Lots of boards go into lockdown when a troll invasion starts and suspend new registrations.
The point I am making here is that discussion spaces on the rest of the internet are in general protected much more carefully in order to allow the conversation to flow in a way that members of the site find productive.
Mumsnet does have free speech at the core of its philosophy and I appreciate that, but the corollary is that you are offering its members little protection against attacks compared with the protection that members of other sites (including those who attack Mumsnet, ironically) accord themselves. I'm not talking about not wanting to be disagreed with here, or not wanting to have false statements corrected - I can quite see that if someone says Mr Sayer Of Scary Things About Harriet Harman had a criminal record which he did not in fact have, he has the right to have that removed. (Incidentally, there is no reason why you should have to be a member to get the post pulled - you could have a report form somewhere on the site to make it easier for non-members to report and for you to find the post they mean.) What I am talking about is the aggression and yes, misogyny that many single-issue posters bring in with them.
Mumsnet is less moderated than many other sites and I would submit that one reason for that (despite nests of vipers comparisons) is that it CAN be, because the general style of posting on here is in fact less aggressive and less personal than that in the rest of the male-dominated internet. It comes as a shock to me when I go to certain other sites just how rude posters are to each other and how little policing by other members there is of racism, sexism, homophobia etc. (We might be more direct than NetHuns but we are a hell of a lot more civilised than CommentIsFree, for instance). The problem is that when you get a load of invaders coming in they often bring with them standards of behaviour where it is ok to call a poster a manhater or a bully or accuse them of not being able to get a man, or going on about women being liars. For posters here who have experienced that kind of misogyny in real life it is pretty nasty to have it popping up in this space and we then get quite upset when MNHQ doesn't step in to delete the offending posts pronto - and as you say it takes time for you to do this especially for a full-on board invasion where not only are there loads of these posts from them, we start trying to give as good as we get so then you have to delete some of us too to be fair. And then they start complaining about censorship when actually they've been deleted for a bog standard personal attack.
So don't you think that one thing you should be doing is to make it clearer to new members that Mumsnet actually IS different from the rest of the internet and bog standard misogynistic insults (of the Miss Piggy/manhater/princess/bitter/can't get a man/lying bitch variety) are not welcome on here EVEN when they don't fall foul of your current narrow technical definition of a personal attack (eg when they aim them at a bunch of us rather than an individual)? In other words, have more of an overarching statement about misogyny? (though you might need to use a shorter word for the ones that don't really understand what it means 
)?
Sorry about the essay - to summarise:
- Mumsnet is different from the rest of the internet. It is not misogynist. This is what makes it good and enables the free speech to exist.
- Many board invaders don't realise that because it is generally unspoken.
- It needs to be made explicit and then it will either make them behave better (hopeless optimist emoticon) or make it quicker and easier to get rid of them.
Thanks for listening Justine. I do appreciate your replying to my previous message despite my losing my temper 