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Original poster

What actually are your plans to deal with disablism on MN?

7 replies

JustAnothersilentorangenugget · 08/07/2017 16:20

You remember you were going to impliment all kinds of things, Message which explained posts were deleted due to disablism, Emails to the posters, proactive buzzwords...

a year on what has been the result of this massive change in moderation?

Now i'm not suggesting this was a carrot, dangled to try and stop people leaving....
But we donkeys ARE getting a little tired of walking and woudl like to know what plans are there for the future to stop attacks.

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MNHQ

YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet · 08/07/2017 17:12

Hello folks, thanks for your comments. We will remove posts or threads which break our Talk Guidelines when they’re reported to us- we aim to get to them as quickly as possible. The recently deleted thread in question here received a high number of reports, so if a post stayed up longer than you think is acceptable, we can only apologise.

We understand that some of you would rather the thread had stayed up- but, in truth, was awash with trolls and previously banned posters and had become increasingly unpleasant. In the end, it was upsetting too many people and once we removed all the offending posts, there wouldn’t have been much left to work with.

We will continue to remove any posts which we consider to be disablist, we will continue to delete threads which we feel are deliberately inflammatory, but we generally encourage posts or threads which we feel are genuine questions and discussions.

MNHQ

KateMumsnet · 10/07/2017 14:35

Hi all

Thanks for all your posts and feedback. As YetAnotherBeckyMNHQ posted on Saturday, we really don't want to see disablism on Mumsnet and we remove posts and threads which break Talk Guidelines when they're reported to us.

We've got a 'three strikes' approach - so anyone who breaks guidelines repetitively for being disablist will be banned. If we delete a post for disablism, we email the poster to let them know why - often this means that they reconsider their language, and they can’t then plead ignorance. Reports about disablism are treated in the same way as other reports about discrimination or prejudice in any form; they're a high priority and we get to them as soon as we can.

Sometimes, on weekends for eg, the process can be a bit slower; it can also sometimes take a while to go through a long thread. Apologies if some of you felt that this was the case this weekend. We’ve now banned the user who was sending unpleasant DMs - and we’ll definitely look at the idea of not allowing DMs until a poster has been posting for a certain amount of time.

We think it's worth repeating, though, what JustineMumsnet's posted about our overall moderation policy a while back. Broadly it's this: Mumsnet has elected to be an open site, and while this brings with it many many advantages - breadth of advice; the fact that there's usually someone around to help; poor advice being challenged, amongst many others - it also means that we're going to encounter different views from our own. We've chosen to be on the side of free speech - JustineMumsnet talks more about why in her post - and that means being exposed to diverse, and sometimes unpleasant, opinions.

We try to get the balance right with disablism, and always delete personal attacks or posts which we think are malicious or deliberately intended to provoke. But we don’t delete every misinformed or misguided post - that would fundamentally undermine who we are. And overall, we do believe that the challenges made to these posts do more to shift the dial than blanket deletions or taking down the thread; we understand that some of you might have lost the stomach for pointing out where those posters are going wrong, but that's where we are.

Thanks very much for your input. We do think carefully about all this, and spend a lot of time weighing things up - that won’t stop, we promise.

MNHQ

KateMumsnet · 10/07/2017 17:17

@Disillusionedone

PMs calling you a cunt are personal attacks rather than "unpleasant opinions"
Absolutely - this isn't at all what we were referring to as 'unpleasant opinions'. This poster was immediately banned.

Some of you are suggesting, though, that if they'd posted similar things as a public post rather than a DM, we should leave it visible but tagged 'disablist'. We just don't think that would be right - it's a PA, and thus breaks our TGs, so it has to go. Apart from the fact that we think many more people would be upset this way, we'd have to apply the same rule across the site, and that just wouldn't be workable. Sorry.

MNHQ

KateMumsnet · 10/07/2017 20:27

Listen, it would be great if everyone could have a look at the bit about MN staff in Justine's post - we do take that bit quite seriously.

@BishopBrennansArse

Most disabled people are scroungers isn't deletable. Some of the things posted about disabled people that are left to stand would be deleted for other protected characteristics.

Bishop, this isn't the case. We would delete that, no question.

@zzzzz

You CAN make a special arrangement in how you deal with disablist posts. It's called INCLUSION and involves you doing more to ensure the vulnerable can participate on an equal footing.

But we'd have to do that for racism, rape myths, homophobia, transphobia, too. And even if we were to limit it to disablism, which would be a bit illogical, we don't think it's a given that most posters would want us to.

As shinynewusername said upthread, 'It's about the practicality of hosting a wide-ranging internet forum, protecting posters from abuse and - as far as possible - offence, but still allowing debate'. It's not easy, it can be frustrating - but it is the path that we've elected to take and it's probably not going to change. We really truly hope you still find MN worthwhile, but we understand if that's not the case.

MNHQ

KateMumsnet · 10/07/2017 20:53

We've moved from generic deletion posts towards MNHQ posting more or less the same thing on the thread, professor. We thought the disablism deletion message didn't allow for any nuance - for eg, when the language was clearly disablist, but we were the user was poorly informed rather than uncaring or malicious.

We will look again at the re-registration issue Weebo - you're right, it could be better.

I'm off now folks - hope this was useful and thanks for your patience.

MNHQ

KatherineMumsnet · 11/07/2017 16:58

Hi all,

We're really sorry about this. We know how much of a pain it is to see re-registering trolls pop up. Unfortunately, there just isn't a great deal we can do about it. We do ban them and block IPs, but it's very simple to get a new one or even 'throw' your ip, so that it looks like you're posting from somewhere else. We're in the process of talking to tech about this, but we can't make any promises (as much as we would like to). We are listening, though, and we will continue to zap and ban as quickly as we're able to.

MNHQ

YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet · 20/07/2017 12:00

Hi folks

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions. We've been looking into this early morning posting of disablist posts and abusive PMs and we've identified the poster, who has been previously banned but is persistently re-regging, for reasons we can't quite fathom, in order to do this.

We're really sorry that some of you have been targeted like this - we know it feels doubly awful when it comes in the form of a PM. We are keeping a close watch for further re-regs, but this troll is very persistent. In the meantime, we are looking again if more can be done from a tech perspective to track persistent re-regs who are determined to cause upset - this won't be a quick process but we'll keep you informed.

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