Earlier, David moderated a thread in the Flying forum that drifted off-topic towards the Paris Attacks. He had all reasons to remove those posts from there (including one of mine) to keep the discussion on-topic and make it certainly more relevant for future references.
May I ask why such posts can’t be moved to Hangar Talk instead (unless, of course, they’re offensive or violate the forum rules in any way)?
And I for one am quite moved by what’s happening in the world at the moment and while this is a flying forum, this is also a forum with intelligent people that I enjoy sharing views with – much more than on other general forums. At least the Hangar Talk should allow for off-topic discussions such as this.
It’s a little bit dissatisfying when you invest time in a post that then gets deleted altogether.
AFAICS, the hangar talk section is not for non-aviation talk.
There is no section for that, so far (which I personally appreciate).
Patrick wrote:
May I ask why such posts can’t be moved to Hangar Talk instead (unless, of course, they’re offensive or violate the forum rules in any way)?
The thread to which you’re referring did violate the rules, or at least guidelines:
“We would like discussions here to be broadly about general aviation and reading them should be a positive experience for as many people as possible. "
As Bosco says, Hangar Talk is really for discussing matters related to aviation which don’t fit neatly in one of the other topics. Of course the occasional non-flying related thing goes through there too, and if it’s an uncontentious subject which won’t require a lot of moderation and is unlikely to cause trouble, that’s usually fine.
I understand and agree it’s dissatisfying to invest time in a post that gets removed and I’m sorry that it happened to you. But you already know what my advice is going to be: don’t invest time in writing non-aviation related messages, least of all on contentious subjects. Then it’ll never happen.
Ok!
While my opinion differs and I find a sort of “catch-all” section on any forum a good idea to not surpress thoughts that fail to fit into the preset categories, I do follow your reasoning and I’m not too bitter about the deletion. 
Also, upon browsing through the first couple of pages of topics currently in Hangar Talk, I agree they indeed all are aviation-related – at least by the token of their thread titles.
I hope we all agree that a change in rules, published by NOTAM, that affects flying to places is a topic we should discuss or ask questions about. No need to stray to other areas around though.
AFAICS, the hangar talk section is not for non-aviation talk.
There is no section for that, so far (which I personally appreciate).
I second that. There are more than enough places on the net where to discuss non-aviation topics.
