Daily Mail - The On Mumsnet This Week Column - part 374, appendix 5

[JustineMumsnet]

Goodday Mumsnetters,
Now I know we said we'd abide by the results of the poll and the poll's not quite due to close yet, so first off we hope you'll forgive us for bringing this matter to an early conclusion.

We've thought about this a bit more (thanks to everyone for their considered input - it's been generally helpful to us though not always fun) and we've decided to ask the DM not to run this column under any circumstances.

We've said all along that we were torn by the column. When push came to shove we thought, on balance, we would prefer though it to exist rather than not, assuming we had editorial control (explanation why later on). But NOT if the majority of Mumsnetters were strongly against it running.

I don't think the poll shows that the majority of MN is actually against it, as it happens - I know there's some debate here - I think it shows 43% are. But I think the whole process has shown that those who are against are very very strongly against whilst those who don't mind the column in one form or another don't feel particularly strongly about it (save perhaps Daftpunk ). The 43% odd would never be happy with the column running and I think that therefore it would cause ongoing acrimony, which is of course not what we're about.

What we are about is making parents' lives easier and we don't exclude DM readers from that. MN is open to all.

However, a weekly column could and has been interpreted as a brand alignment - and it's not really as some have pointed out the right fit for us - which is why we wouldn't have sought it in the first instance.

For anyone who's been upset by/ caught in the crossfire of this debate - MP in particular and indeed, Leah Hardy - I apologise. A Mumsnetter has just written to me to say the following (she agreed that I could quote her here):

"I feel the flames of crises are fuelled by MNHQ's over willingness to collaborate. Offering Mumsnetters an opportunity to help steer, but knowing they all want to go in different directions is always going
to be carnage. They can never be of one voice. That's what makes Mumsnet interesting and wonderful, isn't it?"

I think on reflection this is spot on - we have always tried to be as inclusive as possible here at MNHQ. Our answer to most dilemmas is usually "Let's see what the Mnetters think". But on polarising issues like this one this is perhaps a mistake. It all becomes a bit too Lord of the Fliesish, and innocent folk get caught in the crossfire.

A final thought about the nature of MN and how we go about making it viable. Much bigger beasts than us are trying to work out how they can make their websites work in terms of paying the bills. Many are mooting charging in some way for access. Mumsnet is free and we probably turn down as much advertising as we take. We do our best to operate as ethically and communally as possible but we have costs that are rising as we grow - servers, people, offices etc - and it's a balancing act.

Mumsnet is big and successful in many ways but it does not generate huge amounts of revenue and profit. We don't have and can't afford a big PR machine - it's me!

But we want to do tonnes of things - run campaigns like our miscarriage one that could benefit lots of folk, improve the site with new features, spread the word so more can have access to the good advice available here. To do that we need to get out there a bit and we need to generate some revenue.

Being in the Daily Mail every week was obviously one way of getting out there - but not perhaps, as many of you have argued, the right way.

So we'll ask them to stop and keep you posted.

Have a lovely rest of weekend.

MNHQ

Damn, I thought you were going to say about the personal section then SPB

hadn't actually read that (short attention span...), yes that sounds good too, so effectively I'd have a non-googleable 'StealthPolarBear's page' where I could write what I liked, and MNers could read it but lurkers couldn't?
Suppose that's just an enhanced profile section that you unhide to all logged in MNers. What would make people go to them though??

i suggested having the ability to amend OPs on another thread, it was dismissed as it had the potential to be confusing and cause fights. imo with an 'edited to say' amendment it would have the opposite effect. i do feel for those OPs who put their hands up and apologise for having got the wrong end of the stick and are then barracked for the rest of the day by people who've only read their OP.

That's not what I meant SPB. Basically just another section, like 'chat' or 'conception' or 'products' but entitled 'personal' and you could only access it once logged in, and it's not at all searchable. So I COULD come on MN and talk about something really personal, without having to worry that it would ever end up in print (just because MNHQ have said no to DM doesn't mean they won't ever reproduce anything again) plus it has a little note at the top (like the one about not speaking to a professional on mental health) that says due to the nature of this topic threads will be removed at the request of the OP. Please bear this in mind when posting, or something similar.

Ah, so that's the hidden section of MN? It still wouldn't solve the DM problem though, would it? LH is a fully paid up MN member, and so could access any of those threads anyway as could anyone else who wanted to. And MNHQ might say "don't reprint" etc but whether they'd legally have a leg to stand on remains to be seen.

