BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Not married - no kids - disability choice

Each poster who was removed did say in their final post (or in a PM to me) that they no longer wanted to post on this forum. I am very certain of that - we very rarely remove people from the forum and only when it is asked for.

For those who wonder why we aren't currently flooded with new posters, I think the last 5 posts make it very clear why they are not. The reason they were not posting before was because of the hostility. That hostility is still quite apparent here. Some people may thrive on conflict and love to rant and vent - but many people do not. Those people will not enter a forum area filled with posts such as the above ones. So by continuing to be hostile, you are keeping those posters from feeling this is a safe haven to enter and join.

BellaOnline exists for *all* members - from all parts of the world, from all cultures. This forum here is explicitly for "married no kids" - but we have it open to those who are NOT married and we have it open to those who DO have kids. That is how the entire BellaOnline system is structured. It is a core part of our mission.

Part of the reason we added the banner and will be adding other changes is to make this area *more* safe for healthy discussion. We had seen trolls and bingoers coming in here and disturbing you. These changes are making it more clear to incoming people that this forum is explicitly for MARRIED NO KIDS and that there should not be any complaints about that way of life - no statements about "you will learn to love kids" or so on. So we are actively working to make sure this area is a more safe haven for MNK members.

But the other side of the coin is that it needs to be open to ALL members in a warm, welcoming manner. The rants and word choices were actively driving away people who ARE "mnk" people. That is not the way BellaOnline is designed. We do not create forums that drive people away who we intend to support.

I would think, as MNK individuals, that you would want to be helping these groups of MNK visitors who really want support - but who currently feel afraid of the hostility they continue to see thrown about in here.

Please consider - just for two weeks - posting supportive messages on MNK topics and not continuing the rants. See what happens. Two weeks is not a long time to be positive and supportive, and it would demonstrate to the many "watchers" that they could be happy here.

If there are no "rants" though, what would the supportive comments be supporting? I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm totally serious. Someone is hurt and belittled, they come here to vent, it comes out sounding like a rant. I don't think we can say something like "no rants" without defining what a rant is and realizing that it's not something specific. It'll be something different to everyone.

I'm not sure that we said no rants - I would have to go back and look at exactly what Kim wrote in her rules and I need to board my plane. I think what we said was to please avoid "breeder" as it was upsetting many MNK lurkers (as I guess we can call them) who didn't want to post because of it.

In rants, the issue was more that it seemed to the MNK lurkers that every single post was a rant of some sort. If you go back through the archives you can get a sense of what they were talking about. So certainly if someone's mother screams at them for an hour about having kids, that is abusive, that person should come tell us and we should all give them advice about what to do and how to get some distance from that person. So they are calling for help and we are all helping them. That is what we are here for.

I don't think the people who wrote me were upset about that. They were upset about the many long threads about "I saw a bad kid here" "Well I saw a bad kid there".

Shoot gotta run!! More later! But I hope that makes it more clear.

I find it incredibly sad that some people lack the will power to just push that little red X in the corner when they visit a website that is upsetting to them.
Perhaps you could create a "MNK-lite" forum?

Although I never said anything about it, I did think the term breeder felt -- especially the way I generally was reading it -- derogatory, as if that was the ONLY thing a person who had a child or children did in life. In case anyone cares. ;-)

But otherwise, I think most of the negativity was directed more towards either people who had children but didn't actually parent them, something conscientious parents loathe, too, or at those who assail CF's decision to be such. And that certainly is appropriate, just as someone who's had a miscarriage might rant against someone telling them it's for the best or some other idiocy.