Well, I've always been taught that variety is the spice of life. And merely mentioning the existence of (GASP!!!!) another forum (DOUBLE GASP!!!!), shouldn't be grounds for deletion and banishment. Obviously, it is in CTT's interest to promote and expand the hobby - if a person visits this and other forums, develops and expands his/her interest and involvement in the hobby, purchases more product from advertisers (perhaps a CTT subscription too) - - well isn't that a benefit to CTT?
Each of the three forums I check regularly tend to offer varying content and diversity of opinion and thought. I find all three to be entertaining and usually civil - oddly enough, MTJ strikes me as the most open-minded, light-hearted, and civil of the three (CTT second), despite the frequent references to "elsewhere", which wouldn't be made if a few folks/moderators there weren't so full of themselves and censor-focused.
The O guage world is plenty large enough for 3 (or more) major forums. Each has it's merits, and a few pitfalls. MTJ is growing stronger daily, being fueled by the increasingly OGRe-like treatment of some highly talented hobbyists. Hopefully CTT won't take a page out of that book of mismanagement and increase censorship here.
The great majority of threads move off the front page within a day (at least it seems that way to me). Unless the thread gets hostile and insulting, or is completely non-train/hobby related, why delete it? It's going to die off naturally, so let it, instead of fueling even more threads about censorship, "where'd ____ go?", etc. etc., which then creates more work for the censors, and more hostility towards the forum for the ever-increasing censorship (gee, does this sound familiar??.....)
It's a vicous circle once censorship takes hold - instead, keep the deletions to a minimum and responsibly "moderate" the forum only to keep the absolute BS and hostility off the site (that's IMHO, of course).
GPJ
