Kahalaan

3) Consider 'offshore' webhosting - you may have US/San Diego stuff right now (as far as I can see without peeking too far) but way to go might be to get somewhere (ahem...less 'litigious'). Maybe need to speak to a Web Lawyer, as, for example, a USA hosted site may come back to haunt you at some future date....that all I'm sayin' on that.

Hi Flying Lawyer, (Not sure if you saw my whole post earlier)

As a bit of a Forum/IT, 'nerd' myself, I'd appeciate your comments on the legalese post I made earlier (part quoted above), as I think that might help Danny/PPrune in the longer-term re: some sort of 'verified' PP forum.

e.g. As forums are going right now, there is little 'legalese' in stopping anything being said, apart from, say, actions of Mods etc., deleting/ASBO'ing people etc.,

However, my view is that if such a 'closed/subscribed' forum (as suggested) is hosted in, say the UK or USA (Currently it's USA for PPrune), then there might be a 'legal' comeback to those who post on such a site. i.e. PPrune, might get subpoenaed to divulge any such discussions relating to aviation in any relative court action. An example could be, say a problem with a specific aircraft air conditioning problem, say discussed 'professionally' amongst 'verified' pilot members on a given PPrune forum then leading to individual commentators being asked to appear in court?

I hope I've made that clear. If not, please come back. i.e. Once someone is 'verified' as a member of the intended forum....then one becomes available to be 'subpoenaed' on a 'professional' level from the country which hosts the website (currently under USA law, for example, for PPrune.org.). Therefore, if there is an 'incident' in future that relies on say, CHIRPS (or whatever the new forum addresses, 'Professionally'...with 'verified' members)....isn't there a case to look at maybe an 'offshore' webhost, such as 'Tuvalu' (.tv) just as an example, to help PPrune 'verified members' be 'unaccountable' (despite the best intentions/professional opinions) of their posts.

I mean, I'm happy to express incidents in all honesty on a forum online....whether I want to be 'subpoenaed' for what I say is another matter. I will already have given the facts to the company involved and would rather their specialists account for that, than have days offline to deal with another vein of 'legalese'.

Would appreciate your comments overall, Flying Lawyer.

Regards,

K.

AN2 Driver

Like Flying Lawyer I would not qualify for the "new" forum / forum section as I am neither currently employed by an airline nor is my license valid at this stage. But I think that there should be some things considered on a broader basis then the "them and us" discussion that has evloved over recent threads.

I started in Fora as a member now almost 20 years ago, and I have seen this discussion about unwanted members come and go. In recent years, I saw exactly the same thing you now contemplate happen in several other forums. Trolling went out of control, people locked out by the dozens, many of them long standing members who lost their control over the trolling. In the day and age where everyone can open a new forum at the touch of a button, fora split into fractions over such things, most of the time with considerable damage to both those who left and those who stayed.


The shouts for a strictly moderated and seregated forum with only "qualified" people were to have access, to restrict this by paying access, e.t.c. tend to become very loud at times like this. In some instances loud enough for some enterprising soul to go ahead and do exactly that. Restricted access, paid forum, open to people with credentials only, strictly moderated. The result in 2 of the experiments I saw happen over the last years was sobering to say the very least.
- Of those "elite" specialist screamers who went bonkers on who they perceived as trolls (and had helped to sustain them by feeding them), not a fraction joined the new place. Why? Part reason they had nobody there to shout at and to let out their frustrations and prove how clever they really were when amongst "peers".
- The new place became a totally sterile environment, there was no life to speak of, because everyone became scared to appear "unprofessional" to those who decided what professionalism was. While the old places lost some members, it kept going at the usual rate, the trolling actually decreased and it's still around today. The new places either become a 10 member closed society or shut down within a few months out of pure boredom.

I've seen some of the same, not the same extent, happen in AVSIG, the old compuserve community. It still exists to my knowledge, it's paid access and most of the classic members are gone. The list goes on. Whether we are talking cat's lovers or nuclear power issues, fan forums of the music industries (in comparison to which this forum is TAME ) or medicine forums, you see the same happening all over.

I personally think that the only way a member can "earn" his place in a forum community is by merit of his postings, not by his / her professional position. I much prefer a world whereby the membership of a forum grow together. Excluding large portions of an industry on suspicion that anyone who is not lucky enough to be a flight deck crew member is not "qualified" to even talk to the ones who are, would in my view be the loss of those in the new shell as much as the loss of those who remain behind. There will be trolls on both sides, make no mistake, and I am almost sure that those who openly seek confrontation with them will continue to spin 10page + threads on the love live of the pavement stones on both sides of the fence.

PPRUNE is today, in my consideration, one of the foremost aviation fora in the world. I think the new forum would be it's and the membership's loss. Excluding whole groups of aviation professionals so that the pilot talk can stay between pilots will not bring the result you aspire any more than it did it in other places.

Danny, what good does it do if you tell those of us who are not "invited" into the new place that the old one is still here? So basically, while you experts do the serious stuff in the new sections, we low life can play out here without annoying the pros? What a place would this forum then become if it went the way you hint at here? All the pros gone to Xanadu and just the "jurnos" and other "smelly people" like 80 % of the aviation industry here?

