Ditto the welcome of Van & cutlunch.
You will also note that discussion of rigging is also prohibited. This is for the same reasons. I hope that I don't repeat too much of what cutlinch has said. The target audience of
Controlbooth is high school aged tech
theatre people. Many such people are eager but may not neccessarily have a wide range of life experience. In the eagerness, they can
pick up on an idea and run with it rather than thoroughly looking into it and its potential ramifications. There can also be a desire to "show off". Because of these factors, important
safety details can sometimes be overlooked. This is a problem.
In the
current legal climate it appears that there is no longer such a thing as an accident and no one ever wants to take the blame for their actions. Hence we come to the issue of liability. If a person were to take incorrect advice from a place such as
Controlbooth and an incident were to occur in part or full because of it, then that person might seek to make
Controlbooth liable. If I understand correctly the way that liability operates, this would then have the potential for Dave to be legally liable for the postings on the site and hence for the wrong information and for any damages caused by that wrong information. Understandably Dave does not want to take such a risk and so has implemented the policy that Rigging and Pyrotechics are off limits for discussion. I recall when the explaination of this with regard to rigging was made, there was a statement made along the lines of if a regarded knowledgable industry person came along and was willing to moderate such a section, then the ban would be reconsidered, but until such a time, the ban stays.
I hope that makes sense, and I too would expect that at some
point Dave might be along to elaborate or explain it better.
Just reread the previous post and was reminded of the saying that a little knowledge is dangerous...