Does Mumsnet have an editorial viewpoint?

[FreddyHG]

I get that Mumsnet is pretty left leaning it is basically the Guardian of the forum world. I guess this could be because women are more left leaning in general or it could represent the politics of the editorial team. Recent threads/posts around immigration, baby trapping and the NHS have been deleted with claims that the message breaks talk guidelines. I read many of the offending posts indeed I report many too however whenever I do report I make sure it complies with these guidelines (so I only report the last 2 and the first of the list below).

No personal attacks
No posts that break the law, including hate speech of any kind
No trolling, misleading or deliberately inflammatory behaviour
No trollhunting
No spamming

Often other posts which are deleted clearly aren't unless you very liberally interpret inflammatory behaviour, but then there are lots of left leaning inflammatory threads allowed to stand. Could further deletion messages reference the exact reason for their deletion? I suspect a lot gets deleted under item 2 despite this being obviously not breaking the law. Generally there is a right to free speech in the UK (although not on private forums) so very little you see on here actually breaks the law. Also how posts critical of men and women are treated differently is critism of some female decisions likely to be interpreted as trolling?

What I'm saying is I believe that even if I operate within the talk guidelines as referenced Posts/threads can still be deleted can they be extended to be more explicit about what posts are allowed?

Hi @FreddyHG thanks for your questions. We're not really the same as, e.g. a newspaper, with a defined editorial voice on one political side - our aim is to make parents' lives easier and much of what we do is in keeping with that.

MNers come from a wide range of backgrounds and political affiliations and this is reflected in the diversity of opinion across the boards. As far as our guidelines go, we don't see much value in being too prescriptive and tend to look at everything in context. In short, we're all about the nuance. Criticism of a 'female' decision (presuming you mean the human kind) isn't breaking our guidelines in itself - again, we'd look at the wider context.

If you find a post of yours has been deleted and you're in any doubt as to why, we're always happy to discuss it further.

Interesting perspective. I'm not sure I agree with it...There are many posts that run and run and spawn similar ones that are fairly (or very) right wing.

Politically speaking, I think the left wing viewpoints are especially loud at present because we're witnessing the death throes of a right wing government and the extreme polarisation of political and social views in general media and culture. Right wing comment is easy to find if you pay attention (and not deleted). Also, government has drifted so far to the right in recent years, that central, moderate opinions are frequently labelled left wing when they're no such thing.