My own prediction is that while in the initial phase of enthusiasm the closed section might prosper briefly and the rest of the forum go a tad quieter than it is now, many of those who scream the loudest today will be back here to tell the ones they are upset about now how wrong they are, along with those who seek true dialogue across the industry rather than within a closed group.

You are hosting one damn nice forum here. Don't change that by taking the wrong turn at Albuqueuque here.

Best regards
An2 Driver.

5milesbaby

I think a little clarification is needed for the "engineers" group. I'm not one myself but over the years I've been looking in on PPRuNe have had some valuble replies from several different engineers.

Personally I'd say there are several different engineers that I feel should be included should a restriction be in place. ATC engineers know vastly more about our kit, comms and radars than any ATCO could ever imagine, and on certain CHIRP issues have valid comment. I'd also say that a/c maintenance engineers, those that know everything there is about how each aircraft is built, repaired, maintained and serviced have good input. Flight Engineers, a breed vastly reduced in numbers these days should certainly be included. Beyond these groups I'm not aware of any other engineers that could actually contribute full factual technical information beneficial to the sort of topics raised in CHIRP, but will be happy to be corrected.

PAXboy

Pax speaking: The field in which I now work for the majority of my time, is specialised and unusual. My colleagues and I seek out each other in groups a couple of times a year and we also have a closed user discussion group, accessed via the Web.

What we do affects other people's lives (but, fortunately, not in the death sense!) and there is NO WAY that I want outsiders listening whilst we wrestle with problems practical, managerial, ethical and emotional. We NEED that private space and I cannot imagine that outsiders will be of help in this proposed forum. The work of which I speak has involvement from a range of other people and companies but we have other forums and times to discuss matters with them.

If you try and discuss a complex subject with ALL the possible inputs (Pilots, CC, ATC, LASE etc.) at the same time then I think that you will never reach a conclusion. Perhaps it would work to discuss the subject and reach a reasonable consensus amongst the flyers and then take that DRAFT to the next group involved and refine it further. Going through a couple of layers may well be faster than trying to have everyone contribute at the same time. Afterall, that is what happens at the moment and that is, probably, one of the reasons why there is the suggestion to make a new forum!

As has been suggested, any subject could be brought out into one of the established public forums as a new thread.

lomapaseo

Good post and I agree in total.

Regarding the bolded sections, yes I was an active member of Avsig, but dropped out when it became too sterile and at the same time I had to pay to express an opinion in my field of expertise.. In the grand scheme of things I charge a good deal for my credible opinions (listed against my good name and reputation) so I have no interest in paying somebody to read what I write.

At least with Pprune, as it currently is, I don't pay a cent and I don't risk my reputation when I post opinions under my handle.

highcirrus

Hi Danny.

If it aint broke, why fix it?

Dan Winterland

An excellent idea Danny. WRTo verification, the only thing I can suggest is that you ask for a volunteer who you know, or can verify from each airline who is able to check other members of his airline through their staff numbers.

ExSimGuy

I commented on another thread in R&N on a suggestion by Loose Rivets, and then thought the comment would be usefully added here:

I'm "justapax" these days, and I don't often post on R&N unless I feel that I have something useful to offer (rarely) or want something clarifying that I can't find out elsewhere. (a lot has changed since the VC-10!!) But I read R&N a lot, and learn from it.

Now that I'm "no longer a professional", I'd be excluded from the new forum and, if all the "serious discussion" took place there, I think that R&N would suffer badly (and, in turn, so would PPRuNe.org). Would there now be 2 choices for the "professional" to post "intersting" events? Would the Professional bother to post in R&N or just in the "New" forum? Would PPRuNe (the existing one) become just R&N (heavily diluted), Pax&SLF, JB, GatBashes?

Loose Rivets' suggestion was that we might have some sort of "tag" under our name on the left side of the thread, to indicate our "professionalism". At least that would give readers an idea of the knowledgability of the poster? (similar to the suggestion by "Outlook" earlier here)

N380UA

In regards to verification or rather eligibility to participate on a given forum we could rate each other similar to the way it is practiced on eBay and display the rating (i.e. similar as the threads are today) together with the handle.

Then, just keep it all the way it is now. This way, there is a sort of self governance of those that participate on pprune. It would keep the trolling to a minimum yet allow of everybody to comment or ask questions keeping in tradition of knowledge exchange to improve the safety of out industry. It would allow for members that are not currently flight deck or ATC but with a vast knowledge on the subject matter to contribute and perhaps even see a problem from another angle, coming up with a solution.

With such self monitoring system a member will think twice what he has to say. If a member is only trolling and receives only minus points from the community then he may even eventually be denied access to pprune altogether. However a certain grace period must be allowed for to smooth out any "personal vendetta" amongst members which may be bullied out by someone else.

overstress

But it is 'broke'. Didn't you see the BA744 thread?

Invitation & referrals.

AN2 Driver

And because of one thread you are going to risk a whole community?

