New topic for discussion of the Middle East conflict and a word on our moderation

[JustineMumsnet]

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.

You see, I think the opposite is true, and I feel I see lots of Islamophobia standing, as everyone is terrified of being called antisemitic. There seems to be very little condemnation of posters who support the Israel attacks on Palestinian civilians, in my view.

But because other posters like @WeightWhat clearly feel the opposite is true, MN are probably right to stay neutral. This is an emotive and very personal issue for many posters, which probably colours their view of posts.

It’s difficult, but I think we should always try to have a reasoned debate and some attempt to understand the other side. Because there usually is one.

I think we can probably all agree that the current situation is absolutely horrendous.

WarNet?

This would be find if it were all about ‘views’. But MN’s problem is that lots of this is also about facts and the distortion of facts.

There’s a Hamas PR on at least one of the threads here, spewing certainties that the poster cannot have fact checked and certainly haven’t come from a fact checked source.

Of course people aren't supporting Hamas 🙄

Morning, everyone.

Thanks for continuing to share your thoughts and concerns and for your understanding. As you can imagine, we're getting an enormous amount of reports through on these topics at the moment.

Just to be clear, we do delete posts that conflate Hamas and all Palestinians (and their actions) as well as those that conflate The IDF or Israeli government and all Israelis, and their actions. However, we have to see the posts first. Mumsnet is a huge site so we rely on reports largely to tell us where there is a problem, so please do report posts you see that you think we need to be aware of. Justine's post above covers most eventualities so do have another look at that if you're unsure about which sorts of post could be deletable.

To address some of the concerns about how stretched we are. Yes, as you can imagine, this is certainly the case and something we've been quite transparent about here. We're doing our best to get through the huge volume of reports as quickly as possible, but it's still a big challenge and we'd rather make the right decisions than just 'fast' decisions, so we really appreciate your patience.

Despite the challenge of the numer of reports, we also don't want to discourage people from sending them in when that's such a vital part of our moderation, particularly at the moment. So it's important to us to look carefully at each and every report and deal with them well.

Please be assured, though, that we are prioritising reports on these topics so that they are dealt with as quickly as possible.