Doug Wester said:
A lot of people did not like the non-avaition posts. This board is strictly for aviation related stuff, thus far.
This is not strictly accurate. Non aviation related posts are welcome in "Hangar Talk". Political discussion is welcome, so long as it falls in line with the Rules of Conduct.
As Ken has already said, this site is not intended as competition to AOPA, and it is not intended to be a "baby sitting" forum where the Management squelches every conversation that looks like it might possibly be somewhere close to maybe someday violating the rules of conduct. Our goal is to do as little moderation as possible, but if it is necessary to intervene in order to maintain order, we have the tools and the will to do so.
What is different?
- The software, obviously
- The rules of conduct
- The links database
- The calendar system
- The poll system
- The reputation and thread rating system
The idea for the creation of this board bubbled up when the concern was high that AOPA might consider closing its forum down due to the continued devolution that was occuring in the AOPA forum. The short version of the story is this: Mike Andrews, Chip Gibbons and Dr. B were discussing creating a replacement in case AOPA shut down their site. I was brought into the discussion, and we decided to set up a prototype site as a place where we could discuss our options and have a better record and easier medium in which to communicate than straigth email.
When AOPA put out its survey, we became somewhat less concerned that AOPA would shut down (although I believe AOPA might still consider that option, if the recent streak of improved behavior doesn't continue), but by this point Chip had accumulated almost 100 email addresses of people who wanted to know if a new site got created. We decided to go ahead with the plan to launch a new site, one with clear behavior policies that were enforcable. We believed at the time that sufficent demand existed to go ahead with the launch, and thus far we've been very happy with the result.
We did not want to compete with or detract from AOPA, and we do not suggest that anyone stop participating on their forums. In fact, several of the management team remain active on the AOPA site, and we have made a commitment to do no more than passive advertising (links in sigs) on other aviation related sites.
Hopefully that fills in some gaps.
CH