The topic of this group has always been narrowly defined by design. Over the...what...13 years (the old rbw list migrated here to google groups in March of 2007) in which I've moderated the group, I've taken down all manner of threads which were off topic and got weirdly nasty.
Mostly they were about SUV's or bait versus fly fishing, sometimes about helmets. Innocuous topics that suddenly lurched sideways. Good people saying hurtful things for little reason other than getting caught up in the call and response of the internet. I usually manage to get the nasty threads deleted, but sometimes run out of energy and time before I can get rid of others which are kind of on the bubble. That's not the same as tacit approval. Before the COVID situation had developed into even a quarter of what it is now, we had an exceptionally nasty thread which expanded here. Caused folks to post some very angry things and leave. The current demonstrations and responses and actions are playing out on a scale I don't feel we can ever hope to cover in this group.In the short time following the original post, I deleted responses in the the moderation queue which had already crossed the line of civil discourse. Not to mention the growing debate simply about whether or not the post was on or off topic. There are plenty of places online to have those conversations. I do understand the anger and the pain and frustration going on right now. But there are much more appropriate venues to directly apply yourself to begin to address these issues in our culture than talking (or arguing) about them here. Thank you to those of you who contacted me directly - some of you were concerned about the growing adversarial tone of comments, others the non-RBW content of the post. Others have asked directly why the thread was deleted. I hope this gives some insight to the decision. I guess I come back to the idea: the topic of this group has always been narrowly defined by design at the beginning. Stay safe and act fairly. - Jim / Cyclofiend / list admin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/63d97e7e-4f17-49a1-9ff8-bf275e708255%40googlegroups.com.
