techadmin(Offline)

Welcome to DIR Explorers. This website is a diverse online community of DIR diving enthusiasts dedicated to sharing the enjoyment of our unique method of exploring our underwater world. Our focus is to advance safety, knowledge and enjoyment within our diving community by encouraging the mutual exchange of experiences, ideas and opinions. We sincerely hope you enjoy and benefit from your extended surface interval with us.



In order to read the content of RebreatherWorld.Com and to gain access to DirExplorers.Com you agree to read these “Terms of Service” (TOS) and agree to abide by them and accept them in their entirety. In order to Post to DirExplorers.Com you agree to Read this TOS, agree to abide by them and to accept them in their entirety and in addition to register a member account with us. Please feel free to bookmark this page so you can refer to it whenever you deem necessary. If you wish to discuss the TOS then please contact us via Private Message, you agree it will not be discussed on the forums or in public.



This is a board oriented toward inclusivity, NOT exclusivity. We encourage spirited discussion, as long as it is polite and friendly. Adult language is acceptable, but extreme foul language is definitely not. If any post is found by the moderators to be too offensive, it will be edited by them for politeness. Of course, as always, personal attacks are not allowed.



While the moderators will do their best to keep things this way, it’s impossible for us to review every post. All posts and articles on this website are the opinions of their respective authors and they do not reflect the views of this website or its owner and you agree that DirExplorers.Com, its owner and all moderators and administrators can not be held respsonsible or liable for their content, authenticity or accuracy. If any post seems to violate the spirit of this concept, please use the "report this post to a moderator" link at the bottom of the post to notify us. By the same token the posts and articles written by the Moderators and Administrators are their individual views and you agree neither DirExplorers.Com nor its owner are responsible or liable for their content, authenticity or accuracy.



While we encourage discussion about a wide range of subjects, there are certain areas which elicit more animosity and subsequently far more flames. Consequently we ask that discussions involving politics and nationalities or anything of a sexual nature be reserved for other message boards that are better venues for these topics.


This is a safety oriented board. While we value our DIY folks, and can learn a lot from them, given the legal and litigious environment in which we live, it has to be our standing recommendation that each diver should seek training or mentoring on how to operate his or her equipment in each enviroment he dives in. A formal class is, of course, the industry-standard way to do this safely, and we encourage you to avail yourself of as much training as possible. A competent instructor will be able to see safety concerns that you might miss.

DirExplorers.com, its owner and all other moderators and administrators accept no liability for the accuracy of any information on this board and remind you it is YOUR RESPONSIBLITY to ensure you are appropriately trained and have the appropriate equipment and experience for any diving activity that you undertake.



The moderators and Administrators have the last word in any dispute and are responsible for the smooth running of the forum and have final interpretation of the TOS. At their discretion, when they deem it in the best interest of DIR Explorers, they may edit or delete avatars, pictures, posts and threads, they might also split threads to ensure a thread stays on topic, give infractions (which might result in a temporary or permanent ban) to users who spam, troll, insult members, go off topic or try to hijack threads with their own agendas. They will also ban users when necessary.

The creation of multiple accounts ("sock puppets") for one person is prohibited.

Membership is a privilege, not a right.

We reserve the right to deny service to any person at any time with or without cause or notification.



No post should exceed reasonable propriety. Excessively profane, insulting or mean spirited language is simply not allowed here. Neither is any sort of harassment or bullying. Threats of any sort are grounds for immediate banishment. While the debates may wax passionate, there is no need to revert to personal attacks. If you feel that you have been attacked, please do not retaliate and instead use the "report this post to a moderator" link at the bottom of the post to notify us. No trolling or flaming of any sort is allowed in any section of the board! Posts advocating or condoning illegal activity are also not allowed on DIR Explorers.

Applicable Law

Each member agrees that the DirExplorers.Com website is governed by English law and that English courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any disputes arising.

Each member agrees to personal jurisdiction by English Courts.

This website (www.DirExplorers.com) retains all rights and privileges and copyright to any and all content posted (EXCEPT FOR CONTENT PREVIOUSLY COPYRIGHTED BY THE AUTHOR and identified as such), to its user and other data bases. Cross Posting / Reposting of information from this site is forbidden. Spam, data mining (see exclusion below), or recruiting our membership is expressly forbidden. We are dedicated to keeping our users' information private and will NEVER sell it to a third party.

By becoming a member of DirExplorers.Com and by posting here you grant DirExplorers.Com a license to permanently display your membership account(including its status) and to publish your words indefinitely. To put it another way - think about what you write as we are under no obligation to delete anything you write at any time and what you write will be viewed for years to come.

All photos that are uploaded to our Gallery may have DirExplorers.Com shown on them in one corner to discourage image theft.


Advertising

Commercial advertising is only allowed on a per incidence basis and pop-ups are expressly forbidden. This website (www.DirExplorers.com) maintains commercial relationships with numerous companies which are unrelated to the membership of this board. Advertisers are entitled to no extra privileges nor may they break or disobey these rules in any way. Advertising does not imply endorsement of a product, service or user. DirExplorers.Com nor its owner or volunteer staff are agents of the advertising company. Please contact the site administrator for further details. A user may only include their company’s URL within their signature line. Signature lines must be limited to FOUR LINES with no images other than board approved smilies. We reserve the right to edit or delete any signature we do not feel is appropriate for our board.












