Suggestion Feedback on keeping ScubaBoard members

[gypsyjim]

This question is directed at all members, new and old. It is actually a multiple part question, and is designed to get us all thinking about what ScubaBoard is, or could be for someone just discovering us today or tomorrow.

Two weeks ago on Utila Colleen and I were part of 4 couples with no previous contact who were diving on the same boat for a week, so we had lots of time to chat. It turned out that 5 (6 including myself) of the 9 divers including the DM, were all members of ScubaBoard at one time or another, but I was the only actively participating SM user.

A subsequent conversation with a friend who is also a moderator, has had me thinking about this, so here are my questions:

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1) What attracted you to ScubaBoard in the first place?

2) Are you satisfied that the board addresses your needs adequately? And if not what would you change, if you could to make it do so

3) Why do you think other folks who have joined, have not stayed around?

4) Do you have ideas on what the board either did not provide well, or what might have done to scare them away, without becoming participating members?

5) Do you have ideas or suggestions of new ways to both attract and keep new members, new divers involved, and satisfied with this forum?
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---------- Post added March 3rd, 2014 at 08:30 AM ----------

I will start by adding my own 2 cents.

I discovered SB while researching a dive trip back in '05, and was not a terribly active member for some time. I did though, find the info I was seeking.

I did soon after that did make some friends on the board, as both DeputyDan and Herman offered advice and invited my family to join their group for a trip to Bonaire.

I also later asked for underwater photography advice, and got a lot of help from such diverse members as ScubaSteve and DandyDon, who were more than willing to help a struggling novice.

I had a few conflicts in some of the threads along the way, especially early on, with some of the more vocal know it alls, but while that slowed me down a bit and kept me quiet, it did not scare me off. I just spent more time lurking till I became more comfortable standing up for my beliefs, and not afraid of the loud mouths. It just took me time to realize by lurking that they were a small minority, and not particularly as well respected universally as they might have thought, which made me feel less the outsider.

(Note) I think a lot of that 'know it all' attitude seems to have disappeared from the boards, or at least become far less of an issue. I heard a lot of feedback from non member divers between '95 and about 2000 that this "slamming of 'stupid questions' " was a big turn off, but I do not sense this same complaint from my more recent contactsd, when discussing SB. Now it seems more like SB is not supplying what divers are seeking, and they are just moving on to other sources of info.

I know many folks have moved on to FB, but while I enjoy FB a lot myself, I have never seen it as having the potential to reach as many divers, or to serve as a useful search base for dive related questions.

 

[Rich Keller]

I suspect many LDS are fairly low inventory, low volume businesses with a modest local customer base and considerable competition (online, and some local). I expect many shops are unable to justify making the large volume purchases needed to get really good wholesale prices on gear, to enable low prices, either retail or online. And to do so with a large number of brands isn't practical.

In some ways the internet can level the playing field for the small LDS. Their on line presence can be as big as the larger shops depending on how well their web site is set up. The harder part is delivering, it is easier for a shop that has a large inventory to deliver faster but if the smaller shop can manage their supply chain properly they should be able to come close to the delivery times of the larger shops. When you take into consideration that people ordering on line already expect to wait for something the perception of how much longer they have to wait will seem like less of a factor.

 

[Stormdiver]

1) What attracted you to ScubaBoard in the first place?
I stumbled into it through the accidents and incidents portion from a Google Search shortly after completing my rescue class. I was trying to find sources of actual events to go through ideas in my head of how I would deal with that or how others had dealt with it. (It is still the one section of the board where I read every post)

2) Are you satisfied that the board addresses your needs adequately? And if not what would you change, if you could to make it do so
Yes, as a new diver it has been a great source of information and I have used it to fill in a lot of holes from the training I received. As some of the regulars have posted a number of time "you don't know what you don't know".

3) Why do you think other folks who have joined, have not stayed around?
I would not be sure that they have not stayed around. Many are probably like me and lurking and reading it all but not joining in the posts themselves. Speaking for myself the two things that usually keep me from posting are 1. Still a rather new diver so I don't know all the answers to the questions yet. 2. When I do know the answers usually one of the older members usually beats me to it and written better that I would have gotten it.

