Guest TOSGcentral Posted September 17, 2008 Posted September 17, 2008 This is a large post and if any reader feels deeply about the value of these forums and the benefits they may bring then please make the effort to read it and also offer your contribution if you wish. I particularly call on those of you who do obtain so much value from these forums but we may hear little or nothing from If you wish to keep them then accept that your personal opinion has equal weight as does that of the most prolific poster! During the course of the thread of the Falke Double Fatal at Watts Bridge, I stated that I would open a new thread to discuss some implications. That I am now doing. However it has little to do with that terrible incident, but is being used to stimulate discussion on how the Accident and Incident Forum of this site runs. I stress that I have no authority on this site, I am just a user like yourselves. But while Ian has so kindly made this great facility available to us all free of charge, the site, its standing and reputation, primarily resides in the hands of the users – how we conduct ourselves, what we say and how we say it – all of that is very much our business as users. So I am chiming in with my views and I encourage everyone to put their perspective on this subject via replies. OBJECT OF THE ACCIDENT AND INCIDENT THREAD. It is fair to say that the only good thing that can come out of any incident/accident is learning from it so that it may not be repeated – especially at our individual personal expense. There is nothing ghoulish about this (for most people), it is just another aspect of personal survival. We want to know what happened, how it happened and preferably we want to know NOW! So we have this forum to help achieve that purpose – or at least give us some enlightenment. How well this works is very much up to each of us and how we conduct ourselves. Whether we want to just blow of steam and give the world our so valued knee-jerk reactions to a media report or whether we want to act responsibly. FORUM RULES. The forum has rules. That is reasonable enough! Ian provides the service free and (a) he does not want his work to be used in what is perceived as a free for all and irresponsible manner and (b) he does not want to be dragged into litigation when someone goes outside those rules. Would any of you? I have already suggested to Ian that the Accident & Incident forum has its own specific set of rules, contained in a ‘Sticky’ at the start of the forum. These rules should be expressed in plain language and serve to give primary guidance on what is, or is not acceptable member posting conduct. I will supply some initial suggestions at the end of this post. SOME MEMBER RESPONSE ISSUES. I will cover what as I see as the main recurrent viewpoints: We should not comment on accidents at all – that is the responsibility of a formal investigation and we should wait for the findings. Responses may unreasonably hurt family or friends of any deceased so there should be no comment. We should have open and unrestrained comment so at least some good can come out very quickly that may help to avert other such happenings My personal responses to those three issues are: Results of formal enquiries (if any such are made) take far too long for educational value. Even when published (if they are) they may be incorrect or misleading. As two cases in point - The (presently) final post on the Watts Falke thread by MikeCMB mentions the break-up of an H301 Libelle and an autopsy finding of the pilot having a heart attack. This begs the question of if the medical event caused the accident or was caused by the break-up! Finding yourself flying just a fuselage would come as a huge shock. Equally, I have been privately informed from two different sources what the results of the Falke accident are likely to be. I personally disagree on the several grounds that they would be demonstrably wrong, nobody will learn a thing and a pilot may get an epitaph that is not warranted. We should be careful of worshipping at the altar of ‘Official Enquiries’. I believe that we have to be very careful indeed about drawing any conclusion about virtually anything that appertains to the competency and decisions of the crew in the cockpit at the time. We may surmise circumstance but should not do so on the basis of media reports (that these forums delight in bagging as unreliable or total falsehoods). No matter what actual self evident facts are present then these may (and probably should) be used – but without personal allocation of blame! We have no idea (until otherwise proven by investigation) what situation may have happened, what different emergency may have occurred. But I am now going to take this one by the nuts and squeeze hard! Such outbursts that allocate causal blame (however accurate they may be) cause great hurt to innocents – information can be conveyed in other appropriate ways where the core message still gets across. I also personally consider such outburst to be an act of demonstrated cowardice! A person is being judged when not in a position to defend themselves and say exactly what happened! If they were still alive you may be much more cautious – because you could get your ass sued off! What some of you fail to realise is that could still happen. As I understand the laws of libel as a layman, even if you are 100% correct you still cannot publicly denigrate a person. If you are not 100% correct then you are in deep trouble! No reason why a family cannot take up such an issue on behalf of the deceased. Perhaps any legal eagle reading this could post an opinion please to assist readers? 