Sensorship and post deletions

[WannaBe]

Have put these both in one thread.

Firstly, I was under the impression that MN encouraged free speech to the degree at least where people could discuss specific topics although of course personal attacks have always been removed. But it seems that more and more lately topic discussions are being sensored to the point that if someone reports them then they're deleted in the name of not being in the spirit of mumsnet, while meanwhile the boards are full of blatantly troll posts, some of which are horifically upsetting to users and some are encouraging the discussion of disturbing subjects such as childhood sexual abuse and those are left to stand on the basis that "we have no reason to believe the OP isn't genuine." It seems that e.g. Discussion of the Charlie Gard case has now been sensored even though it is heavily prevalent in the news and there are some awful attacks happening on a children's hospital and their staff by what can only be described as vijilanti's, and while I absolutely do think that these parents should perhaps be left in peace to allow their child to pass peacefully and to find their way forward thereafter, the risk here is that talk of the vijilanti action has been allowed to stand, something which could potentially be damaging to the reputation of GOSH and also bring unease and discomfort to anyone needing treatment there for their child, whereas discussion of the wider issues including sympathy for the parents has been sensored to the point that all Charlie Gard threads are essentially being deleted. This isn't the first time that discussion has been sensored on MN, but really, a parenting forum sensoring discussion around a child illness issue when that discussion is widely available in the mainstream news surely is not going to show MN in a very good light is it?

Moving on from sensorship though, I've just been reading a thread where a post was deleted for allegedly being racist when actually it simply pointed out facts. Many other posts pointed out the same, and the poster has IMO been unnecessarily branded racist when she absolutely was not. Again this isn't the first time posts have been deleted even though there was no ill intent behind them. This to me gives the impression that if an individual post is reported then HQ donn't actually read it or the context of the thread but that they simply delete on the say-so of the reporter?

Wrt the deletions in general, some posters are very good at dancing around the line without crossing it, being GFers and baiting people - twisting words with wide-eyed innocence, then when the poster getting baited finally snaps they're the ones who get deleted.

The whole Charlie Gard situation is pretty hard really - I wouldn't like to be making decisions about those threads tbh.
I've not posted on them, but saw a thread about messaging GOSH to show support so I've done that.

Hi there Wannabe,

Thanks for getting in touch. Will try to answer all your questions but do drop us another line if there's anything you still want clarification on.

So firstly, yes, we do read every report, although we don't have time to respond to each one, so you do get an automated response. We judge each post on its own merits (or demerits) rather than how many reports it got and delete or leave according to our guidelines. Having said that, occasionally we will take it into account if a large number of posters have been very upset or offended by a post or thread that we considered to be within guidelines, and will take that down.

With regards to the Charlie Gard threads, censorship is the last thing we want. We always try to moderate with a light touch and not delete wherever we can. However, we are mindful that the primary purpose of Mumsnet is to make parents' lives easier. For that reason, we deleted several posts on those threads as we just felt it would be awful for someone connected to the family to read, and also some of the posts were just really upsetting for any parent to read. Others we did feel were not in the spirit of what we're trying to achieve on Mumsnet.

With the racist thread, it might be best for you to send us a mail to [email protected], only because we wouldn't want to ignite the whole issue again. If it's the one we are thinking of though, it was deleted for being xenophobic rather than racist. Sorry to split hairs - it was about a minority group, particularly from one country. We know there were lots of people on the thread who disagreed and thought it was ok, but we thought long and hard about it, discussed it at HQ and we really didn't think it was ok. We do accept we can't please everyone all the time, and sometimes we just have to make a decision and do what we think's right. We often have to delete posts for being racist or disablist where we know there was no ill intent but they were racist or disablist nonetheless, so that's why we made deletions there.

If we've guessed at the wrong thread there, though, please do drop us a line and let us know which one it was. We don't want to make this a TAAT but we'll try and answer any questions as best we can.

Hope that answers most of your questions. Please do let us know if not though.