Well kick me out if you wish after I've had my say.
A recent post of mine, in a thread which has now been removed was critical of woomera over the locking of the Steve Irwin threads. I said in that post that if we as a collective group of professional aviators cannot acknowledge something like the death of a national icon such as Steve Irwin or Peter Brock then they should enforce ALL the rules and eliminate anything not related to PROFESSIONAL pilots which this forum claims to represent. My views were supported by several other posters. I can't help feeling that Woomera has gone crying to the boss man that people were ganging up on him, hence the reason for this thread.
Now as I said in that post, aviation or in this case supposedly PROFESSIONAL aviation is what brings us together in this forum, it's our common bond. In my opinion it's not unlike a bunch of us meeting at Adelaide's former Aviation Institute for a beer or two after work. Just because we were in a bar did not mean that conversation had to be limited to beer, although
VB vs any other brand often came up. Often what was on the agenda for discussion would be aircraft, work conditions, or all kinds of other aviation related matters. Did this mean that when the the first Gulf War broke out we turned off the TV, no of course not. It was a temporary change in what was discussed by a bunch of aviation professionals who were there at the time. Some didn't have a lot of interest in that, so they discussed other things at another table. That's cool, it's just like ignoring a thread which has a topic of no interest to you. Eventually the gulf war ended and we all went back to discussing matters aviation.
My point is that if we choose to acknowledge an event other than aviation in our forum it should be treated as what it is, a temporary spike of off topic chatter. Let's face it the Steve Irwin threads have, after a couple of days gone quiet.
It seems to me that most internet forums exist only to massage their owners egos. Some take off and grow into very large sites such as this one and airliners.net, and without exception they seem to reach the point where the control freaks just like to censor this and censor that if they don't agree. So the bottom line is don't come bitching about "I own it" or "I pay for it", there's no law which says you have to do it. If it's such a burden, don't do it. There's a lot of advertising on this site, doesn't it cover much of the cost?
It's not unlike the kid who doesn't get his way so as owner of the football goes home and takes his ball with him screwing it up for everybody.
So there ya go, feel free to cancel my account if you wish, If I have offended anyone with this post, so be it. People who know me know that I speak my mind and I don't hold back. As I've been saying for 20 years or so "Political correctness will be the end of civilization as we know it"
tlf
US ATP Holder
Australian ATP Holder
Professional Aviator