The MN Mail Column - what we think, and what we plan to do next... part 2

[whataboutthisone]

Firstly, I am a regular but have created a new name for this.

My thoughts about what I know so far:

1. In a much earlier post there was a discussion about a change in T&Cs and whether they are valid or not. Several years ago I took a company to court for a breach of their T&Cs. Their argument was that they had changed T&Cs and my complaint was therefore no longer valid. However, the judge said that because I had not specifically been asked to accept the new T&Cs, I was entitled to rely on the ones I had accepted and therefore I won my case.

1. I choose to post on MN in the knowledge that the details I give are probably just obscure enough to anyone I may know in RL who also posts, so that what I say still effectively remains private. However, that doesn't mean that the same could be said of, for instance, my mother, who reads the DM (!) There is probably just enough about my circumstances that would enable her to put 2+2 together. I would like the option to choose whether or not I let my Mum ( or anyone else in RL) in on certain areas of my life, and there is a real possibility that this hack, has taken that choice away from me.

1. I have never ( and now will never) post asking for advice, but I will also be very careful about offering advice in the future. I, along with many others, occasionally use examples from my life to explain where I am coming from. If I continue to do that, as I said earlier, it is possible that some people would be able to work out who I am. Now, I am not so big-headed as to believe that any advice I offer is worth taking, however, there are many fantastic posters on here who do give amazing and insightful advice based on their own experiences. It would be a real shame if that was to stop because they, like me, do not want to share some of those experiences with the folk they are close to in RL. It would also be a real tragedy if others were prevented from asking for help for the same reasons.

I am very disappointed that any MNer would feel it is acceptable to violate the trust we place in each other on this forum. I do not know who she is. I do not want to know who she is. But I hope she is hanging her head in shame for breaching the trust that has been placed in her by everyone whose words she has stolen to make a few bucks!

Can I just take a moment to highlight the brilliance of kitstwins' post - the final one on the previous thread?

Thank you.

Oops: Re. deletions, I refer you to my first paragraph. In fact, anyone concerned about deletions would be REALLY NICE if they waited perhaps for a week or two until The Deletion Monitors were not crying on a beach somewhere

Oh, is that who BadgersArse is? Makes sense.

MP, my first request (and their agreement) was about 4 years ago so I am not sure the whole being on holiday counts.

Oh, FWIW I have only asked/reminded them once since all this kicked off, I am aware they are busy and have no wish to add unneccesarily to the workload up there!

MP, I can't really say how ridiculous that post seems to me right now.

So are you saying that MN is effective totally unable to make any decisons at this point because theya re all on holiday??

Really?

and I'm supposed to be NICE whislt they have their holiday?

I am nice....
honeslty.

Somebody somewhere is doing something as they've truncated the threads but then reposted the truncated thread...

I'm jst asking them to do it correctly if they are going to do.

What exactly isn't nice about that?

yeah SS....what happened to the scissor sisters?..i liked them..

constant craving was way too dull for me..

i like my music to have a bit more going on....indie rock mainly.

So huge swathes of material has not been lifted from Mumsnet has it not? Are you sure? I beg to differ. Mumsnet and mumsnetters have been featured in many articles by The Guardian, The Independent and others. Journalists like Daisy Goodwin have been quick to tap into the newsworthy potential of a large site of opinionated mothers.

Yes Aitch, I can confirm that, LH was asked to write the story. It did not come from her, it was not her idea. She is a freelancer and takes commissions whenever she can. The onus was on the DM to contact mumsnet, not on LH.

No, I'm not LH.

I've said before that you cannot possibly think that anything you post here, on a public forum, is safe and would never be printed anywhere else. Mumsnet is a huge site now, full of rich pickings for journalists, why is everyone so shocked at this happening? You cannot pick and choose where this information ends up.

It seems to me that many people think they own mumsnet, that they have a right to say how it is run and who can use what information. But fortunately you don't. And it's this realisation that has angered a lot of these 'furious of Tunbridge Wells' posters.

I have to be honest, MN is such small fry to the DM (from a "taking you to court for being naughty" POV) I doubt that they will bother much about their opinions so the column will continue if they think it is a good one and won't if they don't!

I refuse to enter into a conversation on how MN organsie their holidays tbh.

It is their business to run the place how they like.

I am also allowed to have an opinion on that.

pragmatically, it is up to them, but it does seem massively sad that they have apparently all gone and left MN rudderless for now..

Morningpaper - I have to agree withOops regards your message "Re. deletions, I refer you to my first paragraph. In fact, anyone concerned about deletions would be REALLY NICE if they waited perhaps for a week or two until The Deletion Monitors were not crying on a beach somewhere". Mumsnet is a business and a limited company, to suggest that its members (customers)should wait until they return from holiday is ridiculous.

On another note Justine's husband is not a journalist. Ian Katz is an editor at the Guardian and I strongly suspect that the advice he gave to Justine was spot on. It is quite laughable that some of the members here are suggesting that Mumsnet take on the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail is represented by
Foot Anstey, and we all know what happened the last time Mumsnet got involved with that firm.

priyag, most people know who he is, we were being coy so that Justine doesn't develop Hilary Clinton syndrome.

One thing that all of this has really brought home to me - and I probably wouldn't have been as harsh as I was on a previous thread had I realised - is just how much, under quite a slick exterior, MN is a bit of a Heath Robinson, small-staffed bodge.

It's not their fault at all, it's the problem of the web - how do you make money from web content.

But they now have to deal with having this huge media profile, without really the resources to cope with it, and I'm not really sure what the answer is (other than co-opt the wisdom of the MN crowd, which might have been slightly more accurate - after it had discussed it at length - than Justine's DH.

I got really irate with their frankly a bit rubbish response to M-gate, and again with this. But what I was expecting was a kind of thought-out corporate response (in the way that a John Lewis person will take your complaint and say, I am so sorry that you feel this way, how can we make it better) and instead what we were getting was what Justine et al thought, right there.

Not sure what this adds, but hey

Oh lol, I didn't realise I'd been quoted in the Independant article before this thread. Was very true though, wot I wrote.

One thing I want to say wrt "The problem with Mumsnet is that it has changed in the last year, from a touchy feely club for mums to a large community business based loosely around the idea of parenthood ".

Mumsnet has ALWAYS been a business. Maybe Justine et al set it up to be a touchy feely club for mums type of business but its till a business.

I wasn't suggesting that MN was "rudderless", just that you all know Justine is on holiday and you also all know that she will be probably spending most of her holiday discussing deletions and pissing away her holiday working. Other than the DM issue, I just don't see that anything has changed, and I don't understand why so many people are asking for their histories and threads to be deleted, which are the sort of requests that are going to take a lot of discussion before anything is actioned.

No one is suggesting they "take on" the DM. There's no "taking on" about it - MN will politely ask the DM to stop and the DM will pretend to ignore them and then not run the column again. MN are in the right here, the only way for this column to continue in its present form is by MN agreeing to it.

OK, so FC is not LH, but is probably LH's best friend or husband.

vonsudenfedhatespauldacre: You can't object that what you got was "What justine thought, right there" when there is the most ENORMOUS clamour when MNHQ takes more than 40 minutes to reply to answer queries!

Morning Paper - when you say "we" are you the official spokesperson for Mumsnset and all of its members ?

Also the point I was trying to make was that Justine's husband was an editor not a journalist, and therefore would have thought would be fairly clued up on what is acceptable in terms of copyright !

I'd imagine the reasons everyone wants deletions is that previously they felt things were safe...now they don't.
Quite a simple concept really.

FC has got the self-righteous buzz of an irate journo about her. I half expect her to ask if we are all in institutions....