Vatsim needs more controllers...

[Thimo Koolen]

On 8/1/2022 at 11:00 PM, Tim Simpson said:

Unfortunately, there is no real incentive, nor desire for VATSIM to streamline the controller training process.  All the power is with the individual ARTCC's, and they are kinda like the greek system at a university.  Every controller has gone through the current "hazing" of sweatbox, and over the shoulder exams where you pile on the traffic, so nobody wants that system to stop and go away, just like every new frat brother can't wait for the next pledge class to come in.
 

This can't be more false and is quite disrespectful for all the work staff puts in. As training staff for a subdivision on VATSIM (almost two years at the moment), we're working hard to improve the flow and training. Obviously not all is perfect, but change is not implemented overnight. We (Training Director + Deputy Training Director) meet every week for a few hours to work on the training program and go through emails and we even do things outside of those meetings. Easily a few hours each week on a volunteering basis. While it might differ in other subdivisions, we have spoken to a few and I know about how hard they all work.

 

Obviously not all is visible for members. A lot is "behind-the-scenes"-work. But, a lot is happening. And it's always easy to complain unfortunately, while everyone is trying their best.

[Magnus Meese]

Recruiting isn't the problem, retaining people is. Speaking from the perspective of my own vACC, the wait time from sign up to actual training can be a year long because there's so much interest, but unfortunately a lot of people in that queue are only mildly interested. Once it's their turn, they do the training because they've waited all this time, right? Great! But after having spent between 5 and 15 sessions worth (times 1 or 2 hours each) of their mentor's personal time becoming a decent VATSIM tower controller, they say thank you very much, control for a month, and disappear forever because they weren't really that into it in the first place. This very human, but taxes VATSIM specifically because everything is done voluntary without compensation. Noone really cares too much when someone gets their PPL and then never flies again, which is fairly common, because they only wasted their own time and money. Instructors and aircraft owners got paid, so the system kind of works.

There's no simple solution to this problem, all you can do is try to make the training as easy and efficient and with as much self-study as possible to ensure minimum time is wasted on people who won't stay around. Stopping training because someone isn't cut out for it is really hard to do on VATSIM under the current rules (it is a hobby community where you try to avoid excluding people, after all), so many hours can and will be spent grinding the same basic theory and techniques over and over again. The last couple years I've trained between 10 and 20 people who certified, maybe two or three are still active. Most of the time I'd rather be doing anything else than mentoring due only to this fact, as it feels rather hopeless at times, but it's a way to give back to a network which not only have given me an amazing hobby virtually for free, but also led to a great career. And once in a while you get to train people who are passionate about it, stick around, climb the grades, and becomes resources to the network, and that is always a joy to see.

[Michael Flemming Hansen]

On 8/10/2022 at 3:55 PM, Magnus Meese said:

Recruiting isn't the problem, retaining people is. Speaking from the perspective of my own vACC, the wait time from sign up to actual training can be a year long because there's so much interest, but unfortunately a lot of people in that queue are only mildly interested. Once it's their turn, they do the training because they've waited all this time, right? Great! But after having spent between 5 and 15 sessions worth (times 1 or 2 hours each) of their mentor's personal time becoming a decent VATSIM tower controller, they say thank you very much, control for a month, and disappear forever because they weren't really that into it in the first place. This very human, but taxes VATSIM specifically because everything is done voluntary without compensation. Noone really cares too much when someone gets their PPL and then never flies again, which is fairly common, because they only wasted their own time and money. Instructors and aircraft owners got paid, so the system kind of works.

There's no simple solution to this problem, all you can do is try to make the training as easy and efficient and with as much self-study as possible to ensure minimum time is wasted on people who won't stay around. Stopping training because someone isn't cut out for it is really hard to do on VATSIM under the current rules (it is a hobby community where you try to avoid excluding people, after all), so many hours can and will be spent grinding the same basic theory and techniques over and over again. The last couple years I've trained between 10 and 20 people who certified, maybe two or three are still active. Most of the time I'd rather be doing anything else than mentoring due only to this fact, as it feels rather hopeless at times, but it's a way to give back to a network which not only have given me an amazing hobby virtually for free, but also led to a great career. And once in a while you get to train people who are passionate about it, stick around, climb the grades, and becomes resources to the network, and that is always a joy to see.

