RyPN Purpose (from the home page)January 6, 1998The Railway Preservation News (*RyPN) website is dedicated to the preservation of railroad history, including documents, artifacts and infrastructure. Towards this end RyPN will:1) report on items and issues of interest to the railroad preservation community; and educate the public to the past and current impact of railroading on the history of this country. 2) identify and document railroad documents, and collections of documents, including photographs, time tables, schedules, advertisements literature, brochures, flyers, menus, tickets, business forms and documents, literature, artwork, paper items, etc.; and encourage their preservation, including stabilization, cataloging and assimilation into appropriate groups, societies, foundations, museums, etc., and formation of these organizations, when this will facilitate the above goals. 3) identify and document railroad artifacts, and collections of artifacts, including rolling stock, locomotives, signals, switches, maintenance equipment, small structures, etc.; and encourage their preservation, including stabilization, maintenance, and restoration in a manner consistent with the original and/or in service usage of the item; and encourage assimilation of these items into appropriate groups, societies, foundations, museums, etc., and the formation of these organizations, when this will facilitate the above goals. 4) identify and document railroad infrastructure, including structures, bridges, rail yards, complexes, factories, right-of-ways, corridors, areas & districts, etc.; and encourage their preservation, including stabilization, maintenance, and restoration, in a manner consistent with the original and/or in service usage of the item, or where more practical and feasible, adaptive reuse; and encourage assimilation of these items into appropriate groups, societies, foundations, museums, etc., and the formation of these organizations, when this will facilitate the above goals. Interchange GuidelinesThe Interchange's primary purpose is to facilitate the exchange of information, advice, and suggestions, not to serve as a forum for debate.The Interchange requires all posters to adhere to a high standard of courtesy and civility. Polite, constructive criticism, and polite responses to same, are acceptable. Insulting or inflammatory language; argument and debate for their own sake; and personal attacks on other posters ("flaming") are all prohibited. Please note that this standard is inherently subjective, and is considerably more restrictive than the standards on many other rail fan and railroad forums. Some people may not find it possible to express their full views and stay within this guideline. Other people may have legitimate philosophical objections to posting under inherently subjective moderation. In either case, we must respectfully ask them to express their views in other forums than this one.Defining what constitutes uncourteous, uncivil, or unconstructive speech, and deciding when continued discussion of a subject is no longer constructive, shall be within the sole discretion of the moderators. They may choose to issue a back-channel warning, may delete posts without warning, or may close threads to new posts. Where possible, the moderators will try to explain the cause for their decisions, either back channel or through an announcement on the board.In my sole discretion as moderator, I felt the discussion was no longer constructive. I have deleted it.Ed

For the benefit of those who did not get to read the "offending" posts - can you please be very specific as to what necessitated the deletion of the entire thread. When I last read the thread, it contained a tremendous amount of useful information - and I do not appreciate the fact that I will not be able to refer to it in the future because a single individual found a small portion of it to be offensive.Tom Cornillie

wow..there was NO reason that thread should have been deleted..warning...if you dare question a mod's judgement, it seems the mod would prefer to delete the entire discussion rather than admit he was wrong..sad..Scot

at worst maybe lock it, if you think its getting OT..but even that would have been unwarranted in this case.at least that way the information remains..but deleting outright is IMO a flagrant misuse of mod privilages..totally unwarranted and unnecessary.and I wasnt even taking party in the discussion!just reading it with great interest. (im a RDG fan).IMO this thread was deleted because the mod didnt like being disagreed with...thats a very poor excuse for wiping out a valuable discussion..im a mod myself on another forum...(LV forum on railroad.net)topics should NEVER be deleted outright..maybe individual posts if they are outright flames, but that didnt even appy to anything in this thread!its just wrong!!! the rules dont list wholesale destruction of the thread as an option.only deleting offending posts, or locking the topic are listed as mod options.Ed, I think you own everyone an apology..you were WAY out of line!!Scot

Thats too bad.I was anjoying the Canadian vs U.S. boiler inspections et all. Found it very informative, especially with the (even remote) possibility of the 2816 operating in my neck of the woods sometimes this decade. Maybe thats a slice of information that could be reproduced somehow. Made for an excellent crash course in cross/border differences.Dave Crosby

Since I can't improve on what Scot said, I'll just agree with him.Quite immature, Ed. JAC

We appreciate the feedback and we three mods will discuss it back-channel. Moderating is a lot like umpiring baseball. The man on the field who sees the play has to make the call, and his call has to be respected. Which is not to say that we can't review a play afterwards and consider whether a similar situation might be handled differently or possibly better in the future.And that is what we'll do in this case.

In this particular thread, unless I happened to miss some individual descending to actual actionable slander.........The reactions of the moderator, in this case, were more detrimental to the discussion and the hobby/industry than the actual thread being deleted.And, as I said, I say that as a moderator who has had to deal with nitwits that can turn a discussion on railroad magazines into a Bush-bashing anti-war tirade.My respect for this board (which, by the way, was being referenced by just about every other forum I saw that was discussing the 2100 in the past week) has just gone down considerably. Not a good thing to do when I'm actively trying to scrape together enough excess cash to join the "Patron" list.

When messages are deleted, are they "really" deleted, or are they just in a "waste basket"? If they are gone forever, then in the future, it seems like it would be better to first lock a thread, then make the determination later if it should be deleted.Add my voice to those who found the thread to be informative and not all out of the guidelines of the Interchange. (I too was not a participant.) I also understand and appreciate that everyone affilated with RYPN does so as a volunteer; nothing discourages volunteers like a public spanking. I believe everyone will instead be the wiser for it.This is a great forum, and I highly value it. I have also been guilty of post "fringe" topics.-James Hefner Hebrews 10:20a Surviving World Steam Project

Add my voice in support of the RDG 2100 thread. Some interesting stuff in the details of speculations re: different boiler regs, etc. Yes, we wandered a bit, but it is no worse than the "name your favorite fan trip engine" and other fringe discussions. If needed, pull an individual reply, but not the whole posting.Wesley

Ditto.

If you pull anything pull those "what would you have saved" threads. Lets talk about what we have and what we are doing to preserve them.

I strongly disagree with shutting down this thread, as well as the cut-off of debate re: the K4 1361 on this site. I think the several aborted attempts at operating the 2100 over the years, the sending of the 1361 to Steamtown, and other similar troubled efforts would have benefitted from MORE vigorous public debate than less. Curtailing this debate is detrimental to efforts like this.Chris.

My only question is why do things have to be in the form of a debate anyway?? I agree that the thread should have been continued, but there honsestly were some accusatory tones to some of things that were being said. As for the K-4 thing a while back, that got pretty ludicrous in itself, with all the back-biting. I was kind of surprised by some of the comments there from people whom I thought were above that type of thing. Let's cool off and find the real enemies that are out there!

First Chaski, now RYPN