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MNHQ

Measles outbreak and MMR vaccinations: live webchat with Department of Health director of immunisation Professor David Salisbury, Tuesday 9 April, 2-3pm

19 replies

GeraldineMumsnet · 08/04/2013 16:40

In light of the measles outbreaks in South Wales and higher than average levels of measles in some areas of England, and concerns reflected in MNers' discussions, we've invited Professor David Salisbury, the government's director of immunisation, back to MN to be our webchat guest tomorrow, Tuesday 9 April, at 2pm.

Please post any questions you have about the MMR vaccine for your children, or yourself, to Professor Salisbury.

Thank you.

Go to post
MNHQ

GeraldineMumsnet · 09/04/2013 13:56

Hello, Professor Salisbury is ready to start in a couple of minutes.

Thank you to him for coming on at short notice and thanks to everyone who has posted questions.

MNHQ

GeraldineMumsnet · 09/04/2013 14:36

Given the number of questions and time limit of an hour, please can you everyone stick to one question. Will give Prof Salisbury time to answer questions higher up the thread. Thanks v much.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2013 15:37

@saintlyjimjams

OMG silverfrog you were deleted!!! Was that the one where you said he didn't really answer anything.

Shame on you MNHQ :waits for post to go pop:

The post wasn't deleted because of what it said but because of the way it was said. Of course folks are allowed to disagree/scrutinise/question - there's loads of of that going on here - but we thought the "thanks for giving up your precious Hmm time" was rude and was therefore deleted for breaking our webchat guidelines.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2013 15:53

@silverfrog

Justine, I did NOT say 'thanks for giving up your precious Hmm time.'

I said
'well, that was informative Hmm.

thanks to Dr David for giving up his precious time. '

please do not misrepresent in that way.

Yes sorry you are right - it was the "precious" time that seemed unnecessarily rude to us - worth taking a look at our webchat guidelines to avoid being deleted in future. Thanks.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2013 15:54

@infamouspoo

I'm intrigued at how MNHQ can tell our tone through the computer Wink
MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2013 16:11

@saintlyjimjams

I don't think anyone was rude to him were they? Considering some of us have severely disabled children who may (or may not) have been affected by vaccination I think emotion was kept well out of it, it was polite and valid questions were asked (and on the whole not answered).

It is allowed to point out when he hasn't really given the details requested surely?

Yes, of course SJJ - as lots have on the thread, no?

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2013 16:13

@saintlyjimjams

'Well that was informative Hmm ' is too rude for mumsnet now? Really.

And he did give vague answers. It was disappointing.

No, it was use of word "precious", as explained - seemed sarky and rude to me.

MNHQ

RebeccaMumsnet · 09/04/2013 20:43

Hi all,

We have a couple of new posters who are posting with links on a single issue and under normal circs, posts would be removed when reported and this has been done on this occasion in good faith.

However, we can see how this could be viewed as being a little over zealous, apologies. We are certainly not trying to silence critics.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2013 20:51

@silverfrog

did you actually read any of the posts, and wonder whether deleting them would be seen as silencing people with valid experience (I won't say critics because, tbh, it was a personal account borne out of experience)

I would not find it odd that a poster would be moved to join to ask questions of a guest such as David Salisbury. especially if they had questions such as the ones Vaccines posed.

weak explanation, imo.

Yes you are right Silverfrog - it was an honest mistake but it was a bit kneejerk. Will see about getting those personal stories reinstated. Apologies once more. (Am really in the doghouse today)

MNHQ

RebeccaMumsnet · 09/04/2013 21:11

@saintlyjimjams

I am very close to leaving mumsnet over this tbh Justine.

Hey Saintly,

Please don't do that. We will go through all deleted now and reinstate some. As Justine said, it was a totally honest mistake - generally, if someone joins and posts lots of links about one subject, they are removed for spamming. We did have several reports about these posts and we responded in the usual way - we can see, now, that this was not appropriate on this occasion - apologies.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 10:55

@saintlyjimjams

Still no proper response MNHQ? Your email suggested it shouldn't take too long to be sorted.

Hello hello. Sorry it's taking us so long. Nearly there!

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 12:00

Right.

Apols for the delay in posting properly this morning.

Just for clarity, am going to try to sum up what happened with the deletions - which will mean I repeat much of what was said yesterday by RebeccaMN and JustineMN but I think it's probably better to have it all in one place (so please forgive me if you've read some of this before).

OK, so first off, Mumsnet webchats have slightly different guidelines to regular Talk threads. We do particularly ask folks to be civil/polite to our guests and we tend to delete posts that aren't civil/polite pretty promptly. A couple of posts were deleted during the chat for those reasons - although, as JustineMN posted, when we were asked about the deletion, we misquoted the deleted post. We have apologised for that - and do so again here.

Moving on to the other deletions last night...

We have a general rule across all our Talk boards, as we hope you all know (as it's in our general Talk Guidelines), that we will delete posts that link to blogs/articles/sites/retail 'opportunities' in a deliberately spammy way.

