Missinginaction apologies for a posting

[missinginaction]

I don't know where else to post this so I'll do it here.

I realize that some members have lately found it difficult to keep the conversation civil and there have been some issues with members leaving the forum.

Yesterday I posted a link in the open discussions forum regarding a US bank holding company.

What I did not realize is that this forum is no longer accepting posts regarding anything not boating related.

I want to apologize to the moderator (I guess that's you Jeff) and to anyone who was put off by the posting.

I've never had a post removed from any site as I try to be polite and post in the proper venues.

This was just an oversight on my part and will not happen again.

I must say though that it's terribly unfortunate that because we can't all play nice together that we need to have these restrictions. I for one have really enjoyed reading posts from various mambers from other parts of the world on business and economic topics in the open forum. These perspectives gave me pause to think that there are lots of people in this world who have vastly different points of view. Who among us can say with certainty who's right?

Sincerely Yours,

Missinginaction

[rasorinc]

Your forgiven. Have a drink or two of Tennessee Jack--100 proof and go to bed realizing all is well, the world is good, and you cannot change it anyway. Vote NO the rest of your life..........................................................................

[Jeff]

I'm sorry for the lack of clarity, and I hope I did not offend by deleting that post. Possibly "Open Discussion" should actually be renamed General Boat & Boating Discussion (not much of a ring to it) or Boating & Yachting Discussion, or something along those lines. A little latitude is good, but threads must have some specific tie to boats or experiences boating, boatbuilding, designing, working on things related to boats, being on the water...

In the early years when things were generally going well for everyone economically and everyone was working on new projects, it seemed we didn't have so many problems in "the Bilge." Then it seemed like a good idea to build comrade to allow discussion about anything and everything. But this year, it seemed like threads such as "global economics: witchcraft and lies" started generating complaints daily, and it seemed animosity was spilling over into other discussions. These non-boating threads started to have a major cost that wasn't worth the price overall if they were creating hostility between members that started to hurt the discussions about what the site was created for - boat design & boat building, discussion of existing designs and boats, or even discussion on any facet of boating.

Some of these off-topic areas could be interesting at times, and I do enjoy hearing different perspectives - but I don't know that you can try and include everything without hurting the core interest. Maybe when things rebound a bit. But for now, it seems things run more smoothly and productively overall if we keep this a place where we can all come and focus on the things we all love and have in common rather than allowing disagreement to build over everything that has or is going wrong in the world economically.