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Old 21st Aug 2011, 18:18
  #88 (permalink)  
Danny2
 
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In order to save some of you the trouble of going into great detail about how incensed or outraged you are about the level of 'reporting' that goes on here after an accident, especially a high profile one such as this, please remember that for all the posts you see on this thread, there are at least 3-4 times as many that are deleted by the moderators, especially as the news is breaking/unfolding.

The problem we as moderators have is that there is an awful lot to trawl through, starting with the 'must be the first to post this breaking news' types followed by the 'must repeat what has already been posted because I can't be arsed to read what is already on there' types.

What then follows is the speculation, often based on little more than the fact that the poster has some vague connection to aviation, possibly an uncle who is a baggage loader at Wythenshaw Municipal. Then come the 'repeaters' who take some ignorant speculation that has already been reported elsewhere and repeat it here, thus starting a hamster wheel of chinese whispers which get repeated by lazy journos who trawl these threads and publish elsewhere which is then read by the 'repeaters' on here who then re-publish... and so on.

In the first hours of an unfolding event, the moderators are trying to to keep some semblance of order and sensibility. It is not easy because as they are reading and taking action on deleting or moving posts, new posts are being made and by the time they have managed to sort out the mess, a new mess has been created while they were sorting out the original one.

Yesterday, I had to close the site for ten minutes to prevent the flood of posts, the vast majority containing nothing new, whilst the original thread on R&N was merged with the one on the Mil forum and then all the RIP posts were extracted and merged into a new but separate thread. Once that was done, the job became a bit easier to manage but it was only thanks to the spread of mods around the globe due to residence or downroute that we managed to, more or less, keep on top of it all.

What is not needed is some of the more sanctimonious posts from those who think they can control the amount of news, rumour and gossip from doing the rounds. PPRuNe is not 'the media' as some would have you believe. PPRuNe is a rumour network which was designed from the start to take advantage of the new information age we find ourselves in. Whilst anyone can post on here, it is primarily for aviatiors, professionals, both military and civilian, in the main. The big words of warning that used to be at the bottom of every page have been removed by the new owners of this site but as a reminder, they used to warn that posts on here could be made by anyone, especially sciolists, so beware.

Even if we were to close the threads as they appear, it would only be a very short matter of time before someone else posted a new one. This is inevitable as it is human nature to want to know and to speculate.

For those who insist on shutting everything down until the board of inquiry has reported back, how come you are the only ones to decide what can and can't be discussed? Do you refrain from talking about the incident with your friends and family? I very much doubt it. And so, it is the same on here.

As moderators, we will try and keep the flow of information as reasonable as we can. We are not full time employees and we are not professional writers. However, we will attempt to keep the flow of information to reasonable debate and speculation. Many of us are ex-military and are fully aware of the sensitivity of information flow during the early stages of new reports, especially those involving casualties, possibly including friends or acquaintances. What we will not do is pull the plug and try and stop what comes naturally... discussion and speculation. For a few individuals to sanctimoniously demand that we shut all discussion down is both futile and insulting.

What we do as Mods is keep the flow going whilst at the same time delete some of the dross that accompanies the input. Yesterday, I read one article on the Sky website that mentioned a name of one of the Reds who took me up in a Hawk a few years ago and I reciprocated by taking him on the flight on the B744. Thankfully, the speculation was wrong and after a short while the name was removed from the reports. Thankfully, it was not repeated on PPRuNe.

So, whilst I and my fellow mods try and keep the various threads in some sort of order and along the track that the title suggests, we do not need the various 'PPRuNe police' turning this thread into a separate debate about the rights and wrongs of reporting what is read elsewhere. This thread is for debate about what happened and what went wrong. There is a separate thread for those who wish to express their condolences to Flt Lt Jon Eggings' family, friends, colleagues and the rest of the Red Arrows team.

Please don't waste your time telling the rest of us how outraged you are at some of the posts you manage to read on here. You should see some of the stuff we mods have had to read and pull. It outnumbers what is on here by about 4:1.

If you still feel the need to have a debate about the rights and wrongs of the news media frenzy that accompanies these sad and unfortunate incidents then start a new thread. To assist you, I have already posted one here: http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...ml#post6653806
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