Talk:World Recreational Scuba Training Council

Sources

I've tried to establish the position of the WRSTC by referencing its status with the ANSI. This is about as good a third-party as we are likely to get as it demonstrates that the US RSTC is recognised as the secretariat of the ANSI ASC Z375 Committee. That should affirm its primary function (standardizing scuba training) and thus the principal point of the article. For the other main content (its organisation of membership and a list of its affiliate training agencies in the USA), surely that can only be a matter of record as laid out on its own website - which was previously referenced.

I'm going to be bold and remove the Sources tag - in my very humble opinion, improving this article would be easier if fact tags could be inserted to show where editors thought there was a statement that required further sourcing. RexxS (talk) 02:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The major expansion of this article by User:Divinghistory is welcome in that it provides a lot of background and history missing from the original stub. However it does lack sources, or to be more precise, relies almost exclusively on [1] the external link provided by Divinghistory. So much so, that (having now checked) a lot of the new content seems to be a cut-and-paste from that article. Since the NAUI website contains the following: "All text, layout and images © 1998-2005 NAUI Worldwide, All Rights Reserved.", it may be that this article is in violation of NAUI copyright and needs to be reverted to its previous stub. I'll defer to those with more experience of WP:C but it certainly seems copyvio to me. --RexxS (talk) 00:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The author was Jed Livingston, he can be reached at: jlivingstone@naui.org for permission, he is NAUI's Vice President and a nice guy ... drop him a line.Wiki4Thal (talk) 01:16, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What does all the mean? Alternate opinions concerning the RSTC

I'm very much in favour of including POV that may be critical of the information presented in an article.

However, this section owed much of its source to http://naui.com/pdffiles/ANSI%20or%20RSTC%20Anyway.pdf and currently that is a dead link. Without any referenceable statement from NAUI (which would per se have an authority as criticism), this section lacks anything to back up the statements made. Is it in fact WP:OR? In addition "There are many in the diving community... " is weasel words. Finally the rhetoric "Since these are, as indicated by the authors, non-optimum standards, why are they wasting all of our time?" is written in first person and reads like an debating point, rather than encyclopedic content.

I've taken this to the talk page, rather than deleting the section as I believe that an alternative view adds balance (as well as substance) to the article. I would much prefer someone familiar with the criticism to summarise it (with references, if possible) and replace this content --RexxS (talk) 19:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NAUI again

NAUI's position on RSTC was removed from its website some time ago. The link http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/5154694-post38.html (recently added to the article by an IP editor and removed by me) covers this, but obviously is unusable as a reliable source. The original document can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/20050131135637/http://www.naui.com/pdffiles/ANSI+or+RSTC+Anyway.pdf and may be useful as a reference in expanding the article to include criticism (it's still copyright NAUI, of course). --RexxS (talk) 22:51, 3 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Article balance

Interesting as the comments from NAUI are, the article is now very unbalanced. There is a principle of due weight that needs to be respected. Why do we need over half the article text to be a quotation from Jed Livingston? Surely a brief summary of the reasons why NAUI is not a member should be sufficient. This is an encyclopedia, not a soapbox, and we do not simply reproduce entire sources. --RexxS (talk) 12:24, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you about "balance," however, I think that Jed's comments are particularly important in that the represent the only direct insight that we have into the thinking of agencies whose choice it was to not join. I though that the excerpt that I used was a better approach than attempting to summarize and thus lose Jed's flavor. You will note that that was not the entire source, just the most relevant passage which is appropriate (I think) from both a encyclopedic and a copyright perspective.Wiki4Thal (talk) 17:52, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I understand it's not the entire source, but it's really not encyclopedic to reproduce so much. It should be summarised. Also there's a paragraph in the lead sourced to Wikipedia. However, a Wikipedia article is not a reliable source. It either needs to be referenced to a RS or removed. --RexxS (talk) 00:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Upgrade to article on 21/10/2012 - comments re PADI membership of RSTC Europe

The following article advises that "PADI Members in Europe, the Middle East and Africa will enjoy a higher level of customer service and support as PADI International Ltd., PADI Europe and PADI Nordic prepare to combine forces in 2011. The new regional headquarters, PADI EMEA (PADI Europe, Middle East and Africa), unites the talent and resources of the three offices to provide PADI Members with an unparalleled level of support, services and products" (New PADI Regional Headquarters (12.01.2011) [url=http://www.padi.com/scuba/news-events/default.aspx?id=16926], retrieved 21 October 2012). RSTC Europe webpage as of today advises that PADI International Ltd., PADI Europe and PADI Nordic are the members, not PADI EMEA. Either the RSTC Europewebpage is not up-to-date or the 3 PADI entities are actually members. Cowdy001 (talk) 07:12, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ken Brock

The following note was removed from the article - 'Ironically, from 1986 to 1992 the WRSTC was administered by Ken Brock, who was also an executive director of NAUI.[2]'. The note is considered to be irrelevant to the article; the article is about the WRSTC, not about NAUI or about Ken Brock. The following points should be noted. Firstly, the WRSTC has only been in existence since 1999 and accordingly to the WRSTC news release re his retirement (refer Ken Brock retires from RSTC ) which was used as the citation for the now-deleted note, Ken only worked for the US RSTC and did so from 1996 onwards. Secondly, the WRSTC New Release states that Ken had a key role in National Scuba Training Council (a US RSTC predecessor) whose members included NAUI (refer Alex Brylske's article, Training Standards:Understanding the “Why” Behind What Divers are Taught which is cited in the article). Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 11:58, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]