Basejumper.com - archive

A user posts, positing the question of if there is a conflict of interest inherent in one person's (and their school's) involvement in recent fatalities and that said individual is a moderator of this forum.

Post deleted. User banned.

Discuss.

Guess who will be banned next?

It was a throw away account made just to stir things up anonymously. I'm not going to allow that here.

The school wasn't related to that jump in any way. I was helping a friend of mine, who had around 300 BASE jumps. He was not a student. This was not a teaching situation.

I find it extremely sad that some people think that the death of my friend is a great opportunity to launch attacks on me.

I find it even sadder that they didn't even know him, or what a wonderful person he was.

I find it pathetic that they want to use this event to attack the school and the other instructors there, who were not involved in any way.

The question still stands...

But at least we can infer your stance on this, since you undeleted the post in question.

not involved? You run SRBA, you moderate this forum, and you've been closely linked to the last two fatalities at the bridge. I think that this question is valid... is the BJ forum just a site where the SRBA can recruit students and delete anything questioning the motives or rational of former BASE jumpers that have their fingers in every piece of this?

Nobody is talking trash about Jim. I think the intent is to question whether the moderator of the incident forum, should be the same person banning users for comments about the moderators involvement in the incident(s).

You keep misdirecting back to this latest one and painting yourself as the victim. It's about more than just this one.

"School wasn't related..." Well, I guess that explains the letterhead, on the last three fatalities in Twin Falls, actually. And what do all of them have in common?

Really, how many more bad judgement calls and instances of questionable integrity should we let stack up?

Nothing better to do? Maybe it's time to grow up..

2 more

Stacking on this, Tom A had to get in on the news of Dean and Graham where he said this gem...

"Aiello stopped counting his BASE jumps after his 1,000th in 2003. He jumps daily from the 486-foot high Perrine Bridge on his way to work after dropping his kids at school."

That's awesome to pretend to be a spokesman for a community that doesn't respect you and spit a bunch of bullshit. At least you did your self promotion show in a news article about the deaths of two awesome guys.

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/wireStory/base-instinct-thrill-fly-carries-risk-jump-31137194

Is this type of thing part of the ethics lecture? And does it come before or after you part where students build experimental gear that they will then use on their own rigs?

Don't forget how it's gear that's neither tested by nor recommended by the original manufacturers on their own equipment. In some cases, likely even goes against their manuals.

And after a fatality back on the student gear rack! Those kids don't know the history of the rigs they're jumping.

i really didn't want to get into this, as i really don't give a shit about anything that goes on in twin falls... but the rumors are killing me.

what Jello said above is a serious concern of mine. i've heard that the SRBA has many floating pin bridles randomly in the mix on their student gear... is this true? and why? students should not be experimenting with shit every gear manufacturer has already walked away from!

this might just be MY opinion of course, but not once in 11 years has making a modification to basic proven components of my factory rigs, ever been considered to be necessary for my safety.

theory is great, but why would you teach people to fuck with properly functioning gear, especially in a novice environment?

i know i'm nobody, but i really think THAT is a valid question.

Less rumor...likely fact based on this:

http://www.basejumper.com/...post=2977313#2977313

Or are they all Vertex containers?

No time to respond right now, I am way too busy doing media interviews and inflating my numbers and experience.

Everyone is responsible for themselves. Especially those who pay money and think they're getting valuable knowledge. How could it matter if they're mislead by someone's qualifications that are built on a foundation of bull shit.

People are so quick to forget all the great things people like Hitler did for the world.

I don't have an opinion on this scenario but I did want to comment on this statement. I belive that once you have become an instructor/leader you are stuck with it for ALL future situations. You don't get to turn it on and off per jump.

Same for mentors, you can't be one for one jump but then set a bad example and say "oh no, that jump was just for me, not to show you anything".

I learned this the hard way after becoming an organizer, you are stuck with the responility of setting an example. We have to sit down in winds that we know we could jump, just so others learn.

I jumped a few school rigs and none had a floating pin

This is not to defend any current usage of floating pins but I think if you did a little more research you would find that way back when Tom made that post, at least some reputable manufacturers used floating pins too. Sometimes it takes everyone a while to sort out what works and what doesn't.

And while you may not know or remember, it wasn't too long before that "conventional wisdom" declared the pin-closed Sorcerer to be black death (and Mark Hewitt an idiot for designing it) because all the BASE gods knew that velcro was the only way to go.


44

More specifically, this is what I remembered from well over ten years ago about the issue, maybe I'm confused,but I was pretty convinced most jumpers were not convinced.

