All -
I added the following to the Forum/Site Info topic up above, where new members will be able to see it easily. I also wanted to post it down here too for a bit, so that everyone can see it and be aware of it. If you'd like to discuss this, lets do so in this thread.
Sorry I didn't get something like this up sooner - chalk that up to inexperience and the site growing a lot faster than I anticipated. I hope that these guidelines are easily understood and acceptable to you all.
Thanks!
Kurt
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We have a loose policy about what can or can't be posted here at sailFar.net, but I've never really defined what is consider acceptable/unacceptable as regards the means and intent of this site. Below you will find our Guidelines. Please join us in making sailFar a resource for people of all ages.
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There's this kid I know, a high school student in landlocked small town America. Although he's mostly like the other kids in the school, there is something that is different about him, too. Nothing that you can see on the outside, yet this difference fills him up on the inside. It's that he knows, knows without a doubt, that he is a Sailor.
He's never yet been on a sailboat, but he has most definitely been bitten by the bug. He's read book after book with tales from men and women who have braved the high seas, he has memorized the names of islands he wants to visit that are thousands of miles away. He's studied sailing vessels and how they work, can tell you the difference between a ketch and a yawl, and knows that there are only 3 ropes on a boat. He hasn't yet actually sailed, but he knows, from books at least, the hows and whys of what it takes to harness the power of the wind.
The kid has a Dream. He wants to cross oceans, under sail. He wants to see sunrise a thousand miles from land, he wants to know that feeling of accomplishment which surely comes when an accurate landfall is made after crossing the ever-changing sea. He wants to follow in the wakes of all of his fellow sailors that he's read about over the course of his own young years. He is learning as much as he can about how to make his Dream come true.
If you look into his bookbag, there among the classroom texts and composition binders with sailboats sketched on the cover, you'll find a dog-eared, somewhat tattered world atlas. Open it to the marked pages, and you'll see lines drawn across the maps, across the great oceans, lines he's drawn in as The Route He's Gonna Take, one day. Some day in his future.
There's a word he knows, a word he thinks about constantly. It's a word that probably almost noone else in the whole school knows. It's a magic word to him, even so.
The word is "circumnavigation"...In the past few weeks, I have been immensely gratified to see our still-small community growing it's own life, it's own style, it's own cast of characters. Y'all are great.
I really didn't expect sailFar to grow this fast, or this well, and I'm *very* happy that it has done so.
It makes me feel good to see the friendships that are developing here, to see the dialogues that are taking place, and, perhaps most, to find that I am not alone in my "small boat weirdo" frame of mind.
I know that I started this, but already I am becoming just a small part of it, and that is as it should be, how I wanted it to be. I think that sailFar is going to continue to grow and become the resource and community I envisioned, and that is all Thanks to *you*, the contributors who make it what it is.
Partly because the growth here has been much more rapid than I anticipated, and partly because I am relatively new to running a site like this and didn't think of it, there is something that I neglected to do from the outset - establish a clear set of guidelines about what types of content you can expect to see on the sailFar.net website, and what type of content we *don't* want to see. That's what this post is about.
This is *not* about "Free Speech", this *is* about kids, like the young Sailor I wrote about up above, and our doing what we can to make both his and our Dreams come true.
In a nutshell, I want that kid, or any like him, to be able to come to this site unhindered, to be able to visit and learn and take something away that will help him realize his Dream. I would absolutely hate to find out that our site was blocked from a learning environment due to "objectionable material".
To that end, I've made the decision that what we post here needs to be the type of content that his school, and/or his parents, will not be able to raise any objection to.This means we can't post naked or racy pictures, that we have to watch our language a bit, that we act like adults should when there are others children about. We don't need to be total prudes, we just need to be conscious of what we write and say in order that young Sailors can be exposed to the joy we have in our own favorite endeavour.
I think we can easily continue to grow and thrive as a community and as a resource while doing that. I don't see any reason that this guideline in and of itself could be seen as objectionable, although I will discuss it if you, the members, have questions about it.
I hope that you will do your part to see that the kids can come here easily from anywhere, to learn about the sheer magic that is cruising under sail in a small boat.
And, BTW, that kid? That was me.
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So, Welcome to the sailFar.net Forum, a discussion area for anyone who has anything to contribute about boats, cruising plans, the site, and other SB/LD related topics. Feel free to add comments and posts as you see fit, and suggestions for topics/improvements are also welcomed.
I'll try an Off Topic area and see what develops. Please, keep it legal, political *only* if there is no other way around it, and post no pictures of naked fat people or extremely deviant behaviors.
Sailing/boating-related is best, but a good guffaw that doesn't fall under these is just fine, too.
Other than that, this area will be a wide open sailors forum catering to a niche of folks who enjoy small boat cruising, so have fun!
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