Political posts - Moderator position

[moderator_AandLUK]

In addition to Carol's "Forum Guidelines Reminder" post, I should like to explain our current position regarding political posts in the light of the "Health Secretary Matt Hancock admits the truth" post which caused so much debate.

We are currently reviewing our guidelines, so our position may change but, for the moment, we would ask members to bear the following in mind.

It is inevitable that any remarks by a Health Secretary will have both political and health implications. It is up to members to distinguish between the two, and to discuss the medical issues as appropriate to this forum. The moderators went to great pains to point out what is acceptable on this forum in our "Message from the Moderators", which can still be found under "Pinned Posts" (you need to select the "See all" link).

It is not the job of moderators to censor posts because some members disagree with the content; the whole purpose of the forum is to allow polite discussion and disagreement where appropriate. There was a case, only a month ago, when members politely challenged the author of a very controversial post, thereby avoiding the need for any official moderation.

Whilst we welcome reports from members, could members please refrain from responding on the forum because this simply exacerbates the very problem which the reporting member ostensibly wishes to solve. In fairness to everyone, moderators need time to discuss the appropriate action to take, as the deletion or modification of some posts can result in removal or redundancy of perfectly legitimate linked posts.

I hope this goes some way to clarifying our position. We prefer a light-touch approach to moderation, but this relies on the goodwill of members, and we will continue to intervene where there are clear breaches of the Guidelines, particularly in the case of overtly political posts and those where personal abuse is involved, as that is completely unacceptable and unnecessary.

In order to draw a line under these discussions, I have removed the option of replying to this post. Please do not start a new post to discuss this one, as seems to be commonplace of late - it will be deleted. If you don't agree with this position, please use the report facility and we will endeavour to consider any matters raised in the review of the Guidelines. For the moment, though, this is the position of the moderators and we should be grateful if members would respect that decision.