Why are we so mean?

[TSandM]

Oh, I know you were being funny, Brian, but here's the fun in that: Next week, I will be in Mexico, and I hope to meet up with a lovely couple from the Ontario area. How do I know them? They came to visit Seattle several years ago, and I met up with them and took them diving. We did a very pleasant, shallow shore dive which is one of my summer favorites, and if I remember correctly, we then went out to eat and talk a bit.

They went home, and at my suggestion, got in touch with Steve Blanchard, who had just gotten his GUE instructor credentials, and they went on to take Fundies. They'll be doing their C1 in Mexico.

THAT's fun. I'm pretty sure I helped them along their road in developing as divers, and they checked out our system of diving and liked it, and have stayed with it. I'm quite sure that gives me more pleasure than any snarky put-down post I could ever write would do.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

When SB Staff flame people, how am I meant to feel comfortable reporting any post? Again, SB Staff set the tone and we just follow along, never post for fear of getting flamed, or leave.

SM staff are just people ... members such as you and me who were asked to volunteer their time to help keep the board organized. Nothing more ... with the exception of NetDoc, who owns the board, and HowardE who manages it. As far as I know, no one else is anything more than a volunteer.

FWIW ... I have reported both NetDoc and HowardE on occasion when I felt it was warranted. They didn't ban me or anything. In fact, I've met both of them personally and consider both in very friendly terms. When a staff member is involved in a thread, they are prohibited from taking action as a staff member in that thread. That's the rule ... and it's adhered to.

ScubaBoard can only function if it is self-policed. And frankly, as someone who served as a moderator for a time, I can assure you that staff polices itself even more rigorously than they police the general membership.

Moderators are a fairly large group of people ... with a broad spectrum of opinions, both personal and in terms of how they believe the board should function. But I have yet to meet one who doesn't act in what they consider the best interests of the general membership here. Like all of us, they are fallible ... and it's inevitable that you and I will disagree with some of the actions that they take. But I can assure you that as a group they act in good faith ... and they don't hesitate to take one of their own to task if that person should do something that other mods believe is not in the general interest of the board.

So by all means ... if you perceive a staff member misbehaving ... hit the Report button. What actions get taken will depend on circumstances ... but I assure you that the Report will be taken seriously, regardless of who is involved ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[boulderjohn]

This thread has evolved into 3-4 topics. I will try to address one of them here. I do believe there are some pretty mean participants on ScubaBoard. Some of them are clearly DIR, and many of them are not. These are people who love to rub your face in the residue of their oozing egos. I really think they intend to be condescending and, yes, mean. Most of the ones I am thinking of are evidently highly skilled and experienced divers, but I have no interest in diving with them; in fact, I would be very happy if I never met them. On the other hand, I am pretty sure they have no interest in diving with or meeting me, either.

But that is a pretty small number--a tiny handful, really. I think most posts that are considered mean are really either failed attempts at humor or simply too clipped and short in their replies. One of the things I do is train online education instructors. A key problem with them is that when they write to students (via email or whatever) they are usually in a hurry because they have many students. Consequently, they get down to business quickly, sending messages that contain nothing but the "meat" of the communication--which is a critical comment. Such communications send a very unpleasant message to the students, and they can be very harmful. The "meat" of such communications should be in the form of a sandwich, with the "bread" of positive communication before and after it.

In the thread that instigated this, I think all of the responses were either failed attempts at humor or clipped "business only" responses. I don't think anyone intended to be mean--but I think they came across as such. I think that if I were the OP, I would have felt insulted and demeaned.

 

[Bombay High]

The implication seems to be that there are other boards out there that are meaner so it's ok?

Not at all.

 

[boulderjohn]

I now want to respond to the DIR issue specifically.

I didn't know a thing about DIR until I read about it on SB years ago. I was immediately turned off by the demeaning attitude displayed by some of the frequent posters. When I started tech training with TDI, I was dismayed when the instructor said that although the courses was officially TDI, we were going to ignore the TDI standards and do it strictly DIR. In fact, I contacted TDI to ask of that was permissible, and I was surprised and disappointed to learn that it is. By the time I had crossed over and become "officially" DIR, I was comfortable with the DIR, but I had to overcome that prejudice I developed on ScubaBoard.

But that did not change my feeling that there are DIR posters who still do the concept a lot of harm through those attitudes. In the past, I tried to say something about that, and I got it shoved back in my face. I saw a real irony in some of those posts, some of which came across to me like this: "That kind of stuff died with GI3. None of us are like that any more, so you can take your comments and cram them up your a$$, you incompetent piece of $hit."

But things are changing. I don't see much of that any more at all in this forum. In fact, there was a recent thread outside of this forum in which someone who had just learned about DIR (but not experienced it) started one of the most incendiary "DIR is the only way and everything else sucks" threads in history, and that fire was immediately extinguished by actual DIR divers who jumped in to correct that attitude. It was very well done, I thought.

I think that people who believe strongly in DIR should follow that example and be vigilant about this because of that past. If we want that past to be behind us truly, we need to careful how we post. I have never in real life met a DIR-trained diver who was anything but friendly and welcoming, and I hope we can maintain that attitude in the virtual world as well.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Actually, when I first joined ScubaBoard I had already formed negative opinions of DIR ... based on some local experiences.

ScubaBoard DIR "regulars" at the time helped me change my perspective on that ... even some of the so-called "mean" ones.

Expressions of personality really don't have anything with how we dive ... there are nice people and mean people in just about every approach to diving you can think of.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[T. Bix]

I now want to respond to the DIR issue specifically.

