More power to nightwatch

[paxillin]

Can the nightwatch get the power to at least temporarily ban posters? Last night there was a troll on many boards, I saw him under 7 names. This thread alone has 121 troll messages, more than half.

What happened last night was absolutely ridiculous.

I don't understand why there isn't some sort of automated system. For example, ten posts hidden by Nightwatch = automatic suspension of account. Or what people have repeatedly suggested - x number of unique reports of a thread or post or poster = thread locked, post hidden or poster suspended.

It could be a high number, say 50, if you are concerned about posters being targeted to silence them. I'm sure many more than 50 people reported those twats last night

It's unfair on Nightwatch. It's unfair on vulnerable posters having their threads derailed. It's ridiculous in 2017 to refuse to have a bit of technology to keep a site unmoderated overnight.

Alternatively pay Nightwatch. £1 per post hidden should do it.

I've seen some awful things posted over night, pictures mainly, that where posted on normal looking thread titles.
I now don't mumsnet late.

A single persistent poster can disable several threads, last night was an example of it. A slightly more sophisticated one could disable MN altogether. Last night's troll will no doubt be back now he knows how easy it is.

Agreed. It's absolutely ridiculous, I definitely agree with the 10 deleted post = ban.

Yes if MN can sort something out then great but in the mean time the trolls can either be ignored or played with, as some posters seem to enjoy.

This has been repeatly brought up, why isn't there at least one actual staff member at night?
A site this size leaving all night moderation to a volunteer with very limited power is ridiculous.

The site is just so badly run it's unbelievable.

It’s ludicrous and so frustrating when you are in another country so all of your MN hours are filled with trolls.

They need to employ people to work overnight or people who live in other time zones.

Hi folks,

Thanks for your thoughts on this. And for the reports last night. And of course, a big thanks to the Night Watch for their amazing work last night.

Horrible though it is when this happens, it is fortunately a rare occurrence, though of course we'd rather it never happened at all.

Over the last couple of years we've changed a few procedures here to try and help with this sort of thing which does seem to have helped a bit. To an extent it's a problem that we can never completely guard against. If a troll is really determined they will find ways and means to get back in and re-register, despite everything we put in place to stop this, so even if we had a moderator on duty all night, they'd be hard-pressed to keep on top of a person or group of people determined to rampage around the boards causing trouble.

There are some good ideas on this thread though and we're going to sit down with Tech and talk about which of those might be possibilities, as well as a few ideas we have ourselves. If anyone has any other thoughts, please do share them with us. We're happy to consider all options and we do want to do all we can to keep the site as free of this sort of thing as possible.

Thanks again for your patience and apologies to anyone who was upset by posts they saw last night.

We've raised these before, and you always say you will talk about it.

Either put a paid moderator on during the Christmas period, pay the night watch (because it's really unfair to expect unpaid people to do what they did last night) AND give them the power to temporarily suspend accounts.

I don't see why they can't. You trust them to delete posts, trust them to delete repeat offenders.

Or, as pax says, last nights trolls (I believe there were a group of bored people) will be back with even more friends. They might even arrive on New Year's Eve [cynical]