Input on our Accident and Incidents Forum... What do you want? How do you want it?

[oya]

I assume it's now defunct.

Or maybe it just takes a while for the all-volunteer teams to write their reports, have them collected, compiled and compared against municipal agencies, getting family permission to possibly talk to coroners, then have all this written into a single report by the volunteer regional coordinator for record and release?

Just as a maybe?

 

[kelemvor]

Or maybe it just takes a while for the all-volunteer teams to write their reports, have them collected, compiled and compared against municipal agencies, getting family permission to possibly talk to coroners, then have all this written into a single report by the volunteer regional coordinator for record and release?

Just as a maybe?

I'm sure there are reasons. Just as there is probably a reason DAN's db isn't searchable. The fact that I can't go browse all or most accident data means that to me the databases are less valuable than the scubaboard A&I forum as it exists today. If that changes, I'd be up for looking through an RSS feed of that instead of scubaboard posts or otherwise using the databases.

Until then, afaik, scubaboard is the only place to go. Despite the imperfections, I prefer it over a complete vacuum.

 

[boulderjohn]

There is an interesting contrast in some of the suggestions between people who want less moderation to allow pretty much anything goes discussions and people who want more moderation to keep things within the ToS. One of the reasons for that moderation is to keep things on topic, and one of the reasons that things get off topic is POV warriors diverting the thread to their pet topics. I am quite aware that some of the criticism of the forum being overmoderated is directed specifically to me and to my actions in a specific thread, and I want to go into that.

A few years ago, ScubaBoard was plagued by 5-6 POV warriors who wanted every thread and every forum to be about one topic--the way modern scuba instruction has been tainted, especially by one agency. In the A&I forum, the reason for all dive accidents was the poor quality of modern instruction, and as soon as they got on that topic, that was it--the entire thread became about the contrast between the glorious good old days and the terrible instruction we see today. Any attempt to discuss the specific incident would be lost in this topic derailment. This would happen even when there was not one iota of evidence that the diver had done anything wrong in the accident. This would happen when there was not one iota of evidence of the kind of training that diver had had, or when he or she had had it. This happened even in cases when it was obvious that diver had succumbed to a cardiac event, with those POV warriors claiming that heart attacks only happen after poor training causes the diver to panic. This was ultimately what we call chest thumping--"this diver would be alive to day if he or she had only had an instructor like me!"

ScubaBoard then made policies to stop that, including making certain forums "green zones." In the A&I forum, we put an end to those derailments. The topic of the thread was supposed to be the specific accident, period. Today, all but one of those POV warriors has left ScubaBoard, and the one who remains has toned it down in general and is still banned from A & I anyway.

As a result of that, the A & I forum went years without anyone even attempting to derail a thread that way. When it happened a number of months ago, I stepped in and moderated it as I always did years before. I took a lot of heat for that. A lot of heat. More than you can know. I was attacked personally within the thread, with false allegations about me presented as facts, and I was attacked via private message. It appeared to me that ScubaBoard's hierarchy was just now just fine with that. I took a break from Scubaboard completely for a while, and I have still pretty much not moderated a thread since.

I think this issue needs to be resolved, because it is clear from the fact that we have the two extremes being advocated within this thread.

 

[2airishuman]

• WHAT IS OUR MISSION? (in your words, please)

I believe our mission in A&I is threefold:
1) To learn from the misfortune of others.
2) To provide a lightning rod for discussion of accidents, so that such discussions do not take place in other SB forums where they would be off topic
3) To better prepare us to discuss with non-divers those accidents that have received general media coverage.

#3 is an important one, and it's been missed upthread. Spouses, friends, other family members often encounter general media coverage of diving accidents that is at best incomplete or lacking in perspective. It is helpful to be able to counter this with facts.

• Are we meeting your and the community's needs?
  
• What are we missing and why?
• How can we add that?

I think A&I is valuable and is better managed than similar forums elsewhere.

The only thing that I perceive as missing is that it is difficult to find threads for a specific older accident. It would be helpful to include the date of the accident and the location in the title of the thread.

It would also be helpful to update the beginning of the thread with links or a summary of substantive new information that comes to light after extensive discussion. This would only be necessary in the few A&I threads that run to many, many pages.

• What needs to be eliminated and why?

Eulogies and near eulogies, often in the form of "[name] was always an excellent diver with great skills who never took risks" are more than unsightly clutter, they are a mental distraction from the difficult purpose of these threads. I would like to see the mods remove posts and edit posts more aggressively to eliminate them.

Speculation that any one accident was caused by the purported shortcomings of the "new training" compared to the "old training" is rarely if ever insightful on these threads, and we'd be better off without it.

• How can we be more respectful to friends and survivors?
• Can we be more respectful without harming our mission?

Some years ago, close friends and family of mine were involved in a tragic accident involving tree cutting. One died at the scene, one was hospitalized and had a limp the rest of his life, one was unscathed. In the wake of it all there were lawsuits, blame-mongering, insurance companies, and the suicide of the decedent's girlfriend. Based on that experience, I can say with confidence that there is absolutely no way to discuss a tragedy of similar magnitude in a way that the survivors and friends will find to be respectful.

• Currently, we don't allow names to be used unless released publicly first. Is this fair for the family? Is it fair for us? Is a change needed?

