The balance between allowing for open discussion while moderating out threatening or irrelevant content seems to really be reaching a straining point given current events.

- The popular weekly 1/13 OAG thread was locked because it included a discussion of COVID testing availability in Mexico and border entry requirements, which was entirely relevant to the topic of airline service & schedule decisions due to the recent US requirement for a negative Covid test for international travel. You literally cannot meaningfully discuss the viability of Delta SEA-SJD service without being allowed to discuss the implications of the U.S. COVID test requirement impacting demand for that route.

- I recently posted a topic in the civil aviation thread sharing the news item that US airlines will temporarily ban checked firearms on flights into D.C. The topic was appropriately quoted and linked to a primary news source. It was inexplicably moved to “Travel Polls & Preferences” in spite of the fact it was a discussion about an objective piece of factual civil aviation news, and in no way a travel poll or discussion of traveler preference (the ban is an incontrovertible pierce of news put into effect by every U.S. airline serving DCA, with the possible exception of B6).

There seems to be an overly aggressive effort on the forum to bury (into the unmanageable pit of Covid threads) or to lock any topics that have even a tangential connection to domestic events or COVID, in spite of the fact they are are heavily and inextricably linked into civil aviation news at the moment. I can understand the general desire to want to avoid topics on which people have varied opinions, but the circumstances that we are currently living through make it impossible to meaningfully discuss the state of civil aviation without being allowed to openly discuss the inextricable links to the current events that are the causes.

It’s like being asked to write a paper on the history of racism in the United States and being told that you aren’t allowed to mention the fact that race-based slavery existed in the U.S. for hundreds of years. It doesn’t work. I know that the extreme, and in many cases unprecedented nature of current events is probably making this a more challenging balance for the moderators than usual, but please don’t allow the quality of the discussion to continue to be stifled in otherwise non-threatening threads on how the times we are currently in are undeniably impacting aviation.

WkndWanderer wrote:

The balance between allowing for open discussion while moderating out threatening or irrelevant content seems to really be reaching a straining point given current events.

- The popular weekly 1/13 OAG thread was locked because it included a discussion of COVID testing availability in Mexico and border entry requirements, which was entirely relevant to the topic of airline service & schedule decisions due to the recent US requirement for a negative Covid test for international travel. You literally cannot meaningfully discuss the viability of Delta SEA-SJD service without being allowed to discuss the implications of the U.S. COVID test requirement impacting demand for that route.

- I recently posted a topic in the civil aviation thread sharing the news item that US airlines will temporarily ban checked firearms on flights into D.C. The topic was appropriately quoted and linked to a primary news source. It was inexplicably moved to “Travel Polls & Preferences” in spite of the fact it was a discussion about an objective piece of factual civil aviation news, and in no way a travel poll or discussion of traveler preference (the ban is an incontrovertible pierce of news put into effect by every U.S. airline serving DCA, with the possible exception of B6).

There seems to be an overly aggressive effort on the forum to bury (into the unmanageable pit of Covid threads) or to lock any topics that have even a tangential connection to domestic events or COVID, in spite of the fact they are are heavily and inextricably linked into civil aviation news at the moment. I can understand the general desire to want to avoid topics on which people have varied opinions, but the circumstances that we are currently living through make it impossible to meaningfully discuss the state of civil aviation without being allowed to openly discuss the inextricable links to the current events that are the causes.

It’s like being asked to write a paper on the history of racism in the United States and being told that you aren’t allowed to mention the fact that race-based slavery existed in the U.S. for hundreds of years. It doesn’t work. I know that the extreme, and in many cases unprecedented nature of current events is probably making this a more challenging balance for the moderators than usual, but please don’t allow the quality of the discussion to continue to be stifled in otherwise non-threatening threads on how the times we are currently in are undeniably impacting aviation.

I wasnt the moderator who dealt with these 2 things however I can understand why they took the approach they did.

Firstly the OAG thread, a reminder was put in the thread to take the discussion of testing to non-aviation after several moderation logs in the thread. The discussion continued to the point where the request from the moderator was not being followed, the topic went from the changes which is the original purpose of the thread to a discussion about testing and various laws in the US which is off topic to the actual thread itself which lead it to be locked.

The topic regarding firearms being banned that was moved from Civil Aviation to Travel, Polls and Preferences was justified. While it may have been factual it was more applicable about travel experience then a civil aviation topic, similar to why support animals is better suited in TPP and not civil aviation. Personally if I had dealt with this I would have not moved the thread but deleted it as you did not provide your own comments of which is required by forum rules as there was only a quote from the article plus a link to it.

I do not agree that we are making an overly aggressive effort in moderation. Firstly that is an assumption on your part. Of the posts made on this site less than 5% is deleted meaning that around 95% of the posts on the site are left as is. When it comes to moving topics from one sub forum to another we are simply moving it to a more suitable forum. We are not burying discussion. I would also like to point out that civil aviation is used all the time for topics that should be posted elsewhere on the site because those who start them know they will get more response there than in the respective sub forums and in the process are cluttering up civil aviation. In some cases moving threads from one sub forum to another is a toss of a coin as some will be happy with the move while others wont.

COVID is being covered in pretty much most threads on the site in one way or another, particular in civil aviation. I think we have been pretty lenient overall with this. However when the topic drifts away from the intended subject and also away from aviation in most cases we have to act. There has been an increase in recent times of politics being brought into civil aviation which has also led us to act. On top of that there has been an increase of things being posted not being sourced correctly, this includes either link sources being provided or users quoting stuff and not adding their own comments. A lot of the deletions that we make are also reported by the a.net community. Ultimately we have rules for a reason and if they are not be followed we have to address them as they arise.