guhj