Wikipedia article on "Doing It Right"

[Rick Murchison]

Dan, you're arguing at cross purposes. I say the grass is green and you come back with the sky is blue. You can write a gargantuan tome defending the noble purpose of DIR, its heritage, its excellent qualities, all of which is irrelevant to the arrogance of the implied claim that all other ways are wrong. That alone is what sticks in the craw of divers who use other (better?) ways of doing things. The demise of the term will see the demise of the criticism of the idea it's supposed to represent. That's a good thing for all concerned.
I have no issues with the ways of DIR (as Brother Dave used to say, "Everybody to their own kick; don't knock it 'til you've tried it"), just the name.
Rick

 

[danvolker]

Dan, you're arguing at cross purposes. I say the grass is green and you come back with the sky is blue. You can write a gargantuan tome defending the noble purpose of DIR, its heritage, its excellent qualities, all of which is irrelevant to the arrogance of the implied claim that all other ways are wrong. That alone is what sticks in the craw of divers who use other (better?) ways of doing things. The demise of the term will see the demise of the criticism of the idea it's supposed to represent. That's a good thing for all concerned.
I have no issues with the ways of DIR (as Brother Dave used to say, "Everybody to their own kick; don't knock it 'til you've tried it"), just the name.
Rick

Rick,
All I was saying is that the name was from Cave Diving, and that it was extremely valuable as a name in Cave Diving...it helped allow access to caves...The style itself does not try to injure other points of view, it just aims to show the best collection of ideas DIR divers have found so far....things that will not get you killed in caves....
Since this style moved from "only cave" , to "all over" , clearly the ideas were popular...it is not arrogance. It is just a name that signifies a style of diving.
You can't ( or shouldn't) eliminate DIR Diving's name any more than you can eliminate the word Beef because you are a vegan ...

 

[jago]

I use DIR today to refer to a team based style of diving, where the divers are geared up in an optimal fashion for low drag

So do you include SM divers in the D.I.R. community ? Or maybe D.I.R. is not the best way, just one of the good ways ?

 

[danvolker]

So do you include SM divers in the D.I.R. community ? Or maybe D.I.R. is not the best way, just one of the good ways ?

The easiest way for me to answer, as I am just DIR, and not yet GUE, is that DIR was created for huge monstrous Power Caves in North Florida...It was then found that it had spectacular application in "most" other environments.....sidemount was not an issue in the North Florida caves in the 90's, and I don't know that it would be today, unless it was for a person with back problems.

This would be a question you should ask Jarrod Jablonski....."Should Sidemount be considered as DIR in some specific environments, particularly where the diver must pass through very narrow restrictions ( where SM is easier to get through) and where ALL Team Members would be geared the same way exactly...." But he will have to answer with what is GUE

 

[PfcAJ]

Oh lord... Come on guys. Get it together. It's a name, just a name, grow up.

 

[boulderjohn]

This past v. present discussion reminds me all too much of something I said in a thread a few months ago, something I also said than that I had been too intimidated to post for years. I have seen many posts in past DIR threads that I would summarize (with admitted exaggeration) like this: "All that rude, arrogant, and unfriendly reputation was really just one person, a person who has not been active in DIR for years. No one is like that today, and I really hate it when stupid jerks like you who know nothing at all about diving keep bringing up that relic of the past. It just doesn't happen any more."

Dan, in this case, I think Rick has a point. When he objected to your characterization of other DIR divers (on two occasions in the thread) as arrogant, you defended it largely by saying it reflected a situation from the distant past. Yet the verbs you used were in the present tense. For example, you specifically said that the people who are writing the article "are more DIW than DIR..." To me that implies that if they are critical of DIR, then they must be using wrong diving practices in their own diving. Your first response to Rick had the same flavor.

I can see how one can make an argument that based on history only GUE can determine the elements that constitute DIR today, but must that argument also be infused with the the accompanying attitude that anything that is not within those dictates today is wrong? You may argue that you have never said that that, but it is the sense that I for one have taken from your overall posts here.

 

[lamont]

Dan, you're arguing at cross purposes. I say the grass is green and you come back with the sky is blue. You can write a gargantuan tome defending the noble purpose of DIR, its heritage, its excellent qualities, all of which is irrelevant to the arrogance of the implied claim that all other ways are wrong. That alone is what sticks in the craw of divers who use other (better?) ways of doing things. The demise of the term will see the demise of the criticism of the idea it's supposed to represent. That's a good thing for all concerned.
I have no issues with the ways of DIR (as Brother Dave used to say, "Everybody to their own kick; don't knock it 'til you've tried it"), just the name.
Rick

Well the DIR page as it stands now has nothing to do with the way that I dive or what I want to be associated with, yet I've taken around 7 GUE courses in the past 8-9 years and I certainly should know a thing or two about it.

