Hi Gang,
I'm a bit of peak bagger, and I admit it freely. This puts me atop a lot of relatively minor peaks, which though they truly are mountains in their own right (i.e., with 300+ feet of prominence), are nonetheless eclipsed in many ways by the major peaks nearby. I love these little mountains, many of which have official names, if not interesting etymologies.
I have therefore created several pages describing these peaks on summitpost.org, but my general approach has been to avoid duplicating information from the Getting There and Camping sections of the major peak nearby. Instead, I've included links from these sections to the major peak page. This approach has engendered some criticism, since it is certainly more convenient to have all of the relevant information on the single mountain page of interest.
Perhaps it's just my perspective as a programming geek, but I shudder to think of keeping multiple copies of any body of text synchronized between pages. In most cases, the major peak page was authored by someone else anyway, so I'd be forced to duplicate most of their work even if I didn't resort to outright plagiarism.
Furthermore, I think one of the things that distinguishes a web-based resource is the utility of the hyperlinks (i.e., summitpost.org is not a printed guidebook). While it may be convenient to "just print out and then take to the car and go", I would argue that most climbers would be printing out the major peak page for that trip anyway. Printing a second page containing only the additional information relevant to the minor peak seems more appropriate to me in that context.
Thoughts?
- Chris