What about genuine safeguarding concerns?

[Universitychallenging]

Hq. I've seen a couple of posts in the last few days where there have been clear safeguarding concerns about children involved. Emotional abuse / neglect / physical abuse.

Can you guys as HQ do anything, or would you ever report a post on here to SS using the IP address or should we as a community if there is identifying information ?

Or should the threads be removed on the grounds that we can't do anything and therefore they are jus upsetting people to feel so powerless?

Incidentally, there was a situation some years ago where a poster rang the police after an OP posted she was going to commit suicide. An ambulance was dispatched and she was given help afaik. However, what happened after that is that that one instance was upheld as the reason why all suicide threads should be left to stand and why posters should become overly invested because "you never know, you might save a life." fast forward a few years and a poster posted here that she was feeling suicidal. Again, a mn'er took matters into their own hands and called the police/ambulance (I have no idea how they knew who these posters were, presumably because someone must have known them in rl or similar.) anyway, ambulance turned up at the door of this OP and it turned out she had been posting on MN as an outlet and nothing more. Her partner and children were in the house but were entirely oblivious. She most certainly was not grateful for the interfeerance of mumsnetters and neither were the authorities very sympathetic at having been unnecessarily called out to a woman who did not seek their involvement.

It is not up to us to decide where to interfeer, regardless of how involved we think we are. This is the internet. People give as much or as little information as they choose, we can read, give advice, but that's all. We know nothing about the posters here or their RL circumstances.

I'm with wanna - MN is an anonymous forum where people seek chat or advice. Sometimes they're trolls, sometimes not.

I completely agree that threads talking about suicide should be deleted.

I also know that MN is a site where people claim to be going through x or y and it isn't always the case. I 100% know that some people troll MN about things that aren't happening and have never happened and I also know that some people tell MN that some things are happening now when that's not true but they did happen at some stage. They're using MN as a sounding board to process things that happened to them years ago or to someone else but present it as an immediate issue.

You couldn't ever use MN as proof that something is happening now. And even if you could? What is the point of an anonymous forum where you're anonymous until you cross an arbitrary line where some people think you shouldn't be anonymous anymore?

MN is already full of people clamouring to 'report' people for minor infractions with no real knowledge of what the Police or Social services are actually designed to deal with.