The following pertains to DIR Explorers's (www.DirExplorers.com) medical discussions, and the Diving Medicine forum only: This board (www.DirExplorers.com), its moderators, administrators and affiliated health professionals provide this forum for the discussion of general questions concerning diving medicine. It is intended to be for general discussion and educational purposes only. Information provided by members, moderators and/or health professionals is in no way intended to serve as actual individual medical advice, diagnoses, or to provide treatment plans. In no way does participating on these forums constitute a formal or informal doctor/patient relationship.



Contributions to the Diving Medicine forum are not limited to physicians, doctors or other health professionals. In fact, all members are invited to participate. Consequently DirExplorers.Com assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or reliability of any posts. It is possible that some information may be inaccurate, incomplete or otherwise flawed.

As per the DIR Explorers Terms of Service (TOS), the information in these posts may or may not be reviewed and is by no means endorsed or verified by the DIR Explorers moderators, administrators or health professionals.


While your health is important to us, you are responsible for your own health care. In the event you feel you have any medical concerns regarding actual illness, injury or other possible risks, you should consult your physician or other health care professionals as you deem necessary and as soon as possible.

Any diver who believes that he or she (or a buddy) may have an urgent medical problem, including but not limited to any life threatening conditions, should initiate Emergency Medical Services contact immediately! Next, he or she should contact both a personal physician, and the Diver's Alert Network (DAN).






Membership of this board is a privilage not a right. If you break any rules of the TOS or behave in a matter detrimental to the good of DirExplorers.Com then you will be warned either via PM or an infraction (which might result in a temporary suspension), if you continue with that behaviour or break other rules or if on review we think your infraction was serious then you will be banned.

If you threaten someone in any way on the DirExplorers.Com forums or via its private messaging system or perform or condone any unlawful act or behave in a manner which harms our community then you will be instantly banned with no warning whatsoever and you will be notified that you have been banned with an email to the email address stored in your account.

Infractions and Bans are private matters between DirExplorers.com, its staff and individual users who receive said infraction or Ban. They may not be made public or discussed on DirExplorers.Com save at the absolute discretion of Administrators or Moderators.

Please be warned that the consequances of being banned are that you will be unable to access DirExplorers.Com and your account will be placed into banned status, your account will be publically shown to be banned and all your posts will be shown to be published from a banned account.

While we do respect a user's desire to request a review of the status of their account, we specifically forbid the use of sock puppets (multiple user accounts) or another user's account to make your case. All such requests must be sent to: <support@DirExplorers.com> for consideration. At this point of the process, we will not feel obliged to correspond any further unless we change your status. All moderators and administrators will forward any and all such requests sent to them personally as well.




Bans can be re-visited by any mod at any time and only need a simple majority of the moderators voting and the owners agreement to be rescinded.








In the interest of providing more diving opportunities, we have decided to allow both *commercial and non-commercial trips to be offered in the "DIR Trips / Expeditions / Holidays Forum". Please honour the following stipulations.



1) One thread only per trip, class or event!

2) Any commercial offerings should be identified IN THE TITLE. Commercial postings must gain permission from techadmin before posting - who will no doubt tap you up for some financial support for the site as it is a hell of a lot cheaper than advertising in a magazine!

3) No "bumping" allowed. Legitimate questions are fine, but please do not post just to get a better position in the forum.

4) You MAY purchase a "sticky" if you want. Contact techadmin for price and information.

5) Club dives may be sponsored by commercial ops, please check with techadmin for details.

For Sale Forum

As of March 1st, 2005 DIR Explorers allows commercial and private advertisement type messages in the for sale forum provided that the following conditions are met:


(1) Advertisements are limited to one ad per seven (7) days posted in the For Sale Forum regarding of your company or status. It is the responsibility of the company to monitor their activity and posting frequency to insure that this requirement is met.

(2) Messages must be clean and professional. Please avoid using large font sizes or more than three colors. HTML is allowed in some forums for greater posting ability but this ability will be revoked if members abuse it by posting off subject messages, attempting to harm the board or otherwise take away from the purpose of the Market Place. Please limit any embedded images to 600x600 pixels or smaller, files larger than this should be attached to your post.



(3) Offers must be clearly explained with all conditions and restrictions outlined upfront. Any attempt to commit fraud, deceive or otherwise harm the members of this board will result in a ban and further reporting action if deemed necessary by the administrators.

(4) There is absolutely no “bumping” of threads. This includes making any reply to a thread that’s purpose is deemed to be solely to force the thread to rise to the top of the thread list page in order to gain additional exposure to a thread.

(5) You must be a site sponsor to be able to post commercial for sale messages.

