Derailing termination thread

[differentnameforthis]

WHY was a poster [troll] allowed to post 14, what has been described as "vile" posts, on a termination thread and nothing was done, except continually deleting the posts?

Isn't 14 posts enough to deserve being banned, at least temporarily?

A poster, vulnerable & looking for support has now not come back to her thread because a troll posted multiple times & MNHQ didn't act!

Not good enough!

I agree and the troll was absolutely horrible.

Yes, appalled that nothing has been done about this troll. That isn't the only thread it's posted on either, all in similar vein. There has been a thread about this in Night Watch for several hours now. Is there even a night watch at all? Not having a working system that takes action when vulnerable women are being abused is wrong and dangerous. It is the very opposite of what I thought this site was supposed to be about.

Agreed. An immediate ban is called for in cases like this.

I have just seen the other posts, all deleted..some on a miscarriage thread!

What is going on, MNHQ?

How can it not have been banned?

It accused a vulnerable MNer of being a murderer...is this what we tolerate on here now?

I believe that the troll has been banned now. I had reported and have just had an email saying as much.

I agree that action should have been taken sooner. There were some pretty horrific posts over several threads. If we have a night watch it needs to work properly.

That's good news Eminybob

The Nightwatch are volunteers who live in different time zones across the world and are normal posters on MN. They also have lives and are not always around to act.

The troll obviously knew the optimum time to post.

How does the night watch work? If posts receive overwhelming reporting, does that not flag up to all the night watch volunteers. Without wasting time, why can't a poster in those circumstances be banned immediately whilst an 'investigation' into all the reports is undertaken? I totally get that it isn't easy to man every thread 24/7, but this sounds like it was particularly bad

I also don't see why an immediate suspension can't be automatically triggered when there are a certain number of reports of a poster. This particular troll has threatened to keep coming back. You can't set up a forum to support women and then let vulnerable women be abused for hours before stepping in. I dread to think what damage could be done.

sleepyfergus do you check your emails every five minutes? I got to work as soon as I saw the post and did what I could. Having a link to the thread helps as well.

Now having outed myself I'm off to name change.

Hi all - we're sorry for the delay in responding to this troll. It looks as though there was an error with the emails that the Night Watch usually receive, and they may not have received one. We're going to get Tech to look into this.

The troll is now banned and we're going to be keeping an eye out for any re-registrations. Many many thanks for all your reports, and please do keep posting here with your thoughts.

Thanks all

Everythingshiney - woah there. It wasn't a direct dig at you. I get that volunteers can't man every thread all the time, but it does seem as this one got out of hand very quickly. Sounds like there was a tech problem (yet again) in this instance but it does sound as if a better system of automatic/temp banning needs to be put in place if a poster receives a certain number of reports.
Perhaps there aren't enough volunteers who can step in, hence an automated system might help. There is never going to be an ideal solution but as mm gets bigger, more investment into web security and anti trolling needs to be made.

Sorry sleepyfergus I've been in hospital for the last 24hrs and was dealing with it all from there and I'm tired. Still I shouldn't have snapped.

Not at all, hope you're okay

I agree there should be an automated kill switch on a poster's visibility if a lot of reports are received in a short space of time. At least until MNHQ have had a chance to look in to things. Some of the posts this morning were truly awful and the way the poster was preying on vulnerable people was worrying tbh. That said, a few people were engaging with him/her rather than ignoring it, so maybe that point could do with reinforcing too.