A call to MNHQ to find £12 per staff member for the Freedom Programme

[UglyCathKidstonBag]

Moderators on such a large site clearly have their work cut out for them. Many members of MN have suggested @MNHQ fund the small cost to train their moderators to spot and deal with coercive and controlling behaviour. Such behaviour constitutes violence and abuse that leads to mental health issues and feelings of worthlessness.

The Freedom Programme have lots of information online www.freedomprogramme.co.uk/training.php

I believe this training would be beneficial to your staff not only in FWR but across large swathes of Mumsnet.

I'm surprised that mnhq didn't opt to send one employee who could then evaluate whether or not it would be useful for the whole team.

A disappointing decision. A more than disappointing decision.

But not very surprising, eh Lang?

I certainly believe Pat Craven could improve understanding.

Disappointing but not surprising. Exactly prawn.

Why not send one MMHQ member as per stillathing’s suggestion.

I must admit to being dim but I don’t understand how time will help here when surely it’s better to recognise manipulation as soon as it happens? Red flag-stylee?

We went through many different scenarios, including various forms of the kind of manipulation that you're talking about, and their red flags.

And the fact that now transactivists are kickng off that we are not forced to call male people she, that you are allowing the gender neutral term of 'they' and such? What do you all think of that? A lot of us did warn, that this would happen, that every inch given will not be enough and only total capitulation will ever be acceptable.

stillathing
I'm surprised that mnhq didn't opt to send one employee who could then evaluate whether or not it would be useful for the whole team.
This. We dont know what we dont know.

The moderation behaviour on FWR is incongruent with your words here @MNHQ and sends exactly the opposite message. Nothing said in this response reassures me that you have taken on board any of the constructive feedback given to you. You seem not to like the FWR feminist position and actively seek to undermine it by enabling abuse and trolling that not only derails constructive discussions but causes harm to many women. Your duty of care would not seem to be with your users here. Your stance is also incongruent with your brand positioning.

Many online organisations now work with users to develop guidelines that work for both - it's disappointing that dialogue isn't apparent here. This is not rocket science.

The lack of moving towards us speaks volumes.

Very disappointing that MNHQ said no to this.

@MNHQ please listen to what your site users are telling you. When so many women from different walks of life are all saying the same thing you ought to listen.

Your current moderation policy is not having the desired effect. Unless the desired effect is to alienate and silence the women who write your site content and buy from your sponsors.

It can't be made any clearer how the women on FWR are viewed by the PTB. We are held to a higher standard, allowed to be abused and are constantly threatened with being kicked out permanently for speaking the truth. The contempt is breathtaking - all we want is to protect women and girls.

Happy to sponsor a mod if that helps

"In light of recent threads, can I add CEOP training to this request?"

I hope MNHQ will reconsider staff training.
The unchecked abuse, and overt grooming, of women seeking advice on FWR that I have witnessed recently has been quite shocking.

I too would sponsor a mod.

I would sponsor a mod, for what that's worth!

What I can't understand is the refusal to send even one person.

It appears to me as though there is a worry that attending training would open a can of worms that HQ is desperately trying to keep shut.

Whilst you can pretend that there is a six of one, half dozen of the other situation going on, you can keep your head below the parapet.

If someone trained you up and you realised, point blank, that you're being manipulated, you'd have to speak.

And maybe that prospect is too frightening.

Because we all know what happens - when that happens.

Nonetheless, given that HQ are the driving force behind the biggest female forum in the world, it's cowardly.

If you thought you had nothing to lose, you'd go on the training.

Why on earth not?

It's because you are worried you have something to lose, that you don't go.

Please, send someone. You don't even have to tell us you've done it.

given that we seem to be a target for people arguing for the relaxation of rules put in place to safeguard children, I think it would be excellent if some members of MN staff attended CEOPS training so they can spot these posters and understand why their posts are so invidious.

fair enough, we feminists are mostly big enough to take care of ourselves, but I think MNHQ should be considering the safety of children where ever possible.

we all should

Given the domestic violence and online grooming stats, I think it completely off brand for MN to skip out on this.

Think how they could impact women on the Relationships board.

