Thank you all and Farewell

[alexanderk]

Hi guys,

not sure where to post this, hope it is appropriate in this section.

I wanted to say thank you and it has been a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for all the advice, information, your experiences and thoughts. Great site and great topics, wealth of information.

It is my last post, and I am gone now. No offence, or dissatisfaction or anything - just a personal rule not to participate in forums where posts get deleted/censored. May not be realistic, but this is important to me.

Best regards and happy flying,
Alex

[Aart]

Alex,
Could you give us some examples of your posts being censored/deleted.
I must say I trust Kai completely as the moderator of our forum...

[Keith M]

Possibly Kai's last post here?

[bcocheran]

Hi guys,

not sure where to post this, hope it is appropriate in this section.

I wanted to say thank you and it has been a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for all the advice, information, your experiences and thoughts. Great site and great topics, wealth of information.

It is my last post, and I am gone now. No offence, or dissatisfaction or anything - just a personal rule not to participate in forums where posts get deleted/censored. May not be realistic, but this is important to me.

Best regards and happy flying,
Alex

Bummer...


Brad - 216DG - 40.698 (G1000) - KELK

[Gasser]

To play the devils advocate, there is nothing worse than doing a search for a topic and pulling up a thread and all you get is pages of off topic banter about an unrelated topic.
I have no problem with keeping a thread on topic as people will come back and read them years later. Lets not get very useful information lost in a sea of junk.

Now that said, maybe there should be a off topic area. Maybe there is one but I missed it. Maybe instead of deleting the point where a thread drifted, it can be moved to a open topic forum named after the original thread plus the word drift ;-).

Anyway, I think this forum does a great job.

Jeff

[bcocheran]

Jeff, I think that is a fine idea. I do not like the idea of deletes. What may have been banter to others is still part of a dialog between me (or whomever) and people I am developing a relationship with. I don't want that axed. Moved is a good idea.

This site is great for information, but equally (or maybe even more so) for me it is about getting to know others with similar interests.

All in all, however, it is not a public site. It is owned, operated, and moderated as a private entity. It is ultimately his choice as to what to do with content. It is members choice to stay or go.

[Tim H]

I think this is an awesome forum but thread drift can be an issue at times. To avoid this, I PM folks with issues that I think may contribute to thread drift.

[carym]

As some of you know, I have been a participant in both this forum as well as in the other forum. This forum was formed, in part, because of disatisfaction with aspects of the other forum. Among the concerns with the other forum, and there were other issues as well, was the fact that posts were deleted without asking the poster. The deletions made many people angry. I understand the issue with thread drift, and the suggestion to move such posts to another post is a good one, but I would urge extreme caution in deleting posts because it may lead to the loss of some individuals who provide valuable help.

Just an FYI.

[Rick]

I would hate to see this forum degenerate into what the other forum became before I left it a few years ago. To date, I have been extremely impressed with the way our members here have conducted themselves, and I want nothing more than to have that continue going forward. Yes, threrad drift is both a blessing and a curse. In the short term, it is fun to get to know other members and their interests, flying or otherwise. But in the long term, as these threads become a wealth of knowledge for both new and old members to search for answers to questions and solutions to problems, the unrelated posts in each thread really do get in the way. Unfortunately, that is the job of a forum moderator to keep things cleaned up and on topic.

As it stands now, the "Hangar Talk" forum is the only place for topics which are not specific to a particular DAxx type, and so it tends to attract a wide variety of topics. And the threads there always seem to start out flying-related. But, just like "real-life" hangar talk, conversations tend to drift to other areas of interest between the parties present. One proposal would be to create another Forum, and move non-flying-related or other off-topic posts to that area as needed to clean up the main threads. Personally, I like that idea. However, I also wonder about the need to keep all the non-aircraft-related talk on a forum dedicated to Diamond aircraft, long term? Is there a benefit to the forum members? In the end, it IS Kai's decision, since he is the one dedicating all the time and money and energy to keep the DAN up and running. And, ultimately, does he really need to store all the old unrelated topics on his server forever? Seems like a lot to expect of a free forum, even one of this caliber...

Maybe off-topic posts get moved to another (new) Forum for a while, and then eventually deleted after sufficient time has passed? I'm sure if we put our collective heads to it, we can come up with a good solution.

[Antoine]

Hmmm I guess I owe Alexander and everyone here an apology for having caused the thread drift. i really would like Alexander to reconsider his decision.

This is a terrific place for socializing and discusing our commton interest/passion, and I am very grateful to Kai. It is hard to keep it informative and I agree that the hread drift needed to be removed. We had fun in the exchange, but this did not serve the scope of the post.

I think the idea of having a place for "clean-up" posts is really good.

Come on folks let's not overreact. We need each and every precious member to make this place what it is.