So, either something is wrong with that characterization of "DIR" (and your characterization of "DIR") or else the whole article should mostly get struck with a historical note that it was a style of diving that produced some controversy in the late-90s/early-2000s, but which is meaningless to define now -- with a note to see "UTD" and "GUE" for more information.

I still don't understand how the Wikipedia article, as it stands, can be considered "encyclopedic" when everyone who knows anything about it -- from Dan Volker, to me, to Lynne, to even Bob Bailey (who wouldn't claim to be DIR) think its fundamentally flawed.

 

[danvolker]

This past v. present discussion reminds me all too much of something I said in a thread a few months ago, something I also said than that I had been too intimidated to post for years. I have seen many posts in past DIR threads that I would summarize (with admitted exaggeration) like this: "All that rude, arrogant, and unfriendly reputation was really just one person, a person who has not been active in DIR for years. No one is like that today, and I really hate it when stupid jerks like you who know nothing at all about diving keep bringing up that relic of the past. It just doesn't happen any more."

Dan, in this case, I think Rick has a point. When he objected to your characterization of other DIR divers (on two occasions in the thread) as arrogant, you defended it largely by saying it reflected a situation from the distant past. Yet the verbs you used were in the present tense. For example, you specifically said that the people who are writing the article "are more DIW than DIR..." To me that implies that if they are critical of DIR, then they must be using wrong diving practices in their own diving. Your first response to Rick had the same flavor.

I can see how one can make an argument that based on history only GUE can determine the elements that constitute DIR today, but must that argument also be infused with the the accompanying attitude that anything that is not within those dictates today is wrong? You may argue that you have never said that that, but it is the sense that I for one have taken from your overall posts here.

John,
The guys I referred to as DIW divers, were divers that sounded like they had a clear agenda AGAINST DIR ideas...I see your point that by my calling them DIW divers, I perpetuate what Rick sees as an arrogant response...In this case, I think it is more like an "expediant" response, because I wanted to stereotype the "perpetrators" as divers that would want to defend diving deep in heavy steels and thick wetsuits in cold water....
You have to stereotype a little, or you end up having to write paragraphs or whole pages in providing an image of who you are talking about.

 

[boulderjohn]

I still don't understand how the Wikipedia article, as it stands, can be considered "encyclopedic" when everyone who knows anything about it -- from Dan Volker, to me, to Lynne, to even Bob Bailey (who wouldn't claim to be DIR) think its fundamentally flawed.

I don't think there is any question that the article is fundamentally flawed. I don't think anyone who has any real knowledge of DIR can dispute that.

What is not clear to me is what is being done about it. People who appear to be involved in the leadership of the Wiki have appeared in this thread, but I don't see any evidence that they are making any real effort to change things. As I mentioned earlier, when I read the PADI article, which is even more seriously flawed, and its talk page, it really seems to me that the Wikipedia philosophy is to make sure that no one associated with something like this participates in writing these articles. I think they feel that this creates objectivity, but in both of these cases I believe it does the opposite. In topics as polarized as this, if your policy eliminates anyone who is in favor of something from participating, then you are left with only those who are against it.

As someone who used to teach research methodology as a part of his profession, I am totally at a loss to understand what they are doing.

 

[danvolker]

I don't think there is any question that the article is fundamentally flawed. I don't think anyone who has any real knowledge of DIR can dispute that.

What is not clear to me is what is being done about it. People who appear to be involved in the leadership of the Wiki have appeared in this thread, but I don't see any evidence that they are making any real effort to change things. As I mentioned earlier, when I read the PADI article, which is even more seriously flawed, and its talk page, it really seems to me that the Wikipedia philosophy is to make sure that no one associated with something like this participates in writing these articles. I think they feel that this creates objectivity, but in both of these cases I believe it does the opposite. In topics as polarized as this, if your policy eliminates anyone who is in favor of something from participating, then you are left with only those who are against it.

As someone who used to teach research methodology as a part of his profession, I am totally at a loss to understand what they are doing.

Agreed,
Many of us would prefer a knowledge source where you could ask " what is special about the Macintosh Computer", and we could read what Steve Jobs had to say about it....In the World of Wiki, they might have a guy writing half the article who has never used a mac in his life, and another that hates macs, because he has done IT in corporate America for years and is married to Microsoft....We will hear all about what is wrong about the mac, but the real insights in to it will be absent, and the real RESOURCES which should have been included, will be absent.
It is close to enough to AVOID WIKI like the plague, as a sick development of a devolving technocracy attempting to enforce mediocrity.