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

[bowlofpetunias]

I am going to play a bit of devil's advocate here.I see nothing wrong with a comment of sorry for your loss embedded in an Accident Thread post... IMHO it helps remind other posters that there is a real person involved not just a statistic. Posts of nothing but condolences should be diverted to the condolences thread. I don't see why a condolences thread can't be created right away. Condolences for the death at.. name the location perhaps date or title it Condolences for (name of A&I thread could be created right away so there was somewhere to redirect posts to immediately. The name can be changed to include the person's name when it is released if that seems appropriate.

 

[Bob DBF]

A scuba incident could be "bob went diving" or "bob inflated his bcd at the surface" or "bob ran out of air and drowned". I think only the third one of those would be an accident.

In the end, does the name really matter to anyone except search engines? It doesn't matter to me.

It may very well matter to me.

bob

 

[Jack Hammer]

Most threads are fine. The biggest issue I see in the forum is in incidents at a more advanced diving level (Tech, trimix, rebreather, especially cave). Too often there are too many people bringing the equivalent of a sixth grade education into a PHD level discussion and really making comments and speculation that are asinine (sorry if I sound like a d*ck). Then you got folks who have little clue about the subject or what they're reading trying to summarize and be an expert and just making more noise in the threads. Those threads really need heavier moderator participation (filtering).

Overall i feel the moderation in the forum is fine and pretty lenient.

Reading all incidents posted reminds me to not become complacent.

I'm OK with the occasional snorkeler or freedivers incidents showing up, I just don't follow those. A lot of people may not realize those can be relevant because just like SCUBA they can all be classified together as diving accidents which can skew scuba incident numbers. This has a possibility to affect/limit access to some areas. If you don't like them... don't read them.

Names of the deceased being withheld from the threads makes sense.

 

[EricTheDood]

Most threads are fine. The biggest issue I see in the forum is in incidents at a more advanced diving level (Tech, trimix, rebreather, especially cave). Too often there are too many people bringing the equivalent of a sixth grade education into a PHD level discussion and really making comments and speculation that are asinine (sorry if I sound like a d*ck). Then you got folks who have little clue about the subject or what they're reading trying to summarize and be an expert and just making more noise in the threads. Those threads really need heavier moderator participation (filtering).

Some posts are easier to "filter" than others. The borderline posts is where it gets tricky. Some posts will get deleted while others remain, despite delivering practically the same message in slightly different ways, which can be seen as "unfair" and open its own can of worms.

An upvote/downvote system is one idea, e.g. Amazon reviews. "5 out of 87 found this helpful" is self explanatory. The system is not without its pitfalls.

The part about a sixth grade education vs PhD is... interesting. Certainly some posts are devoid of accurate fact and are practically trolling. But in some cases, the "PhDs" have tunnel vision and are unable to step back and look at things with an open mind. That would certainly describe some real world PhDs who really enjoy patting themselves on the back.

 

[beester]

The part about a sixth grade education vs PhD is... interesting. Certainly some posts are devoid of accurate fact and are practically trolling. But in some cases, the "PhDs" have tunnel vision and are unable to step back and look at things with an open mind. That would certainly describe some real world PhDs who really enjoy patting themselves on the back.

"
I realise that part of this has to do with blame, litigation and sometimes as well ego (there can be a lot of ego in diving, specifically technical diving). I'm certainly not a "PhD" in diving (although I do know some quite well). However if I come out and explain an incident/accident I had or witnessed and report this I want it to be reviewed/analysed by my peers. If it's a cave dive, I don't want non cave divers to analyse the incident, because they don't know what the decision tree, thought process, procedures, practical issues and logistics are. If it's a deep technical dive with hours of deco, I wouldn't want a recreational diver with 50 dives under his belt to comment. I understand that they could have an open view, but that's not enough to provide meaningful input.

I wouldn't comment on a rebreather incident/accident, because beyond a basic idea of the operation and procedures, I have no idea what it would involve.

 

[kensuf]

So I'm probably one of the cavers that have complained about A&I forums.

Individuals posting things based on rumor and speculation contribute nothing positive to the discussion and do more harm than good. Here is an example of what I am talking about.

Several months ago there was a fatality in a local cave system. A local cave instructor, who was teaching a class at the time, came upon the victim and the victim's buddy 1000' from the exit. The cave instructor tried to save the victim, including attempts at in-water chest compression, screaming at him, and doing everything he could to get his attention. There was no response, no breathing, the eyes of the victim were lifeless. Eventually, the instructor realized the case was hopeless and focused his attention on the living -- the buddy of the deceased and the student that was in his charge. The instructor managed to keep those two individuals under control and got them to the exit safely. The buddy of the deceased had over an hour of mandatory decompression -- I need to be clear on this -- if the instructor had even managed to get the deceased to the surface, the victim would have likely died due to complications from DCI.

The recovery was performed that evening. An autopsy, which took over a week, confirmed the victim died of a heart attack and there was nothing that could have been done to save him.

Before the body recovery was even completed, another cave instructor starting posting disparaging remarks regarding the incident on the internet. The remarks and comments included questioning the judgment of the instructor that RESCUED the buddy and took care of his own student. There were many bold statements in the comments that were made that were utter ******** (time it would take to perform an exit, ability to restart victim heart and get him back in the water for mandatory decompression or in a chamber in a timely fashion, etc). But they were posted in public places in public forums.

Now, here's the rub.

