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.

Like the OP in the house sale thread who has specifically said that she had depression and anxiety because of her mistake from years ago, needed therapy for it, had apologised and would undo it if she could but there are numerous posters who feel the need to remind her how stupid she was, how her husband should have divorced her and one person even telling her that’s it’s clear that her “modus operandi” in life is to never take responsibility for any of her actions?

I don’t think that person particularly needed anyone to kick her up the backside.

Mumsnet HQ already has a tally system. If someone is reported frequently, they will get a time out. Presumably they will get banned after a larger number of reports. I don't know what the trigger number is, but the system already works.

Just report and say 'this poster is crossing a line' etc. If the mod agrees, it will be logged.

that OP is getting a kicking because she isn't contrite and hasn't explained what she is doing to remedy the situation. Admittedly some of the kicking is with Rosa Kleb style shoes with daggers in the toes, but she is not helping herself at all.

That would be a good example of a drip feed that isn't dripping much info, frustration and goady postings that ought to be reported as such.

@SirBasil see, if someone in real life told me that they were so depressed and anxious about a mistake they made and the impact it had on their husband and children that they needed therapy for it I would interpret that as them being really contrite - and I am sure you would too! I’m not sure why that doesn’t seem to apply on MN.

I will do that in future, as I said I didn’t know you could report at the milder end of crossing the line and didn’t want to annoy MN or waste their time if they couldn’t do anything with it. I have been here for years so I am sure a lot of others aren’t aware either.

Hence maybe an automated message from MNHQ reminding people that they can report inflammatory comments would be useful when a thread really gets going and starts to become a pile on?

Last night I skimmed the thread about the poster with the friend who went off to a different restaurant, starting with her posts, and was fairly shocked at the level of vitriol being directed towards her for what to my view was just a garbled OP. As so often happens, a lot of thread seemed to be people reiterating their confusion at that and then criticising the OP for her initial mistake. It so often feels like whole threads are rendered useless by this sort of distraction (particularly from posters who clearly haven't read any of the OP's subsequent posts on page 8 of a thread etc.) and I wonder whether it might be possible to report an entire thread for just becoming a bit poisonous?

Reading an OP with a genuine concern that then becomes endless posts along the lines of 'but OP, you said 10am and that could only happen at 10pm so you must be a giant liar and knowing you would drive me mad' is not pleasant.

Obviously if there are personal attacks you should report them and they'll be deleted.

But for information rather than criticism - I actually remember your username from the "DH says I'm abusive" thread because you came across as very rude to the OP, like you were cross examining her and determined to prove she was at fault.

At one point you asked her X and Y together and when she answered X you said, I didn't ask that I asked Y. I don't think I've commented on the thread but I did think at home, ouch you just gaslighted a probable abuse victim.

I'm not saying you deserve for people to be rude to you, and I can't comment on other threads you're on, I'm just describing how you came across on that one.

On MN you will generally get a fair hearing if you present your view politely and back it up with evidence.
Fact finding is all very well but do bear in mind you are dealing with real people who have real emotions about these situations 🙏

There can’t be an automated message about a pile-on unless someone has first reported MNhQ that there is a pile-on! In which case MNHQ can and does intervene - they may post reminding people to be civil and link to talk guidelines, they may delete posts or take down the whole thread, or they may email the reporter to say they’re keeping an eye on it.

The first step is always for someone to report if they think a poster or whole thread is unacceptable. Don’t assume someone else will and definitely don’t assume MNHQ is actively monitoring threads that have never had a report raised on them.
maybe at some point there will be an AI detection system to alert them but I should think that’s a way off real time implementation (and environmentally very expensive …think of the compute vs just using the human intelligence already available.)

Yes you can report a whole thread when it’s become nasty.
and posts saying the op is a liar are essentially troll hunting and can be reported as that and/or personal abuse.

What would be the point? This place reads like a frat party attended by Farage, Trump and Tommy Robinson now anyway. Just endless racism.

ok let's take that thread. If my friend, or acquaintance or family member said that to me? I would be asking what they have done and are doing to remedy it. Especially given that the stress of earning the wage for the family has ALL been on the DH who is now worried about losing his job.

Which is what i said on that thread.

Yes totally agree and find those sorts of “catch the OP out” posts extremely tedious too.

I like your idea of reporting a poisonous thread, maybe when that happens MNHQ can write a comment putting people on notice and reminding everyone that you can report individuals for being vile. Might help change the direction of threads.

@ErrolTheDragon I completely get what you are saying, I guess my point is that I think an explicit reporting category would help encourage this as it would raise awareness that deep unpleasantness that doesn’t reach the threshold of “personal attack”, is still something you can report. Maybe a category like “breach of MN talk guidelines”.

i don't see endless racism.

And where i do see racism i report the posts. Which topics do you hang out on that have all the racism? How do you define racism?

