October 10, 2001

7:23 PM

17 Divers Die In Hurricane
From NPR: Hurricane Iris struck Belize earlier this week. The storm took few victims. Those who died were all members of the same scuba expedition from the Dive Club of Richmond, Va. NPR's Andrea Seabrook went to a meeting of the club, where surviving members talked about the friends they lost and the trust that exists between divers. NPR's RealAudio report
posted by hotdoughnutsnow (6 comments total)

Here is the MSNBC article, but the NPR story is more personal. I watched this on the local news last night, it was intense.
posted by hotdoughnutsnow at 7:25 PM on October 10, 2001

Shit, my next door neighbors here in Richmond are avid divers, I'm sure they knew some of the people involved. The local NBC affiliate's site has some more info. Seeing the list of husbands and wives presumed dead is incredibly painful...
posted by machaus at 7:50 PM on October 10, 2001

It is painful, and tragic. I'm not trying to diminish that (and some friends of mine are divers, too).

That being said, aside from the extraordinary frenzy of the initial World Trade Center news links, this weblog front page isn't for standard news links that the users can and do find elsewhere like CNN, NPR, NY Times, NBC, MSNBC etc. in the course of their regular internet reading.

Again, don't take this as an attempt to denigrate the content of the link but please really decide before you make a link/topic on the front page whether it works within the MetaFilter guidelines. The membership has really increased in a short period of time, and the servers (and the Wizard handling them) are *strained* to capacity as more and more recent members (and I've been a guilty party) posted frequently in an effort to "break news" topics on the front page--when that isn't what Metafilter content is meant to be.
posted by Kato at 8:49 PM on October 10, 2001

Kato, aren't comments like that supposed to be made in Metatalk? In fact, aren't comments like mine meant to be made in Metatalk?
posted by Doug at 9:08 PM on October 10, 2001

I personally don't mind discussing news items such as this one as it gives rise to a bit more introspection on a topic than is allowed by the message boards on various newspapers. I could use a break from the anthrax/conspiracy/wtc/09-11 discussion once in awhile and this isn't hurting anybody. So we have one less post on the latest Britney Spears car crash hoax -- big deal. Myself, I'll take an actual interesting news item on a topic I'm not entirely familiar with over the latest flash game or celebrity gossip sighting... though I did enjoy rereading that gossip list recently...
posted by evixir at 9:20 PM on October 10, 2001

Kato - you joined MetaFilter a month ago. It's interesting that you are taking it upon yourself to educate everyone about how it's run. As Doug said, you would find a better audience in MetaTalk... until then, this is pulled from the MeFi guidelines:

"A good post to MetaFilter is something that meets the following criteria: most people haven't seen it before, there is something interesting about the content on the page, and it might warrant discussion from others."

This link adheres to the guidelines.
posted by Hankins at 11:34 AM on October 11, 2001