A note on the mental health thread, and this board in general

Hi Folks

Please take a few mins to read and digest this post as we're experiencing a high volume of complaints about some members who frequent this board.

The Health aspect of this board, when it was born, was for people to provide MONEYSAVING advice to keep the cost of staying healthy down. To this end, we were more than happy for people to show where an over the counter style product could be found cheapest, but began with a view that recommendation and advice on health issues wasn't allowed. Frankly, this is an internet forum about MoneySaving, and there are hundreds if not thousands of boards that solely cater to health issues.

Over time, we have tried to allow the community that has evolved organically to chat in more general terms, providing recommendation was still kept to a minimum. However over the last year specifically, the lines have now become blurred and it is time to reign the board in somewhat.

Please understand that this type of issue is EXTREMELY difficult for both the Forum Team, but also the Board Guides to call. We could turn around and remove any single instance of non MoneySaving from this board, including what people deem to be very general advice and specifically support threads.

This brings me on to the mental health thread, although there are a number of similar threads on various topics offering support. We see a support thread as a place where people with similar issues or problems can get together and help each other. They are fast becoming places where people get together and argue and bicker with each other. Added to that, some members are definitely pushing our patience with "grey area" reference to vested interest help. This has to stop.

The amount of resource we are allocating to this board is fast pushing us towards deleting ANYTHING non MoneySaving, though that isn't a decision that has been taken yet. This is a "help us to help you" appeal. I don't think we can be fairer than that - we aren't creating these posts, but we (and i include the Board Guides in this), are taking a huge amount of abuse (and a lot of it is pretty nasty and uncalled for) trying to mediate.

Myself, my team, and the Board Guides (within their remit) always try to take an action that we believe is the best one for the board and the majority of users. Anyone believing we are hatching some machiavellian plan to cause a problem on our own board (and remember our jobs), is probably best looking for alternative forums to spend their time. We have a strict guide, as set out by Martin, that we work to and we do our best to keep a vast and varied demographic as happy as we can.

We can't please everyone all the time, but there are also times where it seems some members, with anonymity and a FREE account, are happy to complain and cause arguments and revel in the fallout. Please stop.

I hope this message has been firmly but fairly conveyed; we want this board to be a friendly and helpful community.

As a final note, please remember we are here to help. If you have an issue, simply report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com and let us deal with it.