First I would suggest read this gcaptain FAQ
Then I would suggest you read below and your original post again.
SUGGESTIONS FOR USING G.CAPTAIN FORUMS
(Please read the “you” as a generic person not you specifically, unless the shoe fits of course.)
- Have an honest understanding of your own competency, experience AND its limitations before contemplating posting something. Do you believe you are so special and so authoritative and so full of insight that you cannot accept others may be equally or more experienced? See point 5 below.
- Read the forums for many, many, many months. Explore as an ethnographer would to gain an understanding of the community - before you post something.
- Have a point. Make a point. An actual point. Not a sweepingly broad generality or ridiculously irrelevant statement(s) likely to unnecessarily offend at least one of the many sub-groups of this maritime industry of ours or offend logic or appear pompous in the process.
- Back up your point. Avoid the various logical fallacies in making and backing up your point. In particular the overuse of anecdotal information, the strawman, appeals to authority, the false cause among others. Facts are valued. Emotions and perceptions have a place but most readers will not accept them as facts. See point 6 below.
- Reconsider if presenting your resume is really central to your point. A captain and I were having a conversation with an “experienced” but poorly performing cook one time who told us he had 20 years experience cooking as if that fact made the food taste better. The captain said he (the captain) and the chief here have been eating food for our entire lives and that he felt equally qualified based on that experience to judge the performance of the cook. Others have made the point when one starts spraying out “qualifications” in terms of years whether one really has 20 years of experience or 1 year of experience 20 times. Still if you just cannot resist - there is a time and place and way of wording these little biographical details to help make your point without raising red “pompous a-hole” flags to the readers. But be aware for better or worse, your “years of experience” will no doubt shine through from the nature and quality of your posts.
- Be ready to defend your point in the face of criticism. Constructive or otherwise. Don’t be surprised to be taken to task for sloppy thinking, writing, perceived arrogance, etc. By the way, observing all these points will not prevent other members from violating them in taking you to task for your generally poor content or your own violations. The usual thin-skinned warnings are valid.
- Use the search features to see if there have been previous discussions of similar nature where your question may have been already answered or your brilliant points already made.
- Don’t post stupid stuff.
What was your point? The USN can learn from the OSV industry because you work so hard? You have so few crew members? Get in line. Everyone works hard. Everyone is undermanned. I don’t know squat about the US Navy but I’d be surprised if they are looking to the OSV industry as a prime source of continuous improvement ideas. And this is not a knock on that segment, just how poorly you have represented your case.
Of all the reasons to offer comments on this serious and fatal event and all the ways you could have analyzed/commented on the manning / duties of a USN bridge even based on your own experiences I think you missed the mark. I’m sorry it just seemed gratuitous more to call attention to yourself than advance the discussion. I’d be surprised if you really are surprised at this reaction. Surely you must have heard these types of responses in your own messroom.
Good luck to you and yours.
post by john on Jun 26, 2017
john Founder/CEO
One more thing:
Here are the guidlines that our software provider, Discourse, has suggested we use:
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