In our litigious society, it is possible for the family of a victim to be encouraged by an attorney to sue someone, somewhere, for something. Scuba instructors carry mandatory liability insurance to the tune of at least $1,000,000 and that makes us an attractive target. Think about the Skiles -vs- DiveRite suit for a minute -- lawsuits that you think would never be filed do indeed get filed.

So let's look at this fatality again. In this particular case, we have public statements made by one cave instructor questioning the judgment of another cave instructor.

Be honest for a second, if this particular incident were to have gone to court, do you doubt that those comments would have been brought up?

Do you think the insurance company would vigorously defend the instructor that performed the rescue, or do you think they would have cut and run?

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the instructor that performed the RESCUE of the buddy and protected his student. How would you feel?

 

[beester]

Now, here's the rub.

In our litigious society, it is possible for the family of a victim to be encouraged by an attorney to sue someone, somewhere, for something. Scuba instructors carry mandatory liability insurance to the tune of at least $1,000,000 and that makes us an attractive target. Think about the Skiles -vs- DiveRite suit for a minute -- lawsuits that you think would never be filed do indeed get filed.

So let's look at this fatality again. In this particular case, we have public statements made by one cave instructor questioning the judgment of another cave instructor.

Be honest for a second, if this particular incident were to have gone to court, do you doubt that those comments would have been brought up?

Do you think the insurance company would vigorously defend the instructor that performed the rescue, or do you think they would have cut and run?

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the instructor that performed the RESCUE of the buddy and protected his student. How would you feel?

I fully understand Ken. SInce we don't yet have a "just society" in which we can report incidents/accidents without any risk for further litigation, and critique on persons rather than procedures, decisions, I believe we should refrain from talking about deadly accidents.

If we discuss incidents/accidents were the actors are still alive and can participate in the discussion, we'll have a much better picture of what happened then a deadly accident where the actor can no longer contribute. This will also solve the conflict between analysing an accident vs being respectful towards deceased family/friends/relations. In the end a non deadly accident could in many cases just be a few steps away from becoming a deadly accident, so there is as much to learn from this as from deadly accidents, without all the risks of misinterpretation, litigation, ego (well that will always remain a risk), etc.

Cheers

 

[boulderjohn]

Before the body recovery was even completed, another cave instructor starting posting disparaging remarks regarding the incident on the internet. The remarks and comments included questioning the judgment of the instructor that RESCUED the buddy and took care of his own student. There were many bold statements in the comments that were made that were utter ******** (time it would take to perform an exit, ability to restart victim heart and get him back in the water for mandatory decompression or in a chamber in a timely fashion, etc). But they were posted in public places in public forums.

Those comments were not posted on ScubaBoard, though. Our rule against blamestorming would have prohibited it.

We recently had a similar case, though. A thread started with a blamestorming post attacking a dive operation for their actions in a case involving a fatality. That thread should have been deleted immediately, but it was not, simply because...
1. Almost no one understands the "no blamestorming rule"
2. Moderators who do understand the rule (sort of) did not see the thread until a number of days and many posts later.

That put the staff into a quandary. Many people had seen the thread, and the operator had already responded. The initial damage had been done, and the subsequent discussion (including the operator's response) had done much to mitigate that damage. Deleting the offending posts would have required deleting the entire multi-page thread, something we almost never do, and it would have eliminated the defense as well. We decided to leave the initial discussion in place and place a moderator explanation saying that we were leaving the original discussion in place but prohibiting further discussion along those lines. That stirred a lot of anger and misunderstanding. A lot of people not only do not understand the blamestorming rule, they see nothing wrong with blamestorming.

 

[kensuf]

@boulderjohn
, you understand some of the things I left unsaid, such as the instructor involved in the rescue was likely told by the accident investigators working the case to keep his mouth shut which meant he would have been unable to defend himself on the public forum where those comments appeared.

And while SB wasn't the forum that was particularly egregious in the incident I described, you just pointed out an incident where it was.

The sad thing is there are a small select few people that seem to thrive on A&I forums. They contribute greatly to the noise without thinking about the damage they are causing in the process. In most cases, the damage could be prevented if the speculation waited until facts were in-hand (autopsy performed, for instance).

And now I've just opened the door to the people that will say "but the information never comes out"...

 

[boulderjohn]

I want to expand upon what I wrote in my last post separately to make a separate point.

Several years ago a thread was started in the Cave Divers Forum that attacked a cave instructor's actions in a case that involved a fatality. That thread was deleted by moderators, but the topic kept getting brought up again and again, with people attacking the moderators for "protecting" a well known figure. The chief person in that attack contacted the person in charge of the annual cave accident (ACA) reports for the National Speleological Society and gave a summary of the accident (which had happened years before) in the hopes that her description would be published there. Since the NSS writer is not a cave diver, she asked me to investigate and submit a report.

I then spent countless hours reading depositions and interviewing key people. I am going to skip the details and just say that I concluded that some of the key players in the discussions were acting out of pure malice. They wanted to hurt the key figure's reputation for personal reasons that had nothing to do with the incident. False and misleading information was used to do this. As I investigated, the people with whom I talked were evidently talking among themselves, and it became obvious that I was figuring that out. they turned the public attack on me in order to discredit my report before it was submitted. It was ugly. It was painful.

My point: The rules of the A & I forum must prevent vindictive people from using it as an avenue for settling scores and carrying out personal vendettas.