Suggestion Feedback on keeping ScubaBoard members

[gypsyjim]

This question is directed at all members, new and old. It is actually a multiple part question, and is designed to get us all thinking about what ScubaBoard is, or could be for someone just discovering us today or tomorrow.

Two weeks ago on Utila Colleen and I were part of 4 couples with no previous contact who were diving on the same boat for a week, so we had lots of time to chat. It turned out that 5 (6 including myself) of the 9 divers including the DM, were all members of ScubaBoard at one time or another, but I was the only actively participating SM user.

A subsequent conversation with a friend who is also a moderator, has had me thinking about this, so here are my questions:

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1) What attracted you to ScubaBoard in the first place?

2) Are you satisfied that the board addresses your needs adequately? And if not what would you change, if you could to make it do so

3) Why do you think other folks who have joined, have not stayed around?

4) Do you have ideas on what the board either did not provide well, or what might have done to scare them away, without becoming participating members?

5) Do you have ideas or suggestions of new ways to both attract and keep new members, new divers involved, and satisfied with this forum?
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---------- Post added March 3rd, 2014 at 08:30 AM ----------

I will start by adding my own 2 cents.

I discovered SB while researching a dive trip back in '05, and was not a terribly active member for some time. I did though, find the info I was seeking.

I did soon after that did make some friends on the board, as both DeputyDan and Herman offered advice and invited my family to join their group for a trip to Bonaire.

I also later asked for underwater photography advice, and got a lot of help from such diverse members as ScubaSteve and DandyDon, who were more than willing to help a struggling novice.

I had a few conflicts in some of the threads along the way, especially early on, with some of the more vocal know it alls, but while that slowed me down a bit and kept me quiet, it did not scare me off. I just spent more time lurking till I became more comfortable standing up for my beliefs, and not afraid of the loud mouths. It just took me time to realize by lurking that they were a small minority, and not particularly as well respected universally as they might have thought, which made me feel less the outsider.

(Note) I think a lot of that 'know it all' attitude seems to have disappeared from the boards, or at least become far less of an issue. I heard a lot of feedback from non member divers between '95 and about 2000 that this "slamming of 'stupid questions' " was a big turn off, but I do not sense this same complaint from my more recent contactsd, when discussing SB. Now it seems more like SB is not supplying what divers are seeking, and they are just moving on to other sources of info.

I know many folks have moved on to FB, but while I enjoy FB a lot myself, I have never seen it as having the potential to reach as many divers, or to serve as a useful search base for dive related questions.

 

[chillyinCanada]

In a normal conversation at a real place..say at lunch at a table----someone will start with a topic, and you WILL get tangents....the tangents are good--if you did not have them, the conversations would be boring

Wow Dan! Did you take that verbatim from a rec.scuba thread? Next you'll be telling us it is real life in here. Someone will have to be "schooled" or have their personal info looked up and threatened with bodily harm.

Yes, I too miss 'certain' aspects of rec.scuba. and sometimes it is a bit frustrating when a thread gets separated but I still understand the reasoning. More frustrating is when we are all having a rollicking good time and our jokes and chuckles get deleted. But hey, guess we've got to take the good with the bad.


Soooo . . .Popeye is in here somewhere you say NetDoc? In sockpuppet fashion, imagine that!

 

[danvolker]

Wow Dan! Did you take that verbatim from a rec.scuba thread? Next you'll be telling us it is real life in here. Someone will have to be "schooled" or have their personal info looked up and threatened with bodily harm.

Yes, I too miss 'certain' aspects of rec.scuba. and sometimes it is a bit frustrating when a thread gets separated but I still understand the reasoning. More frustrating is when we are all having a rollicking good time and our jokes and chuckles get deleted. But hey, guess we've got to take the good with the bad.


Soooo . . .Popeye is in here somewhere you say NetDoc? In sockpuppet fashion, imagine that!

Pete, Is that the Popeye that was on rec. scuba ?
The "larger than life" Popeye from rec. scuba was from Tennessee or West Virginia, or some place with stills and moonshine. Matter of fact, I ran across that Popeye on Splashdown Divers in Boynton on one of my dive days back around 1999 or so....and he gave me a jar full of moonshine with a strawberry in the bottom.....kind of like the worm in the bottle of Tequilla
Was this the same guy" ?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Firstly, this could easily turn into another argument between "Dan and Bob"...which would mean that it would need to be split off or deleted.

Actually Dan I didn't address my comments to any specific individual, although I did use an example that involved the two of us. I could have chosen any number of them, but in context of recent comments that's the one that came to mind.

I recognize that you've taken my comments in other threads as some sort of "challenge", but I don't see it that way at all. If I had, I'd have responded to your comments toward me in this thread two weeks ago.

