To wonder what 'the spirit of mumsnet' is.

Afternoon! Thought I would pop in uninvited as I might know the answer to this one. I don't often know the answer.

There's no 'rule' about what is and isn't in the spirit (I missed the memo if there is) but a lot of the examples given above could fall under that category, I reckon. I tend to think of it as things that aren't set out as forbidden in the talk guidelines but probably would be if we had endless time and thought people would read 30,000 pages of talk guidelines.

As a general rule of thumb I always ask myself if a post is 'making parents' lives easier' as that's meant to be what we're here for. It doesn't HAVE to be doing that job of course but if it's very clearly the precise opposite of that, then I'd think it's not in the spirit of what we're trying to achieve. That's not to say we would delete threads that had opinions that go against the grain, either. We do like a robust discussion. But if it's horrible AND pointless AND going badly and not likely to recover, personally I wouldn't see the point in the thread continuing.

Does that help? You might get someone else from MNHQ along who'll have something to add. It's definitely not an exact science but that's a fair idea, I think.

Talk

To wonder what 'the spirit of mumsnet' is.