I don't contribute much, unless the areas are sufficiently obscure and remote, or need extra instructions to keep people on route.

But if we had full wiki, I wouldn't contribute anything.

I've done much searching of wikipedia over the years, and my take is this:

For subjects that are reasonably well-known, wikipedia is great; an author can't submit ersatz stuff on Bessel functions or Gaussians or the YDS ratings without getting lots of attention, and the changes tend to the best explanation.

On subjects that are not well-known, a lot of the wikipedia entries are absolute crap. There are few experts who can challenge the original author, and those that do, often seem to do so for ulterior motives or grudges. The comments are not in the forefront, and are easily ignored; a massively incorrect section on the geology of local mountains stood for years, despite lots of comments pleading for a change. Changes often reverted back, because so few could offer any real proof of correctness against an obstinate author.

Alas, many, if not most, of the entries on summitpost are on mountains or routes that are not well-known.
That's what gives summitpost an edge.

A more visible comments-corrections section, appeals to the elves for ownership transfers, and other tacks could resolve those issues as well as wiki-style editing. Then the disagreements are right there, highly visible, with all the raw history preserved on the front page or each mountain or route.

I sense that a lot of folks want to wage slightly emotional wars, because someone else has grabbed favorite mountains and left less-than satisfactory instructions (or maybe any instructions at all).

There are many other ways of "getting your information to the public" on summit post if you don't like a route or area description then just attach a trip report or add a route description or one of the other options available and simply make it better yourself.. try and avoid cluster maybe the highest points or hits will take priority in the search engine making your now new and improved description the first one we see in our search to find beta on that route.

I definitely think the initial owners of pages should keep the credit regardless of anything.

Some pages such as trip reports and some photo albums are based on personal experiences and I don’t think they should be considered for any changes without the explicit permission from and cooperation with the page owner if at all.

However, the pages which provide critical information and are crucial to safety of potential route undertakers were supposed to be updated with new and objective information. For instance, some of such pages contain the beta only from and for a specific time of the year instead of all seasons, so is recommended gear list. SP is not only resource for its members but anyone with internet access regardless of their mountaineering experience.

I’m not suggesting that the old page was supposed to be edited, especially by anyone, and especially without the owner’s consent; however, a new version of such page could be created and let the surfer choose which one is more accurate and valuable. These pages were supposed to be indexed by date, so anyone would easily recognize which one is archived and which one is new.

There would have to be a specific demand or need demonstrated by some requests (perhaps voting) to allow the new page to be created. (That’s why we have this conversation.) And perhaps the new page could be more “viki” style to prevent from locking it again by just one person.

Well, there is no way to satisfy everyone for sure.

why not have more than 1 description of the same route, or area?? and why add another source for someones negative outlook on someone elses page.. if anything allow the editor of the page power to delete negative comments.. maybe allow 3 pages on the same route. this is mostly someone lazy who wants to add there 2 cents worth with out going through the trouble of creating the page themselves... or on a popular route make it an open format let every one add there input wiki style.. but why delete a page someone else created

I think that the wiki type editing is a complete non-starter. Most of those of us who take care to create good pages do not want them fussed with. That said, I agree that people besides the page maintainer should be able to contribute to pages. I think there are two good options that might strike a balance between owner control and user contribution.

1. Perhaps the page owner can identify which sections or subsections are open to public editing. If, at the outset of page creation they want to check a box that allows blanket editing privileges to all (a de facto wiki) then that is to their liking. If they only want certain sections to be public then there ought to be a box to check or a drop down that allows that section or sub section to be publicly edited. By doing this, then the owner has control over what is edited while those who want to contribute something have the ability to do so in the open areas.

An open section at the bottom of the page, as previously suggested would also be a good option for odds and ends, in addition to my aforementioned suggestion.

2. The other option, which could work in conjunction with my previous suggestion or separately, is to bypass the elves in adding editing and admin privileges to users. In this scenario, if a user wants to contribute, they need to apply to the page owner to get editing privileges. Perhaps a stable of contributors can be developed for really popular pages, all under the overall direction of the page owner. For those concerned, power point can be apportioned to added editors based on volume of owner approved content in addition to those awarded the original developer of the page.

3. Either way, the separate issue of inactive users and their pages needs to be addressed. However, that is a separate issue from the purpose of this thread and should not distract from the larger issue at hand.

I have alerted and discussed this matter with my husband, who originally wrote and created the pages I currently maintain. He put a tremendous amount of work into them, and when he ceased his regular schedule here at SummitPost, he wanted to remove all of his material for fear something like this would happen. I convinced him to leave most of his work in my care, and I have him make edits and changes when it's better for him to do it rather than me. To see SummitPost lose such a large contribution would have been a horrible set-back for this web site.

We are both "old school" members and have had no problems maitaining our pages under the current system and see no need to change it now.

If the additions and corrections are moved to be visible at the bottom of the page, that is fine. We do like the idea of calling the section "appendix." That way we still have control over the pages and we can determine if new informatin should be added. We usually add pertinent information and we appreciate any help from members.

