Being both a newcomer to these forums this year and a tech geek, I can say 100% that what goes out there in Social Media space, is out there for all to see and very hard to take back once you hit "post". When looking for source of Carp'ing information I searched, Google, Youtube, Facebook, read posts on both CAG and "other" websites forums to get a feel of what the community via. that portal was like. I must say, some of the older CAG "vids" still on youtube even made my sick sense of humor raise an eyebrow.
After joining, paying my dues, I must say that the people in this community are are outstanding, helpful, knowledgeable and generally gracious with the advice they offer. For me, it was certainly worth the membership fee and my knowledge, catch rate and PB are growing almost monthly.
Individuals need to decide for themselves if the value of membership, private forums, etc, is worth it to them. If they don't want to pay, then don't. There are as has been mentioned a ton of "vendor" sponsored or even hosted sites out there with information - you get in life typically what you pay for. Personally I prefer the lack of overt advertising here and the community spirit offered.
As far as fly fishing goes, I know there is an avid group of carp fly fishermen here in Colorado, generally up in Denver where they just had the Carpslam event. Knowledgeable and skillful for sure - would I like to see most information on Fly fishing here (private or otherwise) ? of course. That would be a _value add_, again certainly worth the membership dues to learn from others with more skill and knowledge than I. Is it going to be the end of the world?, solve world hunger, prevent the hext hurricane, if there isn't, no! I have a browser, search engines, if I am that interested in finding out information on fly fishing for carp, pretty easy to facilitate with the tools vailable - just type in "carp fly fishing" into youtube and see how many hits you get!
Would it be great to have ALL the Carp communities and information in one place, one happy family, all playing nicely together, yes ! Will that ever happen, very doubful ! My 10 british pennies worth of thoughts, FWIW.
John