4) Do you have ideas on what the board either did not provide well, or what might have done to scare them away, without becoming participating members?
The board has the one problem that always exists in these formats. Whenever the only communication is written you do not have the advantage of tone of voice. Some people might well take comments that are just meant to be sarcastic/snarky as actual digs at them and be turned off by them. While emotes can help somewhat with this it is not always guaranteed that it will be taken the way it was actually intended. Add into the fact that it can be taken wrong in the first place that we are dealing with an international community and differences in cultural backgrounds and there are always going to be some that take things in a way other than how they were meant.

5) Do you have ideas or suggestions of new ways to both attract and keep new members, new divers involved, and satisfied with this forum?
I really like the idea that had been proposed before about some actual local interaction as well as just the forum itself. As another thought from experience online in general, people generally like to actually talk to each other and hear a human voice, maybe also getting set up some form of VOIP as well as the chat area that is on the site to allow actual conversations between members and group discussions?

 

[drrich2]

1) What attracted you to ScubaBoard in the first place?

Joined back in Dec. '06. I'm mid.-40's, used to researching things online, & used to using forums for research. The name shows up in searches fairly readily and is self-explanatory, and the size indicates a mainstream site with a great deal of content.

2) Are you satisfied that the board addresses your needs adequately? And if not what would you change, if you could to make it do so

Yes. Forums by nature are huge, unstructured repositories of multi-perspective/source knowledge and insight of varied quality. You often need to do a search & read a few threads from different posters' perspectives to get a real sense about a topic, such as split fins or BP/W.

3) Why do you think other folks who have joined, have not stayed around?

Like advertisers in business, identify your target audience. I don't think it's people who OW or Discover Scuba certify for a 1 trip cruise stop, or to only do guided dives on a tropical holiday every year or three.

I think your target audience are people who self-identify as 'divers,' are intellectually curious about varied aspects of the hobby, who wish to independently research equipment and make educated decisions about gear and dive destinations rather than rely on LDS or instructor guidance alone, and/or have a passion for the sport and are trying to 'grow' as divers.

4) Do you have ideas on what the board either did not provide well, or what might have done to scare them away, without becoming participating members?

Cliche': you can't win for losing. You drive people away when brusque members make abrasive comments and personal attacks, and you drive people away when you moderate perceived obnoxiousness in the struggle between 'family friendly' vs. 'we're all adults here.'

5) Do you have ideas or suggestions of new ways to both attract and keep new members, new divers involved, and satisfied with this forum?

I assume a set of articles, a 'newcomers guide to scuba diving,' if relevant, concise, well-written and discussing 'need to know' topics might get a new diver sticking around the site for some initial self-education, but I'm not sure that'd translate to long-term forum participation.

One hurdle that's hard to completely overcome is the 'clique' atmosphere; old members know each other & exchanged personal jokes and references, and newbies are self-conscious that by comparison they are inexperienced (usually) strangers.

I think for a large, adult forum, ScubaBoard does a good job at being reasonably friendly and yet tolerant of personalities. Not a red-light district or kindergarten.

One danger point for a newbie: If you post any kind of accident/error/misadventure event, do not attempt to externalize blame to the guide, staff, captain, etc... There's a strong spirit of personal responsibility on the forum and someone trying to blame others can create a 'blood in the water' criticism frenzy. Or such has been my impression. I'm not saying it's wrong or attacking it; I'm just saying if you're a newbie and you're thinking about posting that the negligent dive master didn't notice you wandered off too deep or strayed from the group, this ain't the place to post that viewpoint.

Richard.

P.S.: Food for thought, somewhat related to thread topic by inference; do you think there are large numbers of people who 'ought' to be members of ScubaBoard and are not?

 

[Diver0001]

What attracted me to Scubaboard:
I wanted to connect with divers and rec.scuba was a war-zone. At the time Scubaboard was the only site on the web that was active so I tried it and liked it.