From the perspective of someone who has just recently started my pre-training, I can give an answer to that issue, from my own perspective. The reason why I signed up with the Vatsim training department was that it intrigued me, but more importantly, I had the opportunity to sit as a delivery controller a couple of times on the IVAO network, before their Scandinavian department changed the rules. 
That gave me a quite clear hands on experience of what it actually means to be a controller on a virtual network. My take is that nobody really knows what it actually involved being a controller before they sign up for training. Yes, you can observe, but in all honest, that is as helpful as learning how it is to be a carpenter by looking at someone doing carpentry. Sometimes you need to get your "hands dirty" in order to really feel what something is like. 
This is, in my opinion, the big conundrum of vatsim controlling. How to you give people access to controlling "from the street" without slacking on the quality standards, but on the other hand, how do you give people a full hands on experience on what it is like to be a vatsim controller, before they say yes.

My suggestion is that the vatsim training should be reversed. In the pre-training phase you read a lot and when you have done that, you are assigned a mentor that will further your training. How about instead give people a short, concise description on how to do delivery or ground, for example, and then assign people a controller (doesn't have to be a mentor) where you can try out how it is. You are the person controlling, but are in constant communication with the certified controller. This should obviously be announced, just like exams, so that the pilots realize that things might be a little "uncoordinated" at times. Like, sitting at the checkout line as a trainee, with the actual checkout worker supervising your work. 
After 2-4 sessions, if people are still interested, then they can continue the pre-training read-up.

Sincerely,

Michael

[David Gwynn]

question why no facility will accept a person like me just because of my GRP. how does anyone on the vatsim expect me to improve if no one will take me?

[Don Desfosse]

That would be a question for your facility or your Division.  They would hold your training records and be able to guide you on a path forward.

[Jason Saucier]

I think it's just something we hafta deal with??  Because we are on here for free. If we paid a fee then I could see the frustration.  

[Malcolm Fernandez]

Also you gotta note..

 

Training times

 

I am a OBS at ZOB and training times are normally weekdays during the afternoon (EST) morning (PST)..Most people are in school so normally those slots are very slow to be grabbed.....Weekends is when training staff is avaible all day and post many slots up...I am currently approaching the end of my S1 training and the training times have been decent,its taking time but thats mostly on me and not the great training staff.....

 

This is just for a mid sized artcc like ZOB....

 

Many other artccs have waitlists for training that spans months and months...because of the Student:Mentor/instructor ratio

 

We don't really NEED more controllers on the US but more mentors and instructors

 

But why aren't people signing up?

 

Many people have stated in this thread that the main reason instructors and mentors dont join are that normally people get their S1 and Control twice and quit. This resulted in the mentor wasting 5-10 hours teaching this single student who quit after a month

 

 

[Rahul Parkar]

1 hour ago, Malcolm Fernandez said:

Many people have stated in this thread that the main reason instructors and mentors dont join are that normally people get their S1 and Control twice and quit. This resulted in the mentor wasting 5-10 hours teaching this single student who quit after a month

This is all but one part of it.

Committing to being an instructor or mentor is a rather large commitment on time. And for many it's not time they have, some are also very comfortable being controllers without the added responsibility because they want to control, and others are quite simply not fantastic at it and know that about themselves or find it out.

Retention of controllers is another thing, people have come and gone from VATSIM for years and years, and as instructors, mentors and training staff have disappeared there have always been people to take their place. It appears from my position that the pipeline has started to dry up of people willing to continue along the path and go on to instruct and mentor. Why is that?

My $0.02 is that the community should really start to have an inquest as to what's driving so many people away, especially those with vast experience training and managing facilities.