As for fundraising, why can't they just either raise subscriptions to £10, or make the £5 one mandatory after 3 months of membership?

Well, I was thinking more of the deletion thingy, so the OP had the option to pull the thread without having of go through any form of discussion.

Also, am not sure what, if anything, MNHQ could do to legally say no reproduction on a closed part of the site. I presume a lot of the time people quoting MN is a Good Thing and also a minefield for MNHQ to try and stop it but if you had to be a member of Mn to enter this area and be logged in to read it they could add something in the terms and conditions that says you may not reproduce anything in the personal section.That would get round the problem with it being open to public and being reproduced, also the issue of people feeling unable to post anything that is of any importance and give the poster the option to pull the thread at any time, allowing us some control over our own threads but not everything.

Red (morning!), I agree that children's privacy is a big concern. Because I'm quite open about my RL identity, I rarely post about my children now. I remember someone on here a while back saying 'can you imagine what it will be like for our kids when they go looking for our posts in 15 years', and that was a real moment for me.

Maybe, in 15 years, our children will be completely chilled about the idea that their mothers were discussing them on a website, but maybe they won't - posters have to decide whether they want to take that risk.

I suppose what I'm saying is - this here gigantic collective resource comes at a cost. If you want to access the collective wisdom of hundreds of thousands of people, you're going to have to compromise on privacy. If you want a lot of privacy, you're going to have to compromise on the size of the resource you use. I don't think it's possible to have crowd-sourced information/entertainment and privacy (unless you name change every week and are constantly changing identifying details, which of course some people do).

Yes, MN (and similar sites) are in a particularly difficult position because so much of the personal stuff on here is about other people - children, spouses, family. You can post about these things in an unidentifiable way though - namechange, alter someone's sex/age. And people can always post in Chat, which disappears after three months (although an additional Personal section, as VS suggests, is a good idea I think - the significance of Chat threads being impermanent is often lost on newbies I suspect. It was certainly lost on me.)

The point below is valid - i.e. why would a members-only section prevent anyone from lifting information? I think it might actually be DANGEROUS to give people an area where they feel "safer" - because then MNHQ WILL have a responsibility to try and prevent the "negative element" from breaking through and using that information - whether it's people's bastard husbands or some random journo from the Brandford Courier. It's far BETTER imo to say: Look, this is ALL public information.

Last year there was a book released (IIRC) quoting people's entries from Livejournal - it caused ENORMOUS repercussions and fury over there. But that's the nature of the beast, and it's a lesson that people are gradually learning. Better to learn that lesson than try and fight it.

I was thinking the other day that it's far more important to teach your children NOT TO POST PERSONAL INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET than it is to teach them stranger danger. But we are only just waking up to the ramifications of the internet being - by its nature - a massive archive of the present becoming (electronic) history.

actually, i'd forgotten about this, but someone made a great suggestion about teh randomising of names within the archive before.

wouldn't that solve a lot of these problems, if we were all given a new name, something numeric like the mn auto ones, nkf345 etc after a year spent on the archive? threads would still make sense, archive still searchable etc but just not for our posting names?

a new name per thread, obv. i suppose if for some reason you really wanted to keep the original names there could be something at teh top saying 'users on this thread aitch, mp, pw etc'

I think that's a rather good idea aitch (although have no idea whether it's the sort of thing that would take 12 Tech-years to achieve).

"why would a members-only section prevent anyone from lifting information? "

Because if it was in the T&Cs that you agreed to never reproduce anything (i.e. you've signed a contract with MN on entering that part of the site) then it would be pretty simple for MNHQ legally, unlike the public parts.

However, I have even less of a legal head wrt these things than MNHQ so have no idea if it's even possible.

I do think that posters being able to post in a section they know they can remove there thread from if they choose to is a good idea though. Rather than having someone agonising over whether to post or not incase it's seen, or posting but trying to make it look like it isn't them etc if it was easily removeable without having to contact MNHQ then it could solve that problem. Not all of the people who wanted things removed have wanted them removed because they have been a bit naive about changing names etc.

I think the only thing questioned about that Aitch was that if for example this thread were to be in the archives with different names on, me addressing you now would make no sense, and it's something done very often, a poster addressed my name rather than their point.

