Thanks Rick.
The internet has become a strange mix of public and private.
In the real world, every place is, by default, public. Places only become private when some sense of "ownership" is established. Ownership in the natural world happens by the force of some plant or animal physically keeping others out and punishing violators. In our society, we've codified that primitive concept of "ownership" with laws and police to enforce them. But we've also explicitly carved out certain places that we call "public space". That last step hasn't really happened on the internet. There are no really "public" places on the internet. Every place on the internet is owned by someone. Unlike the natural world - where space existed before someone claimed it - every place on the internet has to be created by someone who becomes it's owner.
This is a serious defect when we try to map the notions of public places in the real world to the internet - we find there are none. Just as our people (acting through our governments) have carved out public spaces in the real world, I feel the same needs to be done on the internet. That hasn't happened yet (to my knowledge), so we're stuck banding together to create those places ourselves. That's what we're doing here at the U.S. Hawks, and I applaud those with the vision to participate. While I am the current owner, I look forward to eventually turning it over to the community of U.S. Hawks members.
In the end, however, people get what they support with their efforts. Every "happy happy" post on places like Facebook and hanggliding.org gives them power. Every challenge saps their power but risks being silenced (banned). Each person makes their choices and writes their own history with every post. I am very proud to be among many pilots here at the U.S. Hawks who've refused to be told what they can and can't say on hanggliding.org. Those pilots have "put their money where their mouth is" when it comes to free speech, and I salute our "banned of brothers".