Can we discuss the possibility of re-instigating the old "opt in" sections?

[BertieBotts]

For example the SN sections. I realise they still exist, and completely understand and support why they are hidden, but the way that it used to work was that they are automatically hidden from Active Convos, but if you wanted to be able to see them in your own Active feed, you could go to Customise and enable them. It worked like this for years and it was a good system. Parents interested in SN topics could access them just as other threads, and posters with no experience or interest did not come across the threads by accident and post well-meaning but unhelpful replies or sometimes downright hostile ones, which is what (I understand?) happened before the topics were hidden.

It no longer works like this, not sure since when, certainly several years, possibly one of the big redesigns. Now even if you opt in to see them in Customise (or Talk Settings is where it is now), they never appear in Active, they are always hidden. In fact there is not even really an opt-in option any more, just "unhide" (but my unhidden SN-related topics don't show up in Active anyway).

This IME makes it really difficult to participate in discussions there. Partly because of my own ADHD - I tend to forget to check the sections manually, but also because it means that if you do start or respond to a thread there it rarely gets many replies because it's not being shown to anyone who doesn't manually go to each of the SN sections and check them fully. I have a sort of workaround which is that I subscribed to all the topics which act like this that I'm interested in, but even with this, that means that I have to go into the My feed section to see them as a sort of annexed off Active Convos.

I have just seen in chat that there is a new SEN support thread posted there and the OP states that she chose not to start this in one of the SN sections because she thinks most people are unaware that the SN sections exist. And it's true, most of the chat threads in the SN sections are visited mainly by "old hands", MNers who have been here since before this change happened. Obviously I am totally in support of posters running whatever support threads they like wherever they like, but I just mentioned it because it seems a bit of a glaring design flaw with the way that hidden-by-default topics currently work, that someone wanting to offer a supportive space to others interested in that topic has to do so in a non-hidden area of the site otherwise nobody can find the thread. The SN sections used to be really busy and a massive source of support for a lot of posters, but now they are like a ghost town.

With a lot of anti-SEN sentiment on the more general boards at times I also wonder whether this is part of why certain posters feel that "every other thread is about SEN" if posters no longer are generally aware of or have access to these sections.

In fact, I have just used Advanced Search to do a sort of little survey and these results are pretty shocking. I searched for any posts in SN Children within a certain time period and narrowed this down until it got under the 2,500 max result threshold (which was a week in 2008, BTW), changed to March rather than January to avoid New Year posting slump and these are the results from 1st March-7th March, each year from 2008-2021. The change you can see must have happened between March 2014 and March 2015.

2008 - 966 posts a week
2009 - 1541 posts a week
2010 - 1079 posts a week
2011 - 1349 posts a week
2012 - 1533 posts a week
2013 - 2500+ posts a week
2014 - 1530 posts a week
2015 - 466 posts a week
2016 - 262 posts a week
2017 - 296 posts a week
2018 - 113 posts a week
2019 - 151 posts a week
2020 - 118 posts a week
2021 - 129 posts a week

I am going to crosspost this in AIBU for visibility because I honestly didn't expect to see such a gigantic drop off and find this really upsetting that it's been ignored by the site staff, who presumably have access to these kinds of posting numbers more easily than me running manual searches, when the topic was such a brilliant source of support for so many posters previously.

Apart from one, I don't know which topics are hidden by default from view.

This has been asked for repeatedly for years. I don't think MNHQ have any intention of changing it back! I agree with you though, I don't understand why they were completely removed in the first place when the opt in worked so well.

It doesn't affect me but I can see how it would affect others.

I'll support you OP.

It doesn’t affect me directly but I’ve voted to bring back opt in.

The stats you have gathered are quite shocking, and such a shame for the board.

While the SEN and SN boards are quieter than they used to be, and bringing back opt-in would be a good idea, there are limitations to your search that need to be factored in.

Many years ago, the SN section was split into more boards than it is now. When some were consolidated ~2020/21 IIRC, some, like SN Education (which used to be in addition to the SEN board), were merged with SN Children. Some who now decide to post threads on the SEN board would have previously posted on SN Education, which is now part of SN Children.

For example, in 2015 on the SEN board there were 34 posts 1st-7th March. Whereas in 2025, in the same week, there were 253 posts. I haven’t looked at other years I’m afraid.

I also think part of the issue is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People avoid posting because it is quiet but then it is quiet because people don’t post. I think if more people used the boards, they would gradually become more active.

Looking at the figures from last 2 years, the SN Children board has been busier than the last few years of your list and 2022 and 2023. 1st-7th March 2024 had 1136 posts and the same week in 2025 600 posts.

Hi OP

Thanks for taking the time to set this out so clearly, and for pulling together the historic posting figures. We understand how important those boards are to many members - we'll discuss this in the office and get back to you.

