I’ve got no deep understanding of the mysterious ways of mumsnet but the last few dozen posts have led me to a) wonder whether there is any daily limit on the posting of popcorn emojis here and b) think back to my first visit to Guardian Unlimited Talk about 20 years ago. Before I read anything over there, let alone posted, I meekly studied the board’s guidelines, feeling more and more unworthy with each line of board policy as it demanded that people stay on the very specific topic of each thread, etc.
I imagined - if I could ever summon up the courage - clicking through to a bunch of high-minded academic sorts analysing each issue within very strictly-defined, narrow parameters. Then I snuck in and found a bunch of people shouting often seemingly random (albeit usually at least A-C, A Level graded) opinions and insults at each other from various rooftops, others offering tea and biscuits to all and sundry, some discussing early generation reality TV shows in the finest ways you could ever imagine, and even a small and noble few actually staying on the very specific topic of a particular thread about the microclimate of southern Lowestoft in an average November, or whatever.
Some years later, I recall a single Presidential election thread in the USA folder on GUT racking up a quarter of a million posts at a start date-onwards rate that (IIRC) implied about one post every two minutes, 24 hours per day (but which none of the “regular” salt-of-the-earth real UK-based posters contributed to in any meaningful way, other than when it came to trying to bag post number 250,000 - a fruitless task given that deletions were allowed and posts renumbered as a result, but that’s by the by) .
Looooong posts they often were, too, some may even have been almost as long as this one. Nobody posting there could realistically have been reading them all, any more than any of you will have made it this far through this one. Maybe it was an early experiment in bots. Maybe it was just people talking past each other, at a greater speed than people normally do.
So, it takes all sorts. It appears that some people here are fine with us n00bs having a “general” women’s and girls’ rights thread and others aren’t. If a definitive decision has to be made on it, it sounds like there are better-equipped mods here than back in our old place to do that, and in the meantime we’re all real people trying to muddle along (and, as far as I can see, almost all very much on the same side of the fundamental argument when it comes to Mermaids, etc.)
Personally, I think it can be useful (generally, not just on this subject) to have summary threads as well as specific threads - some people might read each of them, some might just follow the summary (especially when it is - at least initially - a group of people who had for months been forced into a single thread on another board and are used to talking with each other in this way, rather than even being permitted to consider having a separate thread for Mermaids, a thread for women’s sports, a thread for women’s prisons, a thread for toilets, a thread for kids’ shop (Hi, Primark) changing rooms, etc.) In reality, there’s a huge amount of overlap in the key elements anyway, so there’s risk in splintering the arguments as much as there is in combining them.
No doubt as time goes on, everyone will move around other threads and I’m pretty sure we’re all already at least lurking on them, but there’s more to some conversations than anonymous words on a screen, otherwise why even bother having usernames rather than every post just being under “anonymous”? Friendship and history are part of the solidarity on this topic, and others, and I’d really miss seeing familiar “faces”if everyone e.g. changed names and vanished into multiple threads. Though I suppose some of us would recognise each other before too long.
I’m relieved and grateful to have been able to regroup here last weekend at basically zero notice though we would have found another way if we’d had to because the Wrong Side of History is nothing if not resourceful. So, thanks to those who have welcomed us, from those who still think this thread (v2, v3, etc.) is okay to keep to those who think we should bin it after a week and to everyone in between. This is indeed a very big site, so hopefully there’s plenty of room for everyone, and it’s been great to see people engaging with us. While I really want to continue to see the familiar names on my screen, it’s honestly a breath of fresh air to see new (to me) pro-women&children/ GC names too.
TL;DR. Gametes.