Why aren’t “reverse” posters banned?

[harriethoyle]

There’s a long thread on AIBU about a friendship group. Lots of people reported it and MN suspended the thread to investigate but then said all was legit and reopened it.

OP has now said it’s a reverse. About 600 posts in. So actually the thread is total nonsense.

Why aren’t reverse posters banned? Lots of people engaged genuinely with that thread and it now turns out it’s not true despite MNHQ investigations.

Reverses surely aren’t in the spirit of the site. So why aren’t such posters banned?

😂😂😂 I wondered if if you just felt very fervently @NoCommentingFromNowOn

Reverse posters are knobheads. Deserve a ban. Also ban the posters who jump on to say 'I call reverse!' when it's so obviously not. Prats.

Me too because generally they are

But in this particular case the OP was just inventing some parts, giving ostensibly accurate details of conversations where she wasn’t really present. It was just lies. It makes me and others feel foolish for ever believing it and taking the time to offer advice in good faith, and imo totally damages the credibility of Mumsnet if it’s true that they knew it was a reverse but let it remain (and deleted the comments of those who questioned its truthfulness, and threatened those posters with suspension).

Very poor and very damaging.

@BeckyAMumsnet @AmeliaPMumsnet Unfortunately Lily MN hasn't responded to our requests for clarification - are either of you able to help with why reverses are OK? Thanks

Hi there and thanks for getting in touch. This is something that comes up fairly regularly so we do get that people are annoyed by reverse threads.

We tend to take them on a case by case basis, depending on what else is going on. So sometimes we'll delete them if we feel that's the only option, but where we can keep a conversation flowing, we will.

Reverse threeads aren't strictly against our Talk guidelines but they are, let's say, frowned upon, just because it doesn't feel like playing fairly and we can see that people who have replied might understandably feel their time has been wasted. We do see the temptation to use a 'reverse' in order to gain a totally impartial view of a situation, so what we'll often do if an OP admits to a reverse, is to edit the first post to make it clear what's happened and to save anyone else having their time and energy wasted. We do make it clear that reverses can annoy people and aren't really to be encouraged, but we don't tend to think of it as a banning offence, unless someone were doing so repeatedly and only in order to cause trouble or troll.

Hope that explains our position a bit more. As always, please do hit the report button if you have concerns. We're always happy to take a look.

I think it’s obvious from the first post.

But you could get the same effect by simply stating the situation, without saying which character you are.

But you did "take a look", and said you had no concerns! Even though the OP was lying by inventing conversations she wasn’t really there to witness. I feel really annoyed about this.

Actually, reversing a situation can often help in seeing the other person's point of view. It can be incredibly helpful to replay a conversation as' the other person involved. I used to use this technique all the time as a business coach.

@KellyMumsnet As always, please do hit the report button if you have concerns. We're always happy to take a look.

I think people did, the thread remained, they then had their posts deleted and apparently threatened with being deregistered. So what would you advise them to do?

A reverse isn't done with the intention of deceiving, it's usually a wish to validate without biasing responses, in other words, someone wants support, which is what MN is for.

It's in a similar vein to changing details to avoid being outing - which most people probably do.

I don't see the harm in it, although I don't know why a poster would wait for 600 responses before revealing it. Getting a general trend from 50 - 100 posts should be enough.

That’s fine if it’s objective facts that are being given. But in the post in question, the OP was, we now know, inventing the thoughts and motivations of other people.

Either she told the truth when MN investigated, and they didn’t care and left us to waste our time and make fools of ourselves writing advice in good faith (even though a number of posters had written about their suspicions), or she didn’t, in which case she should have been suspended when they realised she had lied to them. Neither possibility is good.
It leaves a bad taste.

Most of them surely are not reverse. Its just the OP suddenly realises everyone is against them and they then pretend its a reverse to save face.

I don't like reverse threads although they are usually fairly easy to spot because they are heavily biased.

I do think that if mn are going to allow reverse threads then it's only right that they also allow posters to call reverse.

If reverse threads are not considered trolling then calling reverse is not troll hunting is it.

That's a good point @WallaceinAnderland

@KellyMumsnet can we call reverse on threads that are sus and not get banned?

*and not have your posts deleted