Suggestion: A not in the spirit of Mumsnet report function

[Bloodyscarymary]

I have noticed that there are a number of deeply unpleasant posters across a lot of threads, people with no interest in supporting an OP with advice or even very strongly held opinions of their own, but rather focused on being goady, insulting and aggressive.

These posters don’t veer into the realm of personal attack but they do shut discussion down and I imagine make OPs who have to experience them less willing to post in the future.

Does there exist a way to report these posters?

And if not, might I suggest a “posts not in the spirit of Mumsnet” report function. One report wouldn’t be enough for mumsnet to take action but perhaps if a user gets say, 20 such reports, then they get a time out from using their account?

Perhaps Mumsnet feels that that these posters keep engagement up because they cause arguments but I think the beauty of the site is cheerful, principled or even heated disagreement and debate whereas these poisonous posters aren’t trying to make a case, they’re just nitpicking and bitter and serve to derail threads or simply silence the OP so other users don’t get anymore updates.

Reddit has the upvote and downvote function where posters like this would just get downvoted until their posts were hidden from view. I think mumsnet needs a way to deal with them too.

I agree.

Report. Check "other" and write in the box provided

I think that's tricky because when debate is polarised you might just get people clicking on that when they disagree with the opinion. "Not in the spirit of" is just too vague and subject to misinterpretation.

Say for example if an op comes on saying she's struggling with breastfeeding - you get 50/50 some posters suggesting "just switch to formula it'll make it easier" vs "hang in there, it's a phase, have you tried xyz". Both sides are trying to be supportive but they get cross with the other side's opinion. I can imagine both sides arguing that the other's advice is "not in the spirit" of the Infant Feeding board. I think it'd be a shame if mumsnet ended up shutting that kind of difference of opinion down.

I would so so hate the reddit upvote/down vote function here. It will kill mumsnet. Now, imo, that is not in the spirit of mumsnet

I agree and was just thinking about this last night.

Somebody started a thread about finding learning to drive difficult and some goady fucker joined the thread. Totally pointless and we need a way to get rid of them. They ruin the supportive atmosphere.

Yes I see what you’re saying and I would never want to stifle arguments / differences of opinion - it’s just certain posters who seem like a dog with a bone, picking up on random irrelevant things an OP has said and not letting it go or just being extremely antagonistic despite none of us knowing anything about any OP beyond a few sentences in their post. Usually if you click on their username you see that they have the same attitude across multiple posts.

It just makes Mumsnet really unpleasant these days.

@SirBasil yes I guess that could work but given it already exists and mn is still rife with these characters and getting worse over time I’m not sure it is up to the task!

I wouldn’t want that either as it’s definitely a reddit thing - but it’s hard to police bad faith posters with the current tools.

Yes there is another one about someone’s friend leaving a restaurant early and some of the responses are positively unhinged and dripping with disdain for the poor OP who is doing her best to defend herself and really doesn’t deserve to be spoken to like she is but nothing that constitutes “personal attack” as it’s just very bitchy opinions.

Yes!

Do you have examples?

I do find that sometimes when opinions are very polarised (especially with hot topics right now such as immigration) are being debated - there can be some assumptions that the opposite viewpoints are being "goady" or "troll like " when actually it is just a heated debate with different opinions.

I wouldn't like to see opinions censored.

To me I think the more goady and troll like posts are ones such as "and ?" When a poster has written a really long dilemma for example as their OP.

Yes I agree - I am 100% here for debates on topics, even heated ones - it’s when it’s just unnecessarily unpleasant posts directed at an OP that I have a problem. And yes you can report the post but that maybe gets the post removed - I think repeat offenders who just bring unpleasantness to discussions should get a slap on the wrist so that they think twice and attempt to word things more politely rather than sticking the proverbial boot in and somehow having an empathy bypass, forgetting that the OP is just a person.

Have a look at the trending post about the friends leaving to go to a different restaurant - about 30 pages of examples of people being really quite nasty but not to the level of “personal attack”.