On the other hand....You are ignoring that some people think with creativity, and some others think like accountants or bean counters--in a narrow and focused and blah manner.

I'm not ignoring it at all ... I just don't see it as particularly relevent. This isn't your house or mine ... we're guests here. If either of us can't accept the rules of behavior, then we should reasonably expect the mods to do something about it.

The fact that you chose to divide SB users into categories using the terms you did clearly indicates that you see yourself as "creative", and anyone who doesn't agree with you in those condescending terms you used. You don't see anything wrong with that approach. With respect to the initial purpose of this thread, I think that's a good demonstration of the sort of attitude that keeps a lot of people from participating in discussions here.

In the Accident analysis thread....the bean counter mentality is to keep only to the OP issues, what ever they are/were. I see this as a travesty, as it could easily ignore some very major points that might save lives in the future, if there is ever a SIMILAR situation that some member here is faced with....but is now better prepared. TO ME, THIS "IS" WHAT THE ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS forum IS FOR. It is for seeing how someone had a problem, and figuring out a better way that this person could have handled it...so that there would have been no accident. To me, this is NOT a place to be posting we are sorry for the passing....that is a different forum. This is about seeing what is wrong, and fixing it.

You are referencing my supposedly going off topic, on the Indonesian divers accident.....Here there were deaths, and there was a message that the bean counters would never hear or consider...The "message" was, that if you KNOW you will be diving in a place with big currents--whether always big, or occasional, then it means you need to have PLANS in place for you and your buddy --for if and when a big current becomes a problem. Actually, even before this, you nreally have to have a plan for what you will do at any moment, in a huge current....And this was ignored and lost in the thread. I tried to address it, and since you and others did not like my using Split Fins as part of the problem ( say 20% of the bad issue I was explaining was split fin related--the rest was the bigger issues--poor propulsion skills--no knowledge of how to swim to shore -sideways to a big current.....not being a good swimmer as is COMMON in this part of the world with dive tourists that should not even have C cards..etc.)

As I said there, your comments were in poor taste ... to say the least. You effectively blamed a dead person for their own death by claiming that if they only used the same $400 specialty fins that you prefer the accident wouldn't have happened. On its face, it's an absurd claim. On a more social level, it's disrespectful of the victims.

Furthermore, you made assumptions about what gear they were using. Others correctly tried to point out to you that the accident had nothing to do with their fins ... it had everything to do with the fact that (a) their dive op made a poor choice of dive site, given the conditions, and (b) the boat abandoned them in order to go back and get more fuel. Those were the relevent topics of discussion ... not blaming the victim because they didn't make the same equipment choices you do.

And the bean counters won....all my comments were off topic, even though they may well have saved several divers in the future, if they reflected on this, and decided they had things they should address before going to a place with this kind of dive conditions.

Well, good luck in your quest to convince the recreational diving world that they all need to be wearing $400 free diving fins ... or a specific model of Force fins that you happen to like.

I understand that you believe you're on a quest to save people's lives, but as I pointed out earlier, Dan ... I think your delivery of the message is a good example of what drives people away from ScubaBoard. You can't seem to find a way to get that message out without offending people, and most people are just going to decide they can't be bothered.

An important part of communication, Dan, is how your message gets received. That isn't the receiver's responsibility ... it's yours.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added March 20th, 2014 at 07:16 AM ----------

Pete, Is that the Popeye that was on rec. scuba ?
The "larger than life" Popeye from rec. scuba was from Tennessee or West Virginia, or some place with stills and moonshine. Matter of fact, I ran across that Popeye on Splashdown Divers in Boynton on one of my dive days back around 1999 or so....and he gave me a jar full of moonshine with a strawberry in the bottom.....kind of like the worm in the bottle of Tequilla
Was this the same guy" ?

Popeye was from Tennessee ... we had a few conversations via PM.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[The Chairman]

OK, major disagreement here....I think the mods are way out of control in "deciding" that someone has veered off-topic, and the they "RUIN" what was an active, interesting and "normal" conversation, by artificially narrowing it to be just the narrow topic of the OP.
In a normal conversation at a real place..say at lunch at a table----someone will start with a topic, and you WILL get tangents....the tangents are good--if you did not have them, the conversations would be boring.

Having a bunch of mods running around killing off-topic posts, is like hugely annoying, and bad for the board.

How far off topic, is off topic?

That seems hard to define, and would almost have to depend on the character of each individual thread.

"Judgement Calls" are tough because everyone sees things somewhat differently.
That is where arguments start.

