In my view, a cave diver puts the preservation of the cave and the welfare of the cave community ahead of personal goals. Sometimes the people who wrote the standards haven't considered all the potential situations in which those standards could be applied. Once we start wondering whether or not a situation crosses the line, it's better for all if we do not cross it. If you cave dive long enough or go far enough, you will most likely find yourself in an "Oh, Sh*t!" moment. It would suck to need a skill that you don't yet have or need a skill that you can't do very well. A lot can happen between Point A and Point B. When dives become complex to any degree one should be full cave.
Cave diving is about discipline and temptation. If you learn discipline in the beginning of your cave career it will serve you and the community well.
So you are suggesting that people with the skill and sac rate needed to go between two sinkholes lack discipline? And that they are putting their personal goals ahead of cave preservation? Where you go in a cave is not directly correlated with cave damage, necessarily.
The problem here is, cave diving limits are based on gas, not penetration. A diver might have enough gas to swim through a tunnel 2' deep for 3 miles, or to swim through a tunnel 100' deep for 50 feet. Both are within guidelines, and if both dives result in no damage to the cave, is there a problem?
What do mean, "complex to any degree." ? Different people have different definitions of complex. To some, a single jump means complex navigation. Are you suggesting that divers shouldn't do any jumps or swim distances further than XX feet before full cave?
Also keep in mind that due to variances in instructorship, full cave means almost NOTHING. I've seen cavern divers who blow full cave divers out of the water, in terms of both physical and mental skill. Judging someone solely on certification is a lot like judging a book by it's cover. *
I understand you want to be careful what you endorse on the internet, but I think it's just foolish to condemn divers who do dives they are perfectly capable of, and which fall within their certification limits, just because they are Cave 1 and not full cave.
*For example, I had lots of people telling me I should probably look into furthering my training by taking AOW, after I told them I only had OW, but had also recently become full cave. They assumed because I didn't have AOW, but only full cave, that I must not be as good of a diver as them. Obviously, you can make some assumptions based on certification, but you can only take that so far.
