The usual suspects - closed thread(s) that is

The Oxen Kid

 

Had to be a sponsor bailed out to precipitate this kerfuffle.

 

The purpose of boatdesign.net is to provide a place where everyone can enjoy coming to learn and share information on boat design, boatbuilding, and all things boats and boating, regardless of their diverse backgrounds. The purpose of the site was never to create a political or religious blog platform. The forums are only as strong as its members, and certainly every member who comes here to share their boat design and boatbuilding knowledge is greatly appreciated, but when a few emotive areas, especially those which generate no useful or actionable information relative to the focus of the site, boat design, boatbuilding, or boats in general, begin to offend or turn away those who visit to enjoy the common interest in boats, hosting these political and religious arguments becomes counterproductive.

The request to have unrestricted threads on politics or religion which are not closed no matter if they offend other boat designers or boatbuilders has more disadvantages for the site than the advantages. Hosting a separate or hidden section for political or religious threads under boatdesign.net so that they may go unrestricted by other members being offended by them doesn't make sense; the advantage of sharing a login also creates the spill-over problem, and creating a semi-separate section while sharing a database has only technical disadvantages. Further, if there is a need for a new political or religious forum, it would be better if someone who was very interested in politics and religion created this rather than separating it off and "hiding it" under the boat design forums.

It makes the most sense for those wishing to take part in political and religious discussions and have them remain open without regard to whether they are offensive to other boat design people to take those discussions to one of the many active political or religious forums where political and religious debates are not only welcome, but the focus of the site.

For arguments on religion and politics, people can easily take advantage of numerous political and religious forums:
https://www.google.com/search?q=politics forum
https://www.google.com/search?q=religion forum

 

Boston, no need to apologize. That was a long time ago. I just used the example to say that it had happened to me and an off topic argument affected my on topic posting briefly. I got over it, but it can happen.