Tips and Techniques Forum

[Stone]

A Tips forum does more good than harm to the utility of the Board.

If you look at practically any specialty or hobby magazine, you usually find a department for tips. Rodale's online has "Tip of the Day", and the magazine always has tips in their "Training, Safety, and Medicine" department. Dive Training has "Instructor Tips". Sport Diver has "Diver Development" (which is usually 90% tips). Not only are these Tip Departments a monthly phenomenon, but most specialty magazines (Rodale's included) routinely publish a volume that is a collection of tips so that a reader can have them all in one place.

I, personally, would check a Tips forum for new posts every day because "You don't know what you don't know." Many threads fizzle out pretty quickly, but a Tips forum could capture good ideas in a single place.

Walter's "tongue in cheek" examples in his last post:

Not another forum! How about one for wreck diving? another for shallow reefs? we could use one for walls.....I know I could post in a fossil collecting forum........

would indeed fragment the board, but those examples are the exact opposite of what I think a Tips Forum would do. I think most tips will be applied over a wide range of specialties (including age and eye color).

Another forum (36 instead of 35) increases board "fragmentation" by only 3%, but has the potential to "defragment" hundreds of tips that are spread out over nearly 46,000 posts.

 

[Liquid]

Great idea!

 

[Walter]

Let's take a serious look at how fragmented the board alread is. Do we really need separate forums for BC's? regulators? computers? suits? fins? tanks? I was just teasing about wrecks, using it as an example of a ridiculous additional fragment, now I see it's already there. Do we need it? of course not! I teach a wreck specialty, but I certainly don't think we need a separate forum. We have 10 forums for travel alone, North America is divided into 3 forums. Stone is correct in that 36 forums is not much different from 35, but that misses the point. The point is this continuing fragmentation of the board shows no sign of stopping. 35 or 36? Doesn't matter. 36 or 37? Doesn't matter. 37 or 38? Doesn't matter. Soon it will be 99 or 100? Well, it does matter, we need to be moving in the other direction. I propose we start combining forums.

DSSW,

WWW™

 

[Warhammer]

I'm with you, Walter, enough is a enough. I like a threaded board such as this one and I think it's the best design, but it's gotten too threaded. I vote that instead of adding more, we should cut some of the ones we already have.

 

[Butch103]

with thicaveat................there are too many threads. Lets revise the threads and rethink the names of trhe threads. No we don't need 3 Northa merican threads.....one would do. One medical, one travel, one equipment. One tech and one specialty (as in TIPS). I have learned many tips so far on this board and I know this is the major reason I joined.

I do think we had a similar thread before on this topic, or maybe just another thread off topic. I believe it is where Walter told us about his "buddy" line................................

 

[Stone]

Don't call it a "Tips Forum" (although it would have the same level as a Forum in the [Board:General Heading:Forum:Threadost] Hierarchy

Call it a "Tips Link Library" or a "Tips Archive".

If implemented correctly, it would be a highly effective way to pull (or link) the tips into a common area. If there would have been a Tips area on this board when I joined, it would have been the first place I would have browsed.

 

[large_diver]

Why not just rename the "basic scuba discussions" forum "basic scuba discussions and techniques" or something similar.

I agree with Walter....more forums = more dilution of a good resource. The more this board is segmented, the quicker we will lose the nice sense of community this board has achieved.

 

[martinjc]

I also agree with Walter on this one. I would, however, suggest we add a section somewhere for equipment/set-up photos. There are a number of good photos within the separate forums, but it would be nice to have them grouped together under some type of equipment heading - just a thought. I am a newbie (only certified in August) but I have made several changes to how I organize my gear after seeing how other divers are 'doing it' ('Right' or otherwise). What do you think?

 

[large_diver]

martin,

I agree with the pictures idea -- great way for learning about others' gear configs.