@ trash!
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin ...
Years ago, in 2008 to be precise, some MNetters decided that the growth of MN was Not A Good Thing, and that it had resulted in a watering down of the general intelligence of the site. So they decided to set up their own, exclusive site.
However, having done this, they realised that there weren't really enough of them to make it interesting enough, so they agreed that they needed to invite more people to join them. And where to invite them from? Why, MN of course!
But. They also realised, quickly, that they didn't just want any old MNetter to join them. Oh no. That way madness would lie - so they decided that they would have to nominate people for membership, and that a committee would have to approve people for membership.
The criteria for approval are not really known/understood, but they could be as vague as 'I don't know who this person is', rather than anything more specific. Which led to a number of people being told that they'd been put forward for membership, but then had been refused.
This all happened just before the London Christmas meet-up. And led to all manner of upset, when people realised that they'd been socialising with their 'friends', not knowing that all that time they were Moldies, and/or that they had been blackballed from joining.
To add insult to injury, the Moldies invited Justine to join them. Justine admitted at the time that knowing that this had happened, had had her in tears. (You have to remember that the site was a lot smaller then than it is now, and so this 'breakaway' must have been massively hurtful for her).
And various members of Moldies kept coming back on to MN trying to defend what had been going on, saying things like "we talk about all the same kinds of things that you do on MN - you're really not missing anything". Like that was going to make people feel any better about it.
It was massive. Christmas 2008 was marked by a series of threads where the number of posts was allowed to exceed the 1000 mark - up to 3000, I think. Despite Carrie coming on to the boards several times and asking people to stop posting about it, that just didn't happen. Lots of posters were really hurt by the whole thing. Especially those who had friends who suddenly disappeared.
It may sound silly now, but it actually made the national press as well, as it was such a huge upheaval on the site.