Daily Mail thread 5

[madameDefarge]

and a sticky? pretty please?

PS does anyone on this site really care about business probity? I totally understand that people don't want to be quoted in the DM. And mostly because it is a shit paper. And they despise lousy copy and paste journalism.

But 5 threads on the subject is too much. If you don't like it go away! Don't post here anymore!

lol justine. you said you were off to bed aaaaages ago. it does seem a bit grabby, i think. that's not the worst insult in the world, is it? i think you're suffering abit from having been at the forefront of all this tinternet chat stuff, your technology has evolved piece by piece.

but in the meantime someone went away and wrote forum software that offered editing, PMs etc and now that's the norm whereas MN seems schoolmarmish by comparison with its CAT and asking nicely to have posts deleted. it's part of its charm in many ways, but if you stop to think about it, it is just BONKERS in this day and age that as responsible parents etc we aren't allowed to re-think posts and amend them in any way.

if you don't like them, portofino, go away. don't post on them.

Justine FWIW it's hard to accept your apology, but I'm trying.
my first reported post was on 13/8 and your final email agreeing to delete my whole histroy was 19/8

In that time I think i must have gone through between 150-200 posts (approx) involving various dreadfully upsetting thisng that happned and i posted about.
I begged for MNHQ to just delete my whole history as i reported each post.

I'm shaking now as i type this....

I got fob off after fob off.

I felt that I had to trawl through all of the stuff and present it to your staff for them to look at and decide if it was good enough/upsetting enough ot delete.
I'm not sure but I suspect that they were read by your staff and then a decsion made.
It made me feel extrmemly humiliated and violated.

I knwo I posted stuff that was deep down and personal and extremmely easy for those involved to ID themselves (none of the people involved come on MN but at least 1 reads the DM)
and I had to find it and read it and send it onto you.

All the time I asked that you could save me the trauma of doing this and just make it easy on me and delete the lot.

Initially i was told it would be too hard for you- it would be too laborious.

I found out how a data base works and so found out that this is entirely the function of a data base- you cna pick out an individual name and just apply a rule that means thier whole history gets deleted. It takes less than a minute.
I spent hours and hours on searching for the posts s that would have caused great eprsonal distrss to me and my family had the stuff been raked up again.
I honeslty spent hours.

SIX days after my original request MNHQ conceded with a fairly bog standard apolgy fro causing me distress.

What is your policy for the next person who reealsies they ahve eben daft and niave?

Have you changed the way you handle these requests?

i doubt I am the only one that has been through this- I do know that some people have had the request denied, so i suppose I count myself lucky.

But it don't feel so lucky somehow..

Feel bad suggesting MN is "grabby" now Justine - you've always been very good to me when needing posts deleted - and I have needed that at times.

It's cos we luv yer (too much wine) - it's like watching our daughter's date the wrong men

yes, i'll also happily apologise for hurting your feelings with 'grabby', justine. i didn't mean to, honest, i didn't think it was so bad.

i feel so sorry for oops, though, i can totally believe that it must have felt like an appalling violation to have to go through and then submit her most painful posts to someone she's never met at mnhq, for them to give the thumbs up or thumbs down. i'm sure you've just never thought of it before, but don't you think it's a bit off, tbh?

Some of it was about my father destroying my childhood stuff after my mum dies, and some about some dreadful dreadul allegations made about a family member that i had to discuss with other family members... and some just sad about all sorts..

and some about the death threats we'd had from a workman that required us to leave our home for 2 months.

it was grim grim grim to spend 3 nights going through the horrible things that had happened over the last few years. The posts were all spaced out- so i had search things like "death threat" and put in date and then becuase i'm human i re read the posts and then sent them to MNHQ.

After a little while they suggested I sent them toe approx times and poss search terms that would mena they could pull up the posts themselves. But that felt equally violating- thogh i do feel they thought they were being helpful.. but it doesn't feel so nice writing it all down for somebody else...

I've been a strong and supportive memebr of MN for years and have recommended it to many people.
And now it just makes me wince tbh.

I'm here to see the end of the DM thingy really.

I'm sorry to bring it out here, but I really do think that there should be a deeper responsibilty to the memebrs of MN wrt to the archives and I don't know how to illustrate how important i feel it is without saying how it actually seems to work/not work in practice...

Why isn't this stickered or stuck, or sticked orwhatever? Or am I just paranoid? As far as I know the poll isn't closed so shouldn't there be a thread at the top of the active page, even if you won't win a lifetimes subscription to the DM....

ahh BlackDuck was about to ask the same question as to why there was no sticky for the poll.

I think if there is a chance your 'life' is going to appear in a national newspaper then you have every right to ask for any posts which you feel are personal and may identify you to be deleted immediately.If this leaves gaping holes in otherwise interesting and informative threads so be it.That is the price of this whole thing.I just think it is sad that it has come to this and we are linked an ANY way to a paper which preaches such bigotry

I know it is in the side bar, but isn't that kind of buried? And isn't this a far more important issue than bl**dy school dinners for gods sake?! Get the impression MNHQ would like it all to just go away

Just as an aside I have a strong suspicion that the "husband thinks I am vain to have a tummy tuck on the NHS" thread has been planted by a journalist, for whatever publication. The poster says "I cancelled a three week holiday in the sun this year because of it" which I just don't believe for a minute.

But, even if it is genuine, I am from now on going to be suspicious of first time posters with slightly contentious issues.

Doesn't make for a healthy atmosphere, does it?

The people who object are not hysterical, we are trying to prevent a big shift in our own relationships with Mumsnet and the relationship that future posters will have too.

Of course businesses evolve and change. It must be difficult to have to take on board all your members' opinions, Justine et al, I do feel for you.

