Obligations
Hi everyone,
I've been following this thread and have only now had time to put my word in.
Since I spend a large amount of (personal) money and time each month to keep this site running I find myself jumping up and down with joy when I see the sheer number of people using the site, as well as the quality of discussions. We are truly a unique community here, and i'm proud to stand up and say I helped build it (i'm sure Cliff would say the same thing).
However - I also have a growing concern about the problems associated with people giving out advice. These forums are there for open discussion and we have promoted them as such - however, as Pete (laminar) brought up, the issue is that anyone can read the advice given out here and go and buy some equipment, then drown trying.
This opens up a whole can of worms when it comes to the legality of it. The last thing we need is to be sued by the angry parents of some teenager who drowned in their bathtub.
However (after i've taken some valium to calm me down
) I see that up till now there has been no real ability to provide wide reaching, open discussion on the sport unless you lived close to someone who was a "master". I think the need for "masters" such as Eric, Kirk et al. to provide quality advice for beginners for free is growing...People like Cliff (i'll call the "experts" for now) should be there to provide a bridge between the "masters" and the "novices" and give advice to everyone on how to get to a safe, basic level. I hope we can all achieve that.
Probably the best way of approach this from a forum stand-point is to start looking to have more use of "moderators" or "mentors" on the forums, people who have had large amounts of experience in freediving and are willing to provide basic to medium level guidance to freedivers. They would help guide the discussion safely though dangerous advice and as a last resort could use powers to edit or remove posts that are outright dangerous. (A lot of forums provide this sort of service)
Let me hear your thoughts.