But we totally do not agree with allowing users to edit any content of these pages. We work hard to maintain them, "spruce them up" when we think it's needed, and we check in to SP often to monitor traffic (hits) and comments.

A wiki format invites problem users. Some could seek revenge because they don't have the page they long for and add bogus information. My husband has been repeatedly put off by bad grammar, poor spelling, poor paragraph structure and much more on SP. The trend to write all text without capital letters is bewildering. Wiki=constant mopping up, in our opinion. We're glad to see the format is being refused for the most part. If it wasn't, we would take our leave of SP.

Perhaps if some owners welcome the input they could have the option to allow others to add to and edit their pages?

We might feel differently if we weren't watching over such a large amount of content that represents literally months and years of hard work, but that is our opinion on this matter. Our thanks to the elves for the PM notification.

I definitely say NO to the idea of a full wiki-style page and am resistant to the idea of changing too much about the system. I like being able to have full control over the look and content of my pages. I suppose I wouldn't be opposed to some owner-approved changes, or perhaps a creative commons section at the bottom. What about other solutions such as making it easier to adopt pages from inactive users or take over bad pages with low scores, etc? Just a thought.

Josh Lewis wrote:

Not sure if this was already mentioned (a similar idea was), but if submitters had some kind of check box on the page to allow editors, this would completely make "wikifying" summitpost more appropriate because it would then be up to the users. Yeah I know you would still have some users who might not activate it, but I think many would.

If the idea of the check box is accepted, I would suggest having the check box appear next to every section when you are creating or editing a page. You can check the box next to sections you want to open for editing.

Now that's also a neat idea.

borutbk wrote:Isn't it a shame that Keith (knoback) had to leave in order for a serious discussion to take place?

Putting aside why knoback actually left, what he was talking about before he left was what he saw as the misuse of the "routes" category for all manner of trails and walks. I think he identified a genuine problem, and I would propose, on a going-forward basis, to
(1) have a separate page category called "technical routes" and
(2) make that category of pages more wiki-style, since there seems more desire to go that direction among the relatively few serious techical climbers on SP and since it would be a restricted area in which to experiment with wiki techniques.

A side benefit is that climbers like knoback would never again have the misfortune of pulling up a "route" and finding that it's just somebody extolling the delights of a walk through the meadows. Or if they did have that misfortune, they could wiki the route right into oblivion.

I'm with Bob Sihler on this. I'm not interested in having someone "edit" content that I've contributed, but am willing to let people place information in an easily-visible section of additions and corrections on my pages. However, I want to retain the right to delete anything from that section which proves to be incorrect or worthless.

Mike Hoyt

I'm not a page or route contributor but I've been around for 3+ years so a few minor thoughts:
---Definitely NO to anything resembling a WIKI page, reasons stated well by others earlier;
---APPENDIX type entries at the bottom of a page sounds promising at first but could turn problematic for some mountains, routes etc. especially if the owner has done a poor initial job of creating/maintaining the page;
---Ownership of pages of SP members who don't sign in once every four months - BYE! BYE! Original page creation credit retained but maintenance and expansion can be given to others after that.
---Like the idea someone suggested of new route/new pages requiring certain time of membership in SP or some other minimum requirement; seen some garbage submitted as a page which no or low voting alone doesn't keep from filling good space and getting unwanted attention. I hate to see people posting albums, pages etc. just to use SP's free services for their friends to view speech pictures or Capture the Flag Rights.
---Agree with possible division of ROUTE into 2 types: climbs and hikes or whatever fully knowing that climbs often have hikes preceding them and so on.

I haven't yet created any original pages, although I likely will. However, if page creation goes to a WIKI style format I definitely will not.

I do however think having an open section at the bottom for updates/corrections is an idea worth exploring.

Route pages are supposed to list the difficulty in the upper left, and most people seem pretty good about designating the YDS class and grade. I would think a person would know right away if the climb were technical or not; it seems like we are proposing a lot of changes just to keep people from having to hit the back button. Much of the problem really stems from the SP search function. Perhaps it should be easy to search for mountain names and class; perhaps the difficulty category should be automatically bolded and in red.

Consider:
http://www.summitpost.org/mount-whitney/150227

Most of the routes are technical; one is a walk-up; several are scrambles. Often technical climbers are keen to know the non-technical routes as well, for descent purposes. Folks who climb the Whitney technical routes often descend the Mountaineer's route.

(posted to two forums)

Don't see a problem with having a separate page category for technical routes.

What I see is an emotional war between climbers and non-climbers. What's needed is an emotional rescue in the disguise of change.

Change the voting system - it SUCKS! Too much exposure is being given to popular images, while too little is being given to route pages.

One conflict I had was with a young man who was entirely absent from the Site, and failed to update his low-scoring pages.
This was embarrassing and had a negative impact on the content of this Site.

I would THINK if a person becomes inactive for more than 6 months, the page should be adopted by somebody else. What's the problem with that ???

Of course, you're ALWAYS going to have members with a wide range of egos and interests, so a positive change (sooner than later) SHOULD be in the Works.

Like it or not, there's always going to be dissatisfied people bitching and complaining, but for them "All The World's A Stage," and they are merely Players ..

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms ..."