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Original poster

Lang Cleg 2

9 replies

TiredofthisBSbutIstandwithLang · 22/01/2020 12:17

New thread as we got to 1000.

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MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/01/2020 14:14

Hi all and thanks for your many comments. We do understand that LangCleg was a much loved poster and it’s clear that she obviously also has a great deal of expertise that Mumsnetters find helpful. But we just can’t exist in a situation where users are persistently aggressive towards, and disparaging of, our moderation team, who are simply trying to do a fair and decent job applying our guidelines. We’ve been pretty clear about this: from my statement on moderation principles for discussions around gender identity and sex ‘One thing we can simply no longer tolerate, however, is rudeness and aggression towards our mod team’.

LangCleg has had over 60 posts deleted and we have emailed many times to politely request that she post within our rules. There is zero evidence that these posts were targeted by Trans Rights Activists - reports were overwhelmingly from regular Mumsnet users. From our correspondence it’s clear that she simply can’t accept our guidelines - which is, of course, her prerogative but you must understand that at some point we need to draw the line. As Mumsnet CEO, I have to take the welfare of our mod team into account. I don’t imagine any of you would be particularly happy if your boss stood by and simply let people be rude to and about you (in direct opposition to your stated policies). So we’ve had to conclude, sadly, that Mumsnet isn’t the place for LangCleg.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/01/2020 15:23

@VortexofBloggery

Ha! Putting the boot in after she's gone. Naice. Not.

Well we'd rather not discuss individual bans Vortex, as we've said before, but in this case (judging by posts on this thread and the last) I'm not sure folks would have accepted our discretion. We don't share this type of information lightly.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/01/2020 15:23

@FemiLANGul

With respect *@JustineMumsnet*

Worraloadashite

Which bits exactly?

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/01/2020 15:26

@DuLANGMondeFOREVER

As none of is have witnessed rudeness or aggression I suppose it’s possible that Lang has been sending abusive emails/private messages?

Seems unlikely, mind you. 😂

We've got a whole load of examples of rudeness to mods Dulang, but as just said we'd rather not share private messages publicly if we can avoid it.

MNHQ

MichaelMumsnet · 22/01/2020 16:35

Just to be clear about the rudeness in question - it came down to repeated accusations that we're coercively controlling. It's a nasty accusation that has an impact on staff wellbeing and it's one of the places where we draw the line.

We don't think our moderators should have to be 'robust' in the face of rudeness. It makes for an unpleasant and demotivating work environment, and we don't think it's too much to ask that users avoid being rude to moderators in the first place.

MNHQ

MichaelMumsnet · 22/01/2020 17:14

[quote Mossyrock]@MichaelMumsnet I think that you have misunderstood.

Yes, Lang's view, as I understood it, was that the moderators were subject to coercive control by the monitors (i.e. those activists who monitor posts on FWR and target various posters for deletion - see the Twitterer above).[/quote]

It's been repeatedly asserted that we were both abusers and proxies for abuse at various times - and the distinction doesn't feel very important when you're on the receiving end of it.

MNHQ

MichaelMumsnet · 22/01/2020 17:33

[quote CousinKrispy]**@michaelmumsnet* and @justinemumsnet*, thanks for your responses. I can understand that it's not appropriate for you to share private messages from a poster, and that you need to maintain the well-being of staff. It's no good continually losing hard-working mods to burnout!

I would really appreciate further detail, however, about what falls within the "unacceptably robust" category.

Many of us do not intend abuse or aggression but may express ourselves strongly or bluntly. Sometimes this is due to being from a different culture or being on the spectrum, or simply being at a point in one's life when one believes it's ok for women to be blunt (as long as we're not abusive) rather than softening everything we say (maybe we're gender nonconforming in that way!)

How can we help reduce the burden on your moderation team, while ensuring that posters with a valuable contribution aren't banned unnecessarily, and have an open debate on controversial issues? If being robust isn't acceptable, how can we learn to judge that better?

Or is it possible that robustness canbe ok after all? As someone from another culture who struggles with British norms sometimes, I find this very worrying.[/quote]

Good question - we've always welcomed constructive criticism, much more so than most other forums we can think of, and we don't have a problem with users challenging individual decisions (as users are doing here) or aspects of our rules; what's not on is 'rudeness and aggression' as Justine has outlined before. Accusing us of abusive behaviour - repeatedly, and after we have explained many times that we don't think it's acceptable to accuse us of this - falls pretty clearly into the 'rudeness' category, we think.

MNHQ

HebeMumsnet · 22/01/2020 17:44

Hello everyone.

I'm not actually working now but wanted to quickly come in and clarify the accusations made on Twitter today. Thanks to those of you who instantly doubted the story, it meant a lot, truly.

We think we've been in contact with most of you enough times for you to know that those aren't the sort of chats we have with members, and certainly not with a PBP.

That said, if a member reports a concern and we say we will keep an eye on things, then sure, that's what we'd do. That's our job.
Sorry for the delay in responding today, but thanks for the support, those of you who did.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 23/01/2020 18:04

Hi again, I want to just address this coercive control question because the overriding impression on this thread and the previous one seems to be that MNHQ has been played, that lots of external folks with a specific agenda are reporting maliciously, and that regular MN users are getting strikes/being banned as a result.

I'm confident we've been doing this for long enough to know if someone's maliciously abusing the system and rest assured we do and would ban anyone we considered to be vexatiously reporting in this way.

Furthermore, we’ve looked at the data and LangCleg was reported by 53 different users. Of those, 51 were regular posters (as in they had an established posting history before they reported her); one reported her before posting anything on Mumsnet but went on to become a regular poster. But frankly even if all 53 of those reporters had been lurkers - or even people who aren’t registered MN users - it wouldn’t make many odds; posts either break our guidelines or they don’t and LangCleg not only frequently broke them with her posts but from our correspondence about them with her, clearly found the rules impossible to accept.

Also I want to make it clear that in our opinion this was a case of genuine and continuing disparagement of and rudeness to our mod team - persistent accusations that Mumsnet mods are proxies, behaving coercively and/or abusively, which as I’ve said previously is incredibly demotivating as well as deeply unfair (and against our stated terms of use). It had got to the point that our team were reluctant to engage with LC because they found her obvious contempt upsetting. Obviously different people have different tolerances for this sort of thing, but as said before we have a duty of care to the people who work here and at a certain point - and after plenty of really clear warnings - we really have to draw the line.

One last thing: Mumsnet is a site for debate and often robust disagreement, a principle for which we have risked a great deal throughout our 20-year history and even more so over the past couple of years. As such it’s really not on for one group of users to declare that their position/ argument is the only one that is acceptable and to deliberately make it difficult for those who disagree, to post. (Those of you who’ve been with us over the long haul will remember this happening on other boards before - the one that springs to mind is The Dog House - where we’ve felt compelled to act to diffuse what had become an aggressive orthodoxy.) We’ve made some deletions on this thread where we feel users holding minority viewpoints have come under attack simply for posting, rather than for their opinions, and I’d respectfully ask you all to please be sure in future you’re playing the ball and not the poster so we can continue to host this important debate.

Many thanks.

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