Earlier statement for those who missed it:
We have been a little concerned with the tone of the thread for some time now, but with no new updates for a while it appeared moribund and we elected to let sleeping dogs lie. Now it's active again, however, we'd like to do something to remove the nastiness and snark in what is, after all, the discussion of a horrible crime with a child as the victim. I shall try to write something more specific tonight, but in the meantime it might be worth taking Ringo's excellent posts above as an indication of the way we moderators feel about the stridency of some of the contributions submitted long and not so long ago.
For the avoidance of doubt, nothing is out of bounds as subject matter and there is no 'line' which posters must take to contribute to the thread. My only concerns are with a) posts that potentially open the publisher to legal censure and b) posts that make the board look unsavoury and reflect badly on our community--the bar for rejection is already set very high, but the umpires have, perhaps, been focused on other events.
Update:
Both EnolaGaia and myself have read the entirety of this thread and, to put it mildly, it isn't the board's finest moment. The only silver lining is that much of the most barrel-scraping comments came from former or infrequent posters.
Anyway, I've pruned the thread and removed a couple of dozen of the most egregious posts (
nothing only one thing that was recent).
Those removed include but are not limited to (I paraphrase) :
- How Kate has sex appeal because of the 'bad girl' air.
- Suggestions for various actors who might portray the killer parents in a musical/comedy about the crime.
- Out-and-out accusations that one or more of the parents are killers who did this for fame or money.
- Pretty clear misogyny about women's lib and motherhood (hardly the arch SJW, me).
If you doubt my judgment, please go back and read the whole thing yourself and see if it doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth
even with the worst posts removed.
To reiterate my point in quotation above,
no avenue of discussion is off limits here, but from this point onwards we would very much like posters to write without excessive mordancy and at least couch accusations in sensible terms to reflect what
may,
most likely, could possibly or
probably is true if no supporting evidence is being cited to show the charge is indisputable.
Many would state that humour is inappropriate in such a case, but I disagree. It's natural to find the funny side to even the darkest day, but could we
please make sure that jokes are actually funny and not just mean?
The thread title has been edited for search and clarity.
Play on.
Private messages solicited both for and against, as ever. 
This heat is becoming really boring. At work I grin politely but inside I want everyone to go and take a running jump. How much longer can this country survive on broken sleep, lack of concentration and sweaty colleagues?? Let's hope it rains soon. And don't even mention the options for the football, I don't know which outcome would be worse for the nation's sanity.
Hello 
