I have to laugh a little bit, because as someone who contributes technical route descriptions, I would love to have all this hue and cry around such submissions. Seems in the world of ardent scrambling and hiking there are enough people that competition to decide who owns a page spills out as lots of nuanced parsing of what the meaning of "is" is. As for technical routes, it seems the wind blows through our pages, and for someone who would love to see a lot more of them (to save money on guidebooks), the goal is more to increase the number of contributors rather than beat them back with sticks like I see here.

mvs, summitposting drunk. :p

FortMental wrote:

yatsek wrote:To FortMental,

I'm afraid you missed something important. And if you don't mind "no exposure" where there is exposure in the real mountains, why not read more fantasy stories or wikipedia when there's not enough exciting SP tales at the moment?

I don't understand what you're talking about..... please clarify.

First, Bob meant a mountain/rock page, not a different page type, such as a TR/article/album.
Second, read the explanatory note in my brand new album (boring, I agree), then the overview for the mtn/rock in question (IMO BS), then this exchange below one of the photos on the page (IMO really interesting).

To Mvs,
This just can't be about technical routes. If it were, I bet such a page would be long gone. But about 6 weeks ago a young SP'er from Britain died over here, on a route not much more difficult than the hiking route I'm talking about (on either mts "technical" difficulty is much less below "technical", something you'd never bother about, something like YDS class 3 to 4.
yatsek, summitposting not drunk yet

I think he's talking about mountain pages too
- and the best pages have a lot of that.

Well, my view on "that" is towards the top of this page.

yatsek wrote:To Mvs,
This just can't be about technical routes. If it were, I bet such a page would be long gone. But about 6 weeks ago a young SP'er from Britain died over here, on a route not much more difficult than the hiking route I'm talking about (on either mts "technical" difficulty is much less below "technical", something you'd never bother about, something like YDS class 3 to 4.
yatsek, summitposting not drunk yet

That sounds terrible, I am sorry to hear it. But I didn't really make myself clear. I'm not trying to say I "wouldn't bother" with an easier mountain climb. I love hiking, etc. I'm saying that to me this looks like an overallocation of resources (you guys) among a narrow band of mountains. Competition for peak ownership has led to bickering. But there are so many technical routes unmentioned on SP, that if you started adding those mountain and route pages, you'd enter a world where not only are there never any complaints about your work (though maybe there should be), but not even any feedback or commentary of any kind. It's good and bad.

mvs wrote:

yatsek wrote:I didn't really make myself clear. I'm not trying to say I "wouldn't bother" with an easier mountain climb. I love hiking, etc. I'm saying that to me this looks like an overallocation of resources (you guys) among a narrow band of mountains. Competition for peak ownership has led to bickering.

I must confess to talking rubbish last night. There's no denying I was summitposting drunk so I was far from clear too. Thanks for joining in, your opinion and your “love hiking” announcement. I love to hear that from a technical climber. I am a (very proud ) hiker/hill walker/scrambler (BTW AFAIK in the UK they use the word "hiker" for flat terrain walker) so – excuse me – when a technical guy speaks up, the 1st thing I'm readying myself to hear is you know what. If I do hear this I instantly respond with you know what. Kind of an Irishman and Englishman meeting in a pub.

I guess most SP people see this thread the way it does look like, the way you do. This is unavoidable. I'm aware of that and certainly I don't mind. I'd say, generally things don't usually are what they appear to be at first sight. Second, I've never said I wouldn't like to "own" the page that got me started, I said the opposite. I think competition for peak ownership can be part of SP fun, can't it? But to me fair play is important, if someone cheats in a game of bridge I'm playing I leave the table and look for some other partners to play with. Not furious, just not interested any more. Probably another congenital fault of mine. As for why I don't feel like carrying on coediting the owner's pages (who's the real owner is another complicated issue – see my latest posts on "Bad/Incomplete pages") , well, it'd be hard not to notice he'd got on my nerves but that had happened behind the scenes and I don't think it's something anybody would like to see pasted in here.