In addition, DIR Explorers has set several special rules governing the conduct of messages in the For Sale forum:



(1) The For Sale forum is not a place to criticize, comment on or in other way speak to the reliability or history of another user’s advertisement. Messages commenting on the quality or value of a deal negatively are expressly forbidden as are messages that “flame”, “troll” or otherwise negatively attack a company for their business practices. Honest, fact-based criticism can be posted in the General Chat forum.

(2) Posting competing or counter offers to an advertisement in this forum immediately after another company's post simply as a means of under-cutting the first advertiser is expressly forbidden.

(3) All members are expected to read any and all sticky or announcement threads related to additional rules or restrictions that may exist in a particular For Sale sub-forum.





The term SPAM implies many different definitions based on many different sources. The Washington State Supreme Court (USA) has stated that SPAM can be understood as:


“The term 'spam' refers broadly to unsolicited bulk e-mail (or ''junk e-mail"), which can be either commercial (such as an advertisement) or noncommercial (such as a joke or chain letter).”



Another popular definition focused towards the Internet describes SPAM as:



“Internet spam is one or more unsolicited messages, sent or posted as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantially identical content."



On DIR Explorers we combine the commonly held definitions of SPAM into one concrete statement. SPAM is, as a general rule, a message sent in any amount of a commercial or non-commercial nature which is unsolicited. More specifically, SPAM generally consists of an advertisement of some nature which is sent directly to a user or users or is posted in a forum or forums. While the majority of our SPAM problems do come from traditional bulk postings, a message does not have to be commercial in nature nor does it need to be sent in bulk to be considered SPAM under our rules.



The punishment for spamming a user or the board varies based on the severity of the SPAM. Users with no prior posts who blatantly post SPAM messages to multiple forums or PM multiple users may be banned without further warning. Users in good standing who send out a limited number of messages may simply be given a warning or a short suspension. There is no such thing as “good” SPAM on our board and all members, regardless of their status, may be banned immediately for spamming the board in any manner even if it is with just one message or post. As a general rule we try to take into account the nature of all messages, commercial versus private and the degree of the abuse. Specifically in terms of this issue of SPAM, simply do not send users messages containing advertising of services, goods, links or personal ads that they have NOT asked for!






The concept of data mining has a very unique impact on the Internet and DIR Explorers. Given the unique nature of forums and digital websites such as this one, data mining has evolved into numerous types of behaviors. In short, data mining is defined as information extraction with a goal of discovering unknown or hidden facts contained in a database or population. While data mining is considered a positive idea in corporate analysis, it is a very bad practice on this board in at least one particular sense.



Instead of trying to use a one size fits all definition of data mining abuse, we have put together some examples of past types of data mining that violated the terms of service. This list is in no way inclusive of all forms of data mining but is rather meant to serve as a foundation for understanding the possible ways in which data mining violations can occur.



(1) The compiling of user data, personal or demographic based, only for private or commercial gain is against the terms of service. Example: going through the member database or a number of member profiles to compile a database based on DIR Explorers users is not permitted.*



(2) The surveying of users to determine statistical research for a published project, commercial or private. Example: surveying users to determine interest in a product you are planning to launch is not permitted. Similarly, surveying users to find out broad statistical correlations for an academic paper is also mining the user population and is thus not allowed.*



(3) Attempting to draw trends or categorize general information about the DIR Explorers website by collecting data on users, posts or the board for any purpose is not allowed. Example: keeping a data file to track the user and post count or mapping the views threads receive in order to establish trends about the overall system or about any user is not allowed.

Finally, it should be understood that the idea of blocking data mining is not meant as a negative impact on any visitors of the board but rather as a means of protection. DIR Explorers takes each member’s privacy very seriously and for this reason we do not allow visitors to collect data on a member or on the board itself. There are certainly acceptable times for polling users and finding out interesting trends. For example, if you are curious how many divers live in your area, posting a poll in the appropriate forum would be an acceptable question; trying to figure out the size of the market share for your company per area is not acceptable.*



(4) The punishment for data mining varies based on the type of mining and the severity. Any attempt to collect information on the member database or other large trends BY OUTSIDE AGENCIES OR PERSONS, OR FOR SUCH ENTITIES is expressly forbidden and will be met with an immediate ban at minimum.*

(5) Users collecting data for corporate or private research may be warned and or suspended depending on the nature of the questions, their history and past abuse. If you have a question about a poll or message, ask the moderators prior to posting it!*



PLEASE NOTE: Paragraphs one through five above have an asterisk (*) at the end. The asterisk refers to the one exception to the general statements on Data Mining as follows: IF the member requesting such data research is a member in good standing of this Board who has put a request for such research to the owner, Stuart Ford, AND the research is felt to be in the best interests of all of the members of this Board and/or the re-breather community as a whole, the request MAY be allowed on a one-time basis, SO LONG AS such data is stripped of personal identification information.








As with all agreements we are sure to have left something out. This website (www.DirExplorers.com) reserves the right to add to or amend the TOS without any prior warning, AND without the mutual consent of its users. By completing your registration with us and by using this site, you agree that your DIR Explorers participation will conform to any such additions or amendments to these Terms of Service and that you agree to DirExplorers.Com changing its TOS without your agreement or notyfing you of said change.