Mittens is 100% correct.

There is a marked difference between monitoring and censorship.

There were no disrespectful comments made towards the deceased.

Monitoring is supposed to be for the benefit of the community here.

Very very clearly by the view count the threads closed were being read by everyone on here.

I haven't seen #s online here like that in months.

This business of the thread starter taking his ball and going home is stupid.

The thread starter alludes to looking for mechanical methods of securing safety with a title that includes BLAME GAME.
He doesn't participate much in the conversation which follows his ten year trend with 350 posts of being quiet but gets to get the thread closed.
That's wrong

After a few thousand views and hundreds of posts the ownership of these topics is the community's not someone that doesn't like what they are reading.

Some on here want to use the words Have Respect.

That term goes both ways and disrespecting the people that have thoughts and opinions about probably the absolute most important subject our hobby faces is as bad as disrespecting the deceased.

The topic needs discussion now and on here.

It was brought up in the deleted thread and I got a PM from a "player" that took exception to it, somehow defending a blow-by of anchored boats without stating why other than he had videos to prove otherwise. In the absence of information, people will draw conclusions, some right, some wrong, but until otherwise proven it will generate discussion, some heated because of the potential ramifications.

Brad's wife Krissy is reading the accident threads on OSO. She is all for the memorial decals which are being donated for free by Gino. Donations are welcome to the Bradley Smith Childrens Trust fund, but not required, to obtain a memorial sticker

Seems a lot of people got PMs from someone on one side of this conversation.

Which is ridiculous. IF you line was abut to closed off, and you option means going buy people like that, SHUT DOWN..... its that simple. would you maybe still have to cut close? sure, but at least if your coasting, and trying to stop your not a complete dick, and careless boater. you where trying to do the right thing......


As for the people complaining abotu threads and wait a week or 2? WTF then everyone wont care and the threads wont have the amount of ideas, and energy at that point. The Family's reading them? WTF again I would think they have better things to do then read a forum there husbands use to post on, when they just lost there Husband and father to there kids. But if they so chose to, then that's on them. not our jobs to cover up the facts. She going to try and have the fly buy video of her hubby taken off you-tube too? we live in a digital media age, you do something (let alone do something at a event with this kind of coverage) and it will be caught on film

the Stickers and donations? I agree its pretty tasteless in my opinion.
So respect? sure I agree. Probably should not be name calling them, but talking about issues and being edited and closed is BS> this Forums CENSORSHIP is what pissing me off.

Marc's thread that was started in 2008 has 23000 views

The Blame Game thread stayed up for 1 day

It has 29000 views

And it was closed.

Can you imagine that ??

And all those view numbers includng the orig al thread are from 5 full days timeframe. Yet the 9/11 thread has less than 1/2 the views and is now 12 yrs old. We are a fugged up bunch of people

Exactly, its the time is now, not later, and to be deleted is a BIG shame on the OSO forum.

I would argue that we have a much lower number of members 12 years ago.

I wouldn't argue with this statement. In fact, we really shouldn't be passing judgment on the drivers at all. Conversations will never rule out the concept of driver/operator error. It will help bring awareness so that operators will possibly exercise better judgment.

These conversations that start up just after an incident are most constructive when they focus on what can be done to avoid future incidents. My heart goes out to the deceaseds' families. Yet our love of this sport mandates that we have a healthy discussion and learn how to reduce future chances of repeat incidents.