Does the site suit my needs:
Yes, in two ways. I do believe (not all of you would agree) that I have some things to say that might be valuable to others. I like teaching diving and like the opportunity to help out rookie divers with their questions. The other way it suits my needs is by way of the Instructors forum. I have access to hundreds of *really good* instructors on Scubaboard and wealth of opinions that I can't get from the 10 guys I usually work with. I could milk that cow all day!

Why to people leave without participating?
Online forums have an Achilles heal, which is that when people are anonymous and invisible they will :

- pour unnecessary amounts of pent up aggression into things that they would never *dare* to say to your face
- as a corollary to the first point, I have the distinct impression that some of the more extreme things are said while under the influence. Users may not be expecting this, but it happens. In real life you would *know* if someone was drunk. Online you don't.
- act like someone else (put on a persona), trying pretend to be better/faster/stronger than they really are. Of course, if you're going to put on a mask, then you have to defend it, which leads to some weird stuff being said.
- go on and on and on and on and on and on and on about certain issues, usually in a negative way, (hate PADI because... blah blah blah), thus filling up threads with point-of-view-warrior stuff that simply burns people out. The very worst ones would pollute almost every thread on the board if moderators didn't fence them out of certain forums to keep the volume of such posts under control.

The first point is the reason I think a lot of people come, try posting once, often starting with the words, "please be nice, it's my first post" and then leave when they ask as question and get told (rudely)
- can't you find the search function?
- this has been discussed a million times...
- or a number of other "crawling down the throat" types of responses that, if you spend a lot of time online, you become somewhat immune to.
- or they get a tsunami of "group-think" crap without hearing a balanced opinion (happens a lot with respect to gear)
- .... and of course, the flogging of dead horses of which the OP was previously unaware.

This is often followed by the thread getting off topic before the question is answered. Why would anyone who finally gets up the courage to ask their first question, want to hang around for more of that?

Normal people (people who are not obsessively online) don't communicate in an anonymous world with people whose body language, voice intonation and mood you cannot read. It is a new type of social skill that needs to be learned if you want to be active in cyber space. I think many people are turned off by that, especially after their first exposure.

The last point above (POV warriors) is the very reason why I've taken several breaks from posting on Scubaboard over the years. There are a small minority of extreme posters who are extremely prolific, extremely manipulative and opinionated, often extremely negative and in many cases arguing in circles due to an extreme lack of logic... My inability to ignore them pretty much had me "giving up" on several occasions, and I"m sure I'm not unique in that way. I know several other users who have "given up" as I did and we all ended up coming back because of the simple fact that Scubaboard is far and away the best scuba related resource on the web.

On the subject of moderating, which is related: I've been a moderator on Scubaboard for some time and there have been changes to how we (as a group) perceive certain things and how we choose to respond to them. I'll spare you the history lesson but I will say a few things that are relevant to this thread:

1) moderation has not and never will be entirely consistent. Moderators are not robots and we do not keep a database of measures taken the last (x) times a given issue came up. Every time a post is reported it gets responded to on it's own merits in the context in which it was written. It could be that similar posts result in different approaches to moderating at different points in time or in different threads. I know this can be confusing (especially if your posts get moderated a lot) but in defense of moderators I believe the whole team acts with integrity and acts on consensus as much as possible. This is the model we choose.

2) not all users are moderated the same way. If a child has a proven history of behavioural problems, you're not going to give them the benefit of the doubt when they claim that they "accidentally" stabbed the dog with a pen. Likewise, some users get moderated with a heavier hand than others. Someone mentioned idocsteve. He was getting reported about 5 times a day at his height. We used his case as an experiment to see how the focused use of forum banning could effect the behaviour of a loose cannon. I can't remember if he just stopped posting at some point or if he was eventually banned out of all the forums, but it was a good case because it gave us new approaches to use with "problem children".

The point here being that with such a large and diverse population of users, there are going to be those with social adaptation problems, mental disorders, personality disorders, including being sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, antisocial, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid-defensive, and some who operate in a completely different reality than almost everyone else (remember Wormil?). All of these people are "safely" anonymous online, which is why the internet attracts them like flies and why online forums are often so full of people that make you roll your eyes.

