Monday, September 8, 2008

Excellent Whitby and Brewer Sailors web resources BUT….......

Whitby and Brewer Sailors have three major resources on the web;

1. The sailboat association at;

http://www.bcpl.net/~bcboykin/whitby_home2.htm

This first was established by Bernie Boykin in the early 90’s and is a great source of information for Whitby/Brewer owners and more importantly potential owners. Bernie is also the driving force behind the Newsletter. Unfortunately the site has not been updated for some time and the newsletters have never been put in digital form.

2. Doug Stephenson Brokerage Website (Doug is a broker and recognized expert on Whitby/Brewer vessels). http://www.yachtsls.com/

3. And a somewhat disorganized discussion group on Yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WhitbyBrewerSailboats/

This would be an excellent resource if some attempt was made to structure the information and transfer it to Bernie’s site (I am informed that some sort of restructuring is in hand). Unfortunately, it appears to be controlled by a small number of self appointed moderators. One in particular does not limit himself to preventing spam and unacceptable posts, he chooses to censor posts that he does not agree with. Two of my posts were singled out, one offering to assist in structuring the web site and second contained my opinion of the rudder. The first earned a reasonably civil rebuke for the self appointed gatekeeper (even if the reasoning was somewhat unconvincing), the second post he simply refused to publish as it did not agree with his opinion.

Not being a big fan of censorship, I will give this site a miss for the moment if the hope that wiser heads will prevail.

"I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Voltaire

1 comment:

builder said...

Censorship sucks. Goes completely against the spirit of the Internet. Some people just dont have a clue.