PSD section private

[shaggy1]

I have seen how the instructors, boat captains and dive business's each have their own private section. I would like to see the PSD professionals on scubaboard to have their own private section that they can discuss PSD subject matters. I've emailed some who run scubaboard but havent had any response. Just curious as if any other PSD's would like this as well?

 

[BladesRobinson]

The only minor concern I have is that ScubaBoard typically "rubber stamps" anyone that wishes to join these "private" sections. If you state you want to join the boat captain group because you own a boat, no one questions if it is a "real" dive boat or a row boat.

Some may be aware that USER CP (user control panel) one can select GROUP MEMBERSHIPS and request the label of "Public Safety Diver" similar to what appears under my screen name. I work hard to verify each diver as being a legitimate member of a PSD team. Twenty eight people have provided enough information to be included in the Public Safety Diver "members." Twenty one memberships are still "pending," some because they clearly were not affiliated with a PSD team.

I am uncertain if we have enought PSDs to warrant a private section and if we get one, I am hopeful the ScubaBoard mderators will validate team affiliation as opposed to "rubber stamping" the person requesting permission to join the group.

Time will tell...

Blades

 

[Cave Diver]

A few clarifications...

The instructor area was made private so that instructors could discuss sensitive topics regarding students and training agencies without the board in general being involved.

I'm not really sure why the Captains forum was made private, but generally there has to be enough interested members to make it viable for the forum. Otherwise, we suggest the creation of private Social Groups

All of the groups have some sort of vetting process. The Instructor members are verified before access is granted. This is actually done by staff members

The captains forum also has a vetting process. Not sure who is doing that, but I don't believe it is done by staff.

The PSD badge is not currently linked to forum access, but as noted above, it also has a vetting process. The process is only as good as the person doing it chooses to make it.

Basically, what I would suggest is that if anyone is interested in petitioning for a private forum, that they post here in this thread so we can get an idea. I would probably suggest that the main forum be left open for people interested in PSD and that your training subforum might be the one to go private so you can discuss those techniques without the board looking in.

 

[tc]

It would be no problem to set it up, I currently do most of the authorizations for the instructor forum so it would probably fall to me to do these as well since I'm both a mod and a PSD.

The question would be- how do we do it?

For the instructor forum they fill out a request with their name, DOB, agency, instructor number and level, etc. Many of the agencies have the ability to verify an instructor's info online now so most are verified that way. The ones we can't verify online get to make a scan of their instructor card and email it to me. We get 2 to 4 requests most days for access and it only takes a couple of minutes each to verify and approve most of them.

Options-

Email me a scan of your dept. ID? (Simple enough but doesn't really verify if your a PSD or not, have to take folks at their word for it)

Letter from department? Lot of red tape for a lot of folks to go through.

Any other ideas please let me know.

One method we will NOT be using- calling departments to verify, way to much time, effort & long distance charges involved.

Whatever method is chosen has to be pretty quick and simple on this end or we won't be able to do it.

The incentive for that type of forum would be the ability to speak a bit more freely about cases than we can in the public area- but if we don't have some form of verification of credentials and also a rule in place that information posted in the forum is confidential and is not to be cross-posted or released outside the PSD community without the authors specific permission then the confidence of the members won't be there and the info they feel free to discuss would be no different than what we already have in this forum.

 

[jencks23]

Since most psd divers have some sort of Cert how about a scan of thier current cert forwarded to the moderator. I can see the importance of those of us in the emergency service field to network with each other to discuss equipment, calls, share procedures and SOGs.
I recently (1 year ago) started a fire department based dive team up here in Ct. and other then talking with local divers who have little to no emergency services background we have been using what we learned in our PSD class but the chance to interact with other service would greatly benefit everyone......just my opinion