Moving away from aviation related content is a bit like the forum fitting a hand grenade with a chocolate pin.
I personally prefer not to have non-GA related topics, especially those that are emotionally loaded. Or to have them hidden.
These topics such as climate change, war, maybe even brexit in my opinion better to be discussed in person, the format of a forum/tweet/email etc is just not suitable.
I guess it really depends on the pressure in the cooker between shoulders.
We do see a contemporary land sliding change in managing public opinions by nudging and all sorts of spoofing out of politics, (mis?)using modern communication methods and their reach. As society we are neither firm nor trained to react on these attacks to formerly called ‘democratic systems’. Right now there is a big tendency to replace systems based on the mechanics of capitalism and democracy by systems of attitude and obedience, so what do we do about it and where to start?
Yes, currently there is a need for civil disobedience and renaissance of dispute techniques,
but who is open to sacrifice herhisit personal future to break the current cancel cultures?
My opinion: we are not mature or ripe to initiate that on euroga.org and survive the verbal wars to be expected.
Well, I don’t mind if non-aviation topics are discussed here; the communication style on EuroGA is a good one in my view – so why not, and nobody is forced to read threads one is not interested in…
I doubt that the forums‘ quality will suffer from that, and comparing to another aviation forum where people mostly behave like a bunch of id**ts, basically trying to turn threads as fast as possible to a dumb clown show, EuroGA appears as the place to be.
The fact that the completely off-topic thread about the war in Ukraine happily goes on, while the one about aviation-related sanctions for private pilots (which is still an ongoing issue btw, hundreds of pilots across Europe are grounded) was locked back in March, says enough about the “freedom of speech” here.
hundreds of pilots across Europe are grounded
Russian pilots?
Define
Russian pilots?
Thank you all for your contributions.
A bit of explanation:
I posted the question because some people have complained about this. However, there is a clear majority to maintain the present setup. So we carry on as before.
The Politics / OT thread is needed for practical reasons to avoid posts disappearing, and then people starting threads like “why has my post disappeared”.
Brexit is not allowed anywhere here, even in the Politics thread, because of the extreme divisiveness (and the Politics thread says this in its title).
An “invisible threads” feature would cost 1k-2k to implement. It’s not just the database; it is the user interface, and testing on various client devices. Since we are donation-funded, I need to be sure this is a good use of the generous donations received. If you would like this feature, first ask yourself whether you have donated 
Also, features for making stuff invisible are problematic because people tend to block threads as a kneejerk reaction when they get upset by something, and then forget they did it. A similar thing – blocking posters by name – was requested by a number of people to make invisible posts from a particular pilot (in case you wonder, not the one with a royal title, but another “big” one from the same place, who is no longer here); this is also problematic because one forgets they set that up and then threads get disjointed and people wonder what the hell xyz is talking about.
A couple of posters did tell me they left due to the Politics thread, but seeing their activities elsewhere online I frankly doubt this was the real reason. A lot of people do a “big switch off” where they disappear / change identity / etc. Often this is due to a new job which has specific requirements. I also recall one guy leaving EuroGA while negotiating a contract with a customer (in the GA business) and then returning when it was signed.
It is easy enough to not read some thread. But it is a very good point that sometimes, when flying is slow (winter, bad wx, etc) the forum is dominated by with non GA topics. Like when we have this:
EGKK 111350Z 08002KT 7000 3000S FEW039 M01/M01 Q1006
EGKK 111104Z 1112/1218 VRB03KT 3000 BR BKN003 BECMG 1112/1114 9999 NSW FEW045 PROB30 TEMPO 1114/1118 8000 BKN005 TEMPO 1118/1214 4000 BR BKN003 PROB30 1121/1211 0300 FZFG VV/// PROB30 TEMPO 1122/1204 SHSN PROB30 1214/1218 7000
Just now, the Active Threads link (which is where ~95% of EuroGA users come in through) looks pretty good
Personally I would like to see more discussions relating to “aircraft technical” matters but those are almost totally the province of aircraft owners and thus people who fly to places further away, and we have lost so many of those during covid.
However, we are obviously not a daily newspaper with an editorial team, funded by a €50/$50/£50/year paywall. This was tried recently by one UK site which was going to shove their site behind a paywall, and realised few were going to pay it, and anyway the “editorial” activity is just collecting GA articles off the internet. So the right way, if you want to see certain topics, is that you start a thread on them! EuroGA is a community contributed forum Starting threads is really easy, and there is no such thing as a dumb question.
Finally, regarding the locking of the pro-Moscow thread, the answer is obvious.
Emir wrote:
hundreds of pilots across Europe are groundedRussian pilots?
More like “pilots who liveed outside Russia for decades and were unable to drop their Russian citizenship”, yes, that one.
Not just that – any person with Russian citizenship (not just passport – that could expire) is unable to get some types of medical help – you HAVE to choose where you want to be evacuated to (as per EASA interpretation of the rule). But! Apparently, this is off-topic on EuroGA.
Dropping a citizenship of a dictatorial country is often problematic. For example to drop a CZ citizenship pre-1989 one had to visit the CZ embassy in London (if living in the UK) and hand over a bag with used banknotes. They would not accept new banknotes. The amount was determined according to how many years of education you got back in CZ. I knew a guy who paid £20k to buy out himself and his family (he had a PhD from Prague University) and that was c. 1970 so a lot of money!
The cash was used for funding subversion e.g. spy networks, trade unions and their agent provocateurs, various propaganda, the CPGB, elements of the Labour Party, printed organs (probably the Morning Star, etc), the usual stuff.
And this would have been the same for the whole Iron Curtain region.
So it is nothing new. It is just rare that the possession of that citizenship creates a problem over here.
The pro-Moscow threads just get hijacked for Putin propaganda. The same people were doing the same thing on other domestic GA forums around Europe. Even in places “running on Russian gas”, they didn’t get much sympathy given what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
