JW411

This sort of forum is well and truly overdue. There are simply far too many posers and muppets (as you put it) on pprune.

Forgive my ignorance but don't Air Trafficers, Engineers etc etc have licences?

If they have then perhaps a photocopy of said licences would suffice. They don't really need to be current for the young still have a lot to learn from the old.

Someone suggested that this wouldn't work because all you would have to do was borrow someone's licence and send a copy.

In this day and age would any professional lend someone their licence? If someone asked to borrow my licence I would be speaking to Special Branch very, very quickly!

Hotel Mode

Totally agree about CHIRP, the Cabin Crew section particularly seems to be being used to take swipes at their favourite Pilots! Havent noticed anyone admitting the mistakes you see in the other sections. I Think Ideally Pilots, ATCO's and LAE's, with proof of licence/RECENT (say last 10 yrs) experience. Think the LAE bit will be the hardest to confirm. Pilots with CPL and ATPL only, but job seekers allowed.

it shouldn't be too difficult to confirm ID of Employed guys by Master seniority list/roster x reference. Ie, Send in your name and say 2 weeks rosters. It would only take 1 guy in each company. I'll volunteer for BA!

arem

Don't forget those of us who have retired from the scene

Mad (Flt) Scientist

Depends what you mean by 'engineer' - those involved in the maintenance process are formally licensed, those on the design/certification sides don't, certainly in nothing like the same sense.

That being said, as one of the 'to be excluded' I would have no objection at all; I'd rather there be some discussion than none. I'd just ask that those of us 'second-class citizens' be borne in mind, and that you come out of the 'pilots' lounge' now and again and ask our opinions. Very occassionally we do have an input .....

scroggs

Dan, a private forum within Pprune would be the way to go, I feel. Verification of eligibility is relatively easy if people can use their real identities (with licence and employee numbers, where relevant) to register, yet may use alter-egos to post.

On topics where specialist input is called for, you could invite known experts from ATC/Engineering to view and comment on threads as required. Or, if you prefer, you could open the forum to invited people from these or other fields on the basis of their knowlegeable and valuable posting history on the main forums.

I don't think there's anything to be gained by having the forum readable by people not qualified or invited to post. I also think that such a forum would need considerable encouragement from the nominated mods to get discussions going and keep them lively - the danger being that people would drift back to the open forums if they found the cut and thrust of these to be more interesting than the limited-access variety.

A charge to enter may actually encourage participation on the grounds that if you've paid, you might as well get involved. If you haven't paid, there's less incentive to stay.

I'm in two minds as to whether it's a good idea, but I think it could be done reasonably easily, and it would at least answer the criticism that many of our debates are trivialised by non-expert input.

Scroggs

Le Pen

Excellent idea Danny,

I would like to put in a word for us LAME's. I feel sure that, from time to time, we could be useful (a bit like in real life)! We have ready access to AMM's, IPC's and other technical data. And some of us are quite clever too (present company excluded).

Thanks for everything anyway;

Love

LP

Cough

Just a thought on eligibility. If a user has access to one of the private forums (i.e. airline) then surely the individual forum mods have done your work for you. Anyone else would have to be verified.

Albert Driver

Sorry, Danny. Speaking as someone who would be eligible, I probably wouldn't take part.

CHIRP is already effectively in the public domain - that's why they go to all that trouble to dis-identify contributors. You can talk about CHIRP issues openly here. That's what PPRuNe is all about.

It's always attractive to be in a group that excludes others - until the thrill wears off and everyone wants to go back and join the party! Private forums nearly always turn out to be boring forums. They can be just as emotional and irrational as public ones and can also be dominated by a vociferous few who know less than they think. In any case, sensible discussion of CHIRP issues needs input from non-licence holders and that would be almost impossiible to control - unless you're planning a Danny's Cronies Forum (and I've nothing against that - it's your party).

You say input from those with little or no experience only serves to inflame emotion and detract from the main topics. I think there's plenty of evidence here of those with a _great deal_ of experience doing just that all the time. It's human nature, unfortunately.
Nevertheless there is also plenty of evidence that when people of great experience also choose to talk great sense, everyone else listens. The problem is it doesn't happen as often as it should.

No. Anything we've got to say on safety issues should be said here, open to debate, cross-examination and challenge. Sometimes it's the outsider who asks the most revealing question.

JW411

So what Danny is suggesting by going for a subscription is that an admission that most of our serious threads get sidetracked by those who have no idea of what we are discussing. Is the way forward then maybe that we could go along the lines of £10 per year to beat your gums with fellow professionals to your hearts content (with evidence to join) and perhaps £100 for life membership?

My only caveat would be to suggest that those professionals amongst us who insist that they are proffesionals forfeit £10 every time that they do it!

I could easily be tempted just to get the crapwriters out of the way.

In trim

Danny,

I understand and agree with the reasoning for this forum, and would fully support it if it were to go ahead.

