Unofficial Draft Guide to RFF

[MrsStarkey]

Was I the only one that felt a little badly for the MN team member who tried to get our input in order to help build a guide for this forum recently? That didn’t go as planned!

Am in the only one who laughed about Justine’s “The Royal family forum
is deranged” comment and can take it in stride? That thread was definitely an example!

I am proposing we try again and help crowd source a guide. I just ask that we don’t be so RFF, and have a sense of humor while we do so. I’ll paste my draft attempt below. Everyone is welcome to contribute however they like.

You are not participating here in good faith. That’s fine, I can’t control it but I will point it out.

#37 Mentions of any form of bus or public transport will be deleted. No one knows why.*

*Part 2 is not true.

Or trains

Thank you MrsLeonFarrell the encouragement is genuinely appreciated .

I have been here long enough to see two regular Republican posters chased off the board. I name change regularly partly for this reason.

I am afraid that some posters are being very disingenuous when they pretend to not understand how this happens.

And speaking as a Republican, I agree with you totally about the “Where’s Kate?” threads which were horrible. Everyone should have a right to privacy for medical matters and I said so at the time. I said the same about comments referring to Meghan’s pregnancies which were unacceptable too imho.

Can I just make the general point that you can be a Republican and not have anything against the RF as individuals who, like the rest of us, have not had much choice in to which family they were born, so it gets a bit wearisome if you post anything positive or sympathetic about them and you are then accused of “not being a proper Republican”!

Even those that marry in cannot truly experience what it’s really like until they do and all of the pressure of the press intrusion that goes along with it that must change your fundamental experience of trust and friendship.

Republicanism to my mind, isn’t about baiting the individuals involved, it’s about changing a system. In fact I feel sorry for a lot of the royals (except AMW and even he was abused as a child) bc I think they have to have a very strong moral code and fierce intelligence not to be corrupted by the wealth and privilege that surrounds them.

way out of proportion to anything she has done and think it is strange that whereas AMW is criticised, Meghan is targeted far more

I don't understand why some posters think they can demand what other posters talk about. See also @LipglossAndLies post saying they think AMW should be posted about in the PR disaster thread.

This isn't a job, I am not forced to be here, we are here in leisure time.

I don't want to talk or think about AMW, and I have hidden all threads related to him, as I do for all abuse threads. What he was involved in is far too horrible to mindlessly chat about.

I enjoy the PR threads because it is talking about stuff that H&M put out on the internet - the behaviours they show us. They obviously want people to talk about them otherwise they would be more private. And this is MN, the chat is very light hearted, I don't want to be on other forums where truly dreadful things are claimed about them.

So no, it isn't misogyny and racism (which is often used as a way of silencing people) but because their behaviour is like watching a soap opera.

👏

“Can I just make the general point that you can be a Republican and not have anything against the RF as individuals”

That cuts both ways. One can criticize the behavior of H&M without being a “monarchist” or a “royalist”.

Let’s not pretend to believe that the ones who complain most vehemently about the labels never ran anyone off a thread in their time here. Nor indeed that they never tried to report anyone into oblivion.

I don't agree that 'republicans' as a group are chased off the board. There are several long term posters here who are republican whose opinions I respect and whose posts I look out for, because they are well thought out and because they deal with the topic at hand, without veering off into personal attacks on posters who disagree. I often disagree with them, but there isn't a problem.

There are other posters whose opinions on the RF are more nuanced, or whose opinion I don't even know, but we can all have discussions around the topic of the thread, whether it be a focussed topic (like the ANL threads) or a more generalised one.

The difficulty comes when a poster (however that poster chooses to identify) mistakes disagreement with their point of view with an attempt to 'chase them off the board'.
When that happens, that poster usually starts a personal attack on any poster who disagrees with their point. That's when the thread involved is derailed and everyone becomes frustrated.

Me too @jeffgoldblum & @AnAutumnCrow I've indoctrinated my son & OH too 😎

I think Vardy tried to use a version of it about Coleen Rooney but made a hames of it.. as ever

With respect I am certainly not trying to control what posters can discuss. This is happening to republicans quite frequently though when one of our opinions is met by multiple responses from monarchists mocking them with gifs or being unnecessarily aggressive, or rude, or scathing, dismissing their posts as nonsense or tedious, talking about them to one another, instead of addressing the poster directly and respectfully, and it comes in particular from one or two posters who are always in the thick of needling or jeering at others.

It’s unpleasant if you are on the receiving end if it. I don’t expect you to understand if you are not. It’s about basic manners and respect.

It’s your prerogative not to want to read posts about AMW or discuss him but you must see the Republican perspective that it suits the monarch and the PR coming out of BP currently if AMW is mentioned as little as possible, which allows all of the usual royal activities connected to the season to take place and the PR to be solely positive.

It isn’t solely positive though if the RF did indeed join together to pay off Virginie Giuffre so AMW did not have to face a trial and it’s not ok if they are still covering for AMW while pretending otherwise. It’s legitimate to ask who in the RF knew about AMW’s criminal behaviour and how much they were, and are, involved in covering up.

This is relevant bc all of our current constitutional law assumes that those connected to the RF are acting in good faith.