@MNHQ
What I have witnessed on these boards of lte, the abuse, the veiled threats, the rape apologia, and the repeated suggestion that women and girls do not deserve to have their rights, safety, dignity and privacy respected, and that their boundaries are not legitimate, has shocked me to the core. What is really sick and me however, to the pit of my stomach, is the overt grooming on the ROGD thread. A mother, who seems to all observers to be doing the very best and absolutely right thing for her child, being called a safeguarding risk, and being implicitly threatened that if they don’t take the posters advice, their child will commit suicide, or grow up to be one of the abusive partners in the trans widows thread.
I know you have seen this HQ, and I know very well that you can see what’s going on. I don’t think for a minute that you’re too stupid, naive, or irresponsible not to, so why are you allowing it to continue? Why hasn’t Snappity been banned? I’ve lost count of how many posts they’ve had deleted, and if it had been any of us women we would’ve been banned long ago, so why are you protecting this poster who abuses people, and tries to groom vulnerable parents on your parenting website? And why are you deleting posts made in good faith by women concerned about child safeguarding? These women have a wealth of experience in this particular area, and have grave and legitimate concerns about the compromise and dilution of safeguarding procedures. Anyone would think you had an agenda, or that you were being threatened and coerced.
I’d like to ask you @MNHQ, do you want to be complicit in the dilution of safeguarding for children? Do you want to be complicit in the overt grooming of vulnerable parents on your parenting website? Do you want to be complicit in the abuse and silencing of women on your feminist messageboard?
@MNHQ, your reputation is only as good as your website, you do know that don’t you? And the people putting pressure on you, threatening you and forcing your hand about the way you moderate do not give a shit about the reputation of your website, in fact they‘d like to take you down. You do know that don’t you? They come after you one day for one thing, but it’s not enough, so they’ll be back for more. We already seeing it happening. We see it HQ, it’s happening in plain sight, and if you want to preserve the reputation of your website, you‘d better start seeing it too. We keep getting told that we are on the wrong side of history, but history will not look kindly on the website with 12 million members, the vast majority of whom are mothers, allowing censorship, abuse, and grooming on their website. The old saying goes, everything will come out in the wash, and it will, and you can’t say that nobody warned you, because we are warning you, and we are documenting everything.
You need to do what these wise and experienced women are recommending. They are the people who know Best, because they spend every day of their working lives immersed in it.

Can I be awkward and ask a few questions?
Are mods volunteers or paid?
If volunteers how many are there?
What's the turnover of mods like?
Having spent years on message boards I wonder if MN has many actual paid staff. Despite being such an well known website the mod team would need to be fairly big. So I'm happy to be proven wrong but I suspect many mods are volunteering, and many find it stressful (hence turnover).
Finally, I know I'm new but this is a free site, clearly the members have made it what it is but I'm also pretty sure that if this particular board were to cause MN financial loss (malicious litigation), it would be closed down. If mods were trained to spot coercive or manipulative behaviour and responded accordingly, and then a pattern of posters being banned (you know the type) is formed, there's the possibility of forming a case that MN is censoring (you know the type) or is (yktt)-ist. Threats to advertisers, a few malicious lawsuits and suddenly this board is costing money. The court cases are expensive to lose and expensive to win - AND would rely on the legals/judges having had the same training on being able to spot coercive/manipulative posts, AND would rely on them valuing that knowledge AND assuming no inbuilt bias towards (yktt) or against feminists, AND not leaning towards "freeze peach" for (yktt), AND not considering banning offensive posters as effective no-platforming hence hypocritical.
Hope that makes sense, but I can see why MN wouldn't want to get any more involved in modding than they already are.

Just catching up on that ROGD post. Crikey.

I’d like to ask you @MNHQ, do you want to be complicit in the dilution of safeguarding for children? Do you want to be complicit in the overt grooming of vulnerable parents on your parenting website? Do you want to be complicit in the abuse and silencing of women on your feminist messageboard?
See, that's focussing on the content. It's either a forum for discussion where all sides are heard, however ludicrous (with rules in place for "hate speech" or anything potentially libellous) or it isn't.
For a team of mods to read, evaluate and consider the content, meaning and post history of each post would be impossible.
What would be even worse is if the moderator team took the training being suggested, agreed with the majority of posters on here and then banned certain posters as I described above. You'd have to explain the whole line of thinking re. abusive/coercive/manipulative posting and prove the mods' judgement was sound and based on training, which would be a nightmare to do.

Turp, that would be all fine and dandy if the women on here weren’t being censored left right and centre, and for things that need to be said.
When women who work in the area of safeguarding are having posts removed where they expressed concern about the dilution of safeguarding practice, it is clear that there is a problem. Especially against the backdrop of all the abusive posts that are reported, but still left to stand.
The women on here have chosen their words very carefully since the guidelines changed, to avoid accumulating strikes and getting banned, but we see the goalposts changing before our eyes.

HotRocker I agree, I can see it happening. But where's the commercial motivation for MN to embroil themselves further?

For the sake of clarity, MNHQ DOESN'T MODERATE THE SITE.

There are too many posts daily for them to be moderated. MNHQ has a community team that responds to requests and reports from its users.

They only get involved in moderating threads after the event, and then only when threads are reported to them.

Thanks for clarifying.

I think most regular posters understand that the members are expected to be proactive in reporting inappropriate posts as the first step in the mod system.
There is a learning curve, however. The more times members are told that abusive behavior is not a violation of talk guidelines the less likely members will be to report abusive behavior.