AOPA forums closing.....

Palmpilot said:
http://www.pilotspin.com/
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LOL

I haven't logged into that. And won't. There are probably NO good sites to find an intellectual discussion on politics these days. Everyone is too polarized, so they either devolve into echo chambers or personal insults. Besides, its not like the internet forum trolls have more information than what you can get from the news media. Glad the politics are gone from this site.
 
UngaWunga said:
LOL

I haven't logged into that. And won't. There are probably NO good sites to find an intellectual discussion on politics these days. Everyone is too polarized, so they either devolve into echo chambers or personal insults. Besides, its not like the internet forum trolls have more information than what you can get from the news media. Glad the politics are gone from this site.
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One of the main reasons there aren't any decent discussions on politics is that sites don't want the effort of moderating the discussions and just ban them; so nobody actually gets the opportunity or practice to discuss politics in a civil manner.
 
Katamarino said:
One of the main reasons there aren't any decent discussions on politics is that sites don't want the effort of moderating the discussions and just ban them; so nobody actually gets the opportunity or practice to discuss politics in a civil manner.
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I heard a news story a while back about a news site (forget which) that changed their online comments policy to require a poster answer a few questions about the news article they're commenting on before being allowed to post. Said it greatly reduced the amount of crap-posting/trolling.

But I agree. Moderating is difficult, especially on non-commercial sites where you can't pay someone to watch the site constantly.
 
With dozens of great aviation forums on Facebook, I'm frankly amazed that any of these stand-alone forums survive.

After years of (first) Usenet, (then) AOPA, and (later) POA, I now visit half a dozen aviation pages on Facebook daily -- where I already am -- while I seldom check in here anymore.

And I haven't checked into AOPA in 5(?) years.
 
Kyrpto said:
Dude wtf is that forum?
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The section of Pilots of America that allowed political and religious discussions was called "The Spin Zone." When it was eliminated, some of the Spin Zone participants created pilotspin.com so that those who were interested would be able continue their discussions.
 
Jay Honeck said:
With dozens of great aviation forums on Facebook, I'm frankly amazed that any of these stand-alone forums survive.
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I find Facebook to generally be **** for discussions, it's all about instant gratification. 5 minutes after I reply I can never find the 'thread' again. Here I can easily find things from years ago and people even comment as they resolve issues(well, sometimes) so you know what happened.
 
UngaWunga said:
LOL

I haven't logged into that. And won't. There are probably NO good sites to find an intellectual discussion on politics these days. Everyone is too polarized, so they either devolve into echo chambers or personal insults. Besides, its not like the internet forum trolls have more information than what you can get from the news media. Glad the politics are gone from this site.
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Just to be clear, my posting of that link is not an endorsement, although of course I have no objection to people congregating as they see fit.
 
Jay Honeck said:
With dozens of great aviation forums on Facebook, I'm frankly amazed that any of these stand-alone forums survive.

After years of (first) Usenet, (then) AOPA, and (later) POA, I now visit half a dozen aviation pages on Facebook daily -- where I already am -- while I seldom check in here anymore.

And I haven't checked into AOPA in 5(?) years.
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As we've discussed in other threads, FB doesn't have a good answer for a quality online forum. FB is great for organizing a social gathering or posting pics/articles. However, if you need to find a discussion that was held two weeks ago about, say "Cold Start Procedures for an O-200", you can't search the posts easily and if it's a popular FB group, it takes forever to scroll through content. Thread-based forums offer a ton of functionality in that regard.
 
I wonder whatever became of Claire. I thought she really cared for me.
 
We are still talking about the Internet right? Where most people are checking it while they’re sitting on the can, and don’t give it much thought after that for the rest of the day? LOL.

This place is an oddity amongst sites. Someone might stay on the can for an extra three minutes to type up something. Hahaha.
 
denverpilot said:
We are still talking about the Internet right? Where most people are checking it while they’re sitting on the can, and don’t give it much thought after that for the rest of the day? LOL.

This place is an oddity amongst sites. Someone might stay on the can for an extra three minutes to type up something. Hahaha.
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I’ve seen your posts. You’re sittin’ on the can for waaaay longer than 3 minutes!
 
