SummitPost.org

Being a curious lad that I am, I was wondering how SP got started? Who are the founding fathers? Are they the two users with twice the power points than everyone else?

I noticed on the FAQ page a link to a history but it said the page was deleted.

Thanks for any info!

Looks like Aaron deleted his articles. Unfortunate. There were 3 articles that laid out in a lot of detail the history from beginning until about 2005 or 2006.

It was started by users Josh and Ryle. Then they pretty much abandoned it, though they retained ownership. They gave Montana Matt part ownership in return for doing the current programming support.

In person I told Matt a bit about the history. But there are many pieces of the puzzle missing. Aaron Johnson from what I understand was the guy who either suggested or implemented the trip report section of the site. SummitPost started out as SummitPost.com and swapped to SummitPost.org which I believe was in 2006. (I didn't know about SP then, so I'm not entirely sure). Back in the day I was a secret SP spy which I had all sorts of information that most do not even know about. Top Secret folks, can't give the info away.

Haven't been here very long, but from what I can tell ... it ALL began in KANSAS ...

"Come out, come out wherever you are ..
And meet the young lady who fell from a star.
She fell from the sky, she fell very far,
And Kansas she says is the name of the star."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KSiyaqnZYs[/youtube]

Has Aaron deleted the articles??
Too bad. :(
It started in april, I think, 2001. It's not quite fair to say that they've abandoned the site, one can see Ryle being online now and then.

It started out with mainly American climbers, but grew quite quickly with European members. Since there still are many active from that first group of members, you ought to be able to get the story from any of them, if they have the energy to write it down. Bob Burd was the first elf, the uber-elf Gangolf was the first European elf. Dadndave the first Australian :-)

In the beginning there were areas, mountains, routes, images and trip reports. There was a lot of debates going on about keeping SP "pure", everything should be about mountains. If someone posted a pic of something else, they apologised for it being off topic. Voting for pics had the option "off topic".
When version 2 was implemented, everything under the caption "other" was added, and it changed the direction of the site.

(I have been a member a bit longer then it seems from my profile...)

I can't believe those articles are gone!! They were awesome. I hate when people take good stuff away with them when they leave, especially if that stuff is a museum piece on the culture of SP...

Aaron was all for keeping the site pure, as was mentioned.

Sorry, but I think trying to keep the site "pure" is an impossible task. You will always have some daisies and mushrooms popping up now and then ..

NOPE, don't have a picture to go along with this post.

(Do you have anymore TOP SECRET historical accounts to give to us, Josh ???)

mvs wrote:I can't believe those articles are gone!! They were awesome. I hate when people take good stuff away with them when they leave, especially if that stuff is a museum piece on the culture of SP...

Could somebody who knows Aaron Johnson ask him to put those articles back on Summitpost? They were very informative.

I don't know him but exchanged mail a few times with him. I tried to write to the address I have from 2009, and it's invalid .

So...using the power of archive.org, I found them! Here is Part One, and Part Two and Part Three!.

Happy reading these excellent histories!

Amazing, thanks for those, are there any more pages in there that have been sorely missed and not recreated? Though one wonders if you have written something and then want to delete it, whether all copies should be deleted too. Are web pages copyrightable?

That is some great stuff Michael, thanks for taking the time to dig it up. I am one that loves history and there is so much there it will take some time to get through it all but I think a follow up should be done. Maybe a "where are we now" type of article, still showing the history but updates on the long time members, new stats, new Q & A's etc. One thing I did notice and maybe it was mentioned on another thread but the complaining of the scoring system was an issue back in '06 a well.

Great Stuff!

I just read the articles again, and to refer to another thread here, there were so many names from way back, now gone. Makes me sad. :-(

Edit: thanks mvs, for digging 'em up! Really fun to reread them!

It is sad what has happened to SP over the years. I also think it started to go downhill after Version 2 was implemented and has continued the downhill slide ever since.

Play us a song KathyW.

KathyW wrote:It is sad what has happened to SP over the years. I also think it started to go downhill after Version 2 was implemented and has continued the downhill slide ever since.

It's a shame people leave, I've been around long enough to remember a lot of them too, but it's great that a lot of the original folk are still around and other great people have joined since, and will continue to join, so long as there's a positive attitude and direction from its members. At least that's my opinion.

mrchad9 wrote:Play us a song...

Paula Cole - Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? is a good listen.