been raped by a friend the other day (and the first two threads had already been deleted so you were already on the case at hq), the third thread popped up, it was reported at about midday by others and early evening by me, and the first response i got from hq was at 11am the next day.

And that actually leads me to another question re troll hunting. If hq have already deleted a thread for trolling and they pop up again, how is it wrong for people to point out why it was deleted? I started out on the "we believe you applies to everyone, even pbps" side, so am genuinely curious how this is decided.

Oh dear, that doesn't sound good. What was the poster name? (It's not ringing bells with me but we have four or five people dealing with reports on any given day/evening so we don't all see every reported thread.) We'll have a look into what happened.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 30/10/2014 10:54

@JustScreamNobHurts

See this is exactly what I meant Rowan.

I know, for example, that you've been around after hours to call me a Nob Wink but examples like Beyonds are far from unusual, and it appears from this side of the gin bottle that you've all buggered off home.

Well we haven't, honest - but yes the evening cover is less full than the day cover. Maybe we need to look at that and reshuffle a bit if lots of people feel that evening reports aren't getting responded to. Sad

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 30/10/2014 11:11

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Maybe we need to look at that and reshuffle a bit if lots of people feel that evening reports aren't getting responded to

Or set up some email auto responders Grin

In all seriousness I really think you need to consider some sort of automation - it could massively reduce your workload and allow you more time to focus on the trickier reports.

You could further "sort" your report form:
-spam
-troll
-PA
-isms etc

You could also introduce some triggers based on reporting eg

X amount of reports on an OP triggers thread lock and hide

X amounts of reports on thread in general triggers thread lock and hide

X amounts of reports on a poster triggers a warning email and posting suspension.

Another possibility would be more volunteer mods - with the greatest of respect a small team cannot moderate an site this size without some serious changes in how you handle reporting.

We've always resisted auto-responses to reporters (other than for spam reports) because we do look at and evaluate every single report and we think this is an important part of the way we run the site - and sending individual responses (albeit occasionally based on templates) is, we think, one of the things that enables us to have a different sort of relationship with our users.

Reports do already get sorted into a few categories, with boring commercial spam and the like being accorded a lower priority. Reports of trolls, PAs and isms seem to us to be much the same in terms of how urgent they are, so we're not sure that sorting them into categories would help much - and of course not everything necessarily fits into a neat category anyway.

We do have auto-alerts for threads, posts or posters that draw a lot of reports in a short space of time. This is fairly recent but we're finding it useful.

The Night Watch is our experiment in vol mods and so far we think it's working really well. There's a difficulty in allowing vol mods to rule on things like personal attacks because often these are judgement calls and with the best will in the world, it's difficult for posters who are well dug in to the community to judge these dispassionately - what if the PA being reported is an attack on one of your mates, for instance: or one of your mates is involved in a right old ding-dong with another poster? Even if the vol mods made a good decision, they'd be open to the accusation of favouring their friends.

And our job also involves lots of access to people's personal data (being able to see the back end is essential), which isn't something we'd be very comfortable sharing with volunteers (and we're guessing lots of MNers wouldn't be comfortable with that either...)

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 30/10/2014 11:26

Tbh there honestly aren't many things about this job that are genuinely really simple. Even flat out PAs ('Fuck off you cunt' stuff) can sometimes be in response to endless inflammatory posting from a troll or someone who needs banning - and having a vol mod delete the PA before the staff can get around to looking at the thread as a whole is liable to massively annoy people. (We know this from bitter experience.)

So one of the things that some reporters might be finding frustrating - the fact that a seemingly simple PA isn't being deleted immediately - is actually the result of our policy of trying to look at the overall situation before making a move. This is itself a policy we arrived at after LOTS of feedback from users!

And access to the back end really is essential - can't really explain why fully without giving too much away, but (for instance) knowing that a 'fuck off you cunt' is actually a cheery greeting between two users who know each other well (and who are posting under namechanges) is very useful sometimes. (That's just one example!)

Don't mean to knock back all your suggestions without considering them - we will certainly have a look at what's happening in the evenings, maybe do some analysis of how long it's taking us to respond to evening reports vs daytime reports, and see whether there's something there that needs to be addressed.

