Announcing the Call Out Forum

Who invented it, who was first etc. This forum will be for members to hash out disagreements. Please keep all disagreements within this forum and keep the discussions civil (no profanity please).
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Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by WRA2 Admin »

Welcome to the new Call Out Forum. For some strange reason everyone seems to want to have a "water rocket device" named after themselves. This probably goes back to the "old way" where the first person to use something got to name it after themselves. This leads to many arguments. Now we have a forum for members to "discuss it" without disturbing the peace on the rest of the board. Please keep it clean (no profanity).
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by air.command »

Will you selectively edit user posts like you did before? Otherwise it becomes a one sided argument.
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

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air.command wrote:Will you selectively edit user posts like you did before? Otherwise it becomes a one sided argument.
Our policy is to edit/delete messages containing pornography, vulgar language, are intentionally disruptive, or contain commercial advertisements. Some of our members also have asked for and earned the privilege of editing their own posts. A few other members have volunteered to be moderators who have the ability to delete or move offensive posts. The posts from "rocket42 were simply archived for reference and to show those people you were communicating your very own stilted arguments to in private off this site. Nothing has been "selectively edited" as part of some kind of conspiracy to change the meaning of any post, as you are trying to imply. Perhaps one of the moderators moved a message or fixed a link or some minor correction but the intentions and meanings of the posts has not been altered in any way. Don't bother wasting time showing us "web archive" pages. All of the "rockets42" posts that you made that were disruptive were removed from the original threads so that discussions could continue there.

As far as the "attacks" as you call them go, have you thought about the possibility that many of your background activities can be seen by the public and make you appear 2 faced. I can't force Bill to "like you". You have to earn that yourself and maybe coming clean and admitting what you have done will be a step in the right direction.

Befriending people on one forum and then badmouthing them on another (or in private) or taking their ideas and posting copies to your own website (without crediting them or this forum) is hardly a way to make people like you. Perhaps you could explain why the links to the forum that you placed on your site when you joined the forum suddenly "diasppeared" about 1 month later with no explanation (and no arguments from Bill either). Plus you never explained "Cyndi". Everyone is waiting for your explanation on that one.

This forum was created to heal the "old wounds" and unite the water rocket community and your actions show attempts to divide it (taking ideas discussed here and hastily erecting a prototype to display on your own site without crediting the forum or the originator of the idea). No wonder Bill is ticked off at you.

I operate this forum free of charge to anyone who is interested in Water Rockets and all I ask in return is for people to follow the very simple terms of use and to show respect to one another. I have given you numerous "second chances" and you still manage to blow them by disrespecting the rules or misrepresenting the ideas of members posted here by our members. I really don't ask much, yet you persist in trying to get away with violations behind my back. At one time when you were pioneering a lot of new ideas and launching a lot of rockets and I had thought that this forum could benefit from you sharing your work and discussing your rockets here and I allowed you to rejoin, but you have not only
failed to participate, but also used your access to farm for ideas to swipe. Now there are others who produce just as much or better quality research as you ever did in your prime, so what benefit do I get from letting you stay here mining ideas and upsetting members?
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by Cloud Dancers »

Ahh Haa, It makes sense now. After looking at rockets42's posts it all makes sense now. His first post here was asking if he could use his SCUBA tank in the competitions.

http://www.wra2.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=80

air command was always Mr SCUBA tank. He displays it prooudly in all of his youtube videos. He wanted the admins to change the competition rules just for him and got tewaked off when he was told that using them was not allowed. He wanted an unfair advantage for himself and got mad when he was told to compete the same way as everyone else. :cry: He must have been trying to create disturbances here and discourage people from visiting or competing.

What a Dweeb. :lol:
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by Spaceman Spiff »

I thought SCUBA Tanks are allowed now. If anyone was made about the rule then they should be happy and not angry.
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by WRA2 »

Spaceman Spiff wrote:I thought SCUBA Tanks are allowed now. If anyone was made about the rule then they should be happy and not angry.
Allowing SCUBA tanks is a recent change put into effect after a long discussion to eliminate the advantages of using one.

See the discussion here :WRA2:


http://www.wra2.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=254

The tanks were not allowed in 2007.
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by Andromeda »

I'm disappointed. That whole thing about pretending to being a discriminated female is so childish.

Epic Fail.

