So. That thread.

[BertrandRussell]

Before this I gets deleted, too, did anything happen to make it worse in the last 50 odd posts?

I found it very thought provoking too. It's what finally prompted me to start posting again.
Is it possible to get it reinstated?

Oh dear ... that's pretty juvenile of them. If they had abusive PMs surely they should have just informed HQ and left them to it!

I think MNHQ should have said we are closing the thread due to abusive pms's if that was the case

No names, no info as to what was said

I have to admit that I initially pushed for the poster who said that they had received an abusive message to name names- because it seemed to me that there was something a bit odd about the wording they quoted. I must have missed other people saying they had had them too- I thought it was just the one.

I wonder if MNHQ will comment further if I report this thread?

What is interesting me is that the thread was closed down, but the trolls are on other threads being disruptive - for example there is a thread somewhere on a sexist advert and one of them is in there doing its party trick or demanding examples and then showing how men are also discriminated against, blah, blah, blah, whilst being totally unreasonable but trying to say that the women are unreasonable. Same record, different record player. And they admitted over at Dadsnet that they had been thrown off parenting boards before (they were expecting sympathy).

No one else said they had abusive PMs. A certain poster said that he had been enjoying sensible and supportive chat about the thread topic via pm with some posters, and that some of them had received abusive PMs and told him about them.

I quite often look at a post where someone says that they were called stupid or the poster made a racist comment etc

And then when i look back, the original poster never said anything like that

Its either been misconstrued or outright lied about

Is there any MN policy on off-thread PM discussions, esp if they involve more than two people?

Yes, the claim about the PM was phrased in such a way as to be "look at the nasty feminists being nasty about me", with the clear implication that the PM had come from one of the feminist regulars on the board, but the poster refused to name names (under the guise of claiming the moral high ground: look at me, doing this the right way, getting MN to handle it), thus leaving pretty much everyone on the thread under suspicion of perhaps being the one who'd been nasty (with no clear evidence that the PM in question actually existed at all).

This is why I take the line that PMs are the "property" as it were of the recipient (barring clear cases of confidentiality, where the sender has, say, divulged personal details about themselves as part of an attempt to be supportive of someone in a particular situation). It's entirely up to the recipient whether or not to "retweet" abusive messages - if they are that abusive, the sender shouldn't have sent them in the first place.

I agree het

I could send you a really shitty pm now and still appear really innocent on this thread

Having said that i suppose if we arent told exactly what the pm said our imaginations would probably go into over drive

It would be all "OMG what did rufus say???? "

Although that may just be me

From what I remember of the last few posts of the thread after Bob named names, there was the post about how he knew because of PM chat and other posters saying the same poster sent abuse to them.

Then there was a kerfuffle about whether he should have named names and he said he thought he should because people were asking the original poster to name the person who sent her one. Then he said he had reported his post to MNHQ to have it deleted.

I'm sure there was also a post about how the whole thing had misunderstood and cleared up off-thread.

Et fin.

How weird, I just looked in Feminism Chat and this thread title has totally disappeared from the topic list.

He said that the poster who had sent the nasty PMs was one of the people he'd named but it was all fine because they'd apologised to everyone now. So not a misunderstanding, more the ladies do as I instruct them.

Is it the "i've upset my v feminist partner over his chivalrousness'?
I got into it yesterday, was wanting to post today (coz my brain works really slowly) and now can't find it. could anyone please point me in it's general direction IF it isn't the one pulled. thanks very much.

Sorry, yes its the one that was pulled (but it was full anyway).

One poster, not Teacher Bob, said she had received an abusive pm. That poster didn't name the sender but mentioned part of the content. Several other posters asked her to name the sender.

Teacher Bob said he knew who the sender was as he had been corresponding by pm with the recipient.

There was a bit of a hoo ha about Bob naming the alleged sender.

To be honest it's not at all unusual to see senders of unwelcome pms being outed. It happened on the "controlling dad hairstyle" thread and no one said the recipient was wrong to name the sender. I suppose the difference is it was not the recipient who named the sender.

" I suppose the difference is it was not the recipient who named the sender"

Surely the difference is that he could not possibly have known for sure who the sender was- and in fact named two possibles?

If the recipient had named the sender and posted the content of the message, fine.

Reporting and letting MNHQ deal with it, fine.

Discussing it offthread? Iffy.
A third party, hundreds of posts later naming not just the 'offender' but also someone else who'd presumably done nothing other than disagree with him onthread ... way out of line.

Funnily enough, both the people he named and shamed and said one would be banned ... think they're still here, aren't they? So if the PM incident happened and was reported, MNHQ evidently didn't think it was that bad.

thanks Errol - it was at about 350 posts when I saw it, saw references to 'violence' ( I presume as an alternative to chivalrousness??) further up, so was going to ride in on my trusty steed in a blaze of chivalrousness...and make things worse.

Bob said that two different people had given him the same name, suggesting that there was more than one recipient.

Why on earth he saw fit to play Columbo is beyond me. More space ownership stuff I suppose.

Yep the problem was Bob didn't actually name. He speculated and what's more, speculated down to a pool of two regular posters but actually had no knowledge of whether either of those had sent the PM (or even if the PM existed).

Pan - I doubt you could have made it worse!

Love a challenge.

It all sounds very "I've told the teacher on you and you are going to get into trouble'-ish.

I've reported to ask for reinstatement BR, you might want to also.