Posted by Dave on July 30, 2002 at 21:00:44:
Allow this to serve as an open letter to all as well as the board administrators.
I peruse many boards and on rare occassions, this one. I really enjoy the sense of comraderie that divers share because we do something so different from the normal human experience and we get to witness first hand what most can only imagine. The people that I run into on dive boats, from their capitans and crews, dm's and divers, I have only run into professionals and nice people having a good time.
I have to admire boat owners, it has got to be a tremendous financial risk to aquire a boat, retrofit it, maintain it, take the legal risks, the regulations, and in my opinion to do it for peanuts, usually on weekends. From a financial standpoint, nobody in their right mind would expect to make a good living off of the measley fees dive boats charge.
But back to the boards, the lack of professionalism, the sniping, the bickering, the ad homineum attacks that go on and on this forum is what keeps me away. If I wanted to see that, I would turn on Jerry Springer.
I own and administer a full, high end bulletin board for the products we sell (completely unrelated to diving) and we would never allow the board to be abused the way this board is. There are ways to enage in constructive criticism but this board seems to be chocked full of crass, unhappy individuals bent on discord rather than positive or constructive discourse. Why is this tolerated?
This board has such a potential to represent the interests of those of us in California and in many ways does a job that is not available from other venues, but the bulletin board is something that is repeatedly controlled by unhappy people.
If the administrators would take control of this board, maybe the majority of us would be as excited to come home from a stressful days work and look forward to open this bulletin board and read about our local dive scene as a form of relaxation just as much as I do the other boards that are well moderated and used by fellow hobbyists. An added benefit might be an eventual increase in paying advedrtisers.