Cheers!
Rahul

[Alistair Thomson]

32 minutes ago, Rahul Parkar said:

Retention of controllers is another thing, people have come and gone from VATSIM for years and years, and as instructors, mentors and training staff have disappeared there have always been people to take their place. It appears from my position that the pipeline has started to dry up of people willing to continue along the path and go on to instruct and mentor. Why is that?

Maybe the post by Benjamin Koula about "less knowledgeable pilots" is relevant?

[Luke Kolin]

37 minutes ago, Alistair Thomson said:

Maybe the post by Benjamin Koula about "less knowledgeable pilots" is relevant?

If I was to require teachers to have a PhD in the classics to teach kindergarten and they get frustrated and switch careers, should I blame the children?

We've had a continual mismatch in VATSIM between the skills required to control at a meaningful level and where we are at with pilots. If we require an exam and then 5-10 hours on mentorship over several days or weeks just to control GND, I'm not surprised in the slightest that the vast majority of new controllers leave when they discover that what they imagine ATC to be about will require months or years of training and drudgery. Our ATC organizations are filled with people who put up with that and don't see anything wrong with it - survivorship bias at its best.

Complaints about pilot proficiency have been a constant on VATSIM for over two decades now. We've kept raising the bar for controllers and it seems like VATSIM is now adjusting for pilots by requiring payware navdata and weather add-ons rather than a saner balance between the two. If one's description of one's hobby (whether ATC or flying) involves the word "casual", VATSIM isn't the place for you no matter what we may think.

If only software and its interoperability here was treated with the same passion 😄

cheers

[Alistair Thomson]

1 hour ago, Luke Kolin said:

We've had a continual mismatch in VATSIM between the skills required to control at a meaningful level and where we are at with pilots.

Hi again Luke. I absolutely agree with all you say here - with the exception of :

 

1 hour ago, Luke Kolin said:

VATSIM is now adjusting for pilots by requiring payware navdata and weather add-ons

where VATSIM has not required that at all. On the other hand the BoG has now mandated the requirement of pilots to actually know stuff. You might argue that this is too little, too late, and I have some sympathy with the former, but it's never too late.

 

1 hour ago, Luke Kolin said:

If I was to require teachers to have a PhD in the classics to teach kindergarten and they get frustrated and switch careers, should I blame the children?

I think that raises several points, but misses the big one. The big one is that teacher knowledge in depth can do nothing but give a richer experience to the learners. Someone brighter than me once said that education is not about filling a brain with knowledge as if it were a vase being filled with water, but more like setting fire to the brain as if it were a furnace. I think that requires teachers with depth, commitment and empathy.

One of the side points is that if someone wants to teach and finds that the entry requirements are too steep, maybe they don't want to teach that much after all. Education is the single most important thing we can offer. We can't leave that responsibility to chance, nor to incompetence.

[Malcolm Fernandez]

After thinking of a system for ARTCCs or VACCs to work with this shortage,i thought about a automated method that requires just a small amount of instructors

 

This concept is based for vatusa

 

Student  joins vatusa,passes S1 developemental

Student chooses ARTCC

Student then do a GND/DEL exam and then does some praticice clearances on a VATUSA wide tool called "Text clearances"

Student take S1 final exam with artcc and if they pass,they become a S1

[Filippo Genoni]

1 hour ago, Malcolm Fernandez said:

After thinking of a system for ARTCCs or VACCs to work with this shortage,i thought about a automated method that requires just a small amount of instructors

 

This concept is based for vatusa

 

Student  joins vatusa,passes S1 developemental

Student chooses ARTCC

Student then do a GND/DEL exam and then does some praticice clearances on a VATUSA wide tool called "Text clearances"

Student take S1 final exam with artcc and if they pass,they become a S1

This is the current VATUSA system:

- OBS joins VATUSA and goes through the VATUSA academy courses for DEL/GND before attempting the S1 test.

- Upon passing the S1 test, the student, gets the opportunity to join an ARTCC.

- Student joins ARTCC and follows the ARTCC training program for OBS to S1

- Upon passing the S1 pratical exam, the student is awared with the S1 rating and its related certification/s.

