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Original poster

Madmouse's open letter to MNHQ about the treatment of those with disabilities on MN

34 replies

madmouse · 20/06/2012 19:05

Dear MNHQ

I joined MN when I was pregnant with my lovely ds. That heady autumn with bump before such words as NICU, neonatal seizures, brain damage, cerebral palsy, speech delay, special school entered my vocabulary.

That was 5 whole years ago - and all that time MN has been a part of my life. Got a lot of support from my ante- and postnatal buddies and from experienced SN mums. Gave back where I could. Became ill with PTSD, found the MH threads, recovered, started to give support on the MH threads.

Now I've come to the point that the only thing stopping me from leaving MN is that I would let down people on the MH threads. Other than that your (MNHQ) behaviour today has been an eye opener and a bit of a final straw.

MN has become, like RL, a place where disabled people and people with disabled children are not safe, not treated equally and not extended the same courtesy and respect as those without disabilities.

What happened today is just a tip of the ice berg. Day in day out threads appear with the same old theme. AIBU to use this disabled space because my baby's maxi cosy is too big and the P&T spaces are full, AIBU to use the wheelchair space on the bus (those two appear weekly by and large), AIBU to think it's nice to be disabled because you get lots of benefits, AIBU to think disabled people have it easy, AIBU to think I should have a free car too seeing as that I pay taxes.

It goes on and on and on. And none of it is ever challenged other than by a small group of us who do all this fighting in RL too - because it affects us and our children.

There is such thing as discrimination. And you do have a duty to stamp it out. Hand off moderation is no excuse certainly seeing how quick you were to delete 2shoes thread when some of us started fighting back against the endless threads of threads which in turn are copies of last week's threads.

I am very disappointed. And I think you have some thinking to do.

Best wishes

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MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/06/2012 12:53

I really wasn't meaning to make any connection to this thread by posting on the other one. Apologies if you feel we were having a go - that certainly wasn't the intention - merely a bit of general lighthearted leg-pulling of ourselves I thought.

I know 2shoes that you and others feel that we at MNHQ don't delete enough - we've had this debate every couple of years or so and I'm not sure we are ever going to agree. But over that time we have evolved our policy in consultation with users. Put simply we don't tolerate disablist posting and we state it clearly in our rules.

That said there is a tension between freedom of speech and protecting people's feelings and it's not just on the SN boards, there's a similar feeling at times on the feminism and the relationships boards. We are, as we say in our T&Cs, within reason, trying to let the conversation flow but when you've been on these boards a long time it can be tiring seeing the same old arguments being rehashed. I'm not sure there's an easy answer to that tension tbh but I do think us doing a page of disability myths is a great idea - it might be easier for people to link to that than engage in yet another conversation. I hope so.

It is possible, of course, that Mumsnet will never be completely as you want it to be. It's quite hard for us to operate things in a way that suits everyone but we do try to listen to folks' concerns and adapt where we can, whilst staying true to the core tenets of allowing parents to pool thoughts, ideas, info, advice to make eachothers' lives easier.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/06/2012 12:55

@Thumbwitch

Madmouse - good post, good thread and I really hope you haven't left.

I know it's going to sound shit but I am one of the posters who truly has been educated by the posters who either have disabilities/SN or who have children with disabilities/SN. I am hugely grateful to them for the time they have spent over the 4 years I have been on this site, explaining to the ignorant why things are offensive/wrong/illegal and I can understand that it must be bloody frustrating to still have to do that for all the newbies who come along and display the same old, same old ignorance. I try to do the educating now - to the occasional extent that occasionally people have thought I have a personal reason to do so - I don't, but I do because I believe it is in ALL our interests now to educate the ignorant, it shouldn't be left up to the people who have to deal with the ignorance on a daily basis in real life.

If more people who didn't have to deal with it daily in real life stood up and educated the ignorant, then it would save some time, spread the word faster - and it would help if MNHQ were more consistent with their messages. Perhaps it would be useful to have a set of "Disablist Talk Guidelines", with some legal points on, that could be linked to as soon as one of these disablist threads starts again.

I do think it's a shame MNHQ deleted 2shoes' thread. Other "threads about threads" are allowed to stand sometimes - and perhaps if it was considered inflammatory, you could have just adapted the wording in the OP, rather than deleting the entire thread? I know you can do this, MNHQ - you should maybe consider that as an option instead of blanket deletion.

Yep that's a fair point - we'll have a chat about that internally and see if there was an alternative way of dealing with it.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/06/2012 13:10

@amillionyears

Can you answer a question please,Justine In your heart of hearts,you do not want to delete anything do you? You want to be "innocent facilitators" as I mentioned sometime yesterday.

No that's completely wrong - we delete thousands of posts a year that break our guidelines. You're confusing our thoughts on defamation with our moderation policy. I think users should have the rights to defend comments on defamation if they wish. As it stands we are viewed as publishers and routinely delete comments that are complained about as libellous. In this instant I think we should be viewed as "innocent facilitators" not publishers because otherwise it has a chilling effect on freedom of speech. We've been part of the libel reform campaign for some time and I wrote about it here five years ago and the position hasn't changed.

We are absolutely delighted to delete posts that are racist, disablist, deliberately provocative, personal attacks or otherwise downright nasty, as per our rules.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/06/2012 13:14

@2shoes

I think it is so sad sad madmouse has left, and others as well. It is a shame that the in crowd think this is all so funny they start a thread taking the piss out of my thread!! nice of mn hq to join in as well.

We weren't joining in "taking the piss" of you though, 2shoes. There are truth be told many threads about how crap we are all the time. We joined in a funny thread about that phenomenon and I thought I was taking the piss out of MNHQ with my response...

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/06/2012 13:26

@amillionyears

Sorry ,Im not bright or learned enough to understand what you posted. I will have to read up about what you have just said and get back to you. It may take me a couple of days.

Sorry the libel laws are quite complicated it's true.
Put very simply, in answer to your direct question.

It's not fair to say we don't want to delete anything or moderate Mumsnet. We delete a lot and are happy to delete things that break our rules

our rules in a nutshell are:

No personal attacks
No posts that break the law
No trolling, goading or misleading
No trollhunting
No spamming

Where it becomes trickier is posts which don't obviously break the law but cause offence nonetheless.

MNHQ

JustineMumsnet · 22/06/2012 13:34

@ASillyPhaseIAmGoingThrough

I don't know about that thread re fb.

I do know there are posters who link to mn threads on fb.

There's not much we can do about that tbh except to remind folks that we're here to make people's lives easier not the reverse.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 22/06/2012 15:17

@Mintyy

I think you are absolutely wrong to suggest that the majority of posters on mumsnet hold disablist views. I think it is a very small minority.

And we can categorically say that if anyone is reported for expressing disablist views (and they are expressing disablist views), the very least that would happen is that they'd get a mail from us. The very least...

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 22/06/2012 15:35

Sorry Madmouse, didn't mean to make it look as though we were ignoring you. That's certainly not the case.

If disablist posts have been left up in the past, and were reported to us, we can only apologise wholeheartedly for that.

We would hope that no disablist posts are left up now and in the future - although, obviously, we won't necessarily see them unless they are reported.

MNHQ

HelenMumsnet · 22/06/2012 16:08

@MrsMuddyPuddles

MNHQ it would be very helpful if you could spell out what you do and do not consider disablist.

Well, what we'd class as disablist are discriminatory or abusive posts, expressing the belief that disabled people are inferior to others.

But, as ever, we'd welcome input from all Mumsnetters on this.

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