Input on our Accident and Incidents Forum... What do you want? How do you want it?

[admikar]

Why do you come here?

No training in the world can prepare you every bad situation. There will always be new ways of making new and the same mistakes.
This forum can help in learning as much about those mistakes as possible.

Why do you post accidents and incidents?

I don't.

WHAT IS OUR MISSION? (in your words, please)

Specifically for this sub-forum, to provide a learning opportunities. For SB as a whole, place to get like minded people to interact with each other.
I agree with @Storker about 1st hand posters.
On everything else, like @Diver0001 said.

 

[MMM]

I think the intent or mission of this forum is to thoughtfully consider what went wrong and how to prevent them in future. I completely agree with Diver0001 that a pre-requisite to post in this forum is that you must have first-hand knowledge of the accident or incident. Otherwise it is just wild guessing and passing along rumors you have heard. This forum used to be much more restrictive than it currently is. A moderator had to approve all new threads (and maybe even posts...I can't remember). That was done away with because of the amount of work entailed and to provide more real-time posting. Maybe something like that needs to be re-instituted where a moderator would have a private discussion with someone wishing to start a thread to determine what the individual knows about the accident and whether anything is to be learned from the thread....or whether it will just consume space on the website.

 

[Steve_C]

I come here to learn.

I personally find some of the speculation very useful and informative. Perhaps it was or was not relevant to determining what happened to a particular diver. But I have seen a number of speculations that made me aware of additional things that could have gone wrong that I need to be aware of in my own diving.

A rigorous accident investigation and determination to me is not the purpose of this thread. Making me a safer diver and safer dive buddy is the purpose.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

When I was taking my padi instructor course we were told to avoid telling students that they need to be able to clear their mask because something bad might happen like a buddy kicking them in the face. This was over 20yrs ago.

We were told to tell the students that diving is so much fun that you may laugh or smile and this could wrinkle your face and let a little dribble of water in.

This mentality of minimizing the dissemination of the real risk to the students was emphasized over and over.

I fear that new divers are blissfully ignorant of the true dangers, as well as their own inadequacies. It is for this reason that I think the a and I section is very valuable.

I also think it is way over moderated, but that opinion may be an outlier.

Learning from the mistakes and misfortunes of other on line is a way to transmit real world experience to new divers.

I don't see the need for much change.

 

[Diver0001]

You can't do 'clear-cut accident without speculation'. There is always gonna be some speculation. Last thing people need is more 'leadership' on SB. There is way too much censorship going on as it is, most discussions are controlled by PADI/SSI instructor and or Mods, even the discussions about cave diving accidents... people aren't that stupid, they can decide for themselves whether something is BS or not.

Well.... without getting into too much of a discussion about semantics with you, there is speculation in the sense of presenting a theory that seems to fit the facts as a way to create an avenue for investigation and there is what happens on some of these threads.

What I think happens on a lot of discussion forums to one extent or another is that people start off in these discussions with preconceived assumptions about the causes and then they try to spin a theory that supports that assumption. That is what I would call a POV (point of view) warrior, someone who is out to push a world view, sometimes (in the worst cases) with no regard whatsoever for the facts. I guess you can see them like politicians in a campaign race, and just like politicians they can gain support for a standpoint by having a big mouth and being assertive and people will start to believe in the person even if the message is disconnected from reality. And just as you can see around you how many people will vote for a politician who hardly ever tells the truth, you will start to see on these threads--and in fact on almost any thread, most of which are less sensitive--that the fan club will start parroting what their ring-leaders are saying.

The problem with breaking out of this cycle is that you would need to have input from people who do accident analysis in the real world. Actual experts who are willing and able to lead the discussions through neutral, logic based, fact supported cases using widely accepted methodologies. This would make the cases dull to some people because people get on those and many other threads to cheer-lead, not to think things through methodically. There has been some discussion about this in the past on SB and I think you would be surprised how involved it really it.

Moreover, and I think this comes back to what I was saying before, such an analysis cannot EVER be done based upon hearsay. The analysis would have to be done by a neutral 3rd party who has access to the actual factual evidence, which we very seldom, if ever, have. I just think it's really difficult to have a meaningful discussion about an accident that we can really learn from.

That's not to say that none of the discussions we have here are valuable, but we shouldn't hold up the pretense that it is an accident analysis. SB has some bona fide experts around and when they do check in on discussions you can immediately see the effect it has on the level of the discussion. To that end, I wouldn't call people "stupid" or suggest that MODs think this, as you mentioned in your post, so much as "ignorant". It's hard to wage such a discussion knowledgeably when we are unaware of our own inabilities.

To that end, I think that moderation in the A&I forum should be very strict if we assume to want to learn anything. I'm not sure that MODs are always in the best position to moderate these threads, tbh, but I am completely convinced that they do this with integrity and to the absolute best of their abilities..... and to be perfectly frank, it is my experience (I used to be a MOD so I do actually have some experience) that the people who are quickest to play the "censorship" card and the most vocal about the failings of moderators are more often than not the POV warriors who feel penis blocked by being held accountable for what they are saying. Of course, that's my personal opinion, but I have had some years to study the issue from close up.