I think that it would be reasonable and an improvement to limit the embargo of identifying information to a fixed period of time, like 7 days, so that we can discuss relevant facts even if they are not published. Identifying information isn't always important to the discussion but it can be, particularly where the actions of a dive op may have contributed to the accident and the name of the op is embargoed by current policy.

I am hearing criticisms from a few, mostly cavers.

I would just like to point out that the discussion of caving accidents has benefits for non-cavers.

We need the readers to report more. SB is a bit different from most forums in that we let the community tell us what is appropriate. Let isn't the appropriate word: we rely on the input. Very, very rarely do the mods act without a user reporting a post.

Question for you, @NetDoc: as a matter of moderation policy, do good-faith reports negatively affect a user's standing among moderators? Some forum software maintains a count of reports by user, and some mods on some other sites may consider a user troublesome when the count becomes large.

Yet many of the people who actually ARE experts will often not show up here to discuss.

This is going to sound far snarkier than I mean it, but, why is this?

It is rare, in any field, to encounter experts who are willing to explain and defend their conclusions to people who are not experts, without being paid to do so.

 

[Kevrumbo]

Being able to freely question, comment, deduce, interpret, speculate & expand on media reported accounts of a diving casualty in situ for example, prevents the A & I forum from being just another useless dry fact police blotter. That is, most diving fatalities would end with the same general non-revelatory conclusion: Cause of Death: Drowning, Rule Out Accident. [Wait for the official report to be completed and file a FOI request at a later date].

It's already understood that the A & I forum is not an authoritative review board with all its attendant bureaucracy, and should not be tightly moderated to that end. Keep it open as is, both to lay people, regular divers & professionals alike who want to discuss and understand the potential root causes & precipitating events behind a dive accident/incident.

It's all deductive reasoning, so just let the raw process run and play out in the open. . .

 

[Storker]

That's a great idea, if someone would volunteer the time to manage it for every accident. I suspect that's a decent sized task.

Yup. I don't have the time for that. I doubt that many other mods have either.

 

[2airishuman]

In the A&I forum, the reason for all dive accidents was the poor quality of modern instruction, and as soon as they got on that topic, that was it--the entire thread became about the contrast between the glorious good old days and the terrible instruction we see today. Any attempt to discuss the specific incident would be lost in this topic derailment.

For what it's worth, I had not seen this post when I wrote my previous comment.

I do agree with @boulderjohn on this insofar as the sequence of events in any one particular accident are difficult to ascribe to the general shortcomings of primary dive training.

 

[Scott]

• Why do you come here?

  I visit for a couple of reasons. One, I look for informational that could be educational for my students. I want to provide them current topics and not near misses that happened years ago. We are in the information age and many have read the SB reports while enrolled in my courses and ask questions.
  I also look to see the location. I want to know if it is in a location where students or friends are traveling to or are currently at.
  
  

• Why do you post accidents and incidents? (This is especially for you, @DandyDon!)

  I may have started one thread since 2007. I used to think that DD didn't have a life and spent all day searching for this stuff. Someone or somehow it will likely show up here. I don't care by who or how.
  
  

• WHAT IS OUR MISSION? (in your words, please)

  To provide information as accurately as possible
  
  

• Are we meeting your and the community's needs?

  For me, yes. The community? Let the rest speak.
  
  

• What are we missing and why?
  How can we add that?

• 
  

• What needs to be eliminated and why?

  The BS that comes after the thread has run its course. Most people can tell when its over but some feel the need to keep it alive for whatever reason.
  
  

• How can we be more respectful to friends and survivors?

  When an accident happens friends and family go looking for information, they want to know more so than you or I. Ken really said it best. Be thoughtful before hitting the button.
  
  

• Can we be more respectful without harming our mission?

  Yes, but will we?
  
  

• Currently, we don't allow names to be used unless released publicly first. Is this fair for the family? Is it fair for us? Is a change needed?

  For the family and us as a community, yes. Change needed, no.

 

[2airishuman]

Another point I notice hasn't been yet made in 5 pages:
Scuba Diving Accident Reports, Case Summaries, Incidents, Prevention | DAN

I learn more from SB reports than DAN reports.

The DAN reports, as you point out, are professionally curated. It is not possible to curate such reports in a useful way without some inference, which means that a certain amount of bias is inevitable. The forms DAN uses, the questions they ask and do not ask, show that some areas receive greater scrutiny than others. Overall I like the work they do and consider it valuable, but their approach has inherent limitations.

 

[boulderjohn]

I do agree with @boulderjohn on this insofar as the sequence of events in any one particular accident are difficult to ascribe to the general shortcomings of primary dive training.

It varies by the specifics of the incident.

Let's take the famous Gabe and Tina Watson incident as an example. This was the famed "honeymoon killer" case, in which Gabe's inability to rescue his evidently incompetent bride was so extreme that people thought it had to be intentional. Eventually expert witnesses determined that no, both Tina and Gabe were every bit as incompetent as it seemed. There was nothing intentional about her death.

In the aftermath of the incident, it was revealed that pretty much all of Gabe's diving experience leading up to his Rescue Diver certification was in a quarry, and his instructor had very much cut corners in his classes. That same instructor had certified Tina in that same quarry before she did her first certified dive on the Yongala on the GBR.

In that case, I think a discussion of that specific instructional process would very much be open to discussion.