 

 

In my opinion your method 'with less instructors' is just putting controller quantity over quality.

Kind Regards,

[Rahul Parkar]

On 9/20/2022 at 9:47 PM, Luke Kolin said:

If I was to require teachers to have a PhD in the classics to teach kindergarten and they get frustrated and switch careers, should I blame the children?

Indeed this is an interesting conundrum, the other side to it is for those willing to stick around, what incentive is there to engage in the teaching process? The current structures of appointed facility managers and others breed infighting and politics. Those that wish to even attempt to help the community are forced to engage, and that is a grating experience for most. Anecdotally that is what I've seen across various divisions, I wouldn't be surprised to see stats showing that C1s who never mentor, instruct or take a staff position last longer on the network as controllers than those who do.

On 9/20/2022 at 9:47 PM, Luke Kolin said:

If only software and its interoperability here was treated with the same passion 😄

Now now Luke, you and I know software development no longers cares for interoperability. Why would one need such a stupid thing. 😁 (On a side note, it's a pleasure to see you here)

On 9/20/2022 at 11:51 PM, Alistair Thomson said:

One of the side points is that if someone wants to teach and finds that the entry requirements are too steep, maybe they don't want to teach that much after all. Education is the single most important thing we can offer. We can't leave that responsibility to chance, nor to incompetence.

A wonderful point, it is the most important thing we can offer, and we need to do more than we currently do to retain people who do want to or have the knowledge to teach.

 

On 9/20/2022 at 9:03 PM, Alistair Thomson said:

Maybe the post by Benjamin Koula about "less knowledgeable pilots" is relevant?

I think parts are, but I think there's some wider issues in the ATC world than pilots who are not as skilled as controllers may always want them to be.

[Luke Kolin]

On 9/20/2022 at 6:51 PM, Alistair Thomson said:

where VATSIM has not required that at all. On the other hand the BoG has now mandated the requirement of pilots to actually know stuff.

My concern is based around the CoC amendments requiring real-world weather and especially navigation to arbitrary waypoints. To me that suggests a movement towards ActiveSky and a Navigraph subscription. I don't think that's the BoG's intent right now, but how that gets interpreted at the local level is another story altogether.

15 hours ago, Rahul Parkar said:

Indeed this is an interesting conundrum, the other side to it is for those willing to stick around, what incentive is there to engage in the teaching process? The current structures of appointed facility managers and others breed infighting and politics. Those that wish to even attempt to help the community are forced to engage, and that is a grating experience for most. Anecdotally that is what I've seen across various divisions, I wouldn't be surprised to see stats showing that C1s who never mentor, instruct or take a staff position last longer on the network as controllers than those who do.

I would be fascinated to see the controller funnel. What percentage of people pass the initial exams and then make it to controlling on the network as an S1 doing DEL or GND? What percentage of that actually make it to S2/TWR, S3/APP and then finally C1? What percentage are around in another year? I could totally understand a lack of desire to instruct if the statistics suggest that there's an excellent chance (over 50% or 60%) that this time would be "wasted" by not actually getting to the other end of the process.

I really do wonder if the controller training process manages to discourage both students and instructors.

Cheers!

[Trevor Hannant]

8 hours ago, Luke Kolin said:

I would be fascinated to see the controller funnel. What percentage of people pass the initial exams and then make it to controlling on the network as an S1 doing DEL or GND? What percentage of that actually make it to S2/TWR, S3/APP and then finally C1? What percentage are around in another year? I could totally understand a lack of desire to instruct if the statistics suggest that there's an excellent chance (over 50% or 60%) that this time would be "wasted" by not actually getting to the other end of the process.

I really do wonder if the controller training process manages to discourage both students and instructors.

Cheers!

