The Yahoo group Stapleton Moms has long been a place for Stapleton parents to sell items, buy items, ask for parenting advice, break a local news story, call out neighbors, and even make semi-racist comments. All of these are well within the realm of what is okay for the Stapleton Moms format. There is one area that is off-limits which has recently been challenged: Politics.
Stapleton Moms may sometimes seem like an uncontrolled blog where people can rant about whatever they choose, and about whomever they choose, but it is simply not the case. The group draws a harsh line when it comes to politics. “We have traditionally tried to avoid political discussions,” says overwhelmed Moms moderator Jill Hickey. “It’s not that we don’t have intelligent, thoughtful comments, we simply get overwhelmed with opinions. Plus, we already allow businesses to post things on Moms. What if candidates decided they wanted to do monthly posts asking for votes? It would be a nightmare.”
More than anything else, if political discussions were allowed on Stapleton Moms, there is an outside chance that nothing would get done in Stapleton as all of the moms that handle everything would be too busy responding to political comments to which they disagree.
“There are literally hundreds of political blogs out there for people to make their voices heard,” says Hickey. “We just don’t want to be one of them.” There also exists the danger that Republicans will stop selling/giving away their hand me downs to Democrats and vice versa. Not being able to use Stapleton Moms as a way to get rid of and get new kids’ clothing could cause the community to crumble faster than Greece. And for that reason, The Stapletonion strongly agrees that Stapleton Moms should avoid political tiffs.]]>