However, so many Safety / ASR issue debates would perhaps be limited if only pilots could input. I don't know how you would manage access otherwise, so believe you will have no option but to limit this to currently serving pilots, but as a safety professional within the ground handling environment (responsible for ASR management and oversight covering all areas) I believe that any "ASR / Safety forum" will be somewhat limited without input from the likes of ground safety professionals (particularly on issues such as load control / despatch) and also engineering. (Not that I'm suggesting pilot's have a limited view in this respect )

That said, it would be totally unmanageable to open the doors wider, so I wish the forum success even if I am unable to contribute. (That's a few quid saved.....I'm off to the pub )

In Trim

Kulu

I am a (very) occasional participant but I do spend a lot of time looking at the forums. I don't think I am ever going to be in aviation professionally, but I would like to be a ppl and would be very interested in the kind of things that would be posted to the new forum.

I agree with an earlier poster, that all should be able to access to read, but only those qualified to make comments should be able to make them. Of course, the question is whether only pilots are to have a voice, or other aviation professionals as well.

If that's the way it is decided to proceed, would there be different subscription rates for those with read only access?

JW411

Kulu has a point. If he is not allowed to read the learned argument then how is he to learn?

Learning should be our primary concern. I have been teaching since 1963 and it would have been very difficult without pupils!

So do you think we could have an open spat between pilots, engineers, ATC etc etc in public whilst allowing Kulu and his mates to watch and learn without them throwing spanners in the works or should we banish them completely?

It is not going to be easy.

I am also mindful of our professional colleagues in places like Bangladesh and Burkino Faso who would be left out because of the joining fee.

On balance I am in favour of all professional pilots who really want to join in paying £100 to put their money where their mouth is and perhaps having a joint membership for those of our professional overseas mates who see £100 as a fortune.

mutt

Apologies for a slight diversion........

jondc9, the FAA offered certificate holders the right to remove their records from public access, as i signed the approval request, i doubt very much that you will find any public information regarding Mutt.


Mutt

yellowbobbyjet

Danny
It is, of course your web site to do with as you wish. The idea of CHIRPS is to inform everyone about a problem and include everyone in resolving it. I think the idea of discussing CHIRPS is very good, but to exclude anyone before the discussion starts is bad. I know that you spend a great deal of time moderating what goes on on PPRUNE and you wish to make sure this new idea does not get out of hand before it starts, perhaps a way forward would be to allow open discussion but to bar anyone who’s input is obviously uninformed or inappropriate

Feline

Danny - As someone who is not an aviation professional but is an IT professional I can't help but feel that you are inviting a huge amount of admin in trying to regulate membership of the proposed forum. But it's your call of course ... And the admin comes not just in entering suitably qualified members in the first place - but in maintaining the database thereafter ...

Jet2

Very true and my thoughts exactly. The idea behind this forum is great so you could always try it as an open forum for a while and see how it goes. A sticky at the top to remind those not in a position to comment may deter a few. If it doesn't work you can always look into making it private again.

IMHO, unless you're writing your own roster at VS these days Danny, I think you will be taking on a huge workload for your spare time trying to admin who qualifies to post and who does not. As most have said though, it's your decision and I hope you can make it work.

Just my tuppence worth

DrKev

I was thinking the same thing. It would seem to solve an immediate problem with a minimum of extra work load, though an increase in applications for posting on those forums may result in the near term with possible increased workloads on moderators into the long term.

As an SLF ex-scientist who gets very upset at public and journalistic ignorance/mis-information in my areas of expertise, and in light of the increased media coverage that PPruNe seems to attracting of late, it seems to me a good idea to have a forum for industry professionals (be they flight, cabin, ground crew or ATCO) where they can discuss, debate, and learn from each other without risk of Joe Public or Joe Journalist misunderstanding and, particularly, misquoting or quoting divergent or non-standard views as being representative elsewhere.

That suggests to me that forum areas not open to general posting are also closed to general reading. It's up to you guys to decide on posting and reading rights in different sections for flight, cabin, ATCO, ground etc.

Self Loading Freight

I'm one of the non-professional lurkers who uses Pprune as the best insight bar none into commercial aviation. My interest is almost entirely personal - do you need justification for fascination? - but it doesn't fall into a neat categorisation of spotterhood, nerdy tech, history bufferhood, wannabeness or whatever. Aviation is fascinating, and Pprune is the good stuff.

I rarely comment, because there's rarely anything useful I can add, but I do learn a great deal. The issues covered in CHIRPS are always worth learning about, and I'd regret not having the view from seats 0A and 0H.

For what it's worth!

R

jondc9

tell this yank what a CHIRP is? I think we have the same thing here but we call it a national transportation safety board ASR report.

people in trouble call them "get out of jail free cards"

jon

Bumblebee

Confidential Human Factors Incident RePorting