[Free]

You could get a PhD in psychology studying the dysfunctional sport of hanggliding.

Psychologist are studying us, but I think you already knew that.
Look how the internet 'control grid' started.

From his office at The Pentagon on April 25, 1963 J.C.R. Licklider, Director of Behavioral Sciences Command & Control Research at ARPA, the U. S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, sent a memo to members and affiliates of what he jokingly called the "Intergalactic Computer Network, "outlining a key part of his strategy to connect all their individual computers and time-sharing systems into a single computer network spanning the continent” (Waldrop).

ARPA, DARPA. Behavior Sciences Command and Control.
Every keystroke studied/categorized/analyzed.

The first internet message board for hang gliding was 'donated' and run by a University in Utah. Utah.ed
But it finally became too much for them, I suppose, and they withdrew the deal.
Then there was a free yahoo list type message board run by a couple different hg opportunist till it went down hill and expired under the rule of Jim Zeisit, past President USHGA. He banned me on some 'inside' info like the coward Jack Axaopolous used to ban Joe.
After that, Davis and Jack swooped in with their "free" data mining operations. Davis' message board was pretty crude to begin.
It was advertised as a ''lab" in the fine print.

Its all free but we are selling your data.
DARPA sits on all of it and psychologist are the worker bees sorting it all out.
You are living in a glass house.
Its all free. Aint it grande?

[Bill Cummings]

THE CHEESE IN THE MOUSE TRAP IS ALWAYS FREE, FREE.

[Bob Kuczewski]

The first internet message board for hang gliding was 'donated' and run by a University in Utah. Utah.ed
But it finally became too much for them, I suppose, and they withdrew the deal.
Then there was a free yahoo list type message board run by a couple different hg opportunist till it went down hill and expired under the rule of Jim Zeisit, past President USHGA. He banned me on some 'inside' info like the coward Jack Axaopolous used to ban Joe.
After that, Davis and Jack swooped in with their "free" data mining operations.

THE CHEESE IN THE MOUSE TRAP IS ALWAYS FREE, FREE.

There's a saying that if you're not the customer, then you're the product.

The U.S. Hawks has never sold any information to anyone for any reason. We don't target people for ads, and we don't "share" data with what are euphemistically called "partners". We are 100 times more of a real community than the "doppleganger" sites that shill for USHPA.

[Bob Kuczewski]

It's been over 20 years since the 2001 terrorist attacks in September of 2001.
It's also been exactly 3 years since Joe Faust was banned from hanggliding.org.

Let us never forget.

[Bob Kuczewski]

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[Frank Colver]

I tried my best to get him back in HG.org (almost succeeded). But what Jack wanted was for Joe to let pilots opt out of his HG ratings list and he would let him back on the forum. Joe said he would not do that, so it ended there.

That is the first hand "back story" to this issue.

It's too bad they couldn't come to an agreement, but we all need to remember: forums are private property and the owner has a right to set the rules anyway he wants. Jack's basic rule is: "NO CONTROVERSARY". Bob's basic rule is: "BRING ON THE CONTROVERSARY". Both are good for different purposes. We have the freedom to decide what forums we will visit and we can try to convince the owner to change his rules but we can't force him to do what he doesn't want to do. It's his/her personal property.

If you don't like Hangliding.org then don't go there. I personally find both forums useful for hang gliding information about equipment, HG flying techniques, stories, HG history, beautiful flight music videos, and controversial subjects. I don't want either of these forums to disappear from the hang gliding community. More forums would also be nice.

I personally see HG.org as a hang gliding "nuts and bolts" forum and US Hawks as a hang gliding politics and philosophy forum and where controversial issues like the danger of PG collapse can be posted. Joe Faust can post here thanks to Bob's terms, If he doesn't want to meet Jack's terms, it's his choice. Viva la both forums.

Frank

[Bob Kuczewski]

This topic is now over 3 years old. Hopefully, that time has given people a chance to cool down and reflect on this incident and its impact on the sport of hang gliding.

Frank, I know from our past discussions that you believe in social responsibility when it comes to preserving our environment. I remember some of your activism in that regard, and it gives me great respect for you. Maybe an example from that domain will help.