Moderators, none of whom to my knowledge are trained psychologists, have to learn as we go how to deal with these people so they don't force too many users to "give up" while at the same time trying to keep discussions from becoming "bland".

I don't think anything I could say could really express how much of a balancing act it can be. If someone talks about... dunno... let's say "split fins" in a very negative way in one thread then it won't even get on moderators' radar. We're not here to judge the facts or to make people agree. In fact, a good debate/controversy is fun and a lot of people like it. But if that same user makes similar posts in 90 different threads, then it does become a problem. We don't want users to give up on the board because every thread becomes about one extreme person's opinion.... but when we moderate them then they're crying bloody murder, quoting sections, of the TOS, sending vitriolic PM's and posting negative feedback about moderators on the open forums because they got away with it 87 times and they feel entitled.

Think that's extreme? Not in the least. It happens all the time and it's only one example of what goes on behind the scenes on a daily basis and thankfully invisibly to most users.

What can be improved?
The content on Scubaboard is generated entirely by users. Users should be left to generate as much content as they like without feeling as though it is inappropriate (being told, "can't you find the search engine?") and debating things to their heart's content without feeling that if they break from the heard that they will be dog-piled and ridiculed by other users.

Likewise (since we were talking about moderators) I believe moderators need to be careful to let debates run their course, even ones that make people wonder why we didn't stop it -- like the shark thread that's going right now. Moderators need focus entirely on *how* things are said and not concern themselves at all with *what* is being said. I think we've made mistakes in this area from time to time that tended to flatten out people's attempts to express their opinions in our attempts to reign in rudeness.

So what can be improved? Let's start with 1 easy thing that everyone (including myself) can do more often.

Before you click on the reply button ask yourself, "how can I say this without being rude?"

R..

 

[MRTdiver]

I'm just posting here to get liked my NetDoc.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

well it does go to show that Netdoc is interested and appreciative of the feedback from SB Members

 

[KevWind]

My solution for fixing the "Moderation Problem"....which is both the "how" and "when" to moderate, and this solution may also reduce the need for moderation....

Right now we have LIKES which any member that views a post can add if the like.....
But...What of each member that sees a post they did not like, could respond with a "Post was in Bad Taste" , and as to WHO makes these posts....I propose SB would have the moderators "differentiate" between general audience reaction of Bad Taste, and then "un-weight" the responses of those posters known to be in an adversarial posting relationship with the person getting the Poor Taste post rating....
In other words, If I put a "Post in Poor Taste" rating on something that one of the posters I typically add LIKES to --then this will gain weight and usefulness in moderation potential.....

If I was to put "post in Poor Taste" to someone I have been "warring with" , like Bob for instance, then the moderators should eliminate the weight of my suggestion as I would potentially be biased unfairly against Bob....
This becomes important because dog packs of 3 to 5 friends could pick on members they wanted to shut up, so this behavior would need to be eliminated.

While I understand the thinking behind your proposal and the idea of having a general consensus of displeasure take some pressure off the Moderators as far them appearing to inject their own personal feelings and perhaps not being objective etc.

BUT I also think that in reality it would actually end up being more work for the Mods rather than less. The reason being that a similar idea was actually used over on another board that often gets into colorful discourse . They had a thumbs up and thumbs down option on each individual post.

But what ended up happing was as you say the "dog pack" thingy which works both ways, was in fact not really eliminated at all and may actually have increased. Do to the additional layer of bickering over vote tallies, percentages padding, etc etc. So they dropped the "thumbs down" altogether and went back to just having a "thumbs up" option and have the mods decide what to delete and what to leave in and in the big picture usually only the more habitually caustic members find it not to their liking or unfair .

 

[gypsyjim]

You say that like dog piling is a bad thing

 

[Diver0001]

While I understand the thinking behind your proposal and the idea of having a general consensus of displeasure take some pressure off the Moderators as far them appearing to inject their own personal feelings and perhaps not being objective etc.

BUT I also think that in reality it would actually end up being more work for the Mods rather than less. The reason being that a similar idea was actually used over on another board that often gets into colorful discourse . They had a thumbs up and thumbs down option on each individual post.

