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.

Good idea

@MemorableTrenchcoat

It's a couple of behaviours that others have referred to. Not contributing anything supportive/useful to the OP or thread, getting caught up and dogged on irrelevant details etc.

It's irritating when people are just trying to have a genial chat.

I very much doubt there’s a rule about ‘over reporting’ as such (I report quite a lot).mThere may well be a few people who vexatiously report posts/threads which aren’t breaking any rules (I’m sure this has happened with people who didn’t like women being able to defend their rights for instance). ‘Posts around the internet’ may be from reliable narrators - or they may not.

Given this post it’d likely be used by those who see political opinion they don’t like.

So no thanks

So, anyone challenging a piece of incorrect information is a goady fucker in your estimation? That hardly seems in the spirit of Mumsnet either.

@Bloodyscarymary yeah, absolutely! Who are these horrendous posters? Are they actually mums? I don’t know how they sleep at night after some of their responses to desperate pleas for help. From very vulnerable persons too. If nothing else, they need to fear karma..

I think it's really good to have a place where really controversial views that people might not air in real life can be raised so that they can be challenged. People tend to surround themselves with people like them so i think it's important to have a place that people can post freely and have their views questioned and hopefully rethink them.

I hate the idea of a NITS button as I already find too many posts are reported and taken down - often just as I've finished writing a long reply. People would use a NITS button to report anything and every thing that they didn't like or didn't agree with. People are already obsessed with bot and troll hunting and frankly it's just tedious.

MN will already put up a message saying play nice in the middle of a thread if it gets reported for going too far and I think that works fine.

Maybe youre right.

How do you decide if someone is being vexatious or they have a point and the post is inappropriate? It's subjective. I'd suggest threads like these tell the mods that they arent getting it right.

@MemorableTrenchcoat

It wasn't an exam situation and the 'incorrect fact' you are hung up on was a colloquialism based on a wider and undeniable trend. The point was to reassure OP that if she did her test in an automatic, she wouldn't be short changing herself, because that's the way the car industry is going.

So you have to think - what was your objective there? Were you contributing anything useful to the OP who was posting for help?

Pointless continuing this conversation because I can see you are still desperate to get across that 20 percent of new cars sold are still combustion engines. So gold star for that. I'll take that on board. Have a great day.👍🏻

Stating that cars with manual transmissions are no longer sold might lead people to believe that it’s a discontinued, obsolete technology that they needn’t concern themselves with. As we know, that’s not the case. Automatic cars continue to be more expensive to buy, maintain and, particularly for new drivers, insure. Many people are perfectly happy to accept these drawback, but they are important to consider.

i won’t point out the error in your last paragraph, lest you call me a goady fucker again.

Pointless continuing this conversation because I can see you are still desperate to get across that 20 percent of new cars sold are still combustion engines. So gold star for that. I'll take that on board. Have a great day

But to me this is exactly the sort of goady snipey language this thread is about! Instead of just saying "ok yes, it was wrong to say they're no longer sold" it's an onslaught about exams, gold stars, being desperate.

Play the ball, not the woman - state what it was that was posted that you actually disagree with instead of insulting someone's assumed character.

I think demonstrates how what is "in the spirit" is assumed to be very different things by different people.

(Sorry if that was the point that that poster was making and it went over my head)

...and what hyggetygge is doing here is an example of us policing ourselves by politely calling it out when we think someone is being unreasonable. It works. We don't need top-down moderation in most cases.

Hi all,
We're keeping a weather eye on this thread - as you know we are always keen on feedback - and will be interested to see the conclusion.
We do need to take issue, though, with the idea that posters can over-report. Reporting is not something that we consider a negative, indeed we would re-iterate here that if there are any posts that concern you, we very much want to hear about them via the reports system. Our response will be guided by the very ancient Mumsnet Netiquette (that's how ancient, our guidelines are called Netiquette) and our guiding principle of letting conversation flow.
Apologies for the interruption, we will leave you to get on with your discussion now.

Thanks for the clarification, and please - never change the name of the 'netiquette' section!

Love your username @HyggeTygge making me laugh at Motherland all over again.

I think this would mostly be applied to comments not posts - it’s about the users who are relentless dickheads on other people’s posts!

Yes this is great insight into how internet discourse has changed (for the worse 😖)

“Play the ball not the woman” is my new top contender for the message box reminder

SENs are overdiagnosed
Women never make up rape alkegations
Brexit/Reform party are evil
Israel is wrong

Um, no...

I like this forum because I don't feel it's overly moderated.

If I think someone has taken issue with something I've said or I don't understand something someone else has said, I either try to clarify with them or just ignore them, and move on.

There can be forum cliques which would mean that, if those part of these cliques chose to mass report and MN took action, one could be banned due to failing a popularity contest, much like what happens on Reddit and other forums which are just 'echo' chambers.

I think without a formal 'ignore' button, we just need to ignore those whom we don't feel actively contribute to a conversation and there's no need to drag moderators into it.

You're reading selectively, it seems.

This is so subjective though. I recently saw a poster try to stop any disagreement with her (over a trivial matter of having an artificial lawn) by stating in bold that she's had cancer. It was pure emotional blackmail to shut down criticism. I once saw another poster use her mother's death in a similar way. You can't have a rule that if a poster claims to have an illness or unfortunate circimstances, you can't criticse them.

I would prefer an info box as you start a new thread which says

‘ Please appreciate that not all posters on your thread have your best interests at heart and it is advisable to ignore upsetting posts rather than get into an argument with them’