Restricted callsigns question.

[Matthew Bartels]

Sorry, but I don't see any room for interpretation in the policy; The re-creation of, or organization of events recognizing real world disasters, tragedies, or other such events, particularly those which resulted in loss of life, are not permitted. Loss of life stops it right there. Technically, there are more than 550 restricted callsigns based on that policy statement.

 

But to your comment about it being more about what you do with it that determines things, is exactly my point. Why does VATSIM have to be our collective conscience in a few instances, and then say "whatever" with the rest. The whole restriction is silly IMO. That is what supervisors are for. If someone wants to fly a tribute flight using UAL93, then good for them. I hope it gives them peace when they do it.

 

You're exactly right. There is little room for interpretation, but your interpretation is incorrect.

 

As someone previously mentioned, it's similar to VSOA policy as far as whether or not there is a violation for any not explicitly named call sign. Are you using the doomed flight's callsign? Are you flying the same route as the doomed flight? Are you crashing the airplane? If the answer is yes to all of those then you are in violation for recreating the disaster.

 

It's more restrictive for events as it's intent in laymen's terms is that you can not use a tragedy as the basis for creating an event. So a 9/11 memorial flight regardless of the callsign is in violation.

 

Finally, as many have said. The callsigns on the restricted list are so infamous and dangerous to the flight sim community that we made the decision to not allow them on the network at all. We did not want to restrict a large number of callsigns, so we did a thorough analysis and discussion of various callsigns and their potential impact. The final list is very small and a fraction of what it could of been.

[Andreas Fuchs]

And the rest is called "common sense".

[Brad Littlejohn]

Hi,

 

Back in the day a real possibility of VATSIM being closed existed.

 

Exactly. Most people right now see this as water under the bridge, as they weren't either on the network at the time, or we as a whole have been so far separated from those events that we forget about what consequences/ramifications we could have faced from those events. Again, it wasn't just VATSIM that was under the microscope; SATCO was already gone, and IVAO was thinking of shutting down as well. Even Microsoft's The Zone was going to shut down (eventually, it did).

 

As such a conscious decision was made and we have remained resolute in that.

 

The aforementioned being proactive instead of reactive, and that decision basically kept the entire network running.

 

Even Microsoft recalled and released a new version of their sim without the twin towers such was the potential fall out from all of this.

 

You know it's bad when the authors of their own software have to take that into account.

 

You are more than welcome to fly whatever callsign you like - any at all. The caveat being that if its one of those listed then that flight will have to be offline. There is no room for negotiation in that respect.

 

This.

 

BL.

[Tim Simpson]

Hi,

 

Back in the day a real possibility of VATSIM being closed existed.

 

Exactly. Most people right now see this as water under the bridge, as they weren't either on the network at the time, or we as a whole have been so far separated from those events that we forget about what consequences/ramifications we could have faced from those events. Again, it wasn't just VATSIM that was under the microscope; SATCO was already gone, and IVAO was thinking of shutting down as well. Even Microsoft's The Zone was going to shut down (eventually, it did).

 

BL.

 

I don't see it as water under the bridge, because frankly, the riverbed was never even wet. There was no real threat to flight simming post 9/11, and certainly no threat to VATSIM. It was, as is typical in such events, people over reacting. If VATSIM was close to shutting down, it would have been self induced. Nobody knew who, or what, VATSIM was back then, and today, nobody, outside of a few thousand flight sim nerds, knows, or cares, about VATSIM.

 

Tim

[Norman Blackburn]

That's OK Tim, you think whatever way you feel about it. It won't however change the use of callsigns as detailed in CoC. Thanks for your understanding.

[Brad Littlejohn]

Hi,

 

Back in the day a real possibility of VATSIM being closed existed.

 

Exactly. Most people right now see this as water under the bridge, as they weren't either on the network at the time, or we as a whole have been so far separated from those events that we forget about what consequences/ramifications we could have faced from those events. Again, it wasn't just VATSIM that was under the microscope; SATCO was already gone, and IVAO was thinking of shutting down as well. Even Microsoft's The Zone was going to shut down (eventually, it did).

 

BL.

 

I don't see it as water under the bridge, because frankly, the riverbed was never even wet. There was no real threat to flight simming post 9/11, and certainly no threat to VATSIM. It was, as is typical in such events, people over reacting. If VATSIM was close to shutting down, it would have been self induced. Nobody knew who, or what, VATSIM was back then, and today, nobody, outside of a few thousand flight sim nerds, knows, or cares, about VATSIM.

 

Tim

 

On the contrary; 9/11 posed a serious threat to this and every other network, especially when mainstream media caught wind of it:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/09/14/microsoft.flight.sim/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/09/17/world_trade_centre/

https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/authorities-question-criteria-for-access-to-flight-simulators/

 

And that's just for starters with fllightsimming. A simple search in this forum for events from then can easily be done as well, as this forum existed back at the time, along with a lot of us who were on the network when that happened. Harv, Amy, Kyp, GSM, and the rest of the BoG at the time were in some serious discussions about the future of this network around that time, as no-one wanted to be on it at that time, and IIRC, NBC News even ran a story of some kid recreating the entire events on FS2K, and talked about doing it online. Serious FUD was spread about it and flying on ANY network, let alone VATSIM, and that's with VATSIM being the biggest network at that time.

 

Again, if it weren't for the BoG opting to keep the network going, we could have been shut down well and truly after 9/11 occurred.

 

BL.

[Brendan Held]

Question

as a memorial flight of 9/11

Would it be allowed to sign on as something like
 

remembrance/remembering/remember 175 - 93 - 77 - 11

 

thanks

 

Edited September 10, 2021 at 06:55 PM by Brendan Held

[Don Desfosse]

Perhaps you have not yet had a chance to read the VATSIM Code of Conduct, Restricted Callsign Policy (https://www.vatsim.net/restricted-callsigns), or the dozens, or perhaps even hundreds, of forum posts on the topic.

Those, like me, who still place particular value on the concepts of reading for understanding and taking personal accountability to do so are likely thinking, "Really?!?!?!?" or even "Are you _____ kidding me?!?!?!?!?"

So I'll save you the trouble.

NO!