I don't have the figures to back any of this up but I'm sure there's a large %age of those who join who give up because they only ever get as far as doing DEL/GND.  While this will vary from Division to Division, the waiting times at some are horrendous but yet more and more are added to the list rather than saying "sorry, we don't have the resources to train right now".   When you have to sit as an S1 for over 12 months because you can't get higher than mid-20s in the queue, then there's something that need to be addressed and the gates closed

[Don Desfosse]

2 hours ago, Trevor Hannant said:

... there's something that need to be addressed and the gates closed

I would respectfully suggest that there's something that needs to be addressed so the gates don't have to be closed.  Find the root cause and solve it.  We don't have enough mentors or instructors , and we don't invest enough time and energy in retention of mentors, instructors and students. 

Are places with long queues using mentors?  Most people are happier with slow progress than no progress (i.e. waiting in queue).  A nice analogy that  I read yesterday was that most people much prefer being on a slowly taxiing aircraft than one that is stopped (i.e. taxis at full/normal taxi speed to the end of the runway and then stops waiting for their turn).  Mentors can get the ball rolling, teach to the best of their ability, and they develop teaching skill in the process, while keeping the student engaged and learning and practicing their craft.  There is an education pipeline, too.  For those that show aptitude, make a big deal out of their "promotion" to mentor status.  And make 10X the big deal out of promotion to instructor status/rating. 

Part of this is also the strength of the community.  The controlling community never wants to have their mentors or instructors feel like they're doing a "job"; that's one reason why we lose mentors and instructors.  We celebrate the accomplishments of the students that move up in the ranks, but how many facilities celebrate the accomplishments of the mentors and instructors?  How many publish stats showing how many students they have helped earn ratings AND THEIR RETENTION TIMES?  (For that matter, how many facilities track and publish retention times?)  

Training bandwidth is always an issue, but it's worse at some facilities than others.  Within or even across Divisions, how many facilities with horrendous training queues are borrowing mentors and/or instructors from neighboring facilities/divisions?  Kind of like a visiting controller, perhaps there are mentors/instructors out there that wouldn't mind helping out their neighbors in the short term, assuming they get lauded with praise from both facilities for their time and experience.

Bottom line is we need to find and kill the bottlenecks which will help in reducing attrition, and part of that means we need to very actively respect and appreciate the contributions of our mentors and instructors to help them feel more valued and increase mentor and instructor retention.  Get more students to at least a foundational level where they can get on position faster, and allow the mentors to provide on the job training (OJT), tips, tricks, feedback and support. 

Just a few ideas.  Some or all may work for many facilities.  I'm not talking about sacrificing quality.  But we also need to find the "sweet-spot" balance between quality and quantity.  Most pilots out there would much rather have 5-10X the ATC at a "B+" quality level than zero to one controller online at an "A" quality level.  There will always be a certain percentage of controllers that will aspire to the "A" level.  But a healthy percentage of 40 controllers is a lot better than a healthy percentage of 8 controllers....

[Trevor Hannant]

Something needs to be done Don, but to start focussing on training/retention of mentors, you have to take the resources away from the training queue - which is already growing at a rate faster than people can be trained.

 

[Don Desfosse]

Generally probably true, but I wonder if an enlightened appeal could be made to "retired" instructors to come back to do specific "train the trainer" classes.  They should be getting a more enlightened class load which should reduce frustration.  Just thinking out loud... The more brainstorming the community does, the more likely people will turn decent ideas into good ones, and good ones into great ones.

[Reinhard Ziegler]

On 7/31/2022 at 2:15 AM, Kevin Moseley said:

It's a Saturday afternoon, and I've been watching Volanta pretty much all day, and the average coverage I've seen has been 1-2 ARTCCs, and a handful of TRACONs, in the entirety of the United States.  This morning, I logged on, and decided to fly from KMEM to KMKE (in Milwaukee, just outside of Chicago) based solely on who was online, but by the time I did my plan in Simbrief, rebooted my computer (a practice I advise anyone to do before using MSFS), and got to the ramp, the controllers on both ends of my flight were gone, and both of them had only been on for about half an hour before I decided to hit the go button.  Neither position has been restaffed since.

Kev, I want to pick up some points you've adressed in your post, because I've got some actual tips for you to have almost guaranteed ATC and because I've been an active IVAO member from like 2013 to 2018 or so and I think some of your suggestions would lead directly to where IVAO went: becoming a network

- no one wants to fly anymore on

- having divisions giving up

- losing members.

