Recent events update
Hello everyone,
As some of you might have noticed, we had a few issues to deal with over the weekend. If you're not up to speed (where have you been!?) you can catch up by reading my posts >
here.
I remain of the opinion that the person who made the report was trying to cause trouble and/or get their own back on some of our members. If that's the case then that's very unfortunate.
If they thought that they'd succeed, they were wrong because the opposite has happened, it has served to bring us closer together and remind us of something that we hold dear: the freedom to speak openly about issues that genuinely matter to us. Not only that, but also the importance of supporting that freedom, even where we may not personally share the viewpoint ourselves. This is a cornerstone of civilised and progressive thought everywhere.
Regarding the incident, I can tell you that a member of this forum with close ties to the other site was PM'd asking whether she would confirm or deny her involvement with contacting Tell Mama. She has not replied and it appears she has now cleared out her profile. If this was indeed the person, I don't think any of us should be too hard on her. A person's actions are sometimes driven by several factors. It was disappointing of course, but I think we have matured as a site, as a team and as a membership to deal with most things that come our way.
I am a firm believer in extracting the positive elements from any situation - and as I said earlier, I think the whole episode has brought us all closer together and reminded us of some of the things that are important to us.
Moving on, here's what we plan to do.
1) The 'Discussions' section will now house all the threads that currently belong to Discussions, politics and current affairs.
2) We'll then create another 'Discussions' section which can be used for exactly the same kinds of topics, the only difference being that any posts inside it will only be viewable by registered members.
3) You can decide which section to post your thread in. (We may occasionally move some threads into it if we feel it is appropriate to do so. If this happens, please don't take it personally.)
Unlike the current 'Members only' section (which requires a member to have been registered for 3 months and made at least 25 posts), this new section will be viewable immediately by anyone who registers and logs in, so there's no major drawback in posting in it as it's only guests who won't be able to see it.
Hopefully that should make some of you feel more at ease posting your opinions, but I want to be clear that this does not mean it is going to be an ungoverned, 'anything goes' type of section. For one thing, we (and you) are still subject to the law. And we will still expect you to abide by our rules and not go overboard. So please don't abuse this.
With regards to the admins/mods of the other site who are members here, from this point on they will be prohibited from reporting any posts/members unless the posts in question are targeting them personally. We will keep an eye on all this over the coming weeks. If it appears that they are not here to participate in the way that we'd expect a genuine member to, then we will re-evaluate our rules on allowing staff from other similar forums.
The last few days have certainly made me more determined than ever to do what I can to make the site even better
And I think our first step in doing that will be expanding the Over 50s family! (You can be sure our detractor/s won't be happy about that!) Keep an eye out for an announcement soon