The MN Mail Column - what we think, and what we plan to do next...

[JustineMumsnet]

Evening all - sorry for general absence today - niece's birthday do, packing for hol etc, etc.

So, thank you to everyone for your input on this particular issue. It's been a thought-provoking debate and clearly strong views prevail about exactly how much of a enhanced security risk publication of this column means to Mumsnetters.

We tend in broad terms to come down on the side of the risk being pretty much as it ever was fence but we also buy the argument that there is certainly an increased risk of identification/embarrassment or worse for the OP of a chosen thread - particularly if it of a very personal nature.

We would say as we always have that you should always bear in mind this is a public forum, searchable by Google, legally quotable by all and linkable to by all and sundry.

Clearly having an open forum brings with it risks but it also brings with it great benefits we've always felt. Openness means volume of users and volume of users means Mumsnet in its many guises is available to anyone who needs advice 24-7. It also means fresh faces, differing points of view and debate, and the wisdom that comes from a very big crowd - wrong or dangerous advice doesn't tend to last very long on MN.

Whether the risks outweigh the rewards for each individual only they can decide. Clearly there are basic things you can and should do to protect yourself (ie not reveal basic contact info, namechange to reveal personal stuff etc etc). And bear in mind we are always happy to delete injudicious posts - just report them if you're worried about having revealed too much.

Putting the general risk stuff to one side however, we recognise that many folk (understandably) have qualms not just about being quoted in general but being quoted by the Daily Mail in particular.

If I could just reiterate that this column was not our idea and neither did we know anything about it until it appeared. Neither the journalist involved nor anyone from the DM contacted us about running it beforehand. (And if those of you who are convinced we're lying to you about that keep on impugning our good name, there's nowt for it, we're going to have to sue you for libel ).

In fact the first contact we had was this week (only after the column was brought to our attention by a Mumsnet thread about it) when I wrote to the author of the item in question - whose name we recognised as a Mumsnetter - to ask whether the Mail were planning on this being a regular thing.

At that point we, wrongly we now think having had a chat with a lawyer, didn't believe that we had any redress anyway (see endless posts about the journalistic defense of fair use) but we were, privately, a little surprised that they'd not consulted us.

Whilst we shared/share some of your misgivings about the idea of a MN-DM collaboration, I was, for sure heartened by the fact that the item was being written by a Mumsnetter who, though I don't know her personally, always seemed to be well respected by lots of Mumsnetters. I am quite sure after a couple of email exchanges with Leah Hardy, that she has/had no wish to sensationalise events on Mumsnet and that she would endeavour to protect people's identities. I'm also sure that she didn't feel she was compromising anyone's identity more than they'd already been compromised by posting on a public forum. We do think some of the comments about her have been overly harsh. After all many on here do that she's done nowt wrong in lifting quotes save perhaps for not consulting with us at HQ. That may be because she wouldn't think we could possibly object to her giving Mumsnet weekly publicity - as I've said before most websites/PRs would be in a frenzy of excitement about the Daily Mail doing a weekly column about them. But I don't know that's why, I'm just speculating. She could equally have meant to and forgotten or the dog could have eaten her email. It would be better if she'd come on to talk for herself than me blathering on - maybe she will at some point.

Whatever, we don't think that her actions deserve the general vilification/ outings/ witchunt she's received - bet there are a fair few MN journalists who would love a crack the same gig - maybe for a different publication, but still.

Anyhoo that's all history - sorry for banging on but wanted to be clear - the real question now is what next?

Well... we tend to agree with the view that it's this is not an ideal collaboration for Mumsnet - particularly as we have no editorial control over what gets chosen/ printed etc. So we plan to contact the daily mail on Monday and let them know have we feel about it. We promise to keep you posted about their response.

That's it really. Tanks again to all for your input - please don't interpret any future periods of silence as us hiding under the bed, swigging from the bottle and hoping things go away. It's much more likely to be because I'm going off on hols tomorrow and we're thin on the ground and the DM may not respond straight way but I'll aim to make some calls as soon as I'm on board ship!

ps a few more answers to some direct questions...

Someone asked about stats in response to the DM column. Our stats for thursday don't seem to show any marked influx of new people either in page impressions or new registrations

MaggieBeauLeo asked about a facility to allow members to delete their own posts - we don't think it works for a board like ours tbh - if you're catching up with a thread and the post that someone's agreeing with/taken issue with has been deleted it essentially makes a nonsense of the boards...

Someone else asked about making search for nicknames available only to those who'd paid a CAT. It's certainly a thought but we'd hate to make MN function less well for the majority unless it was for something really wanted by folk - we would welcome further thoughts.

As said we are working on private boards for particular subject groups - which would not be easily mineable for quotes or indexable by Google - they should be here in a couple of months at the latest. We'll keep you posted about their ETA and how they'll work.