But to many of us you might as well become "Mumsnet sponsored by Nestle" as have a formal association with the Daily Mail.

I posted on this at the very, very beginning and my thoughts haven't changed at all. I do not want anything i say splashed all over the Daily bloody Mail.

I feel the argument that other journalists are grudgingly impressed by DM journalists, despite misgivings about the overall content/tone of the paper is rather unhelpful for those of us on here. One can admire the professionalism etc if one is in the same profession and in that whole world of journalism. But MN users, in the main, aren't in that world. We are in a world that isn't a world of London journalists and their mates, and I for one do not want to be affiliated with the Daily Mail. I would not want to see my posts in any newspaper though and so I am at pains not to ever divulge anything really personal.

I do think if MN is going to continue with this affiliation, they really must put it in big bold letters at the top of the site that anything one writes could well be reproduced in the Daily Mail. Just so people know.

"I am from now on going to be suspicious of first time posters with slightly contentious issues."

I was suspicious well before the DM column blew up.

I'm not a huge poster, but I have to say that I find a lot of the archive stuff very useful. Sure some of it goes out of date, as does anything on the internet. Yesterday I was looking at options for a family car, and came across a number of helpful threads. I frequently use it for holidays, days out, odd behavioral issues. And by and large I have no problem with any of my posts being retained and reused. I would think that these days I probably use search about twice as much as I actually post.

Perhaps it should be clearer to posters that _chat is the only forum which isn't archived beyond 90 days. I know a number of posters who do put non-chat threads in there specifically so that they aren't archived.

Justine - After how many days do chat threads get removed vs Topic threads?

Maybe MN could review this. To have some threads lurking around for so long (as you say many lurkers) is not healthy or helpful to anyone (thinking of possibly relationships, bereavement topics, things posted in the moment, sensitive things for support).

True that when these keywords for google searches return MN threads, it improves MN natural google listings. Am I being too cynical to think that for commercial reasons websites think this is OK, ie to benefit from others problems, to boost ratings. Blogs are also another way to make sites perform better in the search engines natural listings. So you bloggers can have a think about that too.

Agree with Aitch that with advance scripts for forums, it is easy add edit features. It would be a good thing.

MN will have to move forward. Lots of sites pop up everyday, other sites listen to what their members suggest and make allowances or try out new things. Sadly without members you don't have much.

Can't edit, so hopefully will come over in the right way. Typos and all.

Hi again Oops,
Again I'm sorry for your distress. It's not what we're about.

It sounds like we were slower to respond to your request for outright deletion than we should have been and would normally be. I think it all started on the weekend - one when I was away on hols and carrie on her way back.

What's more it was at a time when we were being slightly barraged with mass deletion requests - some from folks worried about privacy, others from folks registering a protest about the DM.

Confronted by that the duty person no doubt and understandably prevaricated a bit with the aim of conferring with the team after the weekend.

Our policy is generally, as stated, to comply immediately with mass deletion requests when anyone is under threat. Our response otherwise is to say we prefer not to muck up the boards - would it be ok to report problematic posts instead and we'll delete those immediately. Normally folk are very happy with this solution. If they're not and it's causing them distress then we will delete their posts, as we did in your case.

Clearly the process this time round took longer than you and we would like. Again apologies - I hope you can see that the circs were slightly unusual and there was no intention to cause upset.

And agree with Soupy, journos have been using MN in various ways for years. The DM debacle may be novel in that it is weekly, or current, or regular, or implies collusion, or they're getting nicknames wrong, but MN threads appearing in newspapers and magazines is not new.

I can't get too excited about the poll, but I would have been more interested to have a poll which tried to identify precisely what MNers were objecting to, since far more people have responded to the poll than have posted on any of the DM threads. Other than we now know that a column will appear in the DM (as opposed to not knowing about articles in the Telegraph or whatever), nothing else has changed (not even the number of MN readers).

The poll is a complete waste of time, because you can namechange and vote again..... Like I've just found out for myself.

ATM the lead is No not under any circumstance. But quite a big lead.

Pruners, re your post way back Fri 04-Sep-09 21:51:59 on the last thread. Who is the person to say what MN is then? And by the same token, who can say what it is not? Only MNHQ basically. So all this appealing to the MN brand is a bit of emotive rhetoric rather than concrete argument. It may well have started off as ?inclusive and supportive to women? but as it has grown the community spirit has dwindled ? its just in the nature of the beast. And there are many rivalries on here too. Looking at women, or women?s forums, though misty eyes isn?t to so them justice.

I am pretty sure that Guardian readers fall into a broad demographic, and would resist being pigeonholed in the way you do DM readers. I know some DM readers who are pretty small minded, I know others who are the opposite. I think there have been a few pieces in the Mail that probably are misogynistic, but not half as much as people claim ? misogynistic is a very overused term and often is used instead of ?offensive?. As for casually racist ? again ? this is a sensitive issue but I also think people tend to have an itchy trigger finder over this. Reasonable people must have a place to read about and debate issues such as immigration, without being associated with racists. The DM is not a BMP pamphlet. As for ?fearmongering? ? all the media does this. But maybe it also has it?s place in our society at this time to stop people being too complacent about the palpable threats to us. It?s like Orwell said, ?We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.? That?s a reality we should never forget.

I don?t know when the MN nadir was ? surely that?s in the eye of the beholder. I had some problems adjusting to the changes. But that was my problem. I go over them. This connection could be a force for the better ? mothers, women having a voice in The Mail. I think that is fantastic!

so true MrsE,

i give up on here sometimes, all this "DM is the work of the devil" crap....i thought people on here were supposed to be intelligent.

you just can't reason with the unreasonable.