Imagine that there are 2 businesses that make a kind of widget that you buy on a regular basis. One of those businesses is very kind to the environment and the other business is very destructive of the environment. If they both offered the same widget at a comparable price, I don't even need to ask you which business you would support and which you'd avoid ... because I already know your answer.

When I took my first economics class in college, the professor used 2 words to encapsulate the entire field of economics:

     People choose.

People choose which businesses they support and they choose which politicians they support and they choose which hang gliding forums they support. And those choices in turn determine which businesses thrive, which politicians thrive, and which hang gliding forums thrive. People choose, and those choices have consequences. Those choices shape the world we live in.

That's the crux of my objection to people who choose to support hanggliding.org. They are choosing to support a web site that has harmed a great many people in the sport of hang gliding. They are choosing to support a web site that is harming the sport itself by stifling debate and by dividing us.

It is tempting to try to find a moral equivalence between the two web sites and to say that choosing one site or the other is just a "personal preference". But that's a cop out. There are real consequences to our choices, and those consequences matter. Every post on hanggliding.org perpetuates the division in our sport and every post on hanggliding.org perpetuates the injustices done to so many of our fellow pilots. That is very different from the U.S. Hawks where even our most ardent critics have been allowed to speak. Neither Michael Grisham nor Tom ("Red") Howard, nor Jack Axaopoulos himself are banned from the U.S. Hawks. They can all come here and post whatever they want - whether it's political or not. That's not true of hanggliding.org. The two sites are not morally equivalent. They are not even symmetric. The topics that can be discussed on hangglding.org are not different from the topics that can be discussed on the U.S. Hawks - they are a subset of what can be discussed on the U.S. Hawks.

There's a lot more to say, but it all comes down to a person's own sense of social responsibility. If Jack allowed me back on hanggliding.org today, my first post would be a complaint about the banning of Joe and Scott and Al and Warren and so on. If that got me banned, then I would post that fact on the U.S. Hawks where everyone can know the truth. If everyone did that, then we would have at least one place where everyone could work together to rebuild the sport of hang gliding.

As it stands now, the sport is divided. But it's not divided by Jack or Davis or USHPA. It's divided by those who make daily choices supporting that division. I will continue to be critical of those daily choices because they are harming the sport of hang gliding.

[Bob Kuczewski]

I tried my best to get him back in HG.org (almost succeeded). But what Jack wanted was for Joe to let pilots opt out of his HG ratings list and he would let him back on the forum. Joe said he would not do that, so it ended there.

That is the first hand "back story" to this issue.

Thanks. In other words, Joe wasn't banned for breaking any rules on hanggliding.org. Joe was banned for what Joe posted on Joe's own web site. Did you ever see that mentioned in Jack's terms of service? No, I didn't think so.

It's too bad they couldn't come to an agreement, but we all need to remember: forums are private property and the owner has a right to set the rules anyway he wants.

True. But the counterbalance of Jack's right to make up any rules he wants is the general public's right to choose other alternatives. However, in a monopoly situation, the general public doesn't have that right because there are no equivalent alternatives. That's why there are anti-trust laws to break up monopolies. Unfortunately, the sport of hang gliding seems to be built on monopolies like the ones held by Jack, USHPA, and Air California Adventure.

Jack's basic rule is: "NO CONTROVERSARY".

You don't know Jack. Jack spent many years on the warpath with USHPA because Jack proposed a "lead generation" program for USHPA that they wisely chose not to use. So don't be led astray by any "NO CONTROVERSY" claims from Jack (search his posts for "USHPA lead generation" and you'll find plenty of controversy ... if he hasn't deleted it already). I don't know the details of Jack's proposed "cut" from those leads, but it must have been pretty significant because USHPA turned him down and developed their own system. That's when Jack went on the "warpath" with USHPA. After seeing what Jack did with TorreyHawksForum and with the HGAA, USHPA was 100% correct in turning Jack down. Jack should never be trusted with anything that belongs to someone else ... including every post that you've ever made to his web site.

Bob's basic rule is: "BRING ON THE CONTROVERSARY".

Not exactly true. Bob's basic rule is that people deserve to be heard. Sometimes that is controversy, and sometimes that's a nice day of flying at Dockweiler. Bob believes in empowering and not castrating. I know that you wanted to say more about Joe's banning because I know that you felt it was unjust. We discussed it a lot on the way back from Utah. But you have mostly held your tongue for fear of being banned. It's OK to admit that, but it's important to realize what that is costing our sport.