Andrew Lownie has said the same thing, so it’s not just me who thinks this. He is saying on his Substack and on various podcasts that this suppression about AMW is deliberate because it coincides with BP issuing NDAs and reminding former and current PPOs about the terms and conditions of their pensions. So while pretending to support the investigation about AMW, BP at one and the same time, are leaning on people and trying to dissuade them from giving evidence.

So you can understand that there is a good reason why Republicans want to keep AMW in the limelight,

Btw it is your opinion that racism and misogyny do not form part of the reason why Meghan faces a barrage of disproportionate criticism every day and it is my opinion that it is. Both opinions should be allowed to be aired. Meghan didn’t appear in public when she visited the UK and nor has she said anything for months and yet the criticism still comes thick and fast. What she has done is carried on living her normal life; working on Masterchef, putting her holiday snaps on Instagram like many others and I don’t see what’s wrong with that or why she should be made to hide away.

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that republicans, or however posters identify, can’t tell the difference between genuine disagreement and debate v needling and unpleasantness for the sake if it.

Please give us more credit than that!

You may not be guilty of it bluegreygreen but at least be honest enough to concede that others are.

Most posters who are on the receiving end of it want nothing more than a robust, genuine debate. We are not shrinking violets but instead we are met with in-jokes, rudeness, gifs, and sometimes, often when we have made a valid point, personal attacks. It’s frustrating to say the least,

I am glad you agree that personal attacks are uncalled for though.

I haven't said that, I think you've got the wrong poster

@Waitingfortheotherfeather I could not agree with your 13.55 post more. It sums it up AFAIC

I can’t speak for anyone else except myself and the republicans or mild monarchists (for want of a better identification) I recognise but I genuinely do not make personal attacks and I don’t try and run other people off the board either, and as far as I have seen, neither do they.

I did make an unpleasant direct comment back to someone who was very rude to me once but I haven’t done it since.

I have seen very rude behaviour from some republicans or some elements supporting H&M when a royal topic strays in to AIBU or chat, or when there has been a large influx of new posters on to the RF board because of outside events, but I haven’t seen deliberate unpleasantness involving personal attacks from regular republican posters or mild monarchists, no.

Nor have I seen republicans or mild monarchists deliberately work “in a pack” to bombard one poster they disagree with, with multiple unpleasant posts.

I may have missed some incidents as I spend regular periods when I am not on Mumsnet and deliberately keep away from very contentious or nasty threads because I don’t enjoy that sort of thing.

I do report unpleasantness when I feel it is getting too much but I don’t think I have done so excessively over the past three or so years when I have been on the RF board regularly. More often than not I just ignore it, but it’s got too much of late so I have sent a couple of reports to Mumsnet HQ about the situation on the board as a whole rather than individual posts, especially after they posted about producing a thread guide.

What depresses me is that we have these discussions again and again and the usual suspects keep on doing exactly the same thing and imho that boils down to being unpleasant and mischief-making for the sake of it … and that used to qualify in the old days of Mumsnet as being a troll, but apparently in this context, if you confine the unpleasantness to one board, it doesn’t anymore. 😞

Thank you Simpsonthecat

We all hold slightly different views but there should be room for them all.

Oh I'm just contributing to the general thread.

Well I found your reply to me patronising.

The fact I do not want to discuss AMW does not mean I (a complete random with no influence) is complicit in hiding his sins.

I don't understand why you want to control what people talk about on sub threads.

Start your own, on the topics you are interested in.

So jokes and gifs are seen as ways of driving people off a board yet you say you are not shrinking violets. 🤷‍♀️

I've been here long enough to remember a time when all merry hell would break out if the words black, brown, coloured, commonwealth , hair etc were mentioned in relation to MMarkle. People were accused of being a certain colour based on what they said and were often wrong. We were told no white person should comment on Mmarkle's hair, wigs, weaves, legs etc. It was a hellish time. People were hit on by tag teams. People disappeared possibly banned. There were some posters sucking up to these women by claiming their son in law or whatever was from Pakistan blah blah. I'm sure others will remember. These women even retreated to the safety of their own board to talk openly about people on the RF threads so I think a gif is pretty lightweight in comparison. There was the continual accusation of racism and " I see you".

What depresses me is that we have these discussions again and again and the usual suspects keep on doing exactly the same thing and imho that boils down to being unpleasant and mischief-making for the sake of it … and that used to qualify in the old days of Mumsnet as being a troll, but apparently in this context, if you confine the unpleasantness to one board, it doesn’t anymore

Are you actually accusing “the usual suspects” of being trolls? and who are these “usual suspects” ??

oh I think you have that wrong. there was a group of posters that back in the day went on some poundland mn forum, they were no fans of H&M in any way.
they targeted certain posters and said some very personal stuff about them.

I remember that well.
The accusations, the tag teaming, the sucking-up, assumptions made about a poster’s skin colour based on their posts. Revolting. Then changing username thinking no one would recognise them 🙄
That whole sorry episode really should have been dealt with by MNHQ much more vigorously than it was.

What is a Poundland mn forum ?

I could actually link you to the ones I referred to on MN.

sadly mn hq don't really moderate this board. if only they did.