There have been more than a few times over the last few years that I have experienced a surge of love for the bolshy, brilliant mothers who swap advice, support and witticisms on Mumsnet, the parenting website I co-founded with a friend from ante-natal class six years ago, but few as intense as the one I felt when I logged on last Sunday.

I had just finished posting a rather surreal statement explaining the latest developments in a long-running dispute with the parenting expert Gina Ford. Since Ford was seeking the closure of the site because of an alleged “campaign of serious and offensive libels”, I explained, we had to ban all mention of her.

I returned to our talk boards with some trepidation. Would the mums be furious that we had taken such a step? Would it lead them to discuss Ford in more colourful terms than before? Instead, the first thread I came upon dealing with the issue was entitled: “A thread with no title about nobody and nothing by no one.” “Well all I can say is that I have nothing to say on this subject,” declared the first poster. And so it went on. “Nada,” added someone. “Niente,” offered another.

This thread captured all that’s best about Mumsnetters: independent-mindedness and a wicked sense of humour. But over the following days the bulletin boards buzzed with something else: a fiery indignation that an individual had sought to limit their freedom of speech and a determination to protect a site they consider as much their own as ours. Petitions were launched, demonstrations planned, legal funds established and letters fired off to the media.

On Mumsnet even seemingly innocuous subjects such as “Should you feed your child grapes when going round the supermarket?” can provoke impassioned debates. Of course Ford and her routines are far from an innocuous subject for mums. Legions of parents who thrive on routine and want to stay in control regularly describe Ford as “a godsend”; others who try and fail to implement the regime can end up feeling failures.

As the saga rippled through the media, many Mumsnetters described how much would be lost if the site were to be closed. One user talked of how others had helped her conceive, another of how it had emboldened her to confront a cheating husband, another how they had enabled her to cope with an autistic child: “It’s like having a million big sisters who are there all the time.”

There have certainly been no shortage of lump-in-throat moments on the site which now attracts about 250,000 visitors per month. Recently a depressed single mother announced on a thread that she could no longer cope and had swallowed a bottle of painkillers. Through a process of deduction worthy of Miss Marple, other Mumsnetters worked out her true identity and called an ambulance. Then they organised to pick up her child from school and within 24 hours had raised nearly £2,000 to pay for some emergency childcare.

But to portray Mumsnet as a worthy self-help group would be to miss the attribute that most distinguish it from other parenting sites: a savage sense of humour. Ford, at least, clearly doesn’t appreciate it though. Although her lawyers had unleashed a barrage of threatening letters at Mumsnet over alleged defamation by our members in recent months, the one that appears to have driven Ford over the edge and prompted her moves to shut us down was a suggestion that she “straps babies to rockets and fires them into southern Lebanon”.

In a statement released this week Ford said the original comment caused her “a huge amount of upset and distress”. She said she had been the victim of “a long-running campaign by which Mumsnet published very serious and offensive libels about me”. The demand to Mumsnet’s internet service provider to shut the site had been made as a last resort, she insisted, and “any suggestion that I am trying to close down the Mumsnet website is completely untrue”.

Yet, even after we had removed the offending posts (we don’t allow personal attacks), her lawyers wrote for a second time to our internet service providers warning that they could face legal action if they did not disable Mumsnet. If this was a device to secure the removal of material, why was it deployed after the material had been removed? Ford may have the last laugh in the High Court. Then again she may not: I have a feeling the mums may have something to say about it . . .