I can't believe it. Ugh.
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by air.command »

WRA2 Admin wrote:Plus you never explained "Cyndi". Everyone is waiting for your explanation on that one.
Stupid idea that backfired. I do, however, standby the arguments relating to SCUBA tanks, but perhaps should have been presented in a less disruptive manner.
WRA2 Admin wrote:Nothing has been "selectively edited" as part of some kind of conspiracy to change the meaning of any post, as you are trying to imply. Perhaps one of the moderators moved a message or fixed a link or some minor correction but the intentions and meanings of the posts has not been altered in any way.
You are then well aware of exactly what I am talking about, Not being a member of this forum and being accused at the time of stealing someones idea, we tried to present our side of the story when xenon requested it. We asked Dragracer to post a link to our response as at the time we knew he was a member. This link was promptly deleted on the basis that my response "did not link back to the forum". So much for letting someone present their side of the argument. I see now it has been replaced by different but broken link.
WRA2 Admin wrote:As far as the "attacks" as you call them go, have you thought about the possibility that many of your background activities can be seen by the public and make you appear 2 faced.
This of course goes both ways, if WRA2 and associates are prepared to come clean on their behind the scenes activities so am I.

I think the following is the crux of the main point of contention here:
WRA2 Admin wrote: taking their ideas and posting copies to your own website (without crediting them or this forum) is hardly a way to make people like you.
The problem here is that somehow I keep getting accused of "inventing" something and then not giving this forum credit. Documenting a build procedure does not mean the documentor is claiming invention.

Let's have a look at an example:
http://www.wra2.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=270
http://cjh.polyplex.org/rockets/launcher/cable2.htm

I believe there are similarities between these two references and one predates the other. I know perfectly well that people will often come up with similar ideas independently or may have been influenced by what they see. Have a look at the comments that follow that procedure and praise for what a great idea it was.

We publish a lot of water rocket related information, and you have to agree that most of our posts credit people in the sport. Look at the recovery guide for example, a lot of the people on this forum are in there as well. I also acknowledge that I deliberately do not link back to the WRA2 because of the ill feeling between us. From the last heated exchange a number of instances were highlighted that we specifically did not credit people on this forum, we acknowledged that and made the corrections.

Bill wants to claim credit for a "flight computer" that we "stole" from him. He still has not answered the original question "where were we supposed to have stolen it from?" There is absolutely no evidence of him presenting his idea anywhere on the internet that I have been able to locate prior to 25th September 2006 when we first started documenting our design. We somehow read his mind and stole it from him. In his own words: "I'm the first one to put a computer on a water rocket and it was a real computer, not a tomy timer made from silicon." This was apparently back in 2005. Yet a 5 minute search on google gives us this:
http://www.geocities.com/rocketroos/picalt_release.htm from March 2000.

Now I am certainly not going to acuse Bill of stealing this idea, because it makes absolutely no sense to. I'm sure he decided to spend a considerable amount of time building and flying one without being aware of other people doing similar things and believing he was the first. As we have said time and again we never claim credit that we were the first ones that built or used one.

Secrecy is a double edged sword. One wants to protect their ideas for valid reasons, but don't have the proof later when someone else comes along with similar ideas. This is why patents exists. In our sport it makes no sense to apply for patents due to the huge expences involved. There are infact many water rocket related patents, but no one seems to acknowledge these. Without patent-like framework this becomes an intractable problem and will always come down to a difference of opinion, often leading to heated unresolved debates.

The issue is that not everyone can or wants to set an altitude record, or win some other competition so instead they want to be recognized for their efforts, and leave their mark on the hobby.
WRA2 Admin wrote:This forum was created to heal the "old wounds" and unite the water rocket community
I believe uniting the water rocket community should also include an acknowledgement of the other groups and crediting them with vast amount of work that they have also done in the past and continue to do so. Lots of members here are on both forums, and they are fully aware of the "old wounds". Banning some for being associated with other organisations does not help matters.
WRA2 Admin wrote:I operate this forum free of charge to anyone who is interested in Water Rockets and all I ask in return is for people to follow the very simple terms of use and to show respect to one another.
Agreed, I think mutual respect and acknowledgement is the only way this will ever be settled.
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by WRA2 Admin »

air.command wrote:Stupid idea that backfired. I do, however, standby the arguments relating to SCUBA tanks, but perhaps should have been presented in a less disruptive manner.