We have the freedom to decide what forums we will visit and we can try to convince the owner to change his rules but we can't force him to do what he doesn't want to do. It's his/her personal property.

You do have the freedom to choose, and those choices have consequences to others (sometimes your friends). Those choices also have consequences to the community and to the sport of hang gliding. A person's choices can also be subject to both praise and criticism from the community. That's all as it should be. No one has ever said that Jack's forum wasn't Jack's property. The criticism has been directed at those who support that property having monopoly control of hang gliding communications. People are free to vote with their feet.

If you don't like Hangliding.org then don't go there.

That's like saying "If you don't like Torrey, don't go there" and "If you don't like USHPA, then don't join them". It would be great if people in the sport of hang gliding could communicate without relying on hanggliding.org. But that has not been the case. Fortunately, the number of people participating on hanggliding.org has been dropping. There was a time when the ratio between hanggliding.org posts and ushawks.org posts was maybe 100 to 1. Now it's more like 2 to 1, and on some days ushawks.org has more activity than hanggliding.org. That's attributable to a number of factors, but I am sure that Jack's own actions have been significant in the decline. What that means, however, is that there is no one place where the entire hang gliding community has been able work together to try to reverse its decline. That is Jack's fault. It's also the fault of everyone who has tolerated Jack's division of our community with his petty bans.

I personally find both forums useful for hang gliding information about equipment, HG flying techniques, stories, HG history, beautiful flight music videos, and controversial subjects. I don't want either of these forums to disappear from the hang gliding community. More forums would also be nice.

I personally see HG.org as a hang gliding "nuts and bolts" forum and US Hawks as a hang gliding politics and philosophy forum and where controversial issues like the danger of PG collapse can be posted. Joe Faust can post here thanks to Bob's terms, If he doesn't want to meet Jack's terms, it's his choice. Viva la both forums.

I disagree with that characterization. The U.S. Hawks forum does not prohibit discussions of "nuts and bolts" topics, but hangglidng.org DOES prohibit the discussion of any topics Jack doesn't like. The only reason there aren't more "nuts and bolts" discussions on the U.S. Hawks is that people have not posted them. I have challenged a number of people to just make every post to both forums. Just copy and paste. It takes just a few seconds if you have automatic log-in enabled. To your credit, Frank, you have done that quite frequently, and it helps to ensure that if Jack gave you the "Ax" that many of your posts would still survive here on the U.S. Hawks. But other people without as much "clout" as USHPA #7 are fearful of posting too much to the U.S. Hawks. After all, what did Jack prove by banning Joe? Jack proved that he will ban you for what you post ON OTHER WEB SITES!! Don't you think "Red" is aware of that? Red trembles with fear that Jack will cut him off.

Red claims that he wants to spread his knowledge to save new pilots. So I offered Red his own forum just like Rick Master's "Dangerous Thoughts" forum so Red could organize and spread his good advice. More forums should be better to spread the word. Right? But Red was terrified that Jack would see it and do to him what he did to Joe - ban him for what he posted on other people's forums! So Red is stuck. He's "owned" by his own history of posts that he foolishly put into the hands of Jack Axaopoulos. You're being owned too Frank. Post by post you put more of your life's energy into Jack's hands to dangle over you as a threat if you step too far out of line. Go too far astray and you'll be banned and everything you've ever written on hanggliding.org will disappear. Poof. That's not an idle threat. Jack has already proven that he will do it. By contrast, the U.S. Hawks has proven that we will never do that. Go look for the most venomous posts by Tom ("Red") Howard or Michael Grisham. There're all still here just as they posted them.

Frank, there is no doubt that Jack has forced a division in the community by his actions. I had made hundreds of posts to hanggliding.org without ever thinking of starting a separate forum. As long as that was a fair "public square", I was happy to be there. But Jack's attempt to control the HGAA exposed his desire to control ALL communications within the sport of hang gliding. That's what I challenged with my infamous "Just like the SGAA" post, and that's when Jack was exposed as a control freak. He banned me that instant and eventually deleted all of my posts. That's the unwritten part of his "terms of service". If you cross Jack, then you will disappear to whatever degree Jack is able to enforce. So with every post, you give him more control over you ... because no one wants to disappear. Think about it.