Jay Honeck said:
With dozens of great aviation forums on Facebook, I'm frankly amazed that any of these stand-alone forums survive.
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Facebook sucks for this kind of thing though. It's really hard to find existing information, so you have to ask the same question again. You think there's a lot of "what headset is the best" and "what kind of plane should I train in" and "are high wings or low wings better" here, when you look at the Facebook groups, these questions end up getting asked multiple times per week. I've quit posting any answers on the Private Pilots Club because it's a waste of time to post a good answer there - It'll be buried tomorrow and nobody will be able to find it.

That said, Facebook is great for meeting local people - I'm in several geographically-focused pilot groups on Facebook.

There's also one group there, The Landline, where pilots and ATC ask each other questions and that place is a gold mine. I guess that's the advantage of a platform with a billion users, you can have a very focused group and still have it be active.
 
The great thing about FB is that one group member from some country where English is not the first language who posts a video of an airliner landing in a cosswind and says something about how dangerous, or how brave, or how ... something ... that landing is. And then there are a bunch of responses about how the pilot should have gone around and landed somewhere else.

OK, maybe I hang around on FB too much.
 
chartbundle said:
I find Facebook to generally be **** for discussions, it's all about instant gratification. 5 minutes after I reply I can never find the 'thread' again. Here I can easily find things from years ago and people even comment as they resolve issues(well, sometimes) so you know what happened.
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My wife had the same issue. Luckily, it's easily resolved.

You just have to learn how to use the "notifications" in Facebook. They tell you when there has been a reply in the thread.

Click on the notification and you go straight to the pertinent thread. Easy peasy.

Facebook is where the pilots under age 50 hang out.

Sent from my SM-T380 using Tapatalk
 
Jay Honeck said:
My wife had the same issue. Luckily, it's easily resolved.

You just have to learn how to use the "notifications" in Facebook. They tell you when there has been a reply in the thread.

Click on the notification and you go straight to the pertinent thread. Easy peasy.

Facebook is where the pilots under age 50 hang out.
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Nice try to convince us you're under 50, Jay. :rofl:
 
Jay Honeck said:
..Facebook is where the pilots under age 50 hang out.

Sent from my SM-T380 using Tapatalk
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Two good reasons that'll keep me away... Farcebook and "under 50"... ;)

Sent from my lean-to using SmokeSignulz
 
UngaWunga said:
LOL

I haven't logged into that. And won't. There are probably NO good sites to find an intellectual discussion on politics these days. Everyone is too polarized, so they either devolve into echo chambers or personal insults. Besides, its not like the internet forum trolls have more information than what you can get from the news media. Glad the politics are gone from this site.
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Does politics play into aviation? Absolutely.... But in today’s political “chat” filled with paid trolls, Opinion management firms, AI bots, and active censorship, it just is not worth the effort, if you want to talk about actual aviation.
 
BTW...

...I believe I've received 7 renewal notices now, starting in August. I have tried to keep track but may have missed one or two.

...my membership expires March 1st.

...such a waste of resources.
 
timwinters said:
BTW...

...I believe I've received 7 renewal notices now, starting in August. I have tried to keep track but may have missed one or two.

...my membership expires March 1st.

...such a waste of resources.
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Easy solution: Buy a lifetime membership. :D

Then they'll only ask you for money...
 
timwinters said:
BTW...

...I believe I've received 7 renewal notices now, starting in August. I have tried to keep track but may have missed one or two.

...my membership expires March 1st.

...such a waste of resources.
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If they included a postage paid envelope, write back and tell them you probably won’t renew now that the forum is gone. You’ll be able to do that at least once a month from now until March.
 
Jay Honeck said:
My wife had the same issue. Luckily, it's easily resolved.

You just have to learn how to use the "notifications" in Facebook. They tell you when there has been a reply in the thread.

Click on the notification and you go straight to the pertinent thread. Easy peasy.

Facebook is where the pilots under age 50 hang out.