There’s a thread at the moment where the OP is in an abusive relationship and just wanted to talk about it. Some of the responses are incredibly unsupportive, minimising and nasty. Maybe because it’s in AIBU but still, I don’t think her post would’ve got those responses a few years ago. They’re definitely not in the spirit of mumsnet.

If you can articulate what the problem is then just use the current Report function and write details in there. I've never had a problem doing that.

I think a catch-all "I don't like this!" will just encourage lazy reporting - the act of discerning what is wrong with the post is part of what makes a good, reflective community, in my opinion.

TBH I wish more people would report rather than engage with the unpleasant poster on the thread. The derailers and disruptors literally post for that engagement!

And yes you can report the post but that maybe gets the post removed - I think repeat offenders who just bring unpleasantness to discussions should get a slap on the wrist so that they think twice

You want the post removed though so it doesn't offroad the entire thread. I think repeated deletions would get someone's account looked at - maybe a warning or just a deletion. Would be good to get clarity on that actually.

(I would actually also like to report people for posting without reading all OP's posts, because that's also intensely irritating, pointless and derailing. )

Yes this is the kind of thing I’m talking about. I don’t want to read a post and imagine the OP is probably in tears or more anxious because of all the vile posters on here. I think if mn doesn’t get a handle on it their engagement will drop or the website will just get turned into a horrible place as only the horrid people will remain and it will lose what it once had.

I understand what you’re saying. Also I admit my idea is probably unworkable as would involve MN somehow keeping a tally of reports until the minimum to investigate is reached? However, I feel like unless people are aware that it is an actual policy to for eg suspend accounts that are goady and vile then it will continue. Most people refrain from hate speech and outright calling each other a bitch because those are explicit reporting categories.

I'm on that thread and probably one of the "nasty" posters you're talking about.

There's a few key bits of information missing about the circumstances of it though...

I don't want to derail this thread though so I'll say no more 🤐

@SquishedMallow Completely agree that this thread shouldn’t be derailed and perhaps the thread I mentioned isn’t a good example because it’s such an emotive subject that we all bring our own experiences to.

Talking more generally though, there seems to be a lot more posters who automatically take an opposing stance to the OP. To the extent where posters will really reach to prove a point even when nothing the OP says indicates that it might be true.

It would be too easy to target people using a system like that. Why not report them for derailing the thread or whatever?

There’s no need for a specific function. As PP have said, just use the existing Report. I do sometimes choose ‘other’ and literally write something like ‘not in the spirit? What do you reckon?’
sometimes I get a specific acknowledgment saying they’re taking a look; other times it’ll be a ‘sorry for the mass reply, we’ve deleted the post and banned the user’ - indicating they’ve had multiple reports.

Yes I do agree with you

@ErrolTheDragon yes perhaps that’s the easiest way, but I feel like the general report is something that already exists yet mn is packed full of more people than ever that just seem to be quite rude to the OP for absolutely no reason, as @ThePithyFinch says. Probably “not in the spirit” is uselessly vague - maybe something more direct to the problem like “unnecessary rudeness to OP” could solve it. It would make people think twice, like “hmm am I maybe being insanely harsh/making wild character judgements about this person I know three paragraphs about? Maybe I should tone it down?”

whilst I totally agree @HyggeTygge I think being able to report people for not reading the OP properly would mean half of mn were reported and the site would probably crash lol

There may be more now but there have always been posters like this. That sort of disrupt or is already covered in the talk guidelines ‘deliberately inflammatory behaviour’.
I don’t know but I’m pretty sure MNHQ must have some means of tracking who gets reported a lot (and namechanging is no disguise to them of course).

The downvoting type of thing seems like it could cause problems of its own of echo chambers and ‘pileons’ .

Yes please!

"Not in the spirit of mumsnet" was only ever a convenient choice of words that MNHQ used to explain their exercise of discretion when it came to deleting a thread that was causing bad feeling.

It is deliberately vague.

I can't see any reason at all for adding it to the report function. We aren't the tone police, and there are already plenty of options for reporting posts that actually break MN rules.

It's MNHQ's job to monitor posters who are repeatedly rule-breaking. And afaik they warn/ban them as appropriate. I don't really think anything more is needed.