It was even discussed here: http://www.basejumper.com/...s_%26_Cons_P1278265/

I was unaware people were even dicking around with these still until Bryan went in.

"Way back"?

Like ye-olde September 2014 "way back"?

D'OH! That's twice in 2 days that I misread or just missed a date (Bridge Hanging Girl FB post). Guess I better get new reading glasses.

I also guess I mixed up your link (2014) and blitzkrieg's, which is a 2004 thread. Regardless, sorry about that and never mind -- as I said, it wasn't meant to defend current usage of floating pins so it seems that we may be on the same page about that at least.


44

I agree. You want the role, you chase the role, you get the role, then you have to maintain the role at all times. How many students are like "What would my mentor do?" "I know, he would set the cunt on fire". Sure an extreme example but to brush it off as a "non-teaching jump" is a cop out. But I think Tom knows this and I'm sure he feels the guilt of his decisions here.

No. That's not true.

We had one rig with a floating pin bridle at the beginning of 2014. We had three rigs with floating pin bridles at the beginning of 2015. The additional two floating pins were one new bridle and one original bridle (on a Vertex we purchased second hand). To give you an idea of the percentages involved, we are running more than 60 rigs at this point, so there were never a large percentage with floating pins.

We removed all three floating pin bridles from service (including the one that was the manufacturers original equipment) after Bryan Turner's accident.

Tom, i appreciate the reply. if that's that, i would say splendid.

however, i do find it odd that you posted previously that "we started floating a pin when we replaced bridles, so that students would be exposed to this"

...as that seems to me, contradictory to having only three floating pin bridles in your school.


regardless, i'm not here to pick apart details. i would in fact be quite pleased moving forward to know that no one (including SRBA) is using or actively advocating the use of said bridles.


Bryan's death bothered me more than some. i can't help but think, had he made me aware that he was experimenting with that bridle, i would have been able to prevent his accident. and that being said, i already suffer from too much survivor's guilt outside of BASE jumping.

Honestly, I hadn't counted the bridles at that point.

And I'm still trying to be sure. Off hand, I can only recall two floating pins (the vertex that came that way and my personal Gargoyle), but I remember there being three and I'm trying to track down which rig was the third (if in fact there was one).

I can search my text messages from that time period to be sure, but I'll probably just go look through the gear in person tomorrow and see if I can find a third one.

I want to weigh in here, since this has become an issue now it seems.

Let's be clear that we at Basejumper.com have no intentions of playing favourites, and we'll gladly admit that our moderators are not perfect and sometimes make mistakes, and if the mistakes are big enough - there are consequences to them.

If you disagree with the methods used by an individual on the site, or if you want to ask them questions regarding said methods or behaviour - you're welcome to do so, if it is done in a half decent and mature way.

With that said...

We're not going to allow people to scream like children, creating new accounts, spamming the same topic in different areas or breaking the forum rules. No one is above the rules, that includes the moderators.

I have reviewed the posts that were removed by Tom, as well as the bans implemented. And honestly, it was not a case of censorship by Tom trying to protect his interests - any moderator who is following the guidelines of the forums would have taken the action that was taken.

Saying "This isn't a personal attack but..." doesn't make it any less so. The forum posts that were removed would have violated forum protocol regardless of who they were directed towards. On top of that, the users then created multiple accounts to try escape moderation (something that is strictly against forum rules). The result of their post removal prompted them to create gripe threads as well, another action that is addressed in the forum rules: http://www.basejumper.com/...Forum_Rules_513.html (read moderation)

As stated before, we are not going to protect a moderator who uses bad judgement in his removal of posts that do not offend any forum rules, however I can see no evidence of that. Instead, Tom has actually responded to threads where the questions asked were in a civil manner ( see http://www.basejumper.com/...rum.cgi?post=2982162 ). Also remember that it is normal for us to want to keep all discussions on a matter inside a single thread, so some others that address what this forum thread suggests may be locked, solely to isolate the discussion.

I mentioned before that moderators are human and also make mistakes, and if you should feel that you've been unfairly banned or your post removed unfairly, private message me. I will look at each case and take the needed action to ensure that there is no conflict of interest taking place.

So while I know that a lot of people would prefer a forum with no rules, where anything goes- that's not going to happen, cause we know exactly what happens to forums that allow that. We want to provide a platform where one can vent their frustrations, ask questions, and learn - you don't always have to say what is popular, just ensure that the post follows the basic guidelines and it will stay.

Once again, if you have problems with how something has been handled, PM me and it'll be far more likely to be resolved than creating new accounts to spam the forums with.