What possessed you to use deception and attacks to get a rule amended? We're a democratic organization here and we take all constructive input here into consideration with the association membership. If a consensus is reached then we make modifications. Attacking the association and the rules will only make the members defensive and will get you nowhere. If anyone were to look up your writings under the name "Air Command" you come across as a pleasant, well mannered, and cooperative person. Or is that by design? Do you make a habit of creating aliases and sock puppets to express your true feelings?

As a matter of fact someone else brought the subject of tanks and after a lengthy and productive discussion http://www.wra2.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=254 on the forum the use of certain tanks was approved for use in our competitions.

http://www.wra2.org/WRA2_Class_A_Rules.php See section II.
air.command wrote:You are then well aware of exactly what I am talking about, Not being a member of this forum and being accused at the time of stealing someones idea, we tried to present our side of the story when xenon requested it. We asked Dragracer to post a link to our response as at the time we knew he was a member. This link was promptly deleted on the basis that my response "did not link back to the forum". So much for letting someone present their side of the argument. I see now it has been replaced by different but broken link.

You are correct that the link was changed. When we discovered your "Cyndi" alias was actually your sock puppet we began to monitor your past and present activities and noticed that "Cyndi" was the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, your website URL was added to the "link SPAM filter" function of the forum software. This function locates ALL links in the forum (old messages and new) in that list and replaces them with links or text of our choice. Why would we give your website promotion after you attacked us with your alias? You brought that upon yourself with the Cyndi episode.

Later when we decided to give you a second chance and we gave you an "olive branch" to rejoin as yourself on the condition that you placed links to the forum on your site your lnk was corrected using the same function. When we noticed that you only added the link to our forum as a ruse to regain access and you took the link back off your website, we put your URL back on the filtered list.

We also noticed at one point that you have multiple URLs to multiple sites and one of our moderators added all of your other addresses along the way and we didn't know about this so for a time there were some filtered and some unfiltered addresses.
air.command wrote:This of course goes both ways, if WRA2 and associates are prepared to come clean on their behind the scenes activities .

If you are referring to the link removal, I "came clean" in the explanation above. As far as anything our members may have done on their own, we have no control over that and do not encourage it. If we are made aware of anything they have done that is in violation of our terms of use then we can take corrective measures or take punitive actions within our power on this forum. If they have objectional material on their personal sites then you should try and work it out with them and make peace. We can encourage them to stop but we can't MAKE them. You may have to earn their trust to make that happen.
air.command wrote:I think the following is the crux of the main point of contention here:

The problem here is that somehow I keep getting accused of "inventing" something and then not giving this forum credit. Documenting a build procedure does not mean the documentor is claiming invention. Let's have a look at an example: http://www.wra2.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=270 http://cjh.polyplex.org/rockets/launcher/cable2.htm

I believe there are similarities between these two references and one predates the other. I know perfectly well that people will often
come up with similar ideas independently or may have been influenced by what they see. Have a look at the comments that follow that procedure and praise for what a great idea it was.
We publish a lot of water rocket related information, and you have to agree that most of our posts credit people in the sport. Look at the recovery guide for example, a lot of the people on this forum are in there as well. I also acknowledge that I deliberately do not link back to the WRA2 because of the ill feeling between us. From the last heated exchange a number of instances were highlighted that we specifically did not credit people on this forum, we acknowledged that and made the corrections.

Bill wants to claim credit for a "flight computer" that we "stole" from him. He still has not answered the original question "where were we supposed to have stolen it from?" There is absolutely no evidence of him presenting his idea anywhere on the internet that I have been able to locate prior to 25th September 2006 when we first started documenting our design. We somehow read his mind and stole it from him.

In his own words: "I'm the first one to put a computer on a water rocket and it was a real computer, not a tomy timer made from silicon." This was apparently back in 2005. Yet a 5 minute search on google gives us this:

http://www.geocities.com/rocketroos/picalt_release.htm from March 2000.

Now I am certainly not going to acuse Bill of stealing this idea, because it makes absolutely no sense to. I'm sure he decided to spend

a considerable amount of time building and flying one without being aware of other people doing similar things and believing he was the first. As we have said time and again we never claim credit that we were the first ones that built or used one.

