As Inter_Michael rightly said, "censorship" is not the right term. It is about house rules.

I consider the F16 Forum to be THEIRS, and I think they have the right to handle it in any way they want. If it had been a class or group forum of which I was a leader, I would have deleted that thread long before. I thought the class used admirable restraint. They seemed to be waiting for permission from me, although they do not need that -- all they need is a consensus from their own moderators.

For Rick and I, our own primary class forum is the Wave Class. If somebody came into that forum and started harassing the class or badmouthing the boats, he would be kicked out the door.

Why would you bother to get a separate meeting room for your group if you have no way of controlling the people who come into your room?

It is beyond rude to go to a class website and bully them for months on end because some big manufacturer doesn't like their rules.

The people in the F16 forum listened patiently (and then impatiently) to everything he had to say -- over and over and over -- and they made it clear they did not agree with his proposals, but he kept coming back, and, as Wouter said, hijacking every thread he could to again start hammering away.

Most of that is still on the F16 Forum. As I have said several times, I found the debate fascinating, but in a generic kind of way. After that last thread on the subject was deleted (at my suggestion), I immediately started a thread on the Open Forum about weight issues and told Macca he was welcome to carry on the debate there. He has done so to some extent, and I thank him for that, because it IS interesting. And I have complete confidence in the sailors on the Open Forum to stomp on specific class-bashing. Because, who knows, YOUR class could be next. We all need to respect each other's boat choices.

Mark Schneider's post on this thread did a good job of summarizing the weight issues that have been brought up by Macca, and if anybody wants to pursue those, they should do so on the "Relative weight" thread in this OPEN Forum.

As far as "censorship" or "house rules," I think I have learned some things from this thread.
1. People who have their own rooms should be able to police them.
2. I can trust y'all in the Open Forum to balance things out on your own.
3. I still sit Indian style, but I didn't know that was offending American Indians. I thought it was Indian as in India.

Sorry about such a long post. I'm getting as bad as Wouter. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />