It's time to rethink the Night Watch volunteer system

[TwigletsAndRadishes]

After the truly awful photos that have been posted on MNin the early hours of this morning, which I will never un-see, I think you need to have a different policy for overnight moderation.

The site is big enough and money-making enough to support a better system by now. There really needs to be proper 24 hour IT cover. At the very least, the Night Watch volunteers should be able to call a member of MNHQ who is on call overnight who has the ability to either deal with the issue or shut the whole forum down until it can be dealt with properly by the IT bods in the morning.

It's only been a handful of threads affected this evening, but it could potentially be a major spamming of dozens or even hundreds of threads next time. This site is used in other parts of the world in different time zones where more people risk seeing the grossly disturbing content than a relative handful of us up at 3am in the UK.

The current system relies on posters reporting any offending theads and hoping that a volunteer will pick up the report in good time and hide the thread. This morning one of the threads affected took far too long to be hidden, not that I am blaming an unpaid volunteer for that.

Except they have changed things and are working on other changes.

Those pictures were posted to attack MN and its users. It’s still being attacked.

It's also pretty clear from what we can see behind the scenes that there is an ongoing, coordinated effort from trolls to further inflame these discussions, and cause as much disruption as possible. We are taking steps to remove bad faith actors, but we know this can be frustrating for those who just want to express your views about what happened. If you come across any posts that seem designed to stir up more conflict rather than contribute constructively, please do report them - your reports really help us to act swiftly. Many thanks for your patience while we work to sort this out.
Justine MN

The posters trying to stir up media interest are at best naive.

Agree

They’ve already suspended new registrations, disabled the image function so that new measures can be put in place to screen images before they can be uploaded and they’ve been looking into the reporting system and ways to improve it.

It’s just hit the news headlines

Where?

It hit the BBC news website a few hours ago.

It's on the BBC website.

If they suspended registration where are these supposed trolls coming from then?

Are you joking!? They were absolutely horrendous. There is not worse on Instagram or Twitter.

Already here. It's 1+1 stuff

Yeah right

Just seen the BBC article, I personally don’t think Justine comes off well there:

‘Ms Roberts defended the use of volunteer moderators overnight, saying they were based overseas in different time zones "so they can easily monitor the site".’
But don’t train them properly, pay them or give them the power to moderate effectively.

"I don't believe this horrible incident would have been prevented had it happened in office hours with our usual moderation team in London," she said.
Again, see above….your paid daytime workers will hopefully have been trained, have the on call back up of someone senior, and the ability to address these issues immediately and effectively.

What a crock of shit! Just say it, just say you don’t want to pay for moderation overnight.

It's all just total deflection
The weird adoration of Justine from some on here is just so misplaced.

I don't think any adores her.

I think it's far more weird that everyone's pilling on Justine and not on why were were attacked this way. This wasn't a random thing. I hope the muckrakers who have been deliberately fanning the flames just saw an opportunity and haven't been a part of it from the start. Maybe they need to be asked some questions by the police themselves.

It was said ages ago there was a full on vendetta to bring MN down from the inside. How low will people go to make that happen? Is there a lower than this?

@gamerchick are you implying that regular Mumsnet posters have done this? Because that's what it looks like you're saying.

But you can’t possibly stop the site being attacked, it’ll happen again I’m sure in whatever guise, there are always going to be people who seek to do these things. It doesn’t matter how many deterrents and checks you introduce. The only thing mumsnet can really control is how they react to it, and it’s been shown that there are things they urgently need to change, such as the night watch stuff. Justine coming out and declaring they have absolutely no intention of changing this rightly does deserve criticism.
The blaming of people ‘inside’ Mumsnet trying to bring it down stinks of deflection tbh.

No it isn't.

Everyone's not 'piling on Justine', this isn't some playground scrap ffs.

As I said before, these aren't your mum mates sitting round the table for a cuppa. MN is big business, raking in big bucks but with a shocking disregard for accountability.

I completely agree, woefully inadequate systems of control, lack of ethics around using free mods, lack of corporate social responsibility in addition.

Exactly. I don’t know Justine, I don’t care about Justine. I have absolutely no personal feelings towards her. I feel like a business the size of MN should have handled this better.

Sorry, I’ve defended the site. But why is @JustineMumsnet allowing a post minimising what we were forced to see stand? I don’t want to describe what I saw, but it’s impossible to make it sound worse than it was.

Why are people making out the images were worse than they were?
Sorry but I've seen far worse on Instagram and Twitter

Jeez, is it a competition now?!
So bloody what if you've "seen worse on Twitter?!"
There shouldn't be any CSA (child sexual abuse) on this site.
It's somewhere you think you would be "safe" from that kind of thing on here. (Although I appreciate not everywhere is safe, on a primarily parenting site you think you would be.)

So sorry you had to see what you did, must have been awful.
Just wanted to answer your question why MN will have seen fit to let that comment stand though - it doesn't technically break any talk guidelines on here.It will count as an opinion.