You might notice a few changes with this site over the next few months. We started the site using the Stack Exchange system, but unfortunately the system has had a few teething troubles since it was first created last year. This means that I can’t guarantee the future of the site on the Stack Exchange system, but the good news is that there are plenty of alternatives to Stack Exchange and I’ve gone for Shapado.
The new system is not too different from Stack Exchange and all of the questions and answers have been imported in so the community doesn’t loose anything. The new system also has a few rather useful features like improved email notifications so you will be able to keep up with your questions and answers much easier and some improvements in support for languages other than English. Having said all that if you do have any problems with the system then please get in touch and let me know so I can keep it running smoothly.
Thankyou to everyone who has supported the site throughout this process. Your support is a massive help in keeping a project like this going.
This week there has been a major shake up in Stack Exchange, the system which this site runs on. It has been decided that only the most active sites will now survive In the long term. The site therefore has just three months to prove it is with keeping open. My original plan of building the site and the community over 2 to 3 years has been completely torn up.
I really need your help to show that this site is worth keeping open. If you would like to keep the site active all you need to do is just to ask a question or if you can’t think of one, just see if you can answer one of the existing questions.
I Hopefully within the next few months we’ll be able to prove that this site is worth keeping open.
Thankyou to everyone who has shown this site so much support so far.
Ian
One of the less well know features of the SAR Knoweldge site are question bounties so I thought I’d give you a little background on waht a bounty is.
A bounty gives you the chance to invest a little bit more in a question to try and get it answered sooner, or if you are answering a question it gives you a chance to earn a little bit more reputation for answering a question that one user would like answered quickly.
You can see if a question has a bounty by the little blue box with white writing showing how much extra reputation answering the question is worth next to the title of the question. If you become the accepted answer for a question, you will normally get the bounty as long as you answer within 10 days of the bounty being posted. It’s all fairly simple and a great way of quickly earning extra reputation.
If you have a question that is not being answered, you can easily add a bounty to the question just by clicking the button on the individual questions page. The problem with doing this is that you have to donate some of your reputation to the bounty. The system then doubles the reputation that you donated to make answering the question that little bit sweeter.
If you want to see questions that have an open bounty, just click on the featured tab. Answering a featured question is a great way to boost your repution if you are looking for a bit more.
Before signing off I’d just like to say, if you haven’t had a chance to take a look at Deb Lauman’s project to write a book about the Himalaya Dog Rescue Squad in Nepal, please go an have a look. It is an amazing project that is worthy of plenty of support from the worldwide SAR community. Please donate to her Kickstarter project because there are only 20 days left.
One of my main aims behind launching SAR-Knowledge is to try and improve the quality of reviews of SAR equipment, publications and services. There really is very little information out there to allow SAR team to make good informed decisions about what will suit them best. It’s great if teams can get equipment to review for themselves, but this does take effort and there is only so much any team can do.
We’re going to try and improve this situation with the Reviews Scheme. This scheme aims to put suppliers in direct contact with people in the SAR community who are recognised for their informed opinions.
The Reviews Scheme launches today for registered members of the Search and Rescue Knowledge exchange who have a reputation over 100. It is completely free to both register as a member and for suppliers to get the contact details of scheme members. It is not going to be a quick fix, and is going to take some time for SAR suppliers to use the system extensively, but I’m hoping that is a good step in the right direction, that given time will enable SAR teams to make better informed choices.
I had a debreif with my rescue team this weekend following a major deployment. They are always interesting experiences often with some fascinating and surprising learning points coming out the mission. I guess it is the nature of certain types of search and rescue that actual real world experience is actually quite hard to come by so there is always a huge amount of learning to be done.
One personal positive to come out of the debrief is how much I have learnt just from other peoples posts to this knowledge exchange. The site has been running now for less than 6 months and yet, in some areas, I’ve completely changed the way I look at things, in my opinion for the better. Every post that someone makes to the knowledge exchange brings something new, something different and something personal that we can all learn from.
I’d personally like to say thankyou to everyone who has posted to the knowledge exchange. The ideas I have learnt since it started justify the approach of a cross discipline, cross team place for exchanging all the ideas and solutions we have in the search and rescue community.
Thanks for all your support.
Ian
It was always a little surprising to me how little information on search and rescue was available on the internet. Of course nothing replaces good quality training, but some of the most enlightening training sessions I have ever taken part in have been run by organisations other than my own. Different teams and different teachers always have a different way of looking at things.
So where are the places out there on the internet that foster this cross team thinking about the problems we have in search and rescue. They do exist and there are some fascinating and enlightening discussions on email lists, but if you are not on the list you miss the chat. I wanted to create a site that allowed some cross discipline and cross team discussion on the issues that we face in Search and Rescue and to make that chat available for everyone to see.
I don’t want to this site to replace good quality training or face to face discussion. It is not a money making project and I don’t want to replace the email lists, it is just a place where rescue workers can discuss the problems and find solutions so that the knowledge we have can be passed around the world and down the generations.
I hope you like the site and please get in touch if you have any comments or improvements you would like for the site.
Ian