Need help from technical divers...

[LM]

Hi everyone.
Let me start off by saying that I'm not a technical diver. I also cleared this post with NetDoc, so mods, no worries about this being some kind of spam...

I'm just now gearing up to get my basic open water certs. (Years ago, when I was pretty young, I used to do very shallow dives on borrowed gear without any training or education, but we get wiser as we get older

I am, however, a web developer and marketer and as a function of this, have acquired a few desirable, category defining web properties. One of them is http://www.TechnicalDiving.com (and http://www.TechnicalDiver.com). The existing site was developed as a basic HTML deal using Frontpage by a tec diver years and years ago, who sold it to us when he apparently lost interest in maintaining it.

Since it's the bang-on .com domain for the topic, I want to make the site into something decent- I'm thinking an A-Z, static info base on technical diving. Something much better than what's offered by a Wikipedia article. Something that will be beneficial to the community, so when I'm finally diving at this level, I can be proud of it. One thing I will not do is make it into yet another garbage heap of low quality, farmed content written by unqualified copy writers for the sake of Google Adsense. I really want to make sure the info is spot on, relevant and comprehensive. This will probably entail paying for content and articles from guys like yourselves, so in this regard, stay tuned.

I've learned that the best results come from listening to the people who know and doing what they say, so here's the question...

Aside from forums (which we aren't going to have have- we are going to link back to Scubaboard.com and give this site all of our forum-intent traffic) what is it that you, as tec divers, want to see in a technical diving info base? We won't be doing dynamic content either- matter of fact, we'd happily link out to TecDivingMag.com for our users who want an eZine type experience.

If you owned TechnicalDiving.com, what would you do with it?

(for the tech geeks- we're going to be undergoing a content migration to a Joomla cms with SEO plugin to match the URL's for backlink and serp preservation.)

Any constructive suggestions, comments or the like greatly appreciated.

Gracias

LM

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

Aside from forums (which we aren't going to have have- we are going to link back to Scubaboard.com and give this site all of our forum-intent traffic) what is it that you, as tec divers, want to see in a technical diving info base? We won't be doing dynamic content either- matter of fact, we'd happily link out to TecDivingMag.com for our users who want an eZine type experience.

Nice idea. Indeed, listening to the people is the key to success.

And thanks for the idea of linking out to Tech Diving Mag. :cool2:

 

[Michael Kazma]

My advice would be to wait until you are at a higher level and have a little more knowledge of technical diving before you decide.

Great URL to have!

 

[Dr Wu]

This is something you wish to create without even having a basic open water certification?

First advice is to not link a technical dive site back to Scubaboard. That would be a give away that you don't have any knowledge of the subject.

Lastly: I am genuinely curious why, if these domains were so easy to acquire, do you feel they have value?

 

[TSandM]

I suspect the information you could provide on a such a site would be primarily of interest to new or aspiring technical divers. People who are already doing the dives tend to be a dubious and fairly intolerant bunch, and often don't think anybody can tell them anything

Things that would be of interest to new or aspiring divers could be things like a review of a basic set of equipment, with perhaps even approximate costs; a review of the different technical training sequences from the various agencies, highlighting the differences; a review of different commercially available decompression algorithms, again highlighting how the profiles they generate are different, and preferably with some input from respected people on why they use one or another. These are just a few basic ideas, generated from my memory of what I have seen new tech divers asking on various forums.

 

[Blackwood]

Aside from forums (which we aren't going to have have- we are going to link back to Scubaboard.com and give this site all of our forum-intent traffic) what is it that you, as tec divers, want to see in a technical diving info base? We won't be doing dynamic content either- matter of fact, we'd happily link out to TecDivingMag.com for our users who want an eZine type experience.

Hmm. In my admittedly limited time cyber diving, I've concluded that forums are perhaps the best source of electronic information when taken with a grain of salt.

Consider that SO much in diving methodology ("tech" or otherwise) is opinion based, and that even in the nitty gritty science of things like deco, there are baseless assumptions and vast fields of grey. I believe that doing the subject justice becessitates multi-source conversation. Even a wiki may be too static (IMO the background discussion on Wikipedia is often the most useful/interesting).

I think you'll be hard-pressed to come close to as useful a resource as the combined might of various forums (rbw, tds, sb, etc.), but I wish you luck.

 

[Cave Diver]

How much time are you willing to put into maintaining the site?

Do you want a set-it-and-forget-it site, or are you willing to continually update and improve?

 

[boulderjohn]

I think there can be an advantage to having lesser knowledge about technical diving--seriously.

I have only been technical diving for a few years, but in getting the certs I got, I went with a number of different instructors with different views on some key topics, and when I say different, I mean different.

Lynne said, "People who are already doing the dives tend to be a dubious and fairly intolerant bunch, and often don't think anybody can tell them anything." She is not often given to such understatement. If someone goes out and gets educated in technical diving, the odds are that they will learn a specific belief system, and they will see another belief system as dead wrong.

One (and only one) good example is how one plans decompression. If you go to the computer section of ScubaBoard right now, you will see a thread related to the question of which computer one should use for trimix diving. In contrast, you can find technical divers who say you should never use a computer for trimix diving and will come close to spitting on those who do.

It might be interesting if you could possibly create a neutral site that showed the different points of view from an objective and neutral viewpoint.

 

[Blackwood]

It might be interesting if you could possibly create a neutral site that showed the different points of view from an objective and neutral viewpoint.

I'm not sure one can objectively explain the POV others hold (insert "walk in my shoes" proverb), and the OP already ruled out dynamic content.

 

[boulderjohn]

I'm not sure one can objectively explain the POV others hold (insert "walk in my shoes" proverb), and the OP already ruled out dynamic content.

Yep, it would be tough.

That's why I said it might actually be good to have not so much experience.

When I taught research methodology, I emphasized the need to approach the topic from a neutral point of view. When one makes the mistake so common on English research paper assignments (pick a thesis and then go find evidence to support it), one ends up confirming a prejudiced point of view rather than arriving at truth.

I do think it's possible, though, for someone to be get thorough explanations from two opposite points of view and retain some degree of objectivity, even though the first one will tend to have some primacy in your opinion. I think it can be done by someone who has been trained to retain objectivity in such situations. Otherwise, the one that trains you first will thoroughly poison the well and prevent the opposite side from getting a fair hearing.