I am also in a grey area as far as my involvement in aikido goes. My active training days in aikido, a total of five years, ended in 1978. But aside from that, an interesting thought arises. Why post here? The action seems to be here. At Aikiweb - which, BTW, is not called "AikidoWeb"
I've learned a tremendous amount.
When I came back to America, I entered Psych grad school - and had a terrible time. I was hot for intellectual dialogue and when I disagreed with someone, the response was a hurt little pout, teary eyes, and a response something like, "How could you criticize that. That was one of my favorite thoughts!" So I started hopping the fence and taking philosophy courses, where one ran a gauntlet everytime one spoke. One had to defend - with logic AND wit, anything that came out of one's mouth. I would wager that if the non-aikido folks (and those in the grey area, who also have hard questions) stopped posting, things would get rather pallid and uninformative real quick.
Best