Oblomov I agree we need to take care. Re your question,I don't remember any discussion on the specific question of whether MNers want to invite so many high-profile politicians onto the livechats, and wade in so fully with all the publicity opportunities that have been presented by politicians characterising this election as the 'Mumsnet election' (i.e. an election in which 'mothers' are regarded as key floating voters, and online forums are regarded as key electioneering platforms.
There have been related discussions. The Campaigns and Alliances thread seemed to show a lot of support and very little opposition for the idea of using Mumsnet as an oportunity for users to push certain campaigns, e.g around miscarriage and breastfeeding. The controversy over the proposed Mumsnet-approved Daily Mail column showed a lot of mistrust and reluctance about too heavy encouragement of press interest in the talkboard.
Naturally MNHQ want to use the politician and media interest as much as possible for promotion of the site, and quite a few MNers seem to have an interest in developing MN as a political voice.
BUT I think it also true to say that an awful lot of others are either uninterested in using MN in this way or rather dismayed by the intensity of the new MN/media relationship. I was shocked to discover the other day that an MNer had been approached via CAT by the Daily Mail, who had an interest in a thread she had started. It is a bit dismaying that the press feels so much at home here that it thinks it appropriate to use a contact service that is specifically for members to get in touch with one another.
What I think is important is that these new political and campaigning aspects of MN should not be represented as the 'voice' of MN, and that MN itself should not be represented as a political actor. Because the reality is that the vocally political element of MN is just one aspect of an increasingly large and diverse usership. I would prefer it if these new political aspects of MN had their own well-signalled space and identity on the site.
That way, structures could be developed to make sure that when MNHQ purported to speak for a politically engaged usership they were clearly speaking for all and only those members of the site (a site too big and fractured now to be called a community) who had expressed an interest in political engagement.
MN's primary purpose is support by parents for parents, and this isn't always best given on a forum that is hitting the papers every day. And for many of use it is just a quirky and refreshingly frank place to talk -- private, not in the sense of being confidential (which it clearly isn't) but in the sense of being an autonomous space that exists for its members, not as a resource for outside interests. We expect to be overheard if we talk loudly in a pub. We don't expect the landlord to encourage the world to come in and sit around us with notepads.