But things are changing. I don't see much of that any more at all in this forum. In fact, there was a recent thread outside of this forum in which someone who had just learned about DIR (but not experienced it) started one of the most incendiary "DIR is the only way and everything else sucks" threads in history, and that fire was immediately extinguished by actual DIR divers who jumped in to correct that attitude. It was very well done, I thought.

I think that people who believe strongly in DIR should follow that example and be vigilant about this because of that past. If we want that past to be behind us truly, we need to careful how we post. I have never in real life met a DIR-trained diver who was anything but friendly and welcoming, and I hope we can maintain that attitude in the virtual world as well.

My experience is exactly the opposite. I've been following this thread with quite a bit of interest because when I sought my cave training I was intrigued by the concept of standards and expectations that I'd been able to find about the GUE/DIR way of doing things. But when asking around about it at the various dive sights in cave country I was greeted with a bunch of condescension and arrogance. An imediate turn off. And I must say that to this day I've still to meet a DIRer that is warm and friendly. Now there may be divers that aren't all about sticking their DIR-ness in your face at every opportunity that I've met not recognizing or knowing that they were superior beings but of the ones I've met that announced they were GUE/DIR were D.B.s. I've adopted a lot of the DIR gear set up to my own rig but always refer to myself as a Hogarthian diver. I've gone so far as to check into scheduling a fundies course only to rethink that decision based on the attitudes of some of the DIR crowd here on SB (along with my real life experiences in person).

So other than this little (so far) 9 page exercize in soul searching started by one of the most helpful folks on the board...... Why are you so mean?

Flame away!

 

[Hank49]

There are nice people and mean people and every type in between in every profession, hobby, church, dive club, country, planet.....

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

My experience is exactly the opposite. I've been following this thread with quite a bit of interest because when I sought my cave training I was intrigued by the concept of standards and expectations that I'd been able to find about the GUE/DIR way of doing things. But when asking around about it at the various dive sights in cave country I was greeted with a bunch of condescension and arrogance. An imediate turn off. And I must say that to this day I've still to meet a DIRer that is warm and friendly. Now there may be divers that aren't all about sticking their DIR-ness in your face at every opportunity that I've met not recognizing or knowing that they were superior beings but of the ones I've met that announced they were GUE/DIR were D.B.s. I've adopted a lot of the DIR gear set up to my own rig but always refer to myself as a Hogarthian diver. I've gone so far as to check into scheduling a fundies course only to rethink that decision based on the attitudes of some of the DIR crowd here on SB (along with my real life experiences in person).

So other than this little (so far) 9 page exercize in soul searching started by one of the most helpful folks on the board...... Why are you so mean?

Flame away!

I wonder if it's not a regional thing. Back when I first started diving, Andrew G was in charge of the local DIR scene ... and while I've not known Andrew to display the type of mean, arrogant behavior that DIR gets blamed for, there did seem to be more of that behavior back then than I see today.

And I was a bit surprised to see how much rancor there was between the DIR and non-DIR camps in north Florida ... when I went down there for my cave training. But I didn't detect that coming out of the local shop (EE) or from the GUE organization itself so much as I did from individuals ... and I suspect a lot of it boils down to resentment over access to a certain cave system.

Nowadays ... locally ... there's a pretty fair bit of acceptance and camaraderie between GUE and non-GUE trained divers. There's quite a few folks here who ... like myself ... dipped our toe into the DIR pond and decided that it's nice ... but not really what I'm looking for. A bit of exposure ... a bit of information ... goes a long way toward understanding. And the folks who "drive" the GUE programs locally just don't seem to be all that interested in creating an "us/them' atmosphere.

I like this picture ... taken at one of our local club dives last year ... can you guess which one is the GUE trained diver? Not that anyone who was there particularly cared ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[gypsyjim]

I wandered into SB back in 2005 looking for travel info, and was warmly welcomed by such folks as Herman and DeputyDan, and other folks like DandyDon and ScubaSteve answered a lot of my early photo queries. I decided to stick around and began to occasionally post. I made a few missteps at first and some of my postings got flamed, and a few of those flame jobs boarded on mean, but those were few and far between. I stayed, I watched, read and learned.

I did notice early on a lot more attitude from both a "pro DIR" and "anti DIR" crowd of pretty angry posters, and I quite honestly had no idea what they were going on about for some time, but being myself as I began to feel more comfortable on SB, I waded in and set a lot of traps so I could sit back and enjoy the mayhem that followed between the two opposing groups. As I read along during their ongoing warfare tho, I did begin to learn and absorb a lot of new ideas, never expecting to actually become involved in anything like DIR, but always enjoying learning anything new that related to our sport.

A couple years back now I happened to have friends in our DNY forum (ScubaSam and Henrik) who taking classes with a Bob Sherwood down in PA, and they and he let me sit in and listen to part of their doubles class, and even do a couple of dives as an observer. Before I knew it I was paying close attention to wings, and plates, and differing hose configurations, because what I was learning made sense. How was I supposed to know I was dabbling in the forbidden DIR field? I got the chance to play around with new gear configurations, and I began to adapt to things that made sense, and seemed to work well for me.

I am not DIR. Never passed my Fundies. Never figure I will. I have, and continue adopting anything I come across that improves my diving skills and techniques. I have found a lot of great folks willing to discuss and teach.

As for the jerks who flame folks: they are still around, but they are now and always (in my opinion), were a small but vocal minority on SB. No one group seems to have a monopoly on jerks. Jerks seem to be jerks, no matter what group they belong to. IMO ScubaBoard is an extremely welcoming group overall, with a few troublemakers, and grouches, just to keep the rest of us on our toes.