Originally Posted by NeilGunton

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That said, I do acknowledge that there is a lot of overlap between "bicycle touring" and "e-bike touring". I think this overlap becomes clearer when you think about specific topics that people might raise, e.g. the best tent to use, or the best stove. These are general questions that do not require bringing up the type of bike you are using. I guess it could come up obliquely or in passing, as long as the discussion is not "about" the e-bike aspect, I don't see why it couldn't happen here. And if someone has a question that is specific to e-bikes, like batteries or charging or whatever, then that would reasonably be asked over on the specific e-bike forum. Even if you are asking about charging on the road during a tour, I'm sure that the e-bike forum would be the better place to ask about that. As we have seen here, some people get irritated when motors are brought into a "bicycle touring" forum, so any discussion that attempts to focus on the e-bike aspect will quickly be derailled by snark. Unfortunate, but a fact of life as we have seen. So I think that even though there is overlap there, the "bicycle touring" aspects can adequately be covered by this forum, and the "e-bike" aspects can adequately be covered by the existing e-bike forum. There's no reason why someone on an e-bike tour can't get insight here on all the other aspects of touring, as long as they don't try to make it primarily about the e-bike (in which case, it should probably have been asked on the other forum).

This seems like a reasonable approach, and one which I will probably try to adopt on my own websites. Crazyguyonabike will remain about non-motorized bicycle touring, and there will be an e-bike specific topic over on topicwise.com. People will be free to discuss whatever, as long as the main topic of the discussion is placed appropriately. If it's mainly a question about the e-bike side of things, then please put it on the e-bike topic, and if the question relates primarily to something related to bicycle touring in general (camping, cooking, panniers etc) then by all means have that discussion on crazyguyonabike. And where there are gray areas, I'll just play it by ear on a case by case basis. But I do think that having that "no motors" policy in place will help to clear up a lot of potential problems and confusion before they occur. And it completely ameliorates the "slippery slope" aspect of e-bikes getting better and better over time...

Just some more thoughts, fwiw.

Neil