I think if posters exercised more consideration and restraint in terms of what they considered "valid" and "interesting", then the mods wouldn't have to be called on so often to exercise judgment in determining what's appropriate.

Firstly, this could easily turn into another argument between "Dan and Bob"...which would mean that it would need to be split off or deleted.

I could address these one by one, but let try to get them all at one go.

Dan, for the most part mods are reactive, not proactive. That means someone has reported the OT post(s) as being off topic, overly contentious, etc. etc and THEN the mods take a look. My standard reply in the back room is that if it only offends a mod or two to leave it alone: let Joe User let us know if/when content becomes objectionable. Obviously, if something is clearly against the ToS, a mod will intercede with or without a report. Spam, bigotry or anything you happen to post will fall into this category. Well, everything but the latter. I just couldn't miss such a cheap shot at your expense. Jim's question is answered by who reports what and why. This is why it's important to be clear about why a post is problematic. The Philippines is a great example of this. No one on the mod team speaks Tagalog. We have no idea if something that's being said is megaling or not. We're an international forum and we have to be able to be fair over the entire globe. Reported posts enable this to happen. Also, we often don't know the back story behind a slight, real or perceived. Reporters should tell us what we should know about that or expect us to do nothing.

Bob, emotion and passion often cloud our individual judgements about what is appropriate. Only a few come in here to disrupt on purpose and some of those are clearly only being cheeky: think Wormil. Most of the people who interact with Wormil not only endure his Shenanigans: they love them! If the mods were left to their own devices peeps like Wormil and Pifi would have no place here. How boring a site we would become! This brings us to Dan's last salient point and the very thing we start to get proactive with: a feud that jumps from thread to thread. We can see it when animosity is brewing between two users. Posts between the two start to fill up the backroom. Sometimes they are filed by one of the combatants and sometimes by those tired of the two. What you see as innocuous fun or an issue upon which the fate of the entire free world rests starts to derail one thread after another after another ad nauseum. Your fellow users simply don't like all the bickering and they report this kind of drivel in droves. The mods aren't the ones "out of control". Rly... Rly, rly... Rly, rly, rly!

 

[The Chairman]

Popeye is here on ScubaBoard. He asked to be let back in and promised not to try to take over again. Permission granted. I believe not only in second chances, but in multiple chances. It's my innate belief in humanity and that people are not evil by design, but rather simply don't comprehend how they affect others. I've tried to imbue my moderators with the same philosophy towards you guys. Quite often the person defending the guilty in the back room is none other than myself. Oh hell, my life could be a lot easier if I just let the mods set their lasers on "perma-ban", but that's not my style. Ergo, that's not ScubaBoard's style. People often never realize the patience I've afforded them. The mods do. I say this without boast, that I'm the most patient person I've ever known when I am inclined to be. People mention it all the time and sometimes they hate it when I patient with someone they don't like. But, (and I've got a big butt) when that patience is broken, I do things in a tearing hurry. Then I become the least patient person I've ever known. The ying almost always balances the yang.

And no... I won't tell you his current user name either. He's made peace with himself and the diving community. Good for him.

 

[boulderjohn]

We have a perfect example right now......the Deep air thread.....that got split to one with Sheck.....
It is perfect, in that the moderators involved have actually done a good job---this must be the "A-Team" of moderators, and they decided at one point, that the topic had deviated so far from the OP's topic, that they should split this to another thread.....
Now with the rules of SB in place....you just knew this would happen....and I don't see it as "bothering anyone", and we all know it had to be done due to the guidelines.... On the other hand, this WAS the kind of tangent that WOULD come along in a normal, real life conversation, and it is the kind of thing that keeps the interest up very high in a conversation.....rather than just beating minutia in a very narrow target, to death.

So when the split happens, a whole bunch of us get "shell-shocked", then we recover, and try to find our way in this new "2 room conversation", and this is harder than just chatting in one room...so to speak.

Here is why we will do things like split threads when the topic shifts.