 

Over on the avsim forums, I've described how I got to fly 2 or 3 legs a day, spending about 6-9h per day flying on VATSIM and having ATC almost all the time.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/620690-your-experiences-and-thoughts-of-vatsim/page/3/?tab=comments#comment-4802084

Check out this link. It's basically about checking Qutescoops booked ATC function, then paste it to google calendar and planning flights accordingly.

 

The problem on your side could be, that there are no US ATC bookings on Qutescoop so you might get this info from somewhere else.

 

Another point I'd like to comment on is this

On 7/31/2022 at 2:15 AM, Kevin Moseley said:

[...] it is far too difficult and bureaucratic to get controller ratings, which probably turns a lot of would-be controllers off.

[...] Another way is to offer some sort of incentives, from actual money (which could be collected from donations or even optional dues, which I for one would happily pay if it meant having coverage like another online ATC option that I won't name), software giveaways like MSFS licenses, airplanes from various makers like PMDG, Fenix, Just Flight, etc.,

[...]

I was an IVAO member for half a decade.

One of many major problem of IVAO was (I guess still is lol), that people are online just to get "rewards".

I've been an active ATC too but quit on it because IVAO had a lot of events and rewards and sht and this is, where the problem starts:

There were many many pilots participating, but those where online just to get badges and hours.

I sht you not, I've seen many pilots with couple 1000s!!! hours on the clock but unable to fly a heading, unable to observe initial climbs, unable to perform any other approach than a standard ILS (autoland I guess). Trust me, if you've got just one of those guys (I can't stress this enough, I was always very happy to help newbies and have always been very understanding regarding people who are inexperienced but actually asking and willing to learn), it takes sooo much time and attention like 10 other pilots who know how to fly a heading would take.

You can imagine everyone gets frustrated (other pilots getting ILS overshoots, etc and the ATC) by people who do not have any other interest than getting event badges and hours.

I can only beg VATSIM to never ever introduce this kind of nonsense!!!

By doing so, you loose experienced ATC, leading to less ATC online, leading to less pilots flying, leading to less new members actually wanting to learn towards becoming an ATC and finally become a network like IVAO, where many people go and find a better network 😉

 

 

If I was an ATC on VATSIM too, I'd just like to have pilots who listen out, do what they get instructed to do so or report unable and know how to handle their plane (no, having 10 different payware aircraft doesn't really help in this regard...).

I've never provided ATC on IVAO in order to get something for it, but just for the fun of it.

 

The only way to prosper as a online network is to keep both pilots and controllers skilled and observing rules valid for everyone.

When ATC is having fun controlling, they come online more often.

If there's more ATC online, more people will choose to fly on VATSIM.

More people flying online on VATSIM attract new members and avertisting VATSIM unintentionally (like livestreams, volanta or simtoolkit online maps etc).

 

That's my 0,02€ from an IVAO to VATSIM switcher perspective 😉

Hope this creates some understanding.

[Reinhard Ziegler]

On 7/31/2022 at 2:15 AM, Kevin Moseley said:

Right now, only Seattle Center and Jax Center are online, and Seattle just came online.  Whoever is manning it may be gone in half an hour, a situation I've seen a lot of, too.  And I've been an actual user for less than a week.

What would help in that regard is if every controller would state an actual time he plans to be guaranteed online with a 95% chance (sure, everyone can have urgent events happening in real life).

If there's ATC somewhere online for already 2 hours, and I would arrive in an hour, I often choose not to fly to, because not many are online for +3h in one session.

But if this ATC would state in his controller info, that he's planning to be online for another 2 hours, I'll plan my flight to the airport he's staffing.

