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Original poster

Anti-Religious Trolling On Mumsnet

7 replies

DioneTheDiabolist · 26/03/2016 00:36

I get that not everyone is religious and that some people are very anti-religious (some with good reasons).

But some MNetters are religious, others are simply curious. So how come so many threads are allowed to be derailed by anti-religious trolls? Today a thread about Good Friday was deleted because a troll came on. FFS, it's Easter! Threads about Islam are regularly derailed by Islamophobes. On a thread seeking information on Judaism in the Philosophy & Religion topic, a troll has posted LMFAO. Ok, serious question, why does the Jewish God make all men wear a funny beards? She continues venting for a few posts before eventually exiting the thread saying that she is on drugs because It's Easter, party time.

She is a MN regular, like most of the anti-religious trolls here. I have reported her posts but they still stand.

Trolls are not interested in knowing what other people think or believe. They have no desire to discuss the point of actual threads and rarely start threads of their own regarding their issues with religion or belief. They just derail threads in the hope of driving all talk of religion and different beliefs off MN. And they are succeeding.

Why are MNHQ allowing this to happen? Deleting threads instead of dealing with posters? Allowing blatant anti-religious trolling to derail threads that people may find supportive or informative? Is MN a religion free zone? Because if it is, that's ok. I just think that religious posters should be told. Then they can go elsewhere if they wish to discuss their beliefs.

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MNHQ

DawnMumsnet · 26/03/2016 10:30

Morning all, morning Dione, many thanks for starting this thread.

We really don't want this to turn into a thread about other specific threads, so if we can just get a couple of issues out of the way, we can return to the OP's points.

Firstly, we've dealt with the troll posts on the Judaism thread and escorted that poster from the site. We're sorry if anyone (hmcAsWas , we think it was you who said you're waiting for a reply) hasn't heard back from us. Some of you may be aware that we're having a bit of trouble with our Reports system these past few days, and some reports just aren't making it into our in-tray. It's hugely frustrating for everyone - our Tech team are on the case, but in the meantime we're really sorry if anyone hasn't heard back from us.

Secondly, with regards the thread started in Chat yesterday ('Do you do anything special at 3 today') - we did ask if the OP wanted to change the thread title, and offered to move it to our Philosophy/Religion topic, but in the end we felt that because it had gone so far off the tracks, it was probably better all round for us to delete it so that the OP could start a new thread. The OP agreed with this course of action and a new thread got started (by another poster) which has run smoothly.

MNHQ

DawnMumsnet · 26/03/2016 11:08

So, back to the OP's questions - is MN a religion-free zone? Absolutely not. We believe there's room here for people of all faiths, and indeed for those with no faith.

We're really sorry if some of you feel that we don't deal with posts concerning religion in a consistent way, and we'll definitely try to address that. We tend to delete comments which we consider to be personal attacks on followers of religion, rather than those on religion itself as it would be very hard to know where to draw the line.

At the moment, our Talk Guidelines state:

No personal attacks
No posts that break the law
No trolling, misleading or deliberately inflammatory behaviour
No trollhunting
No spamming

and go on to say:

We're all for freedom of speech. That said, we'll remove posts we consider to contain personal attacks, to break the law and/or to be obscene, racist, sexist, disablist, ageist, homophobic or transphobic, once they are brought to our attention. We will also delete any posts that we think are just seriously unpleasant.

Perhaps there's a case for adding religious intolerance to these guidelines, but again, it's something that would be very difficult to moderate, and a lot of it comes down to the tone of a post.

We think that 'Deliberately inflammatory behaviour' is a big enough umbrella to cover most instances of anti-religious posting. We do remove any out-and-out goady posts of this nature, once they're reported to us.

We think a lot of it comes down to respect and common courtesy, though. We'd like to hope that people would use the same courtesy when posting messages on Talk as they would use when speaking to someone face to face, on the topic of religion as much as any other.

MNHQ

DawnMumsnet · 26/03/2016 11:45

@BertrandRussell

Can I suggest that we just stop talking about the 3 o'clock thread? There is an interesting debate going on beside it- maybe we could focus on that?

Hear, hear.

This thread seems to have been started with a number of threads in mind, not just the 3pm Good Friday one.

We'd be really grateful if we could get this thread back on track now.

Many thanks.

MNHQ

DawnMumsnet · 26/03/2016 11:59

@UmbongoUnchained

There's someone over trying to derail the new thread now 😞

Thanks, Umbongo, we'll take a look now.

MNHQ

IonaMumsnet · 26/03/2016 20:02

Hi folks, we just wanted to pop by to see if we can get this thread back on track and clear a few things up.

We certainly don't think you are a troll Ohfuckaducky but we did think that the misunderstanding and ensuing spat meant the original thread got a bit derailed, which is why we suggested a new one was started. We've just dropped you a mail actually if you want to check your inbox.

We also don't think this thread was started as a TAAT or was aimed particularly at anyone. It's a question that comes up a lot and is something we will have a discussion about again at MNHQ.

We'd really like to draw a line under all this now. We're very happy for people to continue to discuss the original OP and what is and isn't offensive and should or should not be deleted, but if it continues to be a bunfight we'll have to suspend posting on it, which would be a shame.

Whether you're religious or just a fan of peace at any price, could we maybe all just take a deep breath, and crack open the chocolate 12 hours early if that's what it takes? Thank you ever so much.

MNHQ

IonaMumsnet · 26/03/2016 21:52

Hi there Dione. It's always helpful to have as much info as possible in reports but don't worry too much. We can always have a look behind the scenes (and on the spreadsheets on the walls - just kidding) and see if someone is being reported again and again for the same thing and if so, if it was justified.

It is something we'll discuss again at HQ but religious intolerance is a thorny issue and we don't like to close down debate. If a post clearly is a personal attack, or breaches talk guidelines, we'll always delete but to a certain extent we think it's important that people can challenge the beliefs of others and discuss them (in a polite and civil manner, of course!). If we said posters couldn't attack a religion it would be very hard to know where to draw the line as what would be regarded as incredibly offensive in one religion might not be at all in another, and vice versa.

We think that generally encouraging an atmosphere of mutual respect is usually the best way but if we feel any posters are being deliberately inflammatory rather than simply having strong feelings and wanting to discuss them, we will of course take a closer look.

MNHQ

YetAnotherHelenMumsnet · 30/03/2016 17:36

Hi all,
we'd love to say that we have a conclusive answer on this one, but unfortunately we don't really. We can see both sides , and both make good points. In that respect, of course, this has been another valuable discussion. We do, as Silver has said, step in reasonably frequently when we see posters behaving in a goady fashion, but if it's not immediately obvious we tend to wait a little until there is a consensus with regards to the reports, trying to balance the need to let the conversation flow with the general mood. So as ever, really, our response is 'please report in and we will take a look'. If we see that someone is being a GF, we will act.

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