I totally agree. That is very sad and really unfair. I think people should just talk about future baby names and all sorts. There is plenty of room for that. I toally agree with @casilda. they should post fake babies in the name games forum. There is just no point of that.
This is the reason I donât comment on birth announcements for twins, triplets etc. because I think 90% of them are fake. Itâs sad the people feel the need to invent fake children.
Personally, I have been surprised that Nameberry hasnât initialized a process for confirming births before now. I think the one-sock feet picture with the babyâs name written on paper is a pretty ingenious idea. It preserves privacy, doesnât exclude home births, and makes photoshopping inconvenient.
It might also be worth considering leaving the Birth Announcements forum as it is, and adding a dedicated link on Nameberry allowing parents to submit their childâs name directly to [name_f]Pam[/name_f]/[name_f]Linda[/name_f]/site administrators. This could require the foot/name photograph, or something else. If a picture were only going to the administrators and had guaranteed privacy from them â you know, that the pictures are only for confirmation purposes and get deleted after X months or whatever, and Iâm not going to load up Nameberry someday and find myself in one of the blog slide-show features or something like that â I wouldnât object to more stringent requirements, like sending a picture of myself with the baby and the name written out. Or even a full family picture with the babyâs name written out, since I have one of those large families which, while rare, are actually legit. I think it would be worthwhile to go through a screening process, because Iâm afraid many people do think my large family is fake. I donât blame them; it would put up red flags for me, too â but if the administrators approved my familyâs legitimacy, other Berries could know Iâm not a fake while I would maintain my familyâs privacy. A screening process for the official blog seems both prudent and fair in my estimation.
@saracita00 - I think thatâs an ingenious idea, but it seems like so much work! I think it would cause a lot of new mothers quite a hassle to go through all of these guidelines just to prove their birth is legit.
Whatâs going to stop people to take a photo of their niece/nephew/little siblings foot and submit it?
Itâs sad that there are fakers, but this is the internet, itâs going to happen.
I donât think most people that are fakers would care enough to find a random baby and take a picture. There are some that would go to that extreme though⌠but it would greatly reduce the overall number of fakers.
@teatime - I think youâre probably right that those babies arenât real, but they werenât deliberately posted twice. Somebody commented on the original thread from last year, which is why it was bumped to the beginning of the announcements page and was accidentally included in the most recent quarterly report. This happened for about a dozen babies who were accidentally reported twice.
I think trolling is impossible to stop. Sad that itâs so common, especially for genuine mothers of multiples whose stories are sometimes doubted, but thatâs the internet.
This is all very true. Unfortunately, there is no way to stop it completely. Oh well, I guess.
I do wish trolling would stop thereâs no pressure on this site to be a mother which is something I love about the site. Hopefully the trolls wilk see this and change there mind but most trolls seem to get caught.
A photo of the birth certificate but covering the surnames for privacy reasons? Pretty extreme though and some certificates take ages to issue.
To me Itâs kind of the equivalent of people going into chatrooms pretending to be someone they are not. I donât like it but I guess I will just not reply to posts that donât interest me or seem authentic.
Or a photo of the babyâs hospital cot card with the name on it but covering up the sirname.
Again, not everyone gives birth in a hospital. I had a hospital birth with my first but there was no cot anyway - they encouraged co-sleeping. Things like that also mean that if you forget about it while at hospital (I canât imagine nameberry is top of everyoneâs minds when theyâve just given birth) you can never contribute.
I donât think there is any way to authenticate posters, you just have to accept that trolling happens. As frustrating as that is.
So annoying - when I was looking on here for name advice ten months ago I really used the announcement lists precisely because I wanted to see what was currently on the rise that wouldnât show on the official lists for another 12 months. It didnât influence the final decision but it could have. Tiresome people, you have the whole internet for your fantasies - go annoy someone else, pregnant ladies are tired and too hormonal to be trying to figure out fakery.
this literally made me LOL. ;D
[name_m]Ah[/name_m] yes, I see now. I should have been more diligent in looking back for the original post. [name_f]Mea[/name_f] culpa! Iâm sorry if I offended anyone. Sadly, I donât have much time to go digging through the archives anymore, as my one year old is wellâŚa one year old. Heâs incredibly tall and dexterous and can escape any clothing no matter how securely you think it is fastened. I prayed for him and wanted him desperately and am thankful every single minute to have him, but I surely do not wish he was twins. Perhaps if he were, heâd only be half so mischievous? Sadly, I can blame no one but myself for his mischiefâŚI was a horrible child.
I donât think it makes sense to go to any great lengths to try to âauthenticateâ birth announcements in the forum. For one thing, it would just take more time and energy than itâs worth to screen them. Plus, I think it would mostly just discourage people from sharing their real birth announcements, because who has time to do all that when you have a newborn? I wasnât yet a member of Nameberry when my daughter was born, but if I had I would have been posting about her birth one-handed at 2am while breastfeeding. Trolls will troll. All forums have to deal with some amount of trolling. The best thing we can do to maybe reduce the incidents of birth announcement trolling is to ignore the post and donât comment if we think itâs a troll. Theyâre only doing it for attention.
@sarahmezzâIâm afraid Iâm guilty of inadvertently repeating those announcements from last quarterâIâll be more careful in the future. Itâs gotten really difficult to manage the sheer numbersâreal and maybe notâso weâre considering doing it monthly instead of quarterly.
I totally agree with this. The fakery is annoying, but thereâs no way as a mom of a newborn and three other kids that I would bother with photographing hospital bracelets or birth certificates or even submitting my babyâs photo to prove he is âreal.â I think that we would lose a very large number of legitimate announcements by requiring such extreme measures to prove peopleâs babies are real.
There are so many announcements that are obviously real because the parents in question have been on the forums debating names for months before the birth (Iâm just dying to know whether joyfulmomto8 will choose [name_f]Grace[/name_f] or [name_f]Caroline[/name_f], for example). But trolls will be trolls, and as others have said it is the internet. Not much we can do about it.
I agree with the above poster. This is a online forum there is going to be trolling unfortunately. Itâs just how it is and really not a big deal because you can tell usually whatâs real or what isnât. Itâs a forum
Honestly, I think a large problem is that members are allowed to continue faking after extremely persuasive evidence is posted against them. I know Nameberry has a reputation for being âniceâ - but sometimes the lengths mods will go to to prevent conflict is a bit ridiculous. Iâve seen threads locked by mods because someone was accused of faking (WITH evidence of contradictions in earlier posts), and people were discussing it. No action has been taken, in the threads Iâve observed, to remove/correct these members. In fact, Iâve seen several go on to stay on the board for quite some time afterwards, keeping their stories going!
Maybe faking is inevitable - but that doesnât mean Nameberry mods/members should just turn a blind eye when itâs incredibly obvious that somethingâs up. I think Nameberryâs a really interesting site in terms of the names and lists it has available, as well as the interesting tastes of members - but I can tell you right now that a LOT of other name sites out there roll their eyes at the mention of its forums/birth announcements/popularity statistics, due to the vast number of fakers. Most sites have a pretty strong zero-tolerance policy for faking, and I think thatâs a good thing. If not full-out banning a member (which I know may seem a bit harsh compared to the current rules), I donât see the harm in suspensions. Give them a bit of time to consider what theyâve done, observe how the board works, and come back as themselves.
You really canât have a healthy community when members seeking parenting advice are getting suggestions from 14-year-olds claiming to be the mothers of seven children. If the board makes it clear in their rules that faking isnât allowed, and that teen members are more than welcome, I think people who genuinely want to talk about names, rather than playing an online game of The Sims and getting attention/praise via birth announcements, will get the idea.