Come and spread the Mumsnet love locally!

[KateMumsnet]

Hello everyone,

Have you found your new Local site yet? We've given all 170 of them a lick of paint, and we hope they'll really help to make parents lives easier (our mission, in case you didn't know )

But we need your help! We're asking every MNer to nip over to their Local talk board and help a local parent out. Share your hard-won local knowledge on a thread - or ask your own question about what's going on near you: local schools, clubs, businesses - anything and everything local! The more bustling the Talk boards, the more useful they'll be - prizes to be won (including our exclusive MNHQ mugs usually available only to slebs etc!)

We're also on the lookout for a number of Local editors to keep Mumsnetters up to date about what's on in their area, on an ad revenue-share basis. Sound interesting? Ping us a mail on [email protected] and we can send you more info.

If you're already signed up to a Local site, you can see threads about your area in the 'Local' tab at the top of Active Conversations. If not, find your local Talk board via your Local site.

Cheers all! As ever, it's a work in progress and we're keen to know what you think - let us know in the thread below.

MNHQ

Lorna, what's happening is that, as the site no longer seems to automatically switch to our MN Local NN when you click on the tab for Local using our normal NN, it simply isn't recognising us.

I liked the way it switched automatically. Now you have to get into your Local by finding your Local, opening it and then it shows that you're using your normal NN.

Ooops, and you'd have to remember to change to your Local NN to post - if you don't want to out yourself!

NI is split up into 7 boards plus Belfast and it's not really big enough to need all that.

For example, half of Belfast is in Co. Antrim, the other half is in Co. Down so that's 3 boards you have to decide between posting on, it's easier just posting on Chat with a relevant title as more local people will see it.

It would probably be more useful to have one board for all NI.

Thanks!

We're looking to get that error sorted ASAP.

Local is of no use to me unless can. E accessed from the app.

The link is now working for me.

But not the automatic name change. it comes up with my main name, and there is no way that i want to risk using that on a local board and forgetting to change. So I need to stop using the local boards for sure, as the risk of outing is much higher. I hope you can change this back, or a possibly useful resource has been totally wiped out for me.

Same here, HemiDemi. Link works again, but my normal NN is there, not my Local NN.

This isn't looking good for Local Editors is it. They are self-employed and have to generate their own income through selling adverts on their local site. A tall order with a site that has traffic, a complete non-starter if people can only visit it when they are sitting at a PC and even then they can't contribute unless they change their username!

Local eds I really feel for you and I hope this is not being sold to you as a wonderful opportunity to generate some income!

Went back to my local site tonight, mine has reverted to this username too (I'm sure it was using my local one last week). No posts from me then.

I have tried to start threads on my local board before. But there wasn't much uptake.

The board seems to be endless repetitions of which of the local private schools should the posters go for. On repeat, and there really aren't many schools. It was just groundhog thread. It's too dull to be parody.

Another vote for Cumbria being split into three areas as suggested upthread. It is a huuuuge county. I suspect people are put off posting because whenever a thread does pop up on there, it's often from someone very far away.

I'm still getting Chelmsford (not my local) showing in active as my local. It worked fine until very recently. When I click on local my correct local appears. There was another thread about it, but it hasn't been fixed yet...

Hello everyone

Thank you for all the feedback! We're having a chat to tech about how we can make some further changes with Local usernames - we're looking into a system where if you post under a certain NN on Local then the Local boards will remember that name and treat it as your 'local' posting alias, until you opt to change it. So pretty similar to previously but with the ability to change it yourself if you want to, rather than mailing into HQ. We should know tomorrow about when we can implement this so we'll update on the thread asap!

Thanks for all the feedback about accessing Local Talk on the app too; we'll be looking into this.

We want sites to be as useful as possible for users so any feedback about sites covering too wide (or too small!) an area is really appreciated.

Thanks for the update. Think I'll be giving the local boards a huge swerve until we have separate names again.

Whilst you are messing with Local, why is there not a link directly back to the main talk boards? This is also an issue in the "cars" section for some reason I think.

The problem with local is that you're asking the LEs to do a very hard job (building, launching, and publicising an entire website) and telling them their pay is a percentage of advertising. That may be ok for their own websites set up on Wordpress or similar, but not a website with a reputation like mumsnet. Even £50 a month would encourage enthusiasm.

For me it's mainly the app access that's the barrier. I'd definitely check them more if that were possible.

I signed up to be a local editor a few years ago, and lo and behold, the amount of missive "suggestions" and the EXPECTION that I should put in stacks of work for nothing was just ridiculous. I ditched it after a fortnight. At the very least you should be pitching these as internships or putting some sort of training into it.

Or, even better, you should stick your hands in your pockets, MN, and stop exploiting your loyal fanbase - PAY THE LOCAL EDITORS.

I'd LOVE to know how many of the original editors are still plodding away. For nothing.

My local board is very quiet too

Hello!
We’re getting in touch with a select group of Mumsnet users - the ones we 'know' here at MNHQ because you're regulars on the site - to see if you could give us a hand by sharing your knowledge and expertise on our Local Talk boards.
We recently relaunched our Mumsnett Locallsites - we're on a mission to make parents' lives easier... locally!
The more posts on the boards, the more useful they'll be to local parents - and we know you're brilliant at sparking conversations and giving advice. So how about it - could you go to your Local sitee_ and post a question or help a local parent with some advice?

Love and thanks
MNHQ

Is there a reason Active Convos seems to think I live in West Sussex? It's been doing it for the last couple of days.

Not entirely sure I could actually point to Sussex on a map.

SouthChina - same here under my pre-Jeffrey account. I stuck it out a few months before chucking it in. Not only was the workload huge, but MN kept changing things at short notice. So you'd do tonnes of work populating say baby classes as that's what you'd be told for weeks would be promoted on X week. Then a day or two before the promotion went to live you'd be told that actually, it was now going to be a completely different section. It meant I'd have a very short deadline to do a huge amount of work or else my section wouldn't be promoted.
Plus, you couldn't sell advertising space at all as the site visit numbers just weren't high enough.

MN - if you paid even £50 per month then I'll sign up. With no pay - not a chance.

@SouthChinaMorningPost

I signed up to be a local editor a few years ago, and lo and behold, the amount of missive "suggestions" and the EXPECTION that I should put in stacks of work for nothing was just ridiculous. I ditched it after a fortnight. At the very least you should be pitching these as internships or putting some sort of training into it.

Or, even better, you should stick your hands in your pockets, MN, and stop exploiting your loyal fanbase - PAY THE LOCAL EDITORS.

I'd LOVE to know how many of the original editors are still plodding away. For nothing.

Hi SouthChinaMorningPost

We're sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it. Things have changed quite a bit now, with brand new sites and a new business model which works on an ad revenue share basis. If anyone else is interested in the role do get in touch, and we can explain things in a lot more detail.

@EduCated

Is there a reason Active Convos seems to think I live in West Sussex? It's been doing it for the last couple of days.

Not entirely sure I could actually point to Sussex on a map.

Hi EduCated

How odd! This should have been fixed but we'll get our Tech team to have a look. Is it still happening for you now?