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I have always posted in quite a reserved way, not talking about relationship difficulties, not regurgitating conversations with friends etc. It seems a bit unfair because those are the bits of MN I enjoy (I don't enjoy other people's relationship difficulties, obviously, but I like the feeling that when you get into a chit chat with someone there is a real woman who you know a little about on the other side). I share certain things, you can cobble together roughly where I live, my son's name, my occupation, my education etc if you bothered to look for it. Armed with all that someone could identify me if they already knew me, but that doesn't worry me too much.

Oh, I was PDEatsBabies a minute ago but felt this was more topical.

LLareggub, my feelings exactly. It's been a wake-up call. I'm awake now.

I must admit the whole thing with the changing T&Cs applying to everything on the site - regardless of what the T&Cs where when it was posted bothers me - as has been said some of us opted out of being included in books only to find that our opt was scrapped when the question was scrapped. I find that a bit odd - in fact I suspect it is not legal but no-one challenged it at the time as HQ did not publicise it, it was more of an "oh, I thought I opted out" "well you may have done but we don't do that anymore".

I don't like a few things TBH but I am most interested in being given the chance to change my posts to keep up with the way that HQ have been able to change things their end. At the end of the day if they can decide to do things differently we should be able to change to match that shouldn't we?

To me it seems to be like saying to a kid "you can no longer ride your bike to school without a helmet - here are all the detentions you will get for every day you rode without a helmet in the last year" if you are not going to enable them to go back and fix the problem!

I think so DailyMailsaysVOTELABOUR, I suppose they could take the photos from the profile page for a nice little spread and PR shot too...

Indeed KingCanute, when laws change in this country they aren't usually retrospective. When rules change we should be made explicitly aware and allowed to take action to protect our position if that's what we want to do.

Unilateral variation of a contract clause is unenforceable at law. Whether what any of us have with MN amounts to a contract is another matter.

I am not sure - but I am sure that, if I decided to write a book about "KingCs adventures on Mumsnet" it would be considered a breach of somesort, I am not sure why it should be any different the other way around.

lol @ kingcanutes adventures on mumsnet

I am really pleased I am not the only one who did not realise the opt out thing had been scrapped. I felt a bit foolish at the time for not realising

No, I think it caught most people by surprise - I am sure some of them were just too proud to admit it

This is the bit from netmums (and a lot of other websites) which seems to be missing from the MN terms and conditions "We may amend or add to these terms and conditions without notice to you, so please check them periodically."

I've just written a pretty clear message to our little friend on the daily mail website. She probably won't see it, but a sub will. She's just such an offensively poor journalist!

I tried to get stuff deleted off very old boards - but I'm not sure it's comparable: originally some of these were "email groups" (such as Onelist) which were opt-in emails sent to the list-members. I did, on two occasions, try to get stuff deleted from them once they had been sold on. But I was told that it couldn't be done. this was about ten years ago, and when we'd posted some of the stuff we had no idea that the internet would "take off" .

But Mumsnet has always been a publically searchable database which is somewhat different to a privately-circulated email list.

llareggub: Yes it is very likely that your children will access your posts, should they want to, here and elsewhere. If not on Mumsnet then one some enormous INTERNETIN2009.ARCHIVE server based somewhere in 2045. Whether they will want to is another matter (I can't think of anything less appealing than reading my mother's 30 year-old posts about Friday night *sex with my father), but I think we should all assume that they will.

morningpaper...how far back can you search..? would love to read some threads from 2000..(is that when mn started ?) just to see how much it's changed.

Aitch: In terms of social history, Mumsnet is enormously useful as an archive. Imagine if we had a similar archive of mum's posts from 20, 30 or even 50 years ago. It would be immensely interesting from many perspectives. Parenting paradigms change rapidly and forcefully - having a unique record of that is fascinating.

so write a book about it, mp. i'm not suggesting that we get rid of the archive, as it happens, i'm saying that after a year it should be anonymised. if mn want to keep a clean copy for their books, sure.

What's the argument for anonymising, Aitch? That people might have said too much, while using pseudonyms, that might come back to bite them on the bum if some stalker form the future decides to check the archives? That isn't really reason enough, is it?

DP: The mumsnet archives start in February 2001

yeah, how is that not an argument for it? i don't understand. it's just a website full of chatter, it's not the american declaration of independence. how do the signatures matter?

i think it's an excellent way of getting round your and MNHQ's objection that it leaves gopping great holes in threads.

I guess until this week it was still the 1990s and hardly anyone had the internet. Am very firmly in 2009 today.

bearing in mind that the future, wrt an archive, is now.

Because threads and threads of posts that say "By Anon..." will be incoherent

No they won't. I see loads and loads of boards where no one uses any posting name at all. If you want to reply specifically to someone you could say "to Anon Wed 25th May 22:15" - no real problem there.

But then the conversation fo the thread will make no sense. e.g. any post that starts "But Aitch:..." - no one will have a clue who is addressing who

TBH most people's replies start with the username anyway: Doing a search for any name will also bring up all the replies to that name as well as posts BY them

But if you want advice you don't need to know who gave it. What's wrong with By Anon?