*** KATRINA BOARD TO WIND DOWN ***

[Tim Vasquez]

We will be winding down the special Katrina board soon -- "when" is not certain but is awaiting input from all of the moderators. I'm going with their decision on this. I know that this weekend has been discussed. Stormtrack's main focus is on storm chasing and there has been increasing pressure for us to return to that.

Weather & Chasing will handle the continuation of Katrina meteorological discussion, and Map Room will handle Katrina chaser reports. We are currently working on a policy for handling the post-disaster and emergency management content related to Katrina, all of which have become strongly political.

The existing public board will be provided in read-only mode for awhile and will then be absorbed into the rest of the site for archival purposes.

Tim

 

[Justin Turcotte]

Some thoughts that I also posted in the "Katrina-when will it end" thread in Info Desk...

Politics will play a role with any disaster. ST is trying to get away from political discussion but this is difficult to do in the Kat thread as just about any topic here will have some sort of political overhang whether it be pre-storm preparartion, gas prices, looting, clean up, rebulding, etc.

Even in our regular forums there are numerous storm chase topics that at the very least are germainly effected by political decisions such as the roads we drive on, speed limits, gas costs, NOAA funding, diversity in meteorology, cell phone driving laws, etc, etc. Remember the Santorum bill? It is very difficult to completely devoid ST of political discussion unless we gut all the forums less the Map Room.

 

[rdale]

Agreed - but clearly politics are not a "side" issue as they may be in other threads, it is becoming "the" issue here instead...

 

[Scott Olson]

Since the board will be winding down I think it's time to thank Tim for the quick response in starting this board. Thanks Tim! A special thanks to all the mods who worked to quickly intervene in silly arguements and deleting double posts, etc. It was nice to have a place to come to to quickly get the days information between classes and work.

Thanks Guys!
Scott Olson

 

[Jay McCoy]

I agree and also applaude the ST team. This was the storm of our lifetime and having a special section to deal with the multiple angles was a blessing. Good job guys!!