Yes, the new topic might be very interesting to some of the people involved, and they are excited to be discussing it. On the other hand, there are people who were very interested in the original topic, and they are pretty peeved that the original topic discussion has been supplanted. Yes, that sort of thing happens in coffee houses when discussions shift, but the people who shifted the topic are usually unaware of the simmering anger of those whose original interests are now being ignored. That is why a place like ScubaBoard has an advantage over the coffee house--both topics can continue uninterrupted when they are split. Ideally, the mods would not have to do it. Ideally, someone who is interested in the new topic will realize that it is a new topic and will start a new thread about it. If the people discussing the new topic are unaware or are unwilling to make the change, then the mods have to step in and do the work. Believe me, they don't want to do it. It can be a whole lot of work. You can't just tell the computer to go through the thread and pick out all the posts that need to go to the new thread; it has to be done post by post according to the mod's judgment.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bob, emotion and passion often cloud our individual judgements about what is appropriate. Only a few come in here to disrupt on purpose and some of those are clearly only being cheeky: think Wormil. Most of the people who interact with Wormil not only endure his Shenanigans: they love them! If the mods were left to their own devices peeps like Wormil and Pifi would have no place here. How boring a site we would become! This brings us to Dan's last salient point and the very thing we start to get proactive with: a feud that jumps from thread to thread. We can see it when animosity is brewing between two users. Posts between the two start to fill up the backroom. Sometimes they are filed by one of the combatants and sometimes by those tired of the two. What you see as innocuous fun or an issue upon which the fate of the entire free world rests starts to derail one thread after another after another ad nauseum. Your fellow users simply don't like all the bickering and they report this kind of drivel in droves. The mods aren't the ones "out of control". Rly... Rly, rly... Rly, rly, rly!

I don't see myself in a feud with Dan. He said something in one thread that I found to be in poor taste and objectionable, and I said so. A few other people had also said the same thing, prior to my comments. Once that discussion ended, so did any reason I had to object. End of issue, to my concern.

As I said earlier, Dan was the one who came to this thread and brought my name into the conversation here. That was two weeks ago. Notice that I chose not to respond. If there was any such thing as a "feud" between us, you know me well enough to know I would have said something.

I have no issue with him as a person, although I find his crusade to get everyone into freediving fins rather absurd ... my issues were with what he said in that particular thread, because I felt it was inappropriate and very disrespectful of someone who died in a scuba accident.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

PS - I enjoyed bantering with Wormil and Pilot Fish (he really doesn't like to be called PiFi, and I respected his request not to use that term). And although he and I had some memorable exchanges ... particularly in The Pub ... I liked the guy, and miss having him here. My interactions with Popeye were also sometimes contentious, but for some reason I liked the guy.

 

[The Chairman]

I don't see myself in a feud with Dan.

Is the converse true? How does the rest of the Board perceive this? Again, those closest to the fray sometimes have no idea how it comes across to others.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Is the converse true? How does the rest of the Board perceive this? Again, those closest to the fray sometimes have no idea how it comes across to others.

I can't be responsible for what other people think. There's two or three people on ScubaBoard who still insist on beating me up over the octopus incident that happened a year and a half ago ... who live on the other side of the country, and have no idea what really happened. Am I supposed to somehow figure out a way to change their minds? I don't think that's either my responsibility or even possible. I got death threats, for God's sake ... it wouldn't surprise me if some of them came from those people.

I don't doubt that Dan thinks we're in some sort of feud ... he goes from thread to thread saying so. I don't really see that as my problem ... his posts are his responsibility, not mine. When I choose to respond to them, then it becomes mine.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[The Chairman]

I can't be responsible for what other people think.

Nope. You can't. However, sometimes others might perceive the issue and then intervene just to keep things friendly. There is nothing wrong with that.

There's two or three people on ScubaBoard who still insist on beating me up over the octopus incident that happened a year and a half ago ... who live on the other side of the country, and have no idea what really happened. Am I supposed to somehow figure out a way to change their minds? I don't think that's either my responsibility or even possible. I got death threats, for God's sake ... it wouldn't surprise me if some of them came from those people.

I still heartily applaud you for what you did and the changes that happened in the aftermath. You are the Lorax for the Octopi! Don't ever shut up. BTW, how are efforts aimed at protecting the endangered tree climbing octopus up your way?

I don't doubt that Dan thinks we're in some sort of feud ... he goes from thread to thread saying so. I don't really see that as my problem ... his posts are his responsibility, not mine. When I choose to respond to them, then it becomes mine.

Some people just don't like to be disagreed with. They see it as an attack or an insult: an assault on their character, even. There were a few who made a habit out of bashing PADI every chance they got. Oh, they got very creative in not bashing them directly, and I became very creative in exposing their agenda. People got tired of both sides of the discussion and blamed me equally with them. I felt the same way you did and frankly, they both thought that I hated them because I didn't let their venom towards PADI simply slide on by. We were both on our own crusade and at times that was unfair to all the users. I'm glad their onslaught subsided.

Bottom lijne: it takes two to tango. If someone thinks you don't like them, take a close look at how you post. You might not choose to change a thing, but if they see it chances are there's a reason why. Again, it might be a "Toughie Kaboombas" moment for you as it was for me. In the end, the mods took out a lot of garbage they should not have had to take out. Some even wanted to ban me from a forum or two. Sorry guys, but thanks for your hard work and perseverance.