[tylerz]

I can think of many reasons why making private threads or sub-forums is beneficial and desirable. Deeperblue is a service that is backed by a technological infrastructure. That infrastructure is reusable. So, just because it has been created for the express purpose of public discussion, I don't see any philosophical or technical assault towards DB's current form to extend it for private discussion. It is simply a useful function. Why somebody would choose to use such a function could be for many fair and purposeful reasons. Alas that is why tons of newsgroups/mailing lists exist that are private, such as yahoo groups. The most obvious benefit of enabling private group discussion, is to utilize the same user accounts and infrastructure so that DB is your one-stop portal for diving.

The point can maybe be emphasized by another example. I wish to create some software to assist in managing diving meets, so I create the web tools and then I have to host it somewhere. If I do it on my own server, new users need a new account, need to learn a totally different interface to their account management, need to wait for all the same friends from DB to join, and the product can't integrate with cross-functionality between the systems such as, a meet requires management, but it also requires discussion. So, hopefully that clarifies the reason to reuse an environment for extended functionality, so all we are left with is whether there is a "good" use of the extended functionality of private discussion, and James obviously feels he has a good use, and I am certain many others would too.

I am not asking for it, but responding to emphasize that I think negating James' interest for such functionality is counter-productive. Instead actually trying to identify how much use would come from it and how desirable it is would assist to compare against how much work it would take to extend the functionality. If there is no interest in the community then so be it. But it is a useful piece of functionality.