We do this because these posts tend to interrupt discussions and are often off-topic - and annoy the hell out of our regular posters. They also, understandably, annoy folks who have paid to advertise with us - and then see "chancers" cheekily trying to promote themselves for free.

Last night, both Vaccines' posts and soulsurviver's posts were seen by the MNHQer on duty as this kind of spam - because they contained so many links. And also because, in Vaccines' case, they were her first and only posts on MN and, in soulsurviver's case, we'd already deleted him for spamming (about debt control, as it happens) in the past.

As we subsequently posted last night, we made a mistake in Vaccines' case.

It was clear, in hindsight, that though Vaccines had only just joined and her posts did look, at first glance, to be spammy because of the proliferation of links, she was genuinely joining in the discussion.

We should not have deleted all her posts.

They have now all been reinstated (I hope - please let us know if we've missed any), with the exception of one which was, in our view, not civil/polite towards our webchat guest.

We are sorry for all this - particularly as, given the controversy and high emotions of the debate and the fact that we didn't post straightaway to explain why we were deleting the posts, it may well have looked to some as though we were censoring the discussion in some kind of rabid "pro-vaccine" way.

This couldn't be further from the truth. We're not in the business of censoring discussions, as we hope you all know. It was, truly, definitely a case of cock-up rather than conspiracy.

We hope that's all a bit clearer.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 12:02

@hawthornthree

Seeing as Mumsnet have built their success around the women who have posted here over the years and given so much of their time to building the MN brand for so long [the intelligent woman/parent brand, as far as I remember] it seems acutely disrespectful of MNHQ to have behaved the way they have on this thread, presumably as a result of pressure from Salisbury's PR team.

I get it, I really do, the need to have maximum vaccination coverage to avoid more measles fatalities. But to silence people who have another story to tell just fosters and feeds the distrust. Public Health officials in the UK seem to originate from the same breed, peculiarly contemptuous of the general public and unable to engage in subtle or complex debate.

We can categorically state that we have had absolutely no pressure about anything on this thread from Salisbury's PR team. In fact, I'm not even sure he has a PR team, as such.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 12:05

@5madthings

That one post told her story. Could edit out the 'not polite bit' leaving her story.

Tho tbh I thought it was fine as it was.

No, the post telling her story has been reinstated.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 12:14

@hawthornthree

I am glad there was no pressure. Still, very odd judgement call from MNHQ. Glad you have reinstated the posts. Do wonder if you all ought to have a meeting about moderating threads.

We meet and talk all the time, hawthorntree. The last thing we should be doing is operating in a vacuum.

The team who respond to reports (we don't moderate, as such) are incredibly dedicated and hard-working and conscientious but we are human and we do sometimes make mistakes. What matters, I think, is that we hold our hands up when we make mistakes, explain ourselves and apologise. Which is exactly what we're doing here.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 12:37

@mayajan

Message deleted by Mumsnet for breaking our Talk Guidelines. Replies may also be deleted.

This one was a 'proper' spammer, by the way - in case you were wondering...

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 12:40

@saintlyjimjams

Vaccines saying 'I tried to meet with you but you were too busy to see me' was not polite?

Seriously?

Actually, that's not what she said, jimjams. She accused Salisbury of ignoring sick children suffering in pain and sweeping stuff under the carpet.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 13:14

@Beachcomber

But the government did sweep the Urabe fiasco under the carpet - and Professor Salisbury was part of the committee who made the decision to introduce this known to be dangerous vaccine. The Lancet children and thousands like them have had their suffering ignored by the government and its officials.

For a long time the government ignored studies which clearly demonstrated that children with regressive autism often have very serious and painful intestinal issues. Indeed the whole notion was hotly contested although it now is pretty much accepted. Children have been denied proper medical care as a result of this.

Well, thank you MNHQ for listening and at least reinstating some of Vaccine's words.

I understand that we should be civil to guests but let's be frank - it does rather make any invitation of a political figure just an exercise in PR and provide a free platform for them if we are not allowed to be critical or state facts. (Which is why I didn't bother to join in the actual webchat - no point as there will be no real discussion. I understand that MN is a forum and not the internet equivalent of Question Time but as I said before, webchats like this one are all about flannely shite politics, and IMHO rather insulting to MNers intelligence.)

We're sorry you feel like that, Beachcomber.

It was our decision to invited Prof Salisbury for a webchat, after we clocked many many threads voicing concern about the measles outbreaks and asking for advice and info.

To be clear, we have no problem with any MNer criticising a webchat guest's opinions or policies. We would never delete posts of that nature.

But we don't think it's right that folks we invite for a webchat should be bombarded with insulting personal slights (not that Prof Salisbury was, I hasten to add, but it has happened in the past).

We hope that every MN webchat is robust and challenging and thought-provoking and we do think they can be all of those things while also being generally civilised and respectful towards the guest we've invited along.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 10/04/2013 13:50

@SimLondon

Well I still can't see Vaccines first four posts? can anyone else?

Gah! Sorry, there were two we missed and have reinstated now.

The other two remain deleted: one for being uncivil, as we explained; the other for being a potentially libellous post, which, once it was reported to us, we had no choice but to delete.

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