What happened to "Lies & witchcraft"??

One of my favorite threads! Where'd it go, and why?

 

The "Global Economics Witchcraft and Lies" "Do you Carry Firearms" and Drivel threads were deleted. These contained some friendly chat, some good points (though few directly related to our core subject), but also a lot of hostility and material that didn't reflect well upon our site.

The good thing about forums is that discussions often live long as new people discover a design, project, or boat long after the initial post. The bad thing though is that threads like these above that grew so large seemed to not only have immediate fights break out, but worse, seemed to rekindle hostility long after the fact.

We lost a few good boatbuilders recently due to anger and hostility growing from these non-boat-design threads. While I really was sorry to delete any posts, ever, and I realize these did build some camaraderie at the time they were posted, the burden of maintaining these off-topic threads I felt was too great. Any time I turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper I am bombarded with talk of the economy in very general terms, our government, 'the war on terror' - I want this place to be about boats, a sanctuary where I can focus on what I love and meet others who want to talk about their designs, projects they're building, boats they're reworking... I think it works best to keep this site, even the open discussion forum, directly focused on boats, building, design, boating...