divinginfo.mt policies

Aims

Divinginfo.mt is a volunteer-led portal aimed to provide information about diving in the Maltese Islands. It is self-funded by the volunteers behind it and receives no grants, donations nor income from public, commercial entities nor NGOs. Since its funding until the last update of this policy, approximately €200 were spent on creating and running this site, not counting the countless hours. It’s money and time well spent.

Editorial Policy

We aim to publish any information related to diving in the Maltese Islands which has a cultural, technical, historical or other related interest. We do not indulge in advertising or promotion of individual commercial entities, though we do look favourably at promoting NGOs and other volunteering activities.

We do indulge in activism without going into partisan politics. There’s nothing to be ashamed of of working towards retaining or improving the quality of our diving experience as local and visiting divers. Hence, even though we do occasionally get in touch with specific or political figures, we do that with the full intent to promote the sport, rather than to indicate support for one or the others – there’s good apples and other rotten to the core apples on each side in our opinion and only their actions can tell us in which grouping individual politicians fall. Further action is to be left to voting divers at the polls, bur we’ll happily point out who’s doing good stuff for the diving community, and who’s slacking or working against our sport or environment’s interest.

Diving centres and commercial entities policy

We do collaborate with the PDSA where the potential benefit is for the Sport. We are not affiliated nor feel obliged to toe its line if we don’t agree on something, which has occurred in the past. We do understand that not all diving centres are affiliated with the PDSA, nor that all PDSA members are always in full agreement with the PDSA. As an industry representative, we respect it. But we also do respect diving centres who may not be affiliated with it.

As divinginfo.mt, we may take editorial positions which may be in conflict with diving centres policies, but not with regard to protection of the environment, safeguarding access to diving sites and diver safety, nor with diving being a sport to be enjoyed by all. However, we cannot keep our mouth shut and not speak out in fear of losing diving tourists due to bad media.

We will not promote specific diving centres. There is only one way diving centres may self-promote themselves through our pages and social media and that is to provide editorially acceptable content not of an advertising nature such as dive sightings, diving tips and special offers, for which no payment is solicited, nor accepted.

Conflicting interests policy

We do understand that divers’ needs are sometimes in conflict with other groups’ interests, for example, leisure and commercial fishing, leisure and commercial boating activities, construction and development and others.

Where we do cross these interested parties interests, we have no regrets. Divers cannot keep bending over backwards. We have a gem in the underwater environment that we’d better protect, before we screw it up like what’s happened to these islands general land based environment. Furthermore, divers are humans and they need to be protected from dangers caused by others’ interests. We can co-exist, and collaboration is the key.

If you disagree with any of our editorial content, feel free to contact us and debate your points, and we’ll publish them too. However, we do reserve our right to criticize, debate and disagree, and lobby in favour of divers’ interests first and foremost.

Volunteering policy

This is a privately and volunteer-led effort. The founder keeps the keys (and responsibility) towards anything published or stated in the name of divinginfo.mt .

However, we do welcome a helping hand! We can always use help int he form of content creation, sightings reports, technical help, search engine optimisation and a few other things, for which we will pay nothing but thank you from the bottom of our hearts (and hand over a beer here and there) 🙂

If you feel you can contribute in any manner, do Contact Us!