I have reported.
AIBU, politics, parenting.
Defining racism would take me all day and I have to start work, but one example would be the spate of bots saying " I am not going to send my kids back to school because I am afraid migrants will attack schools". A rumour the police themselves have told people not to spread.

MN has become a haven for far right bots.

we clearly hang out in different parts of the site. Agree that bots are a very real problem.

I certainly hope you wouldn’t speak to a real life friend the way your posts on that thread read. But that’s the last I’ll say on the matter as don’t want to ironically derail this thread and really not interested in calling anyone out personally. I just want MN to be a less toxic online space.

I don't really like moral policing - saying that someone is projecting or obsessing about one thing involves one person (you in this case) judging and having power over another person. I object to that completely. We have laws to police behaviour that is harmful; morally objecting to someone because they don't see things 'the right way' (so called projecting) or are deemed to be saying unkind things is a particularly insidious and nasty form of exercising power over others. The most dangerous people are those who genuinely think they are helping or being kind or doing things for the good of the other.

Maybe there just needs to be an automatic message on common culprits topics like AIBU when a post starts trending and attracting the worst types: “Reminder from MNHQ that OP is a real person like you so please be respectful even when you disagree”.

Or perhaps a little floating message in the post-composing window. I'm trying to think of the best phrase - something midway between the abrasive "Don't be a dick" and the saccharine "Be the change you want to see in the world."

I do agree that over the past couple of years the people posting who are deliberately being contrary (and would say the opposing view regardless of what was originally posted!) has increased a lot, along with people not bothering to read salient details in the OP or OP's updates.

There were always a few of these but they are becoming the majority.

Despite noticing this increase over the years I do actually think we are approaching some 'tipping point' where the funny, articulate and wise posters are becoming shouted down by the people who, essentially, contribute nothing but aggro.

I don't think this can be dealt with by an extra reporting function. I don't actually know what to suggest - maybe once you sign up MN could provide a brief click-through tutorial on how to read OP's posts, how to post a decent OP (e.g. with kids' ages), what to expect on AIBU and a reminder not to goad or derail?

But then that could be a bit heavy-handed on a forum that is generally free, open and self-policing. I do worry that all the good posters will disappear off elsewhere leaving this place a bit like Tattle.

In the meantime I would urge people to report any poster you think isn't in the spirit, or is deliberately goading - as I said upthread it's quite good to have to explain why you think a post should be deleted! And would be good for MN to contact those who are repeatedly deleted.

I think your ides of a brief intro tutorial would be good, @HyggeTygge
If it was something that a new user had to step through (whether they read it or not), would that in any way also serve as a bot blocker?

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Hi there @Bloodyscarymary. Thanks for starting the thread. There are lots of really interesting ideas here and we'll keep reading in case anyone else wants to share their thoughts.

The discussion has widened quite a bit over the course of the thread but to answer your original question, we probably can't see us implementing a ban or suspend system based on number of reports. While volume of reports is certainly a heads up for us that there's a problem, we try to moderate by our Talk guidelines in the main and not be swayed by opinion and we would worry that the range of views might suffer and the site end up as an echo chamber. We quite regularly see threads where someone has posted a very unpopular view that gets people's backs up and gains lots of reports yet the post hasn't actually broken Talk guidelines, and we think that in some ways that's one of the positive things about Mumsnet. There are precious few places these days where you can encounter a view you don't share and have the opportunity to change your mind, change theirs, or simply have a civil discussion about it.

On the subject of 'not in the spirit', that's not something that actually appears verbatim in our guidelines, but has definitely been mentioned a lot over the years. As several people here have mentioned, it's very hard to quantify but it probably is summed up by the paragraph in our guidelines that says:

"We'd appreciate it if you could use the same courtesy when posting messages on Talk as you would use when speaking to someone face to face. Please do bear in mind how difficult this parenting business can be, and if there's one thing all of us could do with, it's some moral support."

Posts that aren't courteous or you wouldn't say to someone's face are not really what we're hoping to host, so if someone does that repeatedly they'll probably get some deletions or we might have a word behind the scenes.

Hope that answers some of your questions and, as we say, we'll keep reading others' ideas here with interest, too.

I guess ‘not in the spirit’ is one of those cases of ‘I can’t define it but I know it when I see it’. It’s a judgement call for the mods.

I’d say ‘not in the spirit’ for me would very much be endless thread derailing over minor issues in an OP rather than addressing the substance of the post/thread. But that covers an awful lot of threads.

Thank you for the thoughtful response and good to hear that MN doesn’t want to host toxic content@HebeMumsnet. In saying that… I can see how a commercial entity such as MN might be a bit tempted to let the toxicity continue as lots of people arguing keeps engagement up, but if this is a topic of discussion in the HQ strategy meetings I would like to add that I think that’s just in the short term - eventually the genuine posters will tire of pile ons and there will be the tipping point @HyggeTygge describes and the MN we know will be lost. Then you might get a twitter type situation where big advertisers are no longer interested in spending with MN. I think preserving genuine engagement would be better long term strategy. Just my two cents :)