@LilyMumsnet are you able to say why the boards stopped appearing in active convos for those who had opted in?

If you go into settings>talk settings>manage topics you are following then click on all the SEN topics, then when you go to Talk, the 'My feed' subheading will have all the threads from those topics there.

You could, if you really wanted, create your very own 'active conversations' by selecting every topic as a topic to follow, then you'd see all threads that have been posted, whereas Active only displays the top 100 threads that have recently been posted on.

Thank you very much @LilyMumsnet if you happened to want to look at my thread on AIBU, many posters on there are saying that they find the general boards a very hostile place at the moment for SEN related discussions, and that they have struggled to find the SEN sections because they are so far down the topic list.

@Lougle the my feed option is one thing, but the settings don't allow you to adjust whether you get notifications per topic, it's a notification for new posts in all subscribed topics or none. I want the notifications for the car seat topic as I often can answer Qs posted there. So I don't want to turn off thread notifications, but wouldn't want to be bombarded with notifications for every single thread anyone posts in every section!

@ExistingonCoffee I did notice this later on I promise it wasn't intentional that I stopped at 2021 - I literally stopped there because I thought "Well this trend is depressingly clear, not much point going further"

However it does seem 2024 is an anomaly and it seems to be to do with a thread about ADHD medication which was much more active than other threads on the topic. I did it by searching comments and threads as you found. If you do it just by thread title over a 3-month period, that picks up number of threads instead and it's less spiky because individual threads don't affect the numbers as much. This slowly increases from 2008-2014 (800-1300 new threads per quarter, peak around 1700) and then it halves instantly in 2015 (600ish) and slowly dwindles from there to 2025, which had about 200.

My search was in SN Children because it seems the most active to me, I don't think SEN is used as much but I agree it would give funny results when some sections were merged.

I love that someone else is interested in the numbers. I promise I wasn’t trying to catch you out or anything like that. Apologies if it came across that way. I was genuinely interested in how it compared to the other boards statistics and the last 2 years. And I do agree that the boards could be opt it, the number of boards looked at, and some of the vitriol towards disabled DC on the main boards dealt with.

Oh no, it's fine, don't worry!

I did look into a couple of other boards which don't get an unmanageable amount of traffic - News and Multiple Births. It seems that both have a slow and steady decline as well, suggesting there is a shift away from the smaller topics towards the bigger ones like AIBU (my guess is the shift away from desktop users to mobile users, and the app, which released end 2014/early 2015) but they don't have such a sharp and sudden drop off like SEN Children does. Multiple Births was funny when I checked comments rather than just new threads because their number of comments varies massively all the time based on how active the "d'you ever wonder..." chat threads were that month. Seeing the titles of those again made me smile too. But again once those chat threads stopped being posted, the number of individual comments on that section dwindled.

I would guess behind the scenes MN can probably access much more in terms of statistics so they could check whether it's actually a phenomenon specific to these boards or whether it's part of a wider shift across the site.

I still am vv happy they are discussing whether they can make them opt-inable again.

I think the issue came largely when the boards were split into sub-boards. We used to just have SN children and SN Chat. Then they decided we needed sub boards. Nobody has time to check on all the boards and decide which to post in.

Also SN Chat threads now disappear after 90 days, so you can't do a thread number comparison in the same way because the threads literally disappear. I don't know if @LilyMumsnet would know if MNHQ keep a record of thread numbers for boards where they disappear. I understand the privacy concerns, but I think it's a real shame. I think it's really helpful to be able to look over past threads and I used to use MN as a diary for when I filled in paperwork. My early threads when DD1 was first flagged as having SN are quite nostalgic to me. The innocence and hope I had in the system! I do appreciate that some people can only post stuff if they know it's going to disappear, though.

Name changes can also give the impression that posters don't hang around for long. Many of our regulars change names every 90 days. My life isn't that interesting so I keep the same name.

Also, we have a long running thread in SN where a few of us have posted for years so we don't tend to post about issues as separate threads. So, for example, in the past I might have posted a thread to ask 'what do I do in this situation' but now I'd just put it on the long-running thread. Although it took me years to get to a point where I could cope with it so I had many years where I just stopped posting there.

That's a very long winded way of saying that the numbers aren't the story here. They don't give a true picture.

I am one of the posters guilty of name changing regularly. At least every time there is a new Pub thread in SN Chat. I didn’t change names so regularly in the past until someone stalked my posts under one username, then used the information to upset DD2 IRL. MNHQ kindly deleted my posts and now I am more cautious because I know to anyone who knows our circumstances IRL, I am easily identifiable.

You always leave me breadcrumbs though and I'm truly grateful because otherwise I spend the first few weeks thinking "I think that's Existingoncoffee....." It's like a masquerade ball 🤣