3. Yes, I believe we can and should have open comment so we can extract some good and do so as quickly as is practical. But we should be careful and ordered in the manner in which this is done. WATTS FALKE THREAD. I became intimately, and personally, involved in this very rapidly. I had some extra things going for me other than what I was requested to do that horrible morning – I know the airfield well (about 10,000 landings at the place), I did flying development work on Falkes and know them in-depth, and one of the deceased was a personal friend. At that time I decided that I would attempt to gain more out of this vis a vis benefit to the A&I forum which itself has the potential to do so much good – or so much harm. Perhaps coldly and arrogantly I determined to see if we could get a sensible thread together and how far we could reasonably take it via ‘thread leadership’. That seemed to have worked well. We resulted in one of the most widely read threads and got considerable information out of it. That information was not confined to the accident itself. There was gliding and motor gliding information conveyed. We were able to penetrate into aircraft operation that made the event easier to get a grip of. You got the photographs etc – but no causes nor blame was entered into. The conduct of forum members in response was of the highest order and we had no ‘flames’ or any other dubious postings If we can do that once then we can do it again. If we can do it again then we can do it most if not all of the time! I am going to tighten the screws a little more though regarding the interface between the personal and the technical. The hardest thing I did that day was take the early photos that will never be made public. They had to be taken as there was too many people around the wreck, things could be disturbed etc, and the police forensic were still well over an hour away. But there was a sobbing wife laying on the ground beside her dead husband. She saw what I was doing and screamed at me. That cut me up badly but I finished the job. It is one thing to discuss ‘personal sensibilities and hurt’ at a distance over a forum – try being there and actually experiencing it! Then think of what it may do down-stream when the situation is being coldly discussed by remote strangers and memories re-awakened. Compassion must play an equal part in what we do here! TECHNICALITY One thing I think the A & I threads generally lack is a ‘putting you in the cockit’ for the reader so they may more understand the challenges the pilot was actually facing under the circumstances that may have been applicable. This does not mean re-printing the type pilot’s notes, but many types have peculiarities. We have so much varied experience on these forums. We could tap into this. If an accident comes up, even from a media report, someone with type experience could chime in and describe the sort of operating and systems challenges that the pilot may have had to contend with. This is not drawing conclusions but actually takes us into areas that may be applicable to our own operation and make the situation anyway more understandable and capable of thought beyond one line ‘knee jerk’ responses so you tick up another one on your post count! TASTE Aye well! I have gone into some of that above. We need to learn more about how and why we respond to situations. We all have our own priorities but part of a community is respecting that others have their own pressures. We can explore situations and learn from them. But we should be damn careful that in the process we do neither offend nor hurt. It is only a case of choosing what you have to say and writing it clearly – then reviewing it before you post it. SOME SUGGESTED FORUM POST RULES. I would like you to read these and come back with any views or alternatives. Ian has responsibility for the site but equally we have responsibility for the conduct of the site and how it benefits the majority. No conclusions shall be made on the cause of any accident. No allocation of personal blame shall be made directly or indirectly at any person. Possible causes, or contributory factors, of an accident may be explored and opinion given based on the poster’s demonstrated reasons for giving such opinion. All posts shall be sensible of the feelings of family and friends and expressed accordingly. I do not think we need more than that but perhaps some of you do. If so then say so. Aye Tony
Admin Posted September 22, 2008 Posted September 22, 2008 Thank you everyone for your comments in regards to moderation. I personally would like to say thanks to TOSGCentral for bringing this up and providing a suggested and very constructive course of action. All the posts excluding the first one in this thread have now been hidden and the thread closed whilst a solution is pondered on. This is very important as this is the way how just a few loud mouthed people caused the entire RAAus chat service to be closed down - a few make it so bad for the many. This site was built on hard moderation or should I say effective moderation and despite a few saying that is wrong the site has experienced incredible growth by providing a great service to the many and not just a few and that is even against some peoples wishes. We have hit a point in the site's life, like other times, where we must consider what the future direction of this site will be and whilst it may not please all, it WILL please those that do value and appreciate this site as being a great source of helpful information in keeping us safer and more informed and a place of learning. If that causes the loss of some forum members then so be it - we want more people to feel that this is their home, a friendly home, the true home of recreational flying, pilots and enthusiasts and not a means for people to stand on a soap box. The entire site moderation will be decided on soon - thank you!
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