Hello all,
Thought we'd respond to the point Moondog and a few others have raised on the Fiona Millar thread, on which there is some objection to the process of our live webchats "I do object to all of the above being foisted onto us by stealth in a 'Chat' part of an internet forum" and elucidate a little more on our policy re webchats.
First, we're really not trying to be stealthy.
Rachel wrote at the beginning of that thread:
Fiona Millar will be visiting us at Mumsnet Towers for a live webchat on Tuesday 3rd March between 1 and 2pm. Her book The Secret World of the Working Mother: Juggling Work, Kids and Sanity will be out on Thursday 5th March. Fiona is a well-known journalist, educational campaigner and mother of three. If you can't join us on Tuesday, post your questions in advance on this thread.
It's pretty front and centre in that post that Fiona Millar has a book to plug. As someone wise said earlier in the thread, publishers view MN as a way of reaching a potential audience (much like they view BBC breakfast). Because of our numbers this puts us in a position to get authors/politicians/policy makers to come on here and to interact with us. We think that adds something to the Mumsnet mix - it can be fun, thought-provoking and in the case of politicians hopefully can make a policy difference too...
We haven't introduced Fiona Millar in the Chat topic - it's in a topic called Mumsnet Live Webchats. We're really not trying to pull the wool over your eyes by pretending it's a chat when it's actually an effort to sell books. It's both of course - they are not mutually exclusive - you can have interesting chats with folk who are trying to promote books and arguably if they've written a book about something, they're more interesting because they've hopefully thought long and hard about the subject. It's a little naive, we think, to suppose that authors will come and chat here unless they have something to plug. So if we want folks to come then that's when we're going to entice them.
Sometimes there is a fee involved in these chats, sometimes not. Occasionally we'll throw a chat in when the publisher is doing other advertising with us - but it's generally a small fee and pretty much just covers the cost of administering/archiving the chat. This is not primarily a money making exercise for us, although right now every little helps, there's actually a fair amount of effort involved (particularly when it kicks off as it has a tendency to do of late!).
Of course not every guest will be to everyone's taste - but you are free to hide the thread and or indeed the whole topic if you'd rather not see any non-mumsnetters on Mumsnet, which is, of course, and entirely valid position.
Over the years, though, we think we've had some really good and useful guests (everyone liked Alvin Hall didn't they?) and plenty of folks seem to enjoy the chance to engage.
Thanks for raising the issue and do let us know if your thoughts.
Best,
MNHQ