All Talk

Last week the Guardian newspaper launched a new family section in its Saturday paper. As part of the editorial, the family team decided they would like to tap the collective wisdom of our talkboard users on family and personal relationship matters by printing the best of the contributions, which they felt would be interesting and informative for a wider readership.

This seemed like a good idea – building we hoped into a stronger talk community around a 'family' section. However whilst many people on the talkboards saw this as a positive exercise there were some who were angry and upset that postings had been reproduced in the paper. Some were concerned that they might be too recognisable to their families. Others felt that using the material without warning was unacceptable.