Why was the thread about the violence at the Reform conference deleted?

Hi all. Thanks for giving us the chance to look again at the moderation here. First off, our generic deletion message wasn’t good enough. We should have explained the decision properly at the time, and we’re sorry we didn’t.

For the avoidance of doubt, the thread wasn’t deleted because it criticised Reform. There’s no shortage of criticism of Reform - or any political party - on Mumsnet, as a quick look at Active will confirm, and there’s no rule against it.

The thread began with a sweeping, ageist insult and quickly became dominated by personal attacks. Opening posts set the terms of a conversation and, while they certainly don’t need to be neutral, they do need to leave some room for disagreement without those who take a different view immediately being attacked or cast as defenders of violence. This one left very little prospect of a worthwhile discussion.

By the time we reviewed it, there wasn’t a viable thread left to preserve by removing one or two posts, so we took it down.

Talk

Why was the thread about the violence at the Reform conference deleted?