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 30/10/2014 11:28

@ChillingGrinBloodLover

Too late, Chilling. Too late. OH MY EYES

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 30/10/2014 11:34

@BeyondPreparedForHell

Can i ask, is there a different system for PMs, or do they get mixed in with the thread reports? Cause that seemed to be how the "rape" one got around it the other day, a new poster showed up saying people should pm her and she would send details, rather than putting them on the thread.

So i guess many fewer people reported than if it was on the thread, as people only asked for pm details if they were already on the believing side (i cant remember her name sorry).

So with that, do you get a lot of pm reports? If not, perhaps one single report on a pm could go to top of the list, because from what ive seen elsewhere (a different rape related poster getting "i bet you loved it" messages for instance) the pms reported seem to be the most blatent trolling because it is more hidden?

Just to take the thread even more off track!!

yy PM reports come in to the main 'priority' reports stream. We can see if PMs from the same user are being reported multiple times. We can also see the first line of the PM in our reports list, so if it's utterly grim (as in the case you mention) it's pretty obvious.

(PS don't know if you've mailed in but still not quite sure which thread you're referring to - not the PM stuff, the other stuff. We'd like to take a look at what happened so do please tell us here or via email which case it was)

MNHQ

RowanMumsnet · 30/10/2014 13:00

@BeyondPreparedForHell

This help rowan? -

"Re: What happened to the thread about the | And he wouldn't take no for an answer?? | rpt-206809"

I do apologise btw, the thread was dealt with quicker than i thought (rec'd above email at 8.30pm), it was the pm report (re the same thread) that wasnt responded to til the next morning.

Brilliant, thank you. Our time stamps (GMT in this case) say we got your report at 5.37pm and replied at 7.30pm the same day.

We don't have a record of you reporting the same thread again in the evening - you did report a related PM that evening (at 5pm) and we replied the next morning (at 9.50am), is that the one you mean?

With both the extended time replying to you about the PM, and the deletion message - we were in a really tricky position. We had (and still have) no proof that the second poster was actually the first poster, so we couldn't openly accuse them of that. And the thread was on a particularly tricky topic, and one where it would be a bit disastrous to openly conclude that someone was a lying troll - there was (and still is) a possibility that both posters were telling the truth, and we had to make a decision on balance of probability and the amount of distress the threads were causing.

So the delay in replying, in this case, wasn't because of understaffing so much as because we were weighing the risks vs benefits of allowing the second poster to continue posting, and these things tend to become clearer over a passage of time.

We couldn't use the deletion message 'this poster has already been banned twice already' because we couldn't link that poster to the first at all. In the end the deletion message mentioned both TAAT and troll-hunting, which seems fair in the (very murky) circumstances?

Sorry you had to wait overnight for the reply, though.

MNHQ

RebeccaMumsnet · 31/10/2014 17:36

Afternoon all,

So we've spoken to Mind and the Samaritans about this and they both suggest that we continue to allow threads in which users talk about feeling very low and having suicidal thoughts but remove threads that are clear statements of intent ('I am going to kill myself'), suicide notes, 'live' suicide threads. ('I have taken an overdose and am waiting for it to take effect'), or anything that involves a description of methods.

Looking at the this thread, this chimes with what the majority of Mumsnetters want us to do also, so henceforth that's what we'll do.

In cases in which we remove threads, we will post to explain to the OP that we are going to delete it, and signpost the Samaritans; PM the OP (supportively, obviously) to signpost the Samaritans; and explain our actions in the deletion message.

In cases where we leave the thread up (the feeling low threads) we will post links to our mental health webguide and to the Samaritans' online and telephone support.

We know there are some who feel extremely strongly that threads that express suicidal intent should be allowed to stand, and we do understand your reasons, but the consensus was so strong on this one - from both MNers and from experts in the field - that it really did feel there was only one way forward.

Watch this thread for updates

Tap "Watch" to get all the latest updates

End of posts

There are no more MNHQ posts on this thread

Back to thread