Secrecy is a double edged sword. One wants to protect their ideas for valid reasons, but don't have the proof later when someone else comes along with similar ideas. This is why patents exists. In our sport it makes no sense to apply for patents due to the huge expences involved. There are infact many water rocket related patents, but no one seems to acknowledge these. Without patent-like framework this becomes an intractable problem and will always come down to a difference of opinion, often leading to heated unresolved debates.

The issue is that not everyone can or wants to set an altitude record, or win some other competition so instead they want to be recognized for their efforts, and leave their mark on the hobby.

You bring up an interesting point. There will surely be duplicated efforts and similar lines of thinking. But you also forget that someone seeking fame could post something to their personal website or blog and put in any date they please if they wanted to pre-date existing work. It would be very hard to prove what they did. There is no reliable archive of the internet tracking all the changes in chronological order. With websites popping up all over and going offline when hosts go out of business, etc. the historical record is muddied and google doesn't prove much of anything. That's something we had hoped to eliminate with this forum. By establishing a stable and permanent location for people to visit with a sophisticated search capability built in, it is much easier to give credit to those who desire such things.

Only Bill knows what the story is with his flight computer. I would say work on that predates the forum and we can't get involved in that. What I personally find suspicious is the way that some of the ideas presented on this forum show up on YOUR website just a few days after they are discussed here. I think it was Bill who pointed out the variable nozzle topic. Not that anyone claimed to have invented it here but it's odd that people were discussing it here and then a couple of days later a really hastily produced "demonstration" of the idea shows up on your website with no mention of the sources. In that same topic Tim Chen started talking about measuing thrust and a few days later you start talking on your personal site about a thrust measurement device you were building. Same goes for the split nosecone on the T8. Tim described his elaborate tests comparing various T-8 deploy system concepts on the forum, and then a couple days later their best choice is described on your website as your very own design. It's too much of a coincidence.

I don't know what the truth of the matter is. It's possible you had thought of similar ideas prior to reading about them and never did anything with them until you read of another person closing in on the same concept. The general consensus I read in the complaints about you I've received are that you are intentionally omitting credit or giving credit to your friends for ideas that you read about here. Having seen your actions and behavior as "Cyndi", I believe you had some kind of grudge with the forum or the members and were purposely trying to incite trouble.

One could reason that you would start trouble and fan the flames in hopes of getting flamewars going on this forum so you could tell people not to come here because it was nothing but "wars and attacks" (which I am aware you have said). Or, you could be just hoping that all the negativity here would turn people off from the forum (like Chriswaterrockets complained about a few days ago). There are just too many instances of "parallel development" to be a mere coincidence.
air.command wrote:I believe uniting the water rocket community should also include an acknowledgement of the other groups and crediting them with vast amount of work that they have also done in the past and continue to do so. Lots of members here are on both forums, and they are fully aware of the "old wounds". Banning some for being associated with other organisations does not help matters
As far as recognizing what went on in the past I do not know what you are talking about. There are links to most of the "old time" water rocket websites listed on the WRA2 links page:

http://www.wra2.org/WRA2_Links_Page.php

and the past record holders are mentioned on the official water rocket world records page:

http://www.wra2.org/WRA2_Standings.php

I believe that having two separate "groups" battling to attract new members is bad for the unity of the community. I have been sending out invitations to those members of the other group to join the forum and consolidate everyone on the forum. Response has been good so far. I am unaware of anyone banned because of their affiliations with any other forums or groups. The only banned user IDs are ones who have Spammed the forum or ones who have violated our terms of use (such as "Rockets42" a.k.a. Cyndi). We're not infallible and could make a mistake and ban the wrong name but anyone mistakenly banned could simply contact us and question the reason. Anyone banned for intentional mischief knows they were caught for a reason. We're more than happy to look into anyone experiencing login issues, but we won't know who they are if they don't inquire.
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by air.command »

