Thread 2: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of linguistic transphobia on Mumsnet

[VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia]

At fewer than 20 posts left, time for part two.

Thread 1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5057460-a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet

Site Stuff thread that tipped off MNHQ: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5057903-mumsnet-corpus

So I can only assume the gerbils are red herrings and splitists who dont want FWR as a community to work together.

As Justine is still waiting for a further response from Aston both threads seem to be in a holding pattern. From reading the other thread a large chunk today has been about the use of the term playing in the sandbox and whether it's right or wrong. Some discussion on getting mnhq to delete some users posts, a bit of convo about datasets and the rights of using them and the tweet that picked up the site stuff thread a few hours ago.

This thread has spent today messing with the results of the data scrapers if it happens again! And illustrating to Aston who are most likely reading that mumsnet users have varied ways of showing their displeasure and derision.

Current stats on the tweet

56.5K views
102 reposts and 16 quote posts.

https://twitter.com/AudreySuffolk/status/1783499260484260352?s=19

It's no longer just known about by mumsnet!

https://twitter.com/SarahPedersen2/status/1783564154558726564?s=19

"This whole debate demonstrates the incredible facility of Mumsnetters to research, debate and learn from each other. It also demonstrates that you shouldn’t underestimate or piss off @MumsnetTowers"

Sorry but sometimes I don't get sarcasm and jokes and I didn't know if you were being sarcastic and jokey, or if you were voicing a serious concern about a real division.

I echo what Beetle's just said.

It also makes a lot of sense for the Site Thread to be the repository of serious stuff and for anything serious being talked about here to be flagged with them so they don't miss it, because there'll be a ton going on behind the scenes and reducing what they need to follow seems sensible. On our side of MN, we are all treading water at the moment whichever thread it is.

If anyone is busy scraping, or plans to scrape, any more data here, it seemed to be productive to be messing around with the stuff they might be stealing on this thread, be it irrelevant, confusing, gobbledegook, or annoying topics, or frequently changing names, or anything else that might mess it up just a little bit. I'd be happy to stop it immediately if needed.

Thank you so much. I'll be getting a t shirt soon.

As for the profits, maybe a poll?

I'm willing for it to be kept for gardening, but I'm sure others will have opinions on which charities might need it more.

More merch tomorrow or at the weekend depending on how busy I am forced to be at work. But with a bit of luck, logos.

Also, would there be a market for tote bags which say Foucault Addled Gender Gerbils on them? In proper words or gobbledegook?

I have finally caught up on all these threads and just wanted to the thread topic before returning to the gerbils.

One thing that has stuck in my head since learning about the full scraping of MN, is that the supposed purpose of the sandbox is to improve forensic linguistics for identifying criminals. The examples of possible criminality given included paedophiles and far right extremists, both of which I assume are 99% male crimes. Yet Aston are training their AI LLM on female linguistic patterns. Why?

We have all had the experience of being able to identify male posters on these boards from writing style alone. I'm sure not all men write in a typically male way, but it's definitely a thing we'd usually recognise even if we don't know how. So why, when these differences are obvious to a complete pleb like me, would an academic in forensic linguistics be ignorant of this? And if they are not, what is the purpose of targeting one of the few majority female websites to train AI to spot male linguistics patterns?

Oh and on returning to the Gerbils, I would love a tote bag in non-addled text.

Ooh love me a tote bag.

I love the proper spelling, I love the steampunk cat/gerbil in one of boileds posts back thattaway (see I'm using words I've never before used)
I would buy everything with that steampunk cat/ gerbil on. Everything. And the words of course, not sure itll all fit on a tote or a tshirt.

@MoltenLasagne , that is a very good point.

I've been finding it interesting to try to vary my style of writing with each username and I've found it hard, but not impossible, to do that in a subtle way. I'm going to try to find some examples of the problematic men's posts and see if I can work out what it is about them that makes them so obvious. I wonder if Aston believes that all the posters on here including the men are female. If so, the problematic men would probably love it but it could really mess with the PhD research results if the sex of the posters needed to be accounted for.

I would be interested in ethically-conducted research into whether autistic women's writing is distinguishable from neurotypical women's and from both autistic and neurotypical men's.

That would be a reasonable corpus linguistics PhD topic for Eden.

Toujours gai! Toujours gai!

Sex Matters is a charity now?
FiLIA?
JKR's Beira's Place is not a charity or I'd recommend that

I think there's a list on FWR if I search through my memory.

I've bought a T-shirt in gobbledygook, happy to go to sex matters charity or Party of Women.

This is an interesting point. I think the answer is that they are training and testing their tool to recognise individuals by picking up on subtle characteristic patterns in their writing. What those patterns actually are shouldn't affect how good the tool is at doing this, as the tool is trying to locate an individual against a backdrop of noise.

In reality, there may well be a problem here. It might turn out for example that MN users (and women in general) have greater variety in writing styles, or something like that.

They do have another three undisclosed forums and these may be of a dramatically different user base, so maybe the idea is to test the tool across different user bases to see if it works across demographis.

I'm reminded of the film Dances with Wolves, in which the actors playing the Lakota tribesmen were taught by a Lakota woman. Apparently the Lakota language has a female and male variant, so that the big strong male warriors ended up talking the female way.

Edit: big strong warriors, not worriers... Although maybe they were worriers too. If MN has taught me anything it's that being a worrier is not incompatible with being a warrior.

This one?

Love it.

I feel as if the cat in the picture has just received the VC's statement about 'believing they have legitimate rights to use MN (stolen) data', and is deciding what form attack should come in. Direct, claws out, or the sneaky, sidling up silently first variety.

No I haven't. Thank you so much. I didn't know about it. I'm now trying to work out the logistics of visiting. It's a very long way!

@AgathaAllAlong 'I'm reminded of the film Dances with Wolves, in which the actors playing the Lakota tribesmen were taught by a Lakota woman. Apparently the Lakota language has a female and male variant, so that the big strong male warriors ended up talking the female way.'

Doesn't this happen with Japanese, as well? I thought I'd heard of an Englishman learning Japanese from a woman, & ending up being overly deferential.

@Boiledbeetle Can you get me the highest res version and it can indeed be on products of every kind.

We could do mugs although my previous experience has been a bit iffy. But if people want to take a punt I’m game.

And thank you @PhDinaseive you are the first customer of Gerbils Inc.

When I want to be a completely different poster say I wanted to discuss something relevant but it revealed I didn't in fact live in deepest darkest Peru, or I wish to discuss how difficult it is to live as a billionaire in Britain today, I find it very tiring trying to make sure my posts don't sound like me, don't have any of my repeated frequently wrong spellings, don't use my turn of phrase. Etc. So I do wonder if my posts when I'm trying not to be me under various usernames could all be linked, and whether the AI would also be able to link that group back to me!

I can totally understand why Aston uni wanted (and unfortunately decided to just take rather than doing the right thing and bloody asking first) this data set. The possibilities of what the AI could do with it are limitless and I do wish in some ways we could see it in action.

I had assumed Aston assumed some posters are men, but given that they seem from info found over the last few days not to have understood how this site works I'm not so sure now! Imagine if all their assumptions turned out to be as bad as their ethics are?

Done.

@ifIwerenotanandroid This sounds fairly plausible.

Japanese has other weirdnesses too. You can choose between different words for I depending not just on the status of who you are speaking to but also how you want to be perceived by the listener - say one of the lads or quite conventional. Some of these, if I remember rightly are gendered but others are unisex.

I would read an academic article on this.

This one <hopeful>

In white on green or violet <pushing it>