Sent from my SM-T380 using Tapatalk
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I find FB to be OK for current discussions but abysmal as a information repository as there's no way to search for a subject. On the RV FB page I see the same questions posted over and over again that have already been answered over on VAF and can be searched for with relative ease. But for some reason there's a reluctance for many on FB to avail themselves of that resource. I get not wanting to hang there simply to chat partly due to the somewhat heavy handed moderation, but the wealth of knowledge that's archived there is priceless.
 
tsts4 said:
I find FB to be OK for current discussions but abysmal as a information repository as there's no way to search for a subject. On the RV FB page I see the same questions posted over and over again that have already been answered over on VAF and can be searched for with relative ease. But for some reason there's a reluctance for many on FB to avail themselves of that resource. I get not wanting to hang there simply to chat partly due to the somewhat heavy handed moderation, but the wealth of knowledge that's archived there is priceless.
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Their business model revolves around rapid current news feeds, not as a searchable database. I doubt there's much incentive for them to make accessing that repository of data any easier.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Their business model revolves around rapid current news feeds, not as a searchable database. I doubt there's much incentive for them to make accessing that repository of data any easier.
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That's my point. FB is more chatroom-like which is why I believe it won't replace forums out-right. AOPA was never large to begin (compared to other aviation forums which by in large are small in turn small compared to comparable forums, ie cars, boating, etc) so it's demise shouldn't come as a shock.
 
I contracted them and cancelled autorenew and told them the forums were the last straw (the general disinterest in the membership and the rising renewal fees were the others).
 
flyingron said:
I contracted them and cancelled autorenew and told them the forums were the last straw (the general disinterest in the membership and the rising renewal fees were the others).
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Did the same thing back in october. Got a form letter saying 'sorry to see you go, have removed you from the renewal database, and communicated your thoughts to the executive leadership'. Yeah, uh huh. Organizations such as AOPA, ARRL, etc. only serve the interests of whomever is buying the ads in the magazine, and if it peripherally helps the great unwashed, then so be it.

But, to be honest, I got tired of knowing that a portion of my $$$ was going for an overpaid president and maintaining a fleet of aircraft I'd never afford to be able to fly.
 
The only thing that that me in the ARRL was I was the area liaison for the testing program. That was the only part of the organization that was worth anything, in my opinion. When I gave up doing that, I let my renewal lapse.
 
We have BasicMed. We don't have user fees. And now we don't have the Red Board.

That's 3 for 3. Thanks, AOPA!
 
flyingron said:
The only thing that that me in the ARRL was I was the area liaison for the testing program. That was the only part of the organization that was worth anything, in my opinion. When I gave up doing that, I let my renewal lapse.
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ARRL TA here. I've had my ham ticket for 31 years now. I'll stick with ARRL for now.

73

N6TPT
 
Ghery said:
ARRL TA here. I've had my ham ticket for 31 years now. I'll stick with ARRL for now.

73

N6TPT
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Amateur Extra and VE, but I'm off the air for now. One of these days I'll get around to rebuilding my station, but right now all the loose change I can find is going toward flying. I'm keeping ARRL, though, mostly to stay up to date on the hobby.

73
AJ4CM
 
Half Fast said:
Amateur Extra and VE, but I'm off the air for now. One of these days I'll get around to rebuilding my station, but right now all the loose change I can find is going toward flying. I'm keeping ARRL, though, mostly to stay up to date on the hobby.

73
AJ4CM
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Sounds familiar. My station is assembled, I'm also a VE and hold an Extra ticket, but I have no contacts in my HF log since March of last year. And I'm one state short of WAS in my current location, where I've been for 23 years. I live in Washington and that one state is Idaho. Go figure.
 
Originally licensed in 1971 (WN3SBS) and a succession of ham licenses (N3AGV, KE2LG, WO2L (should have kept that one, really kept the prefix hunters hopping to work me), and finally N1RN).
I also had my Second Class (now GROL) Radiotelephone Operators License and also my Radiotelegraph license. I was very big in the BARC repeaters in Baltimore and then the Vienna Wireless Society (Margy ended up being president, I was secretary and the VE liaison).

Oddly between cell phones and the internet, much of the communications allure went out of it. Still, I do a little echolink stuff and now an officially an old fart (QCWA).
Haven't dealt with the ARRL in decades.
 
I tried to go on the site, Pilot Spin, but couldn't get past the registration red tape, for instance they asked what Is the letters for the chute in a Cirrus? How should I know, I don't own a Cirrus and what good would that do to know it? I finally waded through most of it but they wont take my password, who knows why, they don't say just reject it. Seems like an interesting forum, and being an adult one would be a welcome change.

I think people still write under an alias though.
 
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