I understand, Carlos, and thanks for the response you wrote earlier up in the thread. I think you do have an elevated sense of the importance of these forums, even the old one. There's nothing remarkable been going on here. All internet forums have experts, non-experts and interested parties slugging it out. You can read and participate and use their experience to informally 'lead' an investigation, and with time you know whom to take seriously and whom to screen out, in the sense of eliminating certain lines of inquiry and/or pointing towards probable causes. They can be informative, provided you know how to use them, so 'reader beware' applies as always. It's not just those romantic 'old days', though, when you seem to think things were always better. In more recent times I recall the Comair CRJ, TAM A320, British 777, Spanair MD-80, Aeroflot 737, Continental 737 and Dash 8Q400, US Airways A320, Turkish 737, which this and the other forums have all discussed pretty well. In the Comair CRJ case the accident was basically "solved" (at least the 'what', even if not the 'why') after about three hours of internet discussion.........But the point I wanted to get at was the importance the old forum had up to a certain extent, contrary to David Hilditch's opinion. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe I am exaggerating the importance of the findings we had then concerning some accidents.
That's all great. It has always seemed to me that the "social" aspects of forums can function simultaneously with the professional and industry aspects. So, we just take our gold where we find it. I just don't know why you took the "social" side so seriously, but that's your business, which is fair enough, so life goes on. I think you always had enough to contribute on aviation themes or off-topic serious issues alone.