Hello all,
I'm popping in because I think reading this there's clearly some stuff we need to respond to/ discuss.
First, to address the trollhunting thing...
We have a rule about troll hunting for good reasons, I believe. If you allow troll hunting then there is a strong likelihood that genuine posters, often in need of immediate support, will be met with suspicion and disbelief. That's not to say I think Trollhunters are worse that Trolls (that would be silly) but it's true that Trollhunting can be as big a problem as Trolls when you're trying to moderate a forum. Hence why we've always asked users to report suspicions instead of airing them on the boards.
I know some disagree with that stance and I can understand the desire to unmask someone you think is telling a pack of lies. It seems that that's landed some longstanding Mnetters in some hot water and eventually ended up in them being banned - which is a shame. Some of those posters seem pretty miffed (putting it mildly judging by Reddit!) and some of those return periodically under new IDs often, it seems from our perspective, to put the boot into HQ, which clearly is not an ideal outcome.
Secondly we've always believed in treating posters equally - that's not to say we don't value the many brilliant Mumsnetters who've posted regularly and wisely over the years - but that we want mumsnet to be unthreatening/ welcoming to newbies and not a closed shop. So we've eschewed all the "royalty" stuff you'll find on some other forums like showing number of posts etc. partly for that reason (and partly for reasons of preserving anonymity - ie folks who name change to say something personal etc). But if we've given the impression that we don't value long standing users because of that, then I'm truly sorry and it's something we will give some thought to.
With regard to this particularly issue - as RebeccaMumsnet said last night - it was a mistake, of course, to send an internal mail direct to the user in question and we're sorry for that. But the expression "these people" was not referring to Mumsnetters in general but rather to a few previously banned users who keep returning under pseudonyms to troll hunt and/or, to put it bluntly, slag us off. As you'd imagine, that causes our mod team lots of work and a deal of frustration - hence the use of the not particularly friendly term "these people". (As some have pointed out it could have been worse 
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Contrary to some views expressed here - MN's purpose and vision hasn't really changed at all since we've started 17+ years ago. We've tinkered with our moderation as we've learned some things along the way but the principles remain the same as they always were: we think that pooling knowledge, experience and advice makes parents' lives easier we want to be a place that facilitates civilised debate and diverse opinion, as we think that contributes to understanding and empathy - again making parents' lives easier. We've always put that purpose before profit and we continue to do so.
So, we'd love to move things forward because it's genuinely saddening that a group of people who've contributed so much to the site over the years are so disenchanted that they collect on an alternative forum to give MNHQ a kicking and come back periodically to stir things up. And of course it's not great for the mod team's morale to constantly be thought the worse of. We would love to hear any thoughts on how we might move on (although obviously some banned posters may not be able to contribute directly - but please feel do free to drop me a line via [email protected])