WRA2 Admin wrote:Attacking the association and the rules will only make the members defensive and will get you nowhere. If anyone were to look up your writings under the name "Air Command" you come across as a pleasant, well mannered, and cooperative person. Or is that by design? Do you make a habit of creating aliases and sock puppets to express your true feelings?
No it is not a habit. (please see below for more info)
WRA2 Admin wrote:As a matter of fact someone else brought the subject of tanks and after a lengthy and productive discussion http://www.wra2.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=254 on the forum the use of certain tanks was approved for use in our competitions.
I believe I contributed positively to the discussion.
WRA2 Admin wrote:We also noticed at one point that you have multiple URLs to multiple sites and one of our moderators added all of your other addresses along the way and we didn't know about this so for a time there were some filtered and some unfiltered addresses.
Fair enough.
WRA2 Admin wrote:There is no reliable archive of the internet tracking all the changes in chronological order. With websites popping up all over and going offline when hosts go out of business, etc. the historical record is muddied and google doesn't prove much of anything. That's something we had hoped to eliminate with this forum. By establishing a stable and permanent location for people to visit with a sophisticated search capability built in, it is much easier to give credit to those who desire such things.

What I personally find suspicious is the way that some of the ideas presented on this forum show up on YOUR website just a few days after they are discussed here.

<snip>

I don't know what the truth of the matter is. It's possible you had thought of similar ideas prior to reading about them and never did anything with them until you read of another person closing in on the same concept.
Let me ask this on the timing of release of information: What would have been an acceptable amount of time to pass between Tim's comments and someone demonstrating something similar? a day, a week, a month? Bill had an issue with us demonstrating the tree release mechanism after we discussed it 2 years earlier. This becomes a very subjective issue.

In the instance of the variable nozzle, having read Tim's comments about the concept, I realized that we could adapt a different mechanism we had been working on to remove the residual foam from a rocket to work as a variable nozzle. Since it was easy enough to test, we did. I recall complimenting Tim on this very forum that he had a good idea. That is hardly a denial of his contribution. Put this in the context of our policy of not linking to WRA2 due to other people's actions, then you get into a situation where Tim rightfully felt offended. And why we went back and corrected the reference. A couple of weeks ago we obtained the variable nozzle data from our test stand for our implementation of the nozzle concept, but if Tim wanted to publish his results first then as a sign of good will we will hold off on releasing them.

There is just as much competition for ideas as there is for altitude. Sometimes when you are working on a similar concept, you do try to publish earlier if someone else may be getting close. The same way you would try to launch your rocket before anyone else in a competition.

We generally do not comment on things we are working on, until we have something substantial to demonstrate. We have a 2 page long list of things we would like to experiment with, build and fly spanning the next few years. Many of these are already in various stages of development, and some are based on other people's previous work. The order of things on that list change all the time, depending on finances, material availability and launch window opportunities. When we publish something we try to put as much detail into it so that others can benefit or derive their own variations on the topic. We know ourselves that there are plenty of instances where people have derived work from things we have done, without due credit to either us, or the people we based our work on that we credited. We accept that is a part of the reality, and rather than starting arguments about who did what first we prefer to concentrate our effort on the next design.

Perhaps disclosing what's on our list may help mitigate future disputes? However, we get back to the secrecy issue again. How do you present your perhaps incomplete idea for opinion by the community, without the potential risk of someone else doing something similar? I'm not sure there is a universal answer to that. The same problem occurs within competitions. How will WRA2 address the issue if the winner builds a rocket based on a competitors design, and the loser complains that their idea was stolen?
WRA2 Admin wrote:The general consensus I read in the complaints about you I've received are that you are intentionally omitting credit or giving credit to your friends for ideas that you read about here.
This one has been raised here a number of times and I find interesting. We give credit to someone who has demonstrated something prior to us and provide a link to their work if it exists, yet that is not acceptable unless we also link to someone else on this forum because it was mentioned here. How am I to know that the reference on this forum wasn't based on the person we credited? If there is the perception that they should have been credited, we encourage people to contact us. I know it's human nature to adopt the attitude: "Why should I bother contacting this person, they should have known to include me. I am not going to beg for inclusion." This is then followed by escalating negative sentiment. We are reasonable people (when I'm not being stupid) and a simple email will not be met with a condescending answer. What I find funny is that we've even had a request from a rocketeer asking us to exclude them from the references as they wished to be anonymous.

