Wikipedia article on "Doing It Right"

[Peter Southwood]

I get the impression that the "real history" is something that the driving forces of the new wiki article, will want no part of. They are more interested in explaining DIR to match closer to their own personal agendas.

Hi Dan,
The real history would be ideal. The problem is that it is not recorded anywhere that I know of in a form that is within the Wikipedia constraints of verifiability. It would be great if someone would get around to writing a book or serious journal article on it so it can be referenced easily. I think there is a real danger of the real history being lost and diffusing into myth and legend if it is not recorded professionally sometime soon, and that would be an unfortunate loss, as it is one of the major developments of recreational/technical diving.
Cheers,
Peter

 

[danvolker]

Hi Dan,
I will look at the video. If it looks useful, I will try to find the software you mention, as it will probably be necessary to refer back to it often to get the references straight.
Cheers,
Peter

Peter,
Let's say you were doing a Wiki article on the Macintosh computer...and the BEST quotes and info you see are from a direct email by Steve Jobs to you--or to someone else, that you have access to. Let's imagine further, that you could even question him about the quote or information he wrote...
Are you saying that you could not use this, because it was not published? You did have the email, and you did have the opportunity to question him and determine authenticity and meaning.
I am certainly no Steve Jobs, but I was one of the people that was clearly responsible for a lot of the early DIR information dissemination. You have emails from me, and posts, and the DIR 3 video.
References beyond this would seem unnecessary. Also consider that the 90's were a time when the Internet was nearly the exclusive conveyance of DIR to the diving world, and that DIR was an Internet phenomenon, much like Wiki has become....Obviously Wikipedia is exponentially larger than DIR--the point being, it is "published" only on the internet, as far as I know.

 

[danvolker]

Hi Dan,
The real history would be ideal. The problem is that it is not recorded anywhere that I know of in a form that is within the Wikipedia constraints of verifiability. It would be great if someone would get around to writing a book or serious journal article on it so it can be referenced easily. I think there is a real danger of the real history being lost and diffusing into myth and legend if it is not recorded professionally sometime soon, and that would be an unfortunate loss, as it is one of the major developments of recreational/technical diving.
Cheers,
Peter

I could write up an article in the South Florida Dive Journal South Florida Dive Journal > Home
there are a few old articles there you could also find, like SFDJ ( though my programmers messed up the title credit when they converted to the new format...Bill Mee wrote the first part, I wrote this part 2 article.
You guys at Wiki could also give me credit for the South Florida Dive Journal as being the first photo format ( inline jpegs) magazine on the Internet...When I created it in 1993, hosted by Cybergate ( my Gulfstream issue) , the only thing close to a magazine was a website called Mosaic...I read the code by "view source", and figured out how to do it myself.....Beyond mosaic and the South Florida Dive Journal, there was Yahoo and several other search engines....When SFDJ started up, we were getting 100,000 hits in a week, many from silicon valley....there was nothing like us, and we were also the first model for commerce on the Internet, as the purpose was to show South Florida Diving to the world, and have them come here...dive shops and hotels were given pages in sfdj so they could be toured virtually.
In any event, SFDJ had several DIR related articles in it through the late 90's. It could easily have a new one on "the Real History of DIR Diving".

 

[Peter Southwood]

Peter,
Let's say you were doing a Wiki article on the Macintosh computer...and the BEST quotes and info you see are from a direct email by Steve Jobs to you--or to someone else, that you have access to. Let's imagine further, that you could even question him about the quote or information he wrote...
Are you saying that you could not use this, because it was not published? You did have the email, and you did have the opportunity to question him and determine authenticity and meaning.
I am certainly no Steve Jobs, but I was one of the people that was clearly responsible for a lot of the early DIR information dissemination. You have emails from me, and posts, and the DIR 3 video.
References beyond this would seem unnecessary. Also consider that the 90's were a time when the Internet was nearly the exclusive conveyance of DIR to the diving world, and that DIR was an Internet phenomenon, much like Wiki has become....Obviously Wikipedia is exponentially larger than DIR--the point being, it is "published" only on the internet, as far as I know.

