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.

An opinion on the severity of images of child sexual abuse and how people are making out they were worse than they were?

The other day I expressed the opinion that someone was being a dickhead and it got deleted.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending it!
What you quoted will have come under an opinion. However 🙄 it was (and is.) I'm with you on this one.
If you said someone was a dickhead though, that will have come under the personal attack bit of the guidelines and will have probably got deleted because of that.

But other posts criticising what has happened have been deleted despite appearing to not break guidelines.
it could strongly be argued that the post mentioned is not in the spirit of the site as well. Which has always seemed like a catch everything we don’t want on here but can’t be specific about why.

Yup.

I asked mn and got told my post was deleted because they considered it goady and a personal attack.

it was a reply to the person who suggested the images weren't that bad and they'd regularly seen far worse.

I don't believe it goady or a personal attack but 🤷‍♀️ their site their rules.

Surely that comment was goady itself though! Which comments are being deleted in the context of this conversation seem very odd.

Agree that the original provocative post should have been deleted.

I am very pissed off that that post is still standing, especially when so many responses to it have been deleted. I know that several people including me have reported it yet it's been left to stand among several deletions. That is not an oversight. It's a deliberate choice made by a moderator.

I can't help but draw the conclusion that someone on the mod team has empathy with that poster's argument and possibly a strong anti-Israel agenda. It seems that, in their mind at least, any opportunity to send an emotive and hard-hitting message about the 'genocide' deserves to stand far more than an inaccurate and misleading post minimising CSA deserves to be deleted. That's not responsible or fair handed moderating.

Whatever anyone's thoughts on Gaza, this isn't the thread to be airing them. Using suffering of children in Gaza as a yardstick to measure CSA and declare it to be comparatively 'not that bad' and 'only Cat C' is crass and inappropriate. Especially as the poster in question admits they didn't see ALL of the images, so they are not even in a position to speak with any authority about what category they were.

Wholeheartedly agree with that.

I’m pro-two state solution and thought that the post was crass, offensive and needs to go.
can’t believe it’s still there. Definitely ‘not in the spirit’.

Don't forget everyone Justine wants us to remember that using an ad blocker or not enabling cookies and not paying a 'reasonable' £2.99 is piggybacking off others who do pay, got to keep that money rolling in 🤨

Oddly just now I navigated to the site and for the first time got a pop up to ask if I wanted to continue to read for free or pay for premium access.
Does the premium access come with paid overnight mods?
CF given the circumstances.

They're fiddling with the back end. We're going to get pop ups and consent forms. It's 1+1 stuff.

You didn't honestly think changes could be made to a live website and wouldn't show somewhere, did you?

Keep up!

Introducing Pay or Consent on Mumsnet | Mumsnet

For the first time in a long time, I made use of that "how did we do?" button in the reply email after seeing that post still there, 12 hours after I reported it.

MN really needs to get a grip of its moderation. The same goes for all those posts about poorly genitals, teenagers' sex lives, and mums who have no idea how periods work.

And the obvious poo and pee trolls!

Wtf!!! I think you need to fashion yourself a tin foil hat.

Was a little stunned that this is a priority atm...

Jfc pay or consent to non-essential tracking right in the middle of this CSA trolling and previous security breach 🤦🏻‍♀️

MNHQ are you on glue?

I take the concept and application of consent very seriously and lack of choice or forced consent is not consent it’s coercion

take it or leave it, forgiveness instead of permission, jam tomorrow

all phrases and concepts from the abusers handbook

all hail the ££££ and fuck your mental health ladies is it?

I’m glad I am not currently at the crisis point I was a few years ago and I feel immensely sorry for anyone who could do with a handhold and straight advice rn

It’s ALMOST like they want a mass exodus of their users, isn’t it?

I've seen people all over the internet saying they've de registered

I have just come of for the first time today and that was what greeted me 🙄

Or to give something else to think about to take our mind of this annoying little problem.

Dead cat strategy of Lynton Crosby fame.

Can I just go back to a factual question I asked upthread. It’s not been reported on BBC, but is it correct that during Sunday night the volunteers were asking those who’d spotted the awful photos to repost / forward so the volunteers could see and delete (because unlike staff the volunteers weren’t getting reports)? I was asleep and not on here (thank goodness) but that’s a potentially serious crime (it’ll be one of “show, distribute or make” I think) caused I assume by a total fail in policies and procedures. That’s such an epic fail and far beyond the question of paid / unpaid.

Glad I never saw any of the images.