Should mumsnet be moderated?

[QuintessentialShadows]

Is it maybe time for mumsnet to get a few moderators on board?

jesus...are you gay leningrad?

All the cocksucking broke Mumsnet.

some of my best friends are lesbians

If by moderated you mean that each post has to be checked by someone before becoming live on the system - then NO. The power of Mumsnet I feel comes from the fact that you can post a message and quickly have other users views, comments, suggestions. Google also loves that concept - have you seen how quickly Google will index a new message thread, it's quite incredible how you can write a message - then google yourself a few minutes later and see your message in the Google search results.

Why am I going on about Google you may well be wondering... well, I suspect that a lot of people still find out about Mumsnet, due to them doing an internet search - and at present Google is the King of Internet Search. Google brings visitors to the Mumsnet site for free... it does not cost Mumsnet anything (other than letting GoogleBot have free reign of public parts of the webservers - so there is a 'bandwidth' cost... anyway starting to get to techy ). In return Mumsnet allows Google to quickly index new content, which GoogleBot feels is of high value and thus quickly ads it to the Google Search Results. Parents then search the internet for something, and Google provides a link to Mumsnet... the loop keeps going round and around.

If posts were moderated prior to being made live, then I feel that Google may start considering the site to be of less value and thus not index new threads as quickly, which may mean that less parents find Mumsnet for the first time.

I feel that all Mumsnet users act as first-line moderators - we are all able to report a post that we feel is concerning to us.

Following a post being reported, someone then takes a look at it (or maybe several people, I don't know how this part of Mumsnet works).

Maybe there are not enough people in that message loop, for there to always be at least one person, if not a few people who can take a look at reported posts and make a decision as to what to do with that post (such as deleting it). Or maybe when certain posts have been reported in the past, those with the power to delete have not agreed that the post meets the criteria to warrant deletion.

Keeping a post live may well upset someone. Deleting a post may well upset someone.

Is there really any Win Win solution?

I had written out a sensible reply when MN broke.

So now I shall just say 'I wish my best friends were lesbians'

Lenin, clarify the terminology. Not gay but lesbian? Is that just cos you don't really like the word gay, or because it means something excluding lesbian? Also, I recently saw the word queer being used in a phrase like 'not only gay but also queer' -- as if it meant more than simply being homosexual (or bisexual, transgender, etc.) What extra iss involved in 'queer'?

no no no no no no NO!

Moderation is the same as censorship and is not A Good Thing.

Having mused this over [and with limited insight as a newbie who wasn't here when it was small] I might wish for a middle ground.

Like a prefect, who is a poster who is around a good deal and will be lurking and posting in the normal way - but who has a set of guidelines and the ability to hijack and say 'now now chaps, this is not cricket, the point of the op was not to slate x.y.z.'.

As younger students we would all tug our forelocks and behave a bit better. I think threads can get heated and x-posts get lost in the bun fight and the thread veers off topic, off road and into a car crash. A stern eye gaze from someone might calm things down.

Or that might ignite dynamite and the whole thing would be a disaster. Or be totally unworkable. Or be mildly insulting to all our inteligence. On that note we are all going to have to be brave at telling each other to get a grip and stop being horrible, and also be aware that it may not be rl, but it is real people in question.

So no to moderators.

What is a killfile?

I want one, yeah!

leningrad... honestly i didn't know...our paths never cross much on here,.. what with you being all intelligent and me being a bit thick like..

are only men gay?......sorry, don't know much about alternative lifestyles.

God, no. MN wouldn't be MN if it was moderated. Have you ever tried to have a proper conversation on a properly moderated website? Try 'discussing' something on one of the BBC websites, for example. Like pulling teeth.

The best argument against moderators is to think about who would volunteer to be one if they could.

wikipedia

A kill file (also killfile, bozo bin or twit list) is a per-user file used by some Usenet reading programs (originally Larry Wall's rn) to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching some particularly uninteresting (or unwanted) patterns of subject, author, or other header lines.

Thus to add a person (or subject) to one's kill file is to arrange for that person to be ignored by one's newsreader in the future. By extension, it may be used for a decision to ignore the person or subject in other media. Sometimes more than one kill file will be used. Some newsreader programs also allow the user to specify a time period to keep an author in the kill file.

Newer newsreader software like Gnus often provides a more advanced form of filter known as a score file, which can use multiple rules to determine which articles are shown.

So that's clear then

Absolutely loathe the idea of moderation. I agree that there are some blind spots, but I think they're actually on the quieter boards ('quieter' in terms of absolute numbers reading and posting - SN, mental health and so on). So it's not to do with the board being bigger, IMO. It's to do with there being less passing 'traffic' in certain topics, combined with the posters on those topics already having a lot on their plates.

It's interesting that Lenin's list from feministing talks about that board being a safe haven. I think a safe haven can be achieved through the self-evolving ethos of a non-moderated board just as well as through explicit rule-setting.

One of MN's great strength is its sense of community. The prospect of being 'cast out' of the community (ie, ignored or ridiculed) for repeatedly being hurtful or abusive is far more powerful, as a way of enforcing standards, than a disembodied prefect deleting posts. The latter is infantilising.
I wasn't here when there were mods, but I can well imagine the arse-licking that went on.

(Another one of MN's great strengths is its fantastically simple and brief list of rules - so much more effective than pages of regulations that are endlessly picked over and amended.)

MNHQ possibly do need to prioritise dealing with reported posts a bit more promptly than they currently do, esp. at night-times and weekends/holidays.

not sure where you live but i'm from the vauxhall/brixton area of london...some really good gay clubs around there...it's not my scene but everyone looks like they're having a good time.

Good point Onagar.

Points at PW's post instead of typing it all out again.

Is PW going to rule the world soon.

Oh I hope so. Sighs.

Eyebrow equality for all btw. S'not fair mine are crap and you get brains and eyebrows. Tut.