Getting back to SP problems, I thought there was a rule forbidding SP people to create mtn/rock pages about peaks they haven't climbed, and the "owner" of the page I've been "bickering" over thought the same. Now I/all of us know (Bob's post on Page Eight) that the rule is a myth and this is one thing that's been cleared up, partly thanks to this thread.

mvs wrote:As for technical routes, it seems the wind blows through our pages, and for someone who would love to see a lot more of them (to save money on guidebooks), the goal is more to increase the number of contributors rather than beat them back with sticks like I see here.

mvs, summitposting drunk. :p

You could be right, but I see it more the other way. Threads like this one might deter people from posting what they haven't climbed-- a good, thing, I think-- but I would think they would demonstrate to climbers who want to submit that their grunt work in the mountains will be appreciated at least as much as their grunt work at the keyboard.

FortMental wrote:

SP is supposed to be a resource for information about climbing mountains and other objectives; it is not an encyclopedia for trivia about mountains. I’m sure I can find driving directions and historical facts somewhere else. Some will point out that if that were the rule, some of the world's highest and hardest mountains would not be on SP. To that, I say "Who cares?" I admit I sometimes like to read about peaks I will never climb, but the bottom line is that SP is supposed to provide climbing information, and if I can't get it from a page here, then I think the page shouldn't be here at all.

Thank god some of the other elves feel differently because this is a road map to a spectacularly boring site. If this site can't be a source of inspiration and education when it comes to mountain climbing, mountain geography, mountain photography, mountain culture, and mountain science...... then it's just a dump for route topos. You might as well just post a damn map of the trail; maybe we can find pictures, anecdotes, and whatever, somewhere else.

I'm sure you don't mean it this way, so don't take this as an attack, but the face value of that comment demeans the hard work that many people have put into pages for mountains and routes they have actually climbed, and in many cases, the mountain pages have plenty of the "other" information.

So let me clarify my own views: I agree that the "other stuff" is fine. It can add to a page's worth; that's why I have always felt wildflower and wildlife pictures are good to have because they show more about the mountain than just the cold, hard climbing details even though some others find them to be off-topic crap.

So all that other stuff is (can be) great. But if it's on a mountain page, the mountain page still needs to have the meat, which is firsthand information based on experience with the peak. If a person wants to tell us about the climbing history of "Peak X" in the Karakoram and the culture around "Peak Y" in the Himalaya but hasn't climbed or attempted to climb the peak, why not do it as an article, album, or some other object? Such objects could still be attached to the area pages, or later to the mountain pages when someone who has real experience with the peak puts up the page. If a person's experience in, say, the Karakoram is limited to trekking, why not make the area page or write some trip reports instead of putting up mountain pages?

I understand the argument people make in support of pages for the biggest, hardest peaks even if the writer hasn't climbed them, but where do you draw the line? There are peaks I haven't been on but have pictures of, some illustrating routes, and I could make a "reliable" page for them with little difficulty based on my observations and reports from others. But is that okay? I don't think it is.

Sorry to sound like a grouchy old hard-liner, but I first submitted pages in the SP1 days, when pages didn't look as slick but standards were clearer and higher, or at least they were to me. It doesn't mean there weren't crap pages, but I had no misunderstanding of the fact that I was supposed to have firsthand experience with any mountain or route I wanted to submit.

Fred Spicker wrote:
Mountains and Rocks – Let’s be real about it. How many of us have climbed every route on a particular peak? Just because you have done one route on a mountain does not make you an expert on all the routes. What about “the other side of the mountain”? Granted, there are some peaks with only one sane route, but not that many.

With that in mind, I still think that the page creator should have climbed or attempted to climb the peak (This by the way was the guideline given by the management for SP1). Most people study a mountain and several routes before going on a climb, making them at least familiar with what else on the mountain.

Fred, considering that, what do you think I should do about this?

I tried climbing another peak I have been interested in since last year. In doing so, I attempted two different routes. Both times, I got pretty high up, again getting into Class 5 climbing, but eventually things became too difficult or exposed or both. I never reached the summit ridge or any other type of summit. Thus, I will not make a page for the peak because I do not know the full route conditions, and though the summit ridge looks easy once on it, I cannot say for a fact that it is so. Instead, I may write a trip report covering my attempted routes in case someone who is a better climber or is better equipped wants to give them a try. It burns me not to make the mountain page because I really wanted to do one for this peak, but it would be wrong if I went ahead and did it. It could also put other climbers in danger.

