I guess the motto of the forum should say "State your opinion respectfully, and then walk away from the conversation."
Everyone is entitled to voice an opinion, but why do we need to defend and defy and convince others that we are "right". Or are we concerned that the other readers aren't smart enough to understand what is being discussed. I am absolutely convinced that our readers were able to discern the discussion points without ever letting it become so personal. If your individual ego is so fragile that you feel the need to defend yourself here among a bunch of "strangers" then you need to find a different past-time. As the gambler said, "you got to know when to walk away, know when to run".
There were plenty of points in time where multiple people, having tossed in their thoughts, could have just walked away.
Dan, I disagree with you. Everyone's opinion should be welcome, because only each individual reader can determine what is applicable to him/her, and how much he is willing to invest to get to that point. I will never be a PMTS "Expert" skier. It is, I believe, a pretty small and exclusive group. But I will continue with PMTS lessons and trying to learn more. But I do absolutely enjoy hearing Gary's point of view and Epic's pont of view and Bushwacka's point of view. Hopefully, the "group indicators" give people some sense of who is an instructor, and who is a patroller, and who is like Jim, just a hack skier.
I do understand your actual example, where all of the individuals are at different levels in the same profession. From that point of view, if I were an aspiring ski instructor working on my Level I PSIA, I certainly wouldn't show up at testing sessions having interminable "discussions" with the Level III's that were evaluating me, trying to convince them that I knew more about skiing than they, but that isn't the environment here. If I were trying to join ski patrol, I probably wouldn't argue with Liam about how to handle a sled no matter what color text he posted in. But I don't think that describes the nature of the forum. You personally gravitate to a different level of of information than Byron (for example, no slur intended to Byron).
Bottom line -- Is Helluva right, or is Liam right, or is Dan right?? It doesn't really matter as long as the opinions are out there for each reader to see. The next mission to the moon isn't dependent on who is right and wrong. The only thing I know is that "Jim is right" because we all perceive ourselves that way.
The co-founder of Spectrum Systems and I have been together for the past 30 years. He passed away last week. My fourth grandchild (and first grand daughter) was born last week. THAT is life and death. This is just social chit-chat, life to too short to take a ski forum so damn seriously that we get this upset. We shouldn't confuse skiing with the really important things in life -- and I've got another week in Colorado in 10 days.
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