R..

 

[tridacna]

I'd like to see the moderators tighten up on the immediate outpouring of prayers that seem to be auto generated by users. (There is a forum rule that is seldom enforced about this).

Also keep snorkeling and obviously unrelated to diving incidents out of here - this is a SCUBA forum.

I wish that DD would first try to parse what he reads and then only post SCUBA related accidents. While it's not intentional, it seems as if he simply wants to "find it first and be first to post" regardless of the circumstances.

 

[Bennno]

Well.... without getting into too much of a discussion about semantics with you, there is speculation in the sense of presenting a theory that seems to fit the facts as a way to create an avenue for investigation and there is what happens on some of these threads.

In many, if not most, cases, all you can do is speculate. This has nothing to do do with semantics. Take the last Eagels Nest accident as an example. Only info you have is how the bodies and there gear was found. There is nothing you can do other than speculate as to what happened and what circumstances have lead to the divers dimise. Not allowing speculation as you and MMM suggested means not allowing ANY discussion at all.

Often times there is no first hand info other than reports by the recovery team and even they have to speculate as to what happened.
You can learn from speculation and it makes you think about yoaur own diving, it makes you think about things that are could be dangerous, which also helps people to be aware of dangers they haven't thought about... it's nothing like stopping to look at a car wreck, as you suggested.

I'm not sure that MODs are always in the best position to moderate these threads, tbh, but I am completely convinced that they do this with integrity and to the absolute best of their abilities...

People that wanna be mods enjoy the 'extra power' they have controlling what people can say or not say, people that wanna boss other people around. Call it want you want, is censorship. People need to stop whining and stop getting offended so easily. Ironically, SBs home country has a first amendment and voted for Trump, yet their mods are super senitive. I bet if Pres Trump was a diver he'd be kicked off of SB in no time. Not that I'm a Trump fan, but I don't appreciate censorship, especailly when it's done in a way, were the reader can't even tell when content is deleted.

I also think it is way over moderated, but that opinion may be an outlier.

I would think that most people agree with you. Who wants a group of 'expert' mods controlling what you can and cannot read.

 

[Diver0001]

In many, if not most, cases, all you can do is speculate. This has nothing to do do with semantics. Take the last Eagels Nest accident as an example. Only info you have is how the bodies and there gear was found. There is nothing you can do other than speculate as to what happened and what circumstances have lead to the divers dimise. Not allowing speculation as you and MMM suggested means not allowing ANY discussion at all.

Often times there is no first hand info other than reports by the recovery team and even they have to speculate as to what happened.
You can learn from speculation and it makes you think about yoaur own diving, it makes you think about things that are could be dangerous, which also helps people to be aware of dangers they haven't thought about... it's nothing like stopping to look at a car wreck, as you suggested.

Yeah.... well.... there you go. This is an incident where there are very few facts that were made public to my knowledge, no witnesses, no evidence and a bit of hearsay and an article written by a journalist to go on. So what did we learn? We learned who on SB has what opinions and generally speaking on the internet, he/she who screams the loudest wins. That's just the nature of this kind of discussion medium. Some of it may have seemed interesting if you are still learning the ropes and I think it's fine to express an opinion but the A&I forum wasn't originally intended for that. It is, however, what it has turned into and I think you cited the perfect case to make that point.

The question that Netdoc has put to us is if this is really what the A&I forum should be. You would seem to be arguing that you believe it should. I would argue that accidents where meaningful lessons can be learned should be left in A&I. Something like that Eagles Nest thread should have been split. The first 7 posts and the one from the cave instructor that was made a day or so later should be in A&I and all of the other stuff should have been dumped into the Florida forum where people could discuss their opinions without it derailing the one thread on the board where any relevant developments in the case that could become interesting should be contained. If you ask me, this happens to almost every thread in this forum, so it seems to have lost focus. Is that focus necessary? I think that's what we're trying to discuss here.

R..

 

[Bennno]

is is an incident where there are very few facts that were made public to my knowledge, no witnesses, no evidence and a bit of hearsay and an article written by a journalist to go on. So what did we learn? We learned who on SB has what opinions and generally speaking on the internet, he/she who screams the loudest wins.

No, this is not true! We have learned how the diver and the gear was found from the recovery divers. That's not hearsay! Then, because of speculation we have learned what possibly could have happened (considering the facts given by the recovery divers). You might not know what actually happened in this case, but you have learned what could have lead to the accident. That's valuable too.

Even if all you have is hearsay, there is still value in speculation, as long as people can recognize it as speculation.

 

[BRT]

I think the A&I system we have works well. I appreciate DD making the effort to track and report incidents. We don't want to be afraid of diving but it is foolish to ignore the fact that people die, often because of bad decisions. We need to try to learn from that even if it is painful to some.