But what ended up happing was as you say the "dog pack" thingy which works both ways, was in fact not really eliminated at all and may actually have increased. Do to the additional layer of bickering over vote tallies, percentages padding, etc etc. So they dropped the "thumbs down" altogether and went back to just having a "thumbs up" option and have the mods decide what to delete and what to leave in and in the big picture usually only the more habitually caustic members find it not to their liking or unfair .

The main problem with internet forums is the "group-think" bias. For example, anyone coming to Scubaboard and asking about gear will be advised to buy a BP/W even though there is no basis in *fact* to support it being any better than various alternatives.

The "dog pack" is just an extension of this.

R..

 

[boulderjohn]

What attracted me to Scubaboard:
I am apparently dimwitted enough not to remember exactly that far back. I guess I was just very interested in scuba and stumbled across it.

Does the site suit my needs:
For the most part. It has its problems, but it is getting better. I think it is getting better because certain people keep trying to make a positive contribution to making it better, which is a contrast to people who think you make things better by constantly pointing out and exaggerating its flaws.

Why to people leave without participating?
I am going to jump off of Diver0001's comments (with which I agree) to make a comment on this and the previous comments about local dive shops (LDSs) and instructors steering people away from ScubaBoard. My comments will include some history that some may find interesting.

- go on and on and on and on and on and on and on about certain issues, usually in a negative way, (hate PADI because... blah blah blah), thus filling up threads with point-of-view-warrior stuff that simply burns people out. The very worst ones would pollute almost every thread on the board if moderators didn't fence them out of certain forums to keep the volume of such posts under control.

...

The last point above (POV warriors) is the very reason why I've taken several breaks from posting on Scubaboard over the years. There are a small minority of extreme posters who are extremely prolific, extremely manipulative and opinionated, often extremely negative and in many cases arguing in circles due to an extreme lack of logic... My inability to ignore them pretty much had me "giving up" on several occasions, and I"m sure I'm not unique in that way. I know several other users who have "given up" as I did and we all ended up coming back because of the simple fact that Scubaboard is far and away the best scuba related resource on the web.

A few years ago we had 5-6 very prolific posters, with 2-3 of them extremely prolific, who could not let a day go by without a flurry of posts condemning all modern scuba instruction and especially PADI in the strongest of terms. For a while a couple of them would ambush nearly every new diver in the New Divers forum, telling them just after they introduced themselves how bad their instruction must have been and how they will be lucky to live through their first dives. If you were an instructor, especially a PADI instructor, would you tell your students to go to a site knowing the first thing they were going to learn there is that your instructor really sucked? It happened in seemingly every thread on the board. Sure it was only 5-6 people, a very tiny fraction of the entire SB community, but they posted so much it seemed like a majority. Moreover, when one of them posted, the others would join in immediately, turning it into a barrage of negativity. When I was first brought on the SB staff, it was not as a moderator. I was a "Board guide" tasked with patrolling the New Divers and Basic Scuba Forums in order to help enforce the new "no agency bashing" and "green zone--friendly comments only" rules.

Of those 5-6 people, only 2 are really still here, and one of them does not do it any more. The one remaining individual seems to go at it in fits and spurts, and he is kept from doing it in the green zones.

So now let's pretend you owned a local dive shop, and you knew that as soon as your customers got on SB, they would run into a chorus of people screaming out that all LDSs do nothing but cheat their customers by (can you imagine?) earning a profit through gear sales. Shocked to discover that dive equipment manufacturers were actually pricing goods above their costs with the hope of being able to pay their staffs and put food on their own tables, these people implore people to go to the LDS and that paid staff to get the advice they need for their next gear purchase, and then go to the online merchants to get it at a better price because of their ability to discount through volume pricing. I think that if I owned a local dive shop, I would not be eager to recommend SB, either.

What can be improved?
Look in the mirror and see the first person who can help make things better. Make suggestions. But first, realize that suggestions from people with a track history of being positive voices trying to better the community are more likely to be taken seriously than the suggestions from people who are themselves to be part of the problem that needs to be fixed.