Cruise Critic in the news

[flagger]

I have made my feelings about this known elsewhere but I will say that I feel this brings up the huge disparity between the shoreside and shipside operations. I have never felt once the people at guest relations on the ship were empowered to solve a complaint. We had wonderful time, but have always noted this in our reviews.

[LauraS]

This was a tough call for us. After all, discussing "all things good and bad" about cruising is our mantra -- has been for almost 14 years. Yet, we were faced with a tailwind of conflicting thoughts: how do we handle this? We certainly think the discussion has merit -- but will it be about be about the issues at hand only? Can we keep this from becoming a public execution of the individual involved? It is a unique situation for us, as the couple in the center of this controversy are longtime, Cruise Critic members. Our very mission has been to provide a haven for cruisers on the internet -- will we be able to do that in this case?

After two days we believe this discussion has run its course. The time has come to put an end to this, because the discussion is no longer (or was it ever?) about the issue of being banned from a cruise line -- it is about an individual. One of our members. And although this individual has been determined to share her experiences both here and with other cruise-media outlets -- discussing people in a manner that personally attacks them as has been done these past two days is not what Cruise Critic is all about.

No matter how many reminders, no matter how many times we've asked "please no harassing of your fellow posters" or "stick to the issue at hand," we have posters who cannot refrain from personal attacks and we've had enough. It's been covered, everywhere. Discussed until there is nothing new to say. Rehashed until everyone is simply repeating themselves, or what others have said five minutes earlier. Most folks don't even know what they are talking about, they haven't read the article, or all the posts! Goodness, we've even done our own "follow-up" story.

Some of you won't like that the threads have been closed -- write me. Get it off your chest, in an email. We've made our decision and it is final. So, let's move on now and return to posting our own experiences -- good or bad -- about our favorite cruise lines.

After all, what are we about? We are cruising people through and through. Let's get back to it.

A final thank you to those who took the high road in all of these discussions. I've read every single posting on this issue, and I know who you are. My personal thanks go out to you.