If the tone of lofty condescension was an attempt to claim the moral highground, I think it failed.
For every post that has been insulting about mouldies, there have been at least as many if not more that have been insulting about MNers.
No-one is going to win this battle. Can't we just achieve politeness. Here's the best post I've read on this whole sorry subject.
By ayeayesir on Mon 22-Dec-08 13:25:28
When you start somewhere like this, you notice all the names, then you gradually notice particular ones, then you start to see the best threads as being those posted on by particular names you know - you're looking out for those people and starting to skim a bit quicker over some of the others. Then maybe you start actively not wanting to read new posters, you're more interested in the people you already know - there are lots of them and you want to go deeper, not broader.
Mumsnet is unusual in being so big that it is not very easy or comfortable going very deep into personal details, for some people. That's when smaller boards suit much better. Some people stay on ones like that their whole life without ever really setting foot on a megaboard like MN. Some MN happily while having deeper friendships elsewhere, in parallel, for years.
All very normal, but what's tricky here is that the small board some people felt they suited more has been formed bodily from a set of MN posters that those people would presumably view as the 'cream' of their particular MN experience - the names they know and/or like and not names they don't. Now suddenly the small board isn't just one of the millions that some MN posters have been on since time immemorial, the small board is more like a team being picked out of the main mass of MN posters and everyone's acutely aware that some have been chosen and others not. Even with it having grown organically and innocently, that's still effectively what's happened.
I don't count here, I'm not a regular because I namechange too often (but benignly) - I have seen this happen on other boards though (lots of people probably have). This blow-up is absolutely typical of what happens when something like that gets found out, even though it may not actually have been set up malignly. I sympathise a great deal with the 'left behinds' but I don't recommend wasting too much energy explaining to those who have gone what the problem is because it's pointless - not because those people are bad or unsympathetic but because they probably know they've been caught out a bit and repeating it won't change that. A bit like catching a friend out when they said they were staying in but then you see them out with different people - best not to have too much of an inquest, hopefully said friend will blush, you can feel pissed off and you'll probably be a bit chilly to them afterwards, but the two of you getting together to thrash it out an infinitum won't really get you anywhere. You can't make people want to be with you and if they don't the best thing to do is hit 'em with a bland and deadly courtesy and move on. The embarrassment and anger will be hanging there in the air for a while but will fade in time even if you never feel quite the same about the people who left.
FWIW...