A mountain page would have more far visibility and be of far more use than a trip report. The page would cover my attempted routes with details and pictures. In addition, the Overview would clearly state that I didn't make the top, encourage route submissions, and offer ownership or editing privileges to someone who has climbed the peak. I just wonder if submitting it as a mountain page is pushing the exceptions a little too far in this case.

FortMental wrote:Thank god some of the other elves feel differently because this is a road map to a spectacularly boring site. If this site can't be a source of inspiration and education when it comes to mountain climbing, mountain geography, mountain photography, mountain culture, and mountain science...... then it's just a dump for route topos. (…) I can't begin to count the number of mountains I'd love to visit only because the "other stuff" makes it interesting ie Gangolfs Canary Islands pages, any one of Visentins pages.... I could go on, and on, and on.....

If you thought the overview for the mtn page I was "bickering" over were a source of education, I'd still fiercely disagree. If you find many pages by the guys you mention inspiring or excellent, I say I completely agree. I've said that before, a few pages back. An afterthought I just had is that I bet you really loved those of the pages by Visentin which are concerned with the mountains he has climbed.

SoCalHiker wrote:I think we are mostly arguing about mountains that are accessible to many SPers and that have been climbed by many. Only those who actually climbed such peaks should create a mountain and route page. Not someone, who just took a few pictures from nearby.

Well said. I'm still not so sure it's necessary to have a K2 page here unless there's route information from someone who's climbed it, but it's not an atrocity to have it, either. So maybe pages for the crazy-hard peaks that all but a few have no chance of climbing are in order. But it's really a different story for the peaks accessible to us mere mortals. And again, where do you draw the line?

Here is a case in point. As far as I can tell, the author has never been there. Only two pictures on the page were posted by the author, and they are by somebody else. The author admits on the page that most of the information came from other sources. This is how we want a world-famous peak represented on SP?

http://www.summitpost.org/mountain/rock/152103/cerro-torre.html

But maybe we do. Look at all the votes...

So I will repeat myself. Seems appropriate at this point since everyone is talking in circles now.

mrchad9 wrote:

johnk wrote:This would exclude most if not all of the 8000 meter peaks.

Correct!
Keeps them available for a SP member to submit them later. I would much rather read that page.

This goes for K2 as well. Any page including K2 is likely to be both more interesting and more informative if the author has climbed it. And SP members have signed the K2 summit log, so it isn't so crazy hard that it cannot be done by someone who is a member.

Otherwise, you end up with a potentially substandard page that sits that way, even though someone may climb it a year later and want to put up a page. Too late for them, and it hurts the site down the road.

Bob Sihler wrote: So all that other stuff is (can be) great. But if it's on a mountain page, the mountain page still needs to have the meat, which is firsthand information based on experience with the peak. If a person wants to tell us about the climbing history of "Peak X" in the Karakoram and the culture around "Peak Y" in the Himalaya but hasn't climbed or attempted to climb the peak, why not do it as an article, album, or some other object? Such objects could still be attached to the area pages, or later to the mountain pages when someone who has real experience with the peak puts up the page. If a person's experience in, say, the Karakoram is limited to trekking, why not make the area page or write some trip reports instead of putting up mountain pages?

I'll be honest and say I haven't read all the posts on here and am sure also no-one cares about my opinion. That said I like this quoted point a lot, the existing information is preserved and made available to interested parties. I also think though this boils down to a case of labels, be it 'Mountain' or 'Article'. For me leaving things as they are makes the most sense and If someone comes along and actually climbs the thing then let them take the existing page over and improve it. However if change has to be made I hope it's a small one like Mountain > Article for the unclimbed ones rather than throwing away components of an excellent resource altogether.

FortMental wrote:...much of the reason I took up climbing was because of those glossy large format books of the Alps, Yosemite, and the Himalayas, many of which were written by people who climbed few of those mountains.

Were those books better than the average wikipedia page:

1 in terms of sorting the wheat - that is to say facts, not legends - from the chaff of (sometimes fascinating) fantasy?

2 in that they contained much less pseudo information than the minimal complete SP page?