Thanks for keeping it local Rob

[PaulW]

For those who keep wanting to steer everything towards national politics:
You might think your opinion is important but nobody else does.

[Guest]

Yes thank you Rob for keeping this forum local. This is local news here as one of our own Hilo DLNR officers was recently convicted of sex assault of a minor.

http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2017/0...x-assault/

Why was this guy a DLNR officer here?

Our D.A and his team did a great job on this case, they also had to see through the officers attempted cover up scam.

[kalakoa]

"National" politics are only really relevant in America.

[Rob Tucker]

I feel like I've said it a number of times.... there are a thousand sites to rant and rail on national politics. There is basically only Punaweb to talk Punatalk.

I prefer to keep them separate.

Assume the best and ask questions.

Punaweb moderator

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

There is basically only Punaweb to talk Punatalk.

That's true enough.
Some issues by their very nature, however, are both local and national, and in the case of the two recently locked topics, there was some overlap. As Rob initially noted, he found the immigration link to Puna weak, but would allow it to play out and see where things would go.

Unfortunately, and the reason they were locked, was because those discussions went off the rails into the national aspects of the issues, too much national, not enough local.

In the case of both the immigration topic and the EPA topic, a person posting from outside Hawaii, Lopaka, was the catalyst who intentionally took both issues off topic, and some of us (myself included) went there with him. There were several reasons to end both topics, and Rob picked one.

I would only like to add, that in the case of immigration many restaurants and farms use undocumented workers here in Hawaii. Perhaps in 6 months or a year, should a local restaurant close down or our limited Hawaii grown produce becomes even more limited, we may be able to see with more certainty whether it's a subject that directly affects us or not.

At the moment there are several concurrent topics on Punatalk discussing medical marijuana in Hawaii, which include comments on Colorado, California, National Parks, and mainland state taxes.

I'll leave you with this statistical comparison:

* Number of estimated undocumented workers in Hawaii affected by the new immigration rules: 21,000
* Number of people in Hawaii with a valid medical marijuana permit: 13,000

You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.

[Kapoho Joe]

Plenty Puna stuff to talk about, no need to rehash the national crap ad infinitum.

[terracore]

Just my 2 cents...

Yes there are thousands of other forums to discuss national (and international) topics.

But nowhere to discuss these topics within the unique Punaweb community, with our distinctive selection of local kine users / personalities.

I agree, keep the local forums local. But maybe not a bad idea to add an additional forum for Punawebers to discuss non-local topics with fellow community members.

[Slow Walker]

But once you open up that can of worms how do you keep it from spreading to the other threads?
Once the SHTF it is hard to stop it.

I'll add just four words to make a point.
Donald Trump/Hilary Clinton.

You can relate both of those names to Puna some how.

[ohiagrrl]

Rob Tucker,
How is a friendly chat on 02/02 with PaulW about the Superbowl and Manchester United, a British Soccer Club, a "local" issue in your mind? Your policies could be perceived as censorship. People in Puna want to know why their forests are dying, their soils are poisoned with aluminum. The post you shut down about global weather modification and Solar Radiation Management hosts theories about why that is happening. The people who seemed to get super incensed about the topic could easily be connected to local military, aerospace engineering, or geochemical industries all which employ many residents and have a stake in keeping advances hush hush. Who needs a TMT repeat? This is political and local. Since you shut the thread down it has been read by an extra 200 residents who seem very interested in impending technological advances that either do, or will affect them. A bunch of Baby Boomers screaming "psuedo-science" isn't a compelling argument to ignore something as plausible as large scale cloud seeding here in Hawaii and elsewhere. Please re-evaluate your policies or clarify that your site is specific to a particular subset of Puna Residents.

[Rob Tucker]

Hmm. Not familiar with the Superbowl or Manchester United topics. Fact is I am not compelled to and do not read every post on every topic so the rules get applied on a basis of 'once it comes to my attention'. Even then I will usually give a bit of latitude to see if a topic can come into a Puna/Hawaii oriented vein. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

For the most part this is subjective and imperfect. If playing hall monitor to this web site becomes too time consuming I will shut it down.

Subjective means how things read to me. Generally I consider world wide conspiracy theories to be off topic. It is your job to convince me otherwise. So far that hasn't happened.

Some members in the past have become so time consuming for me that they have ultimately been banned. They are gone, Punaweb is still here.


Assume the best and ask questions.

Punaweb moderator