Hi all
We’ve had tonnes of feedback about our moderation of these discussions so we thought it worth explaining our principles/ thought processes.
First thing to say is that as MNers and parents we empathise with the absolute abhorrence and distress experienced by so many as a result of this conflict.
In recent days, understandably, there has been an unprecedented surge in the number of reports we’ve received, underlining just how hurt and divided people are about the ensuing conflict in Israel & Gaza. We are aware that wherever we intervene or draw lines it won’t be right for some, but we want to give some clarity on our approach so that folks can better understand our decisions.
Our guiding principle is to allow Mumsnetters to express their opinions, so long as they are civil and within the boundaries of the law and common decency, even when those opinions are challenging or unpalatable to some others.
We do not believe that criticism of Israel’s actions is necessarily anti-Semitic. We do believe that it’s entirely fair to call out and condemn Hamas for the terrorist organisation that they are. But we encourage posters to focus on specific actions rather than making sweeping generalisations about anyone based on their ethnicity, religion, or nationality. Failure to do so is likely to break our guidelines.
We obviously can’t verify the accuracy of every post on the site - we have around 30000 posts a day and frankly even the large news outlets, which have editorial control over the content they produce, seem to be struggling with accuracy in a chaotic and fast moving situation. Mumsnet is first and foremost a forum for discussion and whilst we take moderation very seriously we don’t pre-vet posts and we rely on our users to challenge posts they feel are inaccurate or break our guidelines.
We completely understand that, at this time especially, not everyone can stomach contrary opinions about the rights and wrongs of this conflict. But we do not believe it would be right for Mumsnet to shut down all discussion of this topic - that would be anathema to what we’re here for.
What we can do, however, (and thanks to those who suggested it) is to create a temporary Middle East Conflict forum so that those who would rather not engage with these threads can hide them easily via your Talk settings. (You can also hide individual threads, and we’ll move threads into this topic when necessary).
There’s no solution that works for everyone in the way we moderate this. We do understand how distressing this situation is and we apologise if we’re taking a little longer than usual to respond to reports - suffice to say the team is somewhat stretched - but we are doing our level best to listen and navigate this as fairly and humanely as possible. Please bear in mind that our moderation team are human too and I’d ask you not to take your frustration at world events out on them. Thanks.