Sailing Anarchy is a box of kittens compared to what it was even five years ago.

As far as moderation goes, I much prefer the no moderation/censorship template. I got booted from a woodworking forum a few years ago. That forum was aggressively, and severely moderated. If you said something they didn't like, it would be changed or deleted. That pissed me off to no end, and I called a moderator out on being a jackass, and called him a jack booted nazi, and that got me flicked. Which is sad, because that place was an endless stream of entertainment for me. Nothing more fun than watching people screw up wood. Settle down Ding, you're doing fine. I'm on another woodworking forum, and they've got a little different style. They'll ask you to change something if they don't want it there. I mentioned something about cabinet shops going "tits up" in a thread one day. I got a PM asking me to change it. I asked why. They mod said it was inappropriate. I told him to get his head out of his butt. Tits up is a farm kid term. When a cow dies it falls over, the gasses from digestion don't escape since it's obviously not moving anything through the system, it balloons up, rolls on it's back, and goes tits up.

About twenty years ago, the internet started popping up in a useable by the masses form. About ten years ago forums started getting pretty popular for just about any subject. You collect hermaphrodite, miss stitched, factory screwed up Beanie Babies? I'd bet there's a forum or sub forum that fits your fetish. Up pops a sailing forum at some point. We spend ten years catching up on all the things that have developed over the last three thousand years of sailing. Our technology doesn't move very quickly, so I think we've effectively ran out of subjects. Being this is a male dominated sport, there will also be posturing, there will be chest beating, and there will be who's got the largest dick threads. That's nature of the beast. Don't like it? Pull up your panties, and leave. Mike and I discussed some of this when I was in Rhode Island this past summer. And anyone who knows me in person, (which a lot of you do), I type like I speak. People ask, "what about the kids"? Screw the kids. The little darlings are going to be railing coke off a hookers butt before you know it. A sailing forum and its subsequent influence is the least of your troubles as a parent

The other factor is sailing is a small, niche sport or hobby. Compared to just about anything else you could be doing with your day, sailing is way the F down the list for pretty much everyone. It's complicated, it's expensive, it's really f-ing hard to do well, and it's a massive time suck. So enter the teensy, tiny world of beach cat sailing. We are a minority, within a minority. You get it, I get it, even some people named Todd get it. But this isn't for everybody. What could make it more popular? Hell if I know. Cheaper boats? More exposure? You can't get much more exposed than what the last AC gave us. But then people inevitably ask how much one of those cost, and throw up a little bit when they realize that most people don't have the large half of a billion dollars to play in that sandbox. Cat sailing is fricking voodoo when it comes to most of the leaner crowd as well. I have on numerous occasions when setting up or tearing down the boat at one of the places I launch from, which is next to a yacht club, been asked by some fat dopy white dude stumbling over from the yacht club; "What do you do when it turtles?" My responses vary from "scuttle the boat and call the insurance company", to "I just pull it up?"


Oh, and if you don't like a thread, don't click on it jackass, it's not that ding dong difficult. There's plenty of topics that I don't care a bit for, I don't click on them. It ain't rocket surgery.