Hello
Thanks for starting this thread and for all your thoughts. Here’s where we stand from a moderation point of view:
We absolutely acknowledge that there’s a real issue underpinning some of the feelings and vitriol towards Meghan Markle and that racism - deliberate or unwitting, overt and covert - is undoubtedly in the mix.
We absolutely do not tolerate racism or any form of hate speech on Mumsnet and will always delete such posts when they're reported to us. Usually this is pretty obvious and clear cut but just occasionally there are some grey areas, and the decision about what is racist isn’t always so clear or unanimous. But we will listen carefully to what you tell us in your posts and in your reports, so please do keep flagging things up and we promise to evaluate as carefully and thoughtfully as we can.
On the thread that was deleted for ‘being a bunfight’: hands up - we screwed up. First, we take the point about the use of the term ‘bunfight’ to describe serious disagreement on serious topics and we will stop doing this - please remind us if we forget (we’ve all been using the term for so long that it slips out sometimes). We agree ‘bunfight’ is appropriate for parking threads but not for discussions about racism. Secondly, in hindsight we should have bent over backwards to keep this thread up and delete guideline-breaking posts. In our defence, deleting threads that are causing hundreds and hundreds of reports is sometimes the only proportionate thing we can do - leaving them up, and dealing with the reports, means that other reports about other important issues don’t get dealt with in a timely way. But we accept the argument that in this case, deleting that thread had a disproportionate impact. Apologies.
Just on a point of order, the N word is an instant delete for us (and a big red flag about any user who uses it), except in very limited circumstances (such as a person of colour talking about their own experiences of racist abuse), in which cases we sometimes asterisk it out instead of deleting it. So we’re surprised by the report here of an instance of it going undeleted - if you can find that post, please do put a link here or report it to us. NB we do have a word filter that we use for spam and we will add this to that, so from now on it will be auto-deleted.
Here’s some more stuff we’re going to do going forwards:
We've recently banned some repeat offenders for subtle and not-so-subtle racism but we are going to redouble our efforts to make sure we’re quicker to ban those who repeatedly have posts removed for racism and to do everything we can to catch determined racists who re-register.
For now, we are going to limit the number of threads running about Meghan Markle. As some of you know this has been our approach on Madeleine McCann threads for some time. Frankly, both topics attract some obsessive attention for reasons that we don’t fully understand - but both are also the subject of genuine interest and news stories in the media and among the public at large. We will keep all discussion to one or two threads, and will look very carefully at reports about overt or covert racism. We will also be minded to delete bottom-feeding internet rumours (although not, to be clear, posts about stories that have appeared in mainstream outlets) - so again, please do report any you see.
While it's perfectly possible for people to criticise her because of things she’s said or done, there's no doubt that some of the flack Meghan Markle has faced is also due in no small part to her being a prominent black woman. So we will work harder to bear this context in mind and crack down harder on people who seem to be on Mumsnet mainly to contribute posts that criticise her or speculate about her actions in an unpleasant way. Because frankly, it’s not what we want Mumsnet to be about.
Lastly we think it’s problematic - not only on threads about Meghan Markle but on other sensitive issues too - when some users aggressively close down posters who dissent from the prevailing opinion. We do believe in the benefits of diversity of opinion and debate as lots of you will know, and that does mean tolerating other people’s points of view even if you disagree with them. We think calling people derailers or handmaidens, or calling ‘grey rock’ when someone posts, with the intent of driving them away from a discussion, is not on and we will take firmer action on this from now on. Can we ask you to help on this please by reporting these posts when you see them?
Thanks so much for your input - it’s been genuinely useful for us to take a bit of time internally to revisit this, collect our thoughts and to lay out our approach and where we stand.