Thanks for the input - we've dropped the clasp your norks ref. Have sent off just now but suspect too late for tomorrow. Here's what we sent:
Dear Editor,
In the story ?Sympathy for beleaguered parents muted by jeers and suspicion? in Saturday?s Guardian, you included two quotes from the Mumsnet discussion boards in a paragraph that began ?But on other sites popular sympathy appeared to slipping away from the McCann family.?:
?On Mumsnet yesterday a furious debate erupted between those hidden behind online pseudonyms. "I do think the McCanns have acted somewhat oddly throughout this investigation - particularly the mother," commented Krazykoolkazza.? "I can't quite see it as natural for a mother in her position to make one of her immediate priorities in the days immediately following the disappearance of her daughter a visit to the Pope - without her remaining children."
This is not a fair representation either of how the Mumsnet community feels about the McCann case or the debate that has taken place on the site. In fact the majority of the membership has opted out of discussion about Madeleine McCann and her family, believing the extraordinary amount of speculation and media interest to be pointless, distasteful and ghoulish.
Many hundreds have signed up to a boycott that has been in existence since May. The initiator of the boycott, Blu, sums up how Mumsnetters feel:
?I have the utmost sympathy for the McCann family, and hope for a happy ending to their trouble. Meanwhile I am not happy about many aspects of the many [discussion] threads, and hearby resolve to completely boycott them by not clicking, not reading, nor responding (however horrible the views), and thus not adding to the circular and predictable route they take, no matter what quality of intervention is made.?
Justine Roberts and Carrie Longton
Co-founders
www.mumsnet.com