Dan,
That is exactly what I am saying. There is a very strict rule on Wikipedia called "No original research" If I wrote that Mackintosh article I would not be able to put it on Wikipedia, I would have to publish it somewhere else, then somone else could use it as the reference for an article on Wikipedia. The point is that one's own work is assumed to be biased, and as you may have noticed, this is often a problem on Wikipedia. We strive for neutral point of view, and are expected to provide references for anything that we claim as a fact. Opinions are only allowed if they are somone else's and you can cite a reference. And you must say they are opinions and not claim them as facts. This makes some subjects easy, as there is a huge amount of published information, or not much controversy. DIR is tricky as there is a lot of controversy and very little published in the traditional formats. Internet sources are unfortunately somewhat volatile, and often when you try to check a citation you get a broken link, which means that information becomes a grey area, and if someone doesn't like it they can challenge it and if it can't be defended, it gets removed. This is why we much prefer something published as a book or periodical on paper, as it ends up in the Library of Congress or similar and is then considered permanent. Seriously, if you were in at the start and can write a reliable history, it would be great. Best of all it might encourage other people to contribute and you could end up with good, robust records.
If you do have a go at a history, it would enormously improve its credibility if you could cite as much as possible, and where the information is only available as internet pages or e-mails, attach copies as appendices, so they can be checked and are less likely to be lost.
It would be a big work, but could be well worth it in the long run. I would also suggest a collaborative effort if it is more than you want to do yourself. South Florida Dive Journal would be a reasonable place to publish, and it would be very helpful if you could get it archived somewhere like the Rubicon Research Repository.
Cheers,
Peter

 

[rlynch]

dan i'll take a shot at adding the references (or if you can provide) for intro and history and see what i can do about providing depth (via references and wording changes)
i would like to have some reviews for the material prior to publishing on Wikipedia (dan, looking to you here as well as others from the foundational group if possible, i can contact JJ via GUE.
I can take lead on publishing to Wikipedia or can help with that as the case may be.


I'll send you my direct contact info

 

[Rhone Man]

I could write up an article in the South Florida Dive Journal South Florida Dive Journal > Home

That actually sounds like a really good idea, if you were OK with taking the time to write such an article. If someone who was closely involved in the early days wrote a definitive article on the subject in a journal like that, which the article could then link to as a source, that would be hugely helpful.

 

[danvolker]

dan i'll take a shot at adding the references (or if you can provide) for intro and history and see what i can do about providing depth (via references and wording changes)
i would like to have some reviews for the material prior to publishing on Wikipedia (dan, looking to you here as well as others from the foundational group if possible, i can contact JJ via GUE.
I can take lead on publishing to Wikipedia or can help with that as the case may be.


I'll send you my direct contact info

This sounds good to me...I will start roughing out the article more, and if you would like to make some outline suggestions, or if some of the others like Peter or Rhoneman would like to suggest some things I should include, I will.
George still dives with Bill Mee and me, and I am friends with many of the people from WKPP in the 90's that are going to need to be referenced in the article....

Thanks for offering.

 

[danvolker]

That actually sounds like a really good idea, if you were OK with taking the time to write such an article. If someone who was closely involved in the early days wrote a definitive article on the subject in a journal like that, which the article could then link to as a source, that would be hugely helpful.

I will commit the time....I will also get some of my friends at GUE that were WKPP in the 90's to provide quotes and information as well.

 

[boulderjohn]

OK, I know this will be controversial.

The historical information about DIR is certainly valuable. The difficult thing will be explaining the current state of DIR. It has been debated within this forum without a clear consensus. There is obviously a difference of opinion within the larger DIR community.

 

[danvolker]

OK, I know this will be controversial.

The historical information about DIR is certainly valuable. The difficult thing will be explaining the current state of DIR. It has been debated within this forum without a clear consensus. There is obviously a difference of opinion within the larger DIR community.

The way I planned on handling this was to ask Jarrod for one of his guys to write a page on this....