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Jim, Thanks for posting this over here. Any rational, careful reading of this thread should ultimately tell you that the folks on CIS are concerned and interested in fairness and free-speech, given the debate that this issue sparked. It should also tell you that CIS is not the Internet, it is a privately owned service which caters to a wide variety of people from all over the world, over 28,000 members at the last count. Our membership consists of people from all ages, from young children, barely able to write/type and older men and women from all over the world. I have personally responded to dozens of Forum messages from kids in grade school, middle school and high school asking questions about diving, caves, oceans, certification, safety and every imagineable aspect of diving. Many come online to assist in homework, others because a brother or father dives and they want to learn more or dive someday themselves. For this reason and others, CIS has a standard about profanity and abusive language. For some this standard is unacceptable and they often find a home here in the tech diving lists where language is not curtailed in any way. However, profanity has never and never will limit in any way the exchange of information about diving of all kinds. No aspect of technical diving is better described with insults. No cave system is explored more safely or completely with fake E-mail or profanity. So we live with that restriction and it is really the only one other that the ban on overt advertising online. George Irvine is an accomplished diver and leader of a group of divers who contribute a great deal to cave divers and cave diving. Their extreme explorations into the Woodville Karst Plain systems is to be admired andtheir methods emulated. His message of safety is direct and backed-up with the experience to prove it and his uncompromising standards for gear and technique is quickly being adopted by cave divers everywhere. This made him a valuable asset for the members on CIS. George found a number of divers there who were very happy to see another accomplished cave diver online to answer questions and to weigh-in on issues of safety and gear. I was personally very happy to see him online on CIS despite his pronouncement that everyone online were strokes and weenies. I know his style and I wondered from the start if he would survive the encounter with the CIS. I regret that he is gone. From the start, though, with a few scattered broadsides on the side, he seemed to fit right in. He answered questions completely and in a friendly manner for the most part. His well-known abrasive style did raise a few eyebrows, but I was not aware that there was any concerted effort to get rid of him until I received an E-mail from a long-time member in which George was his threatening, cursing self again. I soon learned that this was not an isolated note, but that a private war via E-mail was being waged, so savage that the recipient had turned everything over to his attorney and had temporarily signed off of CIS. Quick on the heels of this note I saw the note that I quoted Techdiver in which George tells the head Sysop over on CIS Scuba Forum to "S"-word his "D"-word! Now, there is really only one way to get booted from CIS and George found it. This has nothing whatsoever to do with politics or persecution. If you step in front of a train, it doesn't matter who you are, or if you feel you're being picked on, you're DEAD! No politics, just track-ketchup! George presented himself to the CIS train and he got run over, plain and simple--he broke the only rules you really have to follow to stay online there. It had nothing to do with NACD, NSS-CDS, Dive-Rite, HawMartin, Faked mail ( you can't fake E-mail on CIS, thank god!) or the Hogarthian Way or even the Sysops that you're so worried about. They didn't really get a say! We got a simple announcement--George is gone! . . . and then I found out why, and I agreed with the decision and I still do. CIS isn't the Internet. There are standards of behavior. George knew what they were, he violated them. I know what they are, I manage to write hundreds of messages to people all over the world and have never violated them, I've skirted them, but I've never actually raised those skirts! But really nothing is changed, most of the cavers & techdivers who are on CIS are here as well. So I am a little amused at the self-righteousness I now see displayed over _here_ on Techdiver, the Land of the Outlaw Diver, the no rules, anything goes, take it like a man, it's a tough world, kinda mailing list where if you can't take the heat . . . and here you are tut-tutting because George managed to achieve what I believe he was looking to do in the first place--get his butt kicked off CIS. Congratulations, George, I hope you won the sushi!! Joel
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