I have no objections with people criticizing what we do, they are free to express their grievances, but when opinions include personal insults then the attitude we adopt is to ignore them and not link to their rants from our site. The problem becomes more difficult when multiple parties are involved and they choose to use WRA2's forum for expressing their opinion. It is then easier for us to just exclude the entire site. When there is further perception that there is a bias from the forum administration, that is typically regarded by the public as neutral, disenchantment occurs. I am realistic and fully know that there are biases on all forums, but at least the perception I believe should try to be neutral. When Bill and I had our most recent disagreement, you presented the 'neutral view' of threatening to ban both of us which was the right thing to do. When Bill later continued, and we remained silent attempting to honor the request, the perception of neutrality shifted towards bias again, due to WRA2s inaction on what continued. In private you can of course completely agree with Bill, and I know from the member list that Team Seneca has been involved with WRA2 from the very start. I realize now that understandibly the bias was partially related to our previous actions from a year ago.
WRA2 Admin wrote:Having seen your actions and behavior as "Cyndi", I believe you had some kind of grudge with the forum or the members and were purposely trying to incite trouble.
Our disapproval of past WRA2's actions goes way back before rockets42. When presented with what I consider unreasonable arguments from "experts" to a straight forward question, and coupled with our personal bias this expectantly received a less than cordial reply. Rockets42 started out as a regular "male" rocketeer, the "Cyndi" gender change was an attempt to avoid a potential imminent ban, which as I said was a stupid idea. I'm sure that WRA2 wants to distance itself from what has gone on in the past, the same way we have tried to move on from rockets42. And no I am not proud of the episode.
WRA2 Admin wrote:Or, you could be just hoping that all the negativity here would turn people off from the forum (like Chriswaterrockets complained about a few days ago).
Numerous people have contacted us expressing their disappointment with WRA2's actions going back several years, even prior to rockets42. Most people choose to stay on the sidelines though without comment. I have a habit of expressing my opinion, sometimes less tactfully than what it should be.
WRA2 Admin wrote:As far as recognizing what went on in the past I do not know what you are talking about.
I was referring to the Yahoo water rocket group and IWRA. There are no links on your website to the groups. Are these also on the spam block list, or simply because they are rival groups? There is a wealth of information there for water rocketeers. WRA2 of course are entirely entitled to place who ever they like on their links page, but it doesn't seem very "unifying".
WRA2 Admin wrote:I believe that having two separate "groups" battling to attract new members is bad for the unity of the community. I have been sending out invitations to those members of the other group to join the forum and consolidate everyone on the forum.
I actually believe that having different points of view is very useful without having, a single unelected voice controlling who gets to say what or who gets banned. Wasn't this the very same reason that the WRA2 forum was created when WRA2 membership wanted to freely express their view?

Why does there have to be one or the other? People are free to join the Yahoo forum the same way they are free to join this forum, and in a lot of cases they join both. There are many instances where hobbies have multiple forums that happily co-exist. While I understand and agree with your point about having everything water rocket related in one place as being very useful for the water rocket community, personal opinion on debatable topics I think should be allowed to be discussed freely without having to wonder if your opinion will be censored if your opinion differs to that of the administration. This is why there are governments and government oppositions.
WRA2 Admin wrote:I am unaware of anyone banned because of their affiliations with any other forums or groups. We're not infallible and could make a mistake and ban the wrong name but anyone mistakenly banned could simply contact us and question the reason.
I hope WRA2 can understand how such mistakes can be misinterpreted by the people being banned.

I do appreciate you taking the time to discuss through these issues in a civilized manner. I know people will not see eye to eye, but perhaps discussions like these should be encouraged more before escalating into something undesirable.
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by Andromeda »

Where can I get some popcorn?
:P
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Re: Announcing the Call Out Forum

Post by Team Seneca »

Cyndi wrote: The problem here is that somehow I keep getting accused of "inventing" something and then not giving this forum credit. Documenting a build procedure does not mean the documentor is claiming invention.

Let's have a look at an example:
http://www.wra2.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=270
http://cjh.polyplex.org/rockets/launcher/cable2.htm
I call B.S. on this!

The idea of using a middle core pipe is nothing new and I didn't see anyone claiming the idea as their own. I give USWR credit for coming up with a SIMPLE method of doing this. They even call it a "simple" way.

The other site shows how to do the same thing except it talks about using a lathe to remove 1.5mm of material from a plastic electric conduit tube. This is HARDLY something the average person will be able to do. This is far from "simple".

Not the same thing and even if it was I wouldn't say anything because this could be a mistake or oversight on their part... not a PATTERN of behavior.
Bill W.
Team Seneca