Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
Neil,
Honestly, what I am trying to understand is why you are here on this site trying to sway what is allowed or not when you have a very large website and like minded community of your own that you already control exclusively. It's a huge website! Is it not enough that you do have that community where you can discuss pure bike touring without having to try to eliminate the E bike threat here as well? What's up with that. Does the whole internet have to conform to your personal world view? You like to call others whom you think have an agenda names and call discourse rant therapy but it seems you have a larger agenda of your own to promote.
But I guess, if you completely disallow discussion of the subject on your own site you are forced to come here to talk about it - kind of caught in your own web there. Perhaps if you allowed discussion about E bike touring on your site you could also discuss the pros and cons of it there.
Do you not wish to soil your website with such discussion and so, talk dirty here and claim purity there? I'm actually asking because I don't get why, if you have your way already, where you live, why you feel the need to have your way everywhere else as well.
There have been discussions about e-bikes on the crazyguyonabike forums. I don't automatically shut them down, but I do generally re-state my policy that the site is for non-motorized bicycles only. I don't see that I'm being inconsistent here, by arguing the same position. As to why I'm here on bikeforums, I thought you were all in favor of inclusiveness? Or does that inclusiveness only cover people who agree with you? You can't have it both ways, you know.
But hypocrisy aside, why I am here is because I am interested in bicycle touring, obviously, and I saw an interesting discussion developing, one which I have opinions on, and I saw that certain viewpoints were perhaps not being represented. I also saw people who had viewpoints similar to my own being labeled as trolls, and calls for them to be banned from the discussion. I felt a need to say something, so I said it. A forum is a place for discussion, and here on bikeforums, it is still a point of contention as to whether or not e-bikes have a place here. I am not trying to shape the whole internet to my liking, I'm just expressing a viewpoint, as are you. The fact that I run another bicycle touring website is neither here nor there - on bikeforums, my view carries no more or less weight than yours, and I fully accept that. On my own website I have already made certain choices about what I allow, and the mods here will make their choices, and in the meantime the forum is a place where such things can be discussed... what's the problem? I think I've earned the right to be regarded as posting "in good faith" and not trolling, so you can't throw that one at me. It's a forum. I'm foruming, to coin a phrase.
Neil