Bit of an overreaction, don't you think?

jondc9

trying to remember the exact quote from "the discourse of machiavelli".

it was the very arguments and shouting in the ancient senates of greece and rome that created democracy (poor paraphrase, forgive me).

Many feel that the 747 thread was broken. Many feel that only those who actually fly long haul 747 might rightly comment.

These people are IMHO wrong. There is a lesson to be learned from any contribution to a forum. From any tangent it takes. We all learned the marvelous capabilities of a very redundant aircraft.

But the bigger questions might be summed up as:

Can the plane do it?

Do the regulations allow it to be done?

And finally:

Should it be done? (can we, may we, should we?)


My views then and now are: Yes, maybe, and no.



to leave anyone out of a forum makes it a club of self sustaining illusion. one captain I know put it best: how can I be wrong, I am the captain?


regards

jon

panda-k-bear

That's the problem with the word "Engineer", isn't it? It covers a multitude of sins from the bloke who comes to fix your washing machine to the girl who designed and certificated your aircraft in the first place. And everything in between.

On a forum, private or otherwise, where the actual design, operability and functionality of aircraft and their systems may be the key to understanding how and why a particular event occurred there are engineers who are qualified to explain what the drivers may be - and who know about how a system is desinged and operates in more depth than a pilot perhaps needs to know (the "widget" factor).

There's certainly a good case for including engineers, I would have thought, provided that they are the "right" engineers, if you catch my drift. Administrating that is another story!

overstress

Yes, I do think your comment about risking 'a whole community' is a bit of an over-reaction
Ever heard of the straw that broke the camel's back?
Also, with the posting 2 above this one we're risking Danny padlocking this thread as well
As Flying Lawyer alludes further above, professional pilots are a patient lot, willing to explain to the interested. I think that perhaps that patience was squeezed to the limit recently when those qualified to comment were frustrated by a continual bombardment of ignorance.
I don't think there's any danger that members of the proposed forum would entirely vacate these hallowed forums, but you might find that a serious thread on, say, B744 flight continuation policy, might end up with only MS Flight Sim protagonists involved.

Pax Vobiscum

If Capt Pprune & his mods (whom God preserve) are prepared to go to the trouble of identifying and verifying professional (however that is defined) forum members, why not simply extend the 'Ignore' option to enable those who so desire to exclude from their sight all postings by non-professionals? Or am I missing something??

Heliport

N380UA
"we could rate each other"

We had a 'rate this member' facility when the site's software was changed at the beginning of the year. It was good in theory but hopeless in practice. The facility was removed after a trial period which showed that friends gave each other high scores and the more juvenile amongst us gave people with whom they disagreed low scores. Hard to believe in an adult forum, but true all the same.

H.

jondc9

"qualified to comment"!


and who among us is qualified to judge who shall comment?

historically, perhaps Lindbergh, Read, Alcock, Brown, the Wrights, D.P. Davies. who else?

:-)
jon

international hog driver

With pprune being nearly 10 years old (yes boy and girls 10 years) maybe it is time for a slight change. I remember when it was a daily bulletin board format emailed to you with two forums, Rumours and Jet Blast, Danny was pushing the Gemstone to fraggle rock and back and in his spare time giving us the genesis of this wonderful forum. After the great crashes where we lost our membership and had to start again we now have what we have.
People got up and down and hot under the collar, legends like Capt I F Snailtrails were about and these pioneers helped guide us to what we have today.

However today pprune is like all the internet a mass audience show, open to all comers. I really think that we can show what we know and pass our combined experience to those that follow behind and those others that just have an interest….. remember how interested in aviation you were before you took that first faithful step??

Personally I think that a system like what Searider (post 44) suggest is reasonable having used the same system before. Firstly you have to be nominated by another member, before you can post. If you bugger it up then you both get sin binned. It can all be done electronically no serious admin required.

People that suggest specific airline based forum mods be able to check out individuals but what about those of us who work as contractors and flip from private to commercial contracts form operator to operator with joe blow executive one week and corruption airlines the next?

Unrealistic, no I don’t think so, do-able. Open forums for all to read but you must be “sponsored” to post. Some of us post our current types, mine is there, pretty common really they have only made over 5000 except you just have to think outside the square.

Others want to remain anomous, and that’s hard when you get to flight ops and you pprune handle is written on the schedule.

My vote.

New forum, Yes
Paper work verification…. No
Sponsorship….. Yes

Give it a go and see if it floats, if the system does not work and the place becomes a cob-web site, then we just get Slasher, Onan, and a few of the JB old salts to run amok.

(Edit for Heliport) Sponsorship is different to rating, if you missbehave, your both gone. I would think very carefully about who i would sponsor and trust in return.

overstress

God?

I mean qualified on type, Jon, as you well know. You're a bit like a dog with a bone, aren't you?

BEagle

A self-professed private clique of 'professional airline pilots' would hardly be in keeping with the nature of PPRuNe.

The 'sim goons' are soon outed, so what's the big deal?

What would this proposal seek to gain?

Don't fix what ain't broke!