I appreciate the focus of HBA. If I want to read about tracked vehicles, I bet there's a forum for it somewhere on the WWWeb; that's the place I'd go for that discussion... not HBA. I enjoy some of the thread drift in HBA, but I primarily come here to learn about aircraft building and closely-related "stuff". I'd like to keep the (relatively) tight focus.
Agreed. It just sounded like he was saying non-active builders shouldn't be allowed to post on the site, or at least on some portion of it. That was one of the unclear parts. A lot of people come here for advice on selecting aircraft to build, choosing between metal, wood or composite, or to gauge the mere possibility that they might actually be able to build. Some come to simply stoke the fire, which leads to many people building, or motivates continuation of a build. Some people are just plain interested in the topic, and are curious. It sounded like he wanted to restrict or even banish those people, which I very much disagree with.
As for off topic, that's sometimes a grey area when deciding how
far off topic things can get. Politics or social issues for instance, are restricted, but those do sometimes influence aviation, so good judgement has to be applied. Obviously most of it won't be accepted, and there will never be 100% agreement, but someone has to make the call, and I'm fine with that. But as far as something like tracked vehicles, I haven't seen anything like that. But I would almost certainly agree it doesn't belong here (it would be a tough sell to make that relevant to aviation). I'm personally sick of seeing multiple threads every day on just about anyone's proposal for a new electric aircraft, no matter how outlandish the proposal may be, or the notion that we should all be running out and buying into something that isn't even viable yet (yeah, pet peeve). But it is aviation, so I don't call for restrictions or banning those threads.
Now I
do believe there could be a discussion about limiting to homebuilding topics as opposed to all aviation topics in general. I don't think I'd advocate for an outright ban in that regard though. I think it would be a huge Pandora's box just chock full of more grey areas we'd have to deal with (for you younger folks, "chock full" means really a lot). I think it would also turn a lot of people off, and eliminate some very interesting content.
I just wasn't sure what he was asking for. It's still not totally clear, but it does sound a lot less draconian than what it originally sounded like, so I'm happy with that.
The only things that truly frustrate me here are the inability to delete my own posts to get rid of duplicates or something I posted in the wrong place, and the inability to simply cancel a reply you've been drafting. But those are relatively minor things.
Don't think I ever saw it in print before.