 

[Andreas Fuchs]

I am a passionate user of Qutescoop, but those who do not wish to install this program only for the purpose of accessing ATC-bookings, I recommend this page: https://statsim.net/atc/

[Reinhard Ziegler]

4 hours ago, Andreas Fuchs said:

I am a passionate user of Qutescoop, but those who do not wish to install this program only for the purpose of accessing ATC-bookings, I recommend this page: https://statsim.net/atc/

I use statsim for when I'm at work and want to see where I'm probably gonna be flying this evening, cause my company doesn't use Qutescoop, unfortunately... (sucks 😂😂)

The cool thing using Qutescoop is, you can sort by facility (APP, CTR, TWR...), time and you see if the booked position is a training session or not.

 

Unfortunately, it's not used by US ATC, so I was never able to plan flights in the US back in P3D when I used to have couple Flightbeam Airports over in the States.

[Ken Doyen]

On 8/10/2022 at 8:55 AM, Magnus Meese said:

Recruiting isn't the problem, retaining people is. Speaking from the perspective of my own vACC, the wait time from sign up to actual training can be a year long because there's so much interest, but unfortunately a lot of people in that queue are only mildly interested. Once it's their turn, they do the training because they've waited all this time, right? Great! But after having spent between 5 and 15 sessions worth (times 1 or 2 hours each) of their mentor's personal time becoming a decent VATSIM tower controller, they say thank you very much, control for a month, and disappear forever because they weren't really that into it in the first place. This very human, but taxes VATSIM specifically because everything is done voluntary without compensation. Noone really cares too much when someone gets their PPL and then never flies again, which is fairly common, because they only wasted their own time and money. Instructors and aircraft owners got paid, so the system kind of works.

There's no simple solution to this problem, all you can do is try to make the training as easy and efficient and with as much self-study as possible to ensure minimum time is wasted on people who won't stay around. Stopping training because someone isn't cut out for it is really hard to do on VATSIM under the current rules (it is a hobby community where you try to avoid excluding people, after all), so many hours can and will be spent grinding the same basic theory and techniques over and over again. The last couple years I've trained between 10 and 20 people who certified, maybe two or three are still active. Most of the time I'd rather be doing anything else than mentoring due only to this fact, as it feels rather hopeless at times, but it's a way to give back to a network which not only have given me an amazing hobby virtually for free, but also led to a great career. And once in a while you get to train people who are passionate about it, stick around, climb the grades, and becomes resources to the network, and that is always a joy to see.

Yup, controlling was glamorized but they never really thought bout what went into it or why they wanted to do it.  Just wanting to try is not he approach to have for aspiring controllers. 

[Ken Doyen]

My 2 cents, it doesn't feel like a community anymore in that Covid brought in a massive wave of people who don't care.  It's a game, for pilots & some controllers.  Like I said in another comment, it's been glamorized.  It is supposed to be for fun & not the $$$.  There's no personalization anymore.  Sure we were all new at one time & made mistakes no matter how much we tried to learn ahead of time.  The fear causes many mistakes.  Pre Covid, we were able to latch on to controllers & slowly work our way up.  They would know who we were, see the progression, develop a bond, & eventually everyone would calm down.  Now, there's no personalization.  You're either a noob or you're not & I don't know where the line falls but it is relentless for controllers.  Some centers can work top down & only have a few planes in fly over country.  Others can get on & have 50 requests plus 50 planes in the air.  Everything feels so concentrated, if it's not a mainstream airport, people avoid it.  This shows in events.  Major ARTCC's events get hundreds of planes at one time, smaller or fly over country can get less than 50.  Yes, we go where the controllers are & controllers will come to us for group flights but that's not a big deal to people anymore.  Now, these aspiring controllers want to go where the action is just like the pilots, but as pointed out, lose interest.  Is it cuz it's boring, overwhelming, too time consuming, not profitable to them?  I don't know the numbers of how many total controllers Vatsim has but I wonder how many are visiting controllers?  I see some around.  It seems that neighboring ARTCC's don't get on together like they used to.  Is it cuz there's less main controllers or less visiting?  I know it's a lot of work to know one airspace let alone multiple, but, maybe that would help.  Being a supportive ARTCC makes things smoother & creates more opportunities, spread things out.  To sum it up, people are having tunnel vision so it's either too much or not enough.  JMO.