SummitPost.org

Josh Lewis wrote:Eye candy is very important in my book.
If a good mountain does not have any eye candy, even if the text is good, I usually refuse to vote on it.

Depends on the type of page. If it is a route page, and there are lots of route pages as children of a single parent mountain page, the route pages should give correct descriptions, and the mountain page can have the eye candy. Albums are usually just eye candy.

I guess you have to ask what the real purpose of summitpost should be. Years ago, SP was a primarily place to find information that would help one climb summits. The size of photos and maps was severely limited, and people had to get creative -- perhaps uploading maps in sections, or simply giving the quad name and providing details relative to that map.

Years ago, there was a person who provided a nice web page, with nice photos, and nice maps with drawn, color-coded tracks. The problem was that the person had not actually climbed the mountain, and had drawn in hypothetical tracks. One of the tracks, described as class 2, went over 300' of technical cliffs. In this case, the prettiness of the page, and all the detail, was a smokescreen. But it was an obscure peak, and few people could call the author on the errors. Yet the page was pretty, and got the requisite 10/10 votes. Now, the person did not intend to be malicious-- the author was just new to the game, and naive; the author thought that if you could draw a trail on a map, by golly, you should be able to follow it. But since a loop was shown, a person could have chosen to descend the "class 2" route at the end of the day, and been quite surprised.

IMHO, accurate directions are far more important than pretty pictures, unless the pretty pictures are used to illustrate a route.

MoapaPk wrote:IMHO, accurate directions are far more important than pretty pictures, unless the pretty pictures are used to illustrate a route.

That is definitely true. Exactly why I refuse to give a good vote on mountain pages with tons of pictures and hardly any text. (I'm a picky voter). But when it comes to trip reports, I'm a bit easier going.

The reason I like some nice eye candy on the page is because I admit that I'm a visual learner. "Take a left here, right there, third right at the far off left..." I sometimes can get confused by that kind of stuff. I know, sounds silly. Fortunately my good mountaineering skills make up for this problem which I figure it out on my own on the climb.

lcarreau wrote:Which book are you reading there, Josh ?

Last book that I went all the way though was this one:

And yes, it was a picture book. I used to read books, but I guess the internet made me lazy. But at least I read other things.

Well, there's little to no snow here in Arizona, so gotta make due with what we've got.

I can't afford to travel like some (other) members can, but sometimes "THINKING" is the best way to travel ..

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

Pictures are nice, definitely make a page look better, and can be very helpful, but I might vote 10/10 on a mountain page that has very good information and just one decent picture of the peak to fill in the primary image field. And I think a route page can get away with no more than a map if the written information is excellent.

However, I don't see too many pages of those types. Most pages short on pictures also seem to be short on effort.