Those who oppose the idea under the assumption that people will go there is instead of coming here...nonsense. I'm certain you understand that people both visit this sailing forum and other sailing
forums already...right? It's really a non-issue.
I am a registered user of two other sailing
forums and yet I still come here as well. Providing links to other forums won't have any effect in the number of viewers and posters to this forum. Besides, its easy enough to do your own
Google search for other sailing related forums and no amount of censorship in this forum is going to stop people from using search engines. People ARE going to find other sailing forums, so why even attempt to stop it? ...it would only serve to make the administrators look like book burners.
Linking to other sailing forums also provides something to
member of this forum which may not be available here...such as more opinions on a given subject.
Providing people with more information is always a good thing. When you think about it, links to other sites are provided all the time in here for the purpose of providing more information to the members of Cruisers Forum. One
member in particular is the king of links to other websites...and I very much appreciate the vast number of links that he does provide to places outside of this forum.
AOL did everything it could to keep its members within the confines of AOL...and look what happened to AOL in terms of the number of members.