lcarreau has been inspiring me a lot lately .

What is so bad about being inactive? It's only "bad" when you own a batch of pages that people want to contribute to but can't because you don't return calls. Yes, they made the pages once, but that was then and now they've moved on. What do they care?

If they had allowed collaboration on their pages then they could definitely go away without bad feelings from the rest of us. They came, they contributed, they disappeared. In the world of dozens of free internet services competing for our eyeballs, this should be expected behavior. Instead we keep asserting a wish that "if they would only" return and take care of their work we wouldn't have something to complain about. Magical thinking.

Diversity of activity levels is healthy.

peterbud wrote:Very shortly: I opt for that extra section in the bottom of the pages. That would give enough exposure to additions/corrections, yet it wouldn't require more work maintaining the pages by their owners. For wiki style editing, there is wikipedia...

Thanks Peter. I take exception to the last statement though, as it sounds true, though it's not.

If you go to Wikipedia and start adding route information for the Southwest Ridge of some mountain, especially as your info becomes specific ("the two pin belay anchor at the top of pitch 8 is unsafe, can someone bring a new Lost Arrow?"), then your info will be promptly deleted.

Wikipedia has decided to be an encyclopedia of the world, and ruthlessly removes content that is too specific. Basically, they tell you to go to a site like Summitpost (nice, eh?) to add this level of detail.

When this "ugly" wiki idea reared it's head a year ago I spent some time over there, wondering if that was the right thing to do. I learned that it's just not possible for the type of content we traffic in.

Anyway, sorry for over-posting. Good night,
--Michael

Great thread.

First off SP is already great.

To adress the issues of inaccuracies and poor submissions, I like the following ideas...

The current system for additions/corrections by way of contributing to the A/C section, then messaging, then e-mailing, then contacting the elves is functional, perhaps more users need to be educated about it. A brief description of these ethics could be added to the additions/corrections section.

1. The added section at the bottom of a page for all to see for additions/corrections is good. I think perhaps there maybe a need to make it even more appealing for the possible lax page owner to take action such as allowing other users to vote a "like" on the revisions. Also perhaps by making this particular section stand out a bit with some color.

2. By giving points to someone who has only a blank page is promoting pointless points. Removing that type of system seems like a great idea. Only until the page is voted upon should it recieve points.

3.Faster upload speeds on contributions.

I am not too keen on putting ones pages up for adoption after a certain period of inactivity. I believe they deserve to be contacted via e-mail and only after no response over six months has been made by them should this happen.

EDIT: I am not in favor of the wiki option.

peterbud wrote:For wiki style editing, there is wikipedia...

Although I like the information posted on wikipedia, when it comes to travel information, wikipedia is lame! (I'm saying this in the nicest of terms)

"I took a look at the article you created for Vesper Peak. Thanks for creating this article. However, some aspects of the article are not appropriate for Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia, not a travel or how-to guide; see what Wikipedia is not."

This was the response I got from the wikipedia admins. The Vesper Page on Wikipedia got the beta removed and stripped out by the admins themselves.
But don't worry, I'm starting up where wikipedia ended on that note.

Scott wrote:

If you don't separate the technical from the non, you are burrying the technical stuff and burried it gets.

It already is separated. Here are all the SP routes over 5.4 (or whatever difficulty you choose) in difficulty:

http://www.summitpost.org/object_list.p ... bject_name

It seriously takes about a few seconds to separate them on your own at whatever criteria you choose (i.e. harder than 5.8 or easier than class 3).

Thanks, and thanks again for showing how easy it is. My apologies to Matt et al. for suggesting we needed a stronger search function. However, with YDS, 5.7 can come up even if it is a scramble with one 12' section (e.g. Lady Mountain Cable route), so maybe future contributors can be more cognizant of what they enter in "route type." In this case Dow did the right thing, and marked it as a scramble, yet retained the 5.7 rating for the one short pitch.

In an earlier example, borut searched for "mixed" in the route type and got a hodgepodge of 244 examples. But he didn't specify anything else; how could he have set up a better search?

EDIT: Maybe we should put a few examples in the faq, and put the FAQ link at the top of the page in BIG BOLD RED LETTERS?

Bruno wrote:Several members have mentioned that the proposal to open area/mountain/route pages for editions would only concern page owners who are willing to open their own pages for edition (beside, possibly, abandonned pages). I haven't seen much debate on this thread regarding this idea, so shall we consider that there is a silent consensus in favour?

After all, shouldn't we leave it to each member to decide if he/she wants to open his/her own pages for public edition (provided that the site programmer is willing to spend some extra hours to create this option)?

I'd say NO, we should not. If the owner turns his/her page into a "full wiki-page", as of that day I guess the page will never get transferred to anybody else, will it? And we'll get back to pre-Sihler era with some people "booking" mountains they say they'll climb in the future, multiplying sham pages to collect power points and owning tonnes of pages they've never really created.

yatsek wrote:

lcarreau wrote:

asmrz wrote:Separate the site for hiking and climbing, those two are after all completely different.

Sorry - I thought we were supposed to be coming together rather than drifting apart. Separation is not always good.

Part of the reason I joined this site was my perception that hiking and climbing are married to each other. Opposites attract.

Opposites attract, get married and then split up. If they have to - or both want to - go on living in the same, their beautiful old house, they have to have their own rooms so that neither goes insane. That's why I think separating Technical Routes from the other routes would make sense if we don't want technical climbers to feel confused or excluded.

So Jacek, YOU believe in Free Choice, and I appreciate that fact.

If I want to leave my house, I say goodbye to my wife and head for the hills. Then, I come back and post the information on my computer.

I think the problem is NOT what we choose to do with our lives, but HOW do our pages look and HOW much information did we leave on the computer ???

"We're NOT a reflection of Summitpost; rather, Summitpost is a reflection of us." ...

Fletch wrote:
Really? Aren't we taking this to an extreme?

No, we're just making a feeble attempt to come to a conclusive decision, where people of different skill levels can coexist in a peaceful environment.

Fletch wrote:What if an asteroid hit SP? What would we do then? OH NOOO!!!

We'd do what the classic rock band "Pink Floyd" did on their "The Wall" album. 'RUN LIKE HELL.'

Fletch wrote:Surely we can come to an agreement on how 500 people can get along... UNREAL!

Surely it's going to take some TIME, especially when you have 500 different egos (of various sizes) in the same room.

Fletch wrote: Its about five hundred people. Thats it. Surely we can come to an agreement on how 500 people can get along... UNREAL!

Fletch, just a guess, but you were probably a little impatient with Congress when they had trouble agreeing on how to handle the debt ceiling. Am I right?

This argument wouldn't be happening if we had flashing text.

And Global Warming with Reality TV ..

rasgoat wrote:2. By giving points to someone who has only a blank page is promoting pointless points. Removing that type of system seems like a great idea. Only until the page is voted upon should it recieve points.

That actually is the way it works. The problem is that there is a crew on the site that will vote on any garbage whatsoever. I have literally seen them vote 10/10 on completely empty pages. Your guess is as good as mine, though I suspect the wish for reciprocity.

Bob Sihler wrote: The problem is that there is a crew on the site that will vote on any garbage whatsoever.

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

I would be all for a limited wiki style where the original owner stays in some sort of control. I know my pages could benefit from the input of others since. My only concern is that this does not address the problem of incomplete pages by inactive or very slightly active members.

Whatever the case. Larry should be allowed to edit everyone's pages and put 1 photo or video of his choice at the top.