Nooka said

'Why are we into Moldies crap again? They were by definition a small group (for exclusivity) and as they post their private stuff elsewhere I would have thought that they would be less likely to be up in arms about the DM issue than those of us who have been here for a long time and were very bothered but have nothing to do with Moldies...most people in this debate appeared to be normal posters, some of whom (like me) who might be seriously thinking about leaving because of this association, or because they realised that perhaps the way they used mumsnet was no longer advisable. How expressing this unhappiness becomes blackmail is beyond me, as individual posters amoungst thousands we have absolutely zero power to make threats in any case.'

I totally agree!

FWIW MP, I didn't 'threaten' to leave, I said I was tempted. I am not so vain as to think that the forum would be different or poorer for my loss. I also made the leaving comment as a Mumsnetter, not a Moldie. As a MNer, I was annoyed with all this DM stuff. I changed name for that reason, as did a lot of others.

I have enjoyed MN for over 7 years and would feel sad to leave. However, I wish everyone who keeps bringing up the 'M' word would just move on. It just perpetuates bad feeling. I want people on here to see me as a MNer who (hopefully) contributes something useful rather than a Moldie who is 'raiding' to make facetious comments.

Just because I want to be here does not mean that I will stop posting when I disagree with someone. So, 'riposte' away, I really don't mind.

VeeEss - clearly you and I have seen similar forum s/w (only allows edits for a limited time).

Out of interest, can people delete their own posts, too?

beanieb... - certainly seems we are seeing completely different types of forum, and perhaps the more recent ones are developing/ using new s/w that handles posts more like blogging, where the author can go back to change content, or wipe items.

The BBC 606 seems out of line with everything else on BBC discussion areas, as they have no option to edit posts made on either the standard MB areas (eg Radio 4, Radio 7) or the various blogs. In some cases items are moderated before being displayed on site (esp Have Your Say on BBC News section, which slows down the 'discussion' if they have hundreds to look at).

Only the BBC can hide or delete posts or threads from view (and 'hiding' only replaces the title and post with text saying it has been hidden by the BBC).

Finally, private messaging would not work on MN as surely CAT provides some (small?) income (and helps stop spammers who would never spend their own money, or want to be traceable through having to give a postal address linked to a card).

Webdude, generally the delete option is there for the same length of time as the edit option I believe.

wtf is wrong with the Brandford Courier???

MP, you are employed by MNHQ arent you? You said previously that you are paid a pittance so much an hour to produce the round up. Or is that not correct?

Aitch, randomising names would only work if names, abbreviations of names etc within posts could be changed too. That's much more difficult tbh. Particularly with the piss poor spelling that goes on in this place

VE - re 12:25:50 - in theory all the content is covered, but protecting it (sorry if it sounds like I'm giving MN a kicking) seems low or no priority.

I like the idea of a 'personal' discussion area, but as MP says, it's all really quite public, even if someone has agreed to not make public, and needs to login and/or pay annual fee for access.

If someone becomes an ex-friend because they took copies of pages on a 'closed to public view' FaceBook area, where someone was nude or drunk or snorting coke or whatever, the damage (when they post it elsewhere, get it into the local paper website etc) has already been done, and no amount of legal or other 'reaction' makes it change from public to private again.

We have seen instances where foreign websites may have put online information which has had a D-notice placed on them in the UK (eg 'secret' papers on show in Downing Street) and while I've never bothered searching for them, it's clear that once the genie is released, it's not catchable. That list of BNP members was copied and freely available (I have a copy, just from curiosity to know if any neighbour is member) and even if they do bring in prison sentences for releasing data like that, the personal details / photos that one considers private could easily jeopardize career / placement opportunities.

Youngsters feeling "chilled" with an "online" profile are going to suffer some backlashs when older - they need warnings as strongly as for not doing drugs / drink / promiscuity!

(That was not something from VE but policywonk, sorry am rambling... need coffee and breakfast!)

"certainly seems we are seeing completely different types of forum, and perhaps the more recent ones are developing/ using new s/w that handles posts more like blogging, where the author can go back to change content, or wipe items."

I've been a member of one forum forum since something like 2003 and as far back as I can remember members have been able to edit or delete their own posts with no time limit at all.

this is a similar kind of forum set up to the one I am talking about. You can edit posts months after you posted them.

"Finally, private messaging would not work on MN as surely CAT provides some (small?) income "

Why do you think it 'would not work'? Apart from the loss of revenue from the CAT thing (Which I have paid for incidentally and only used once and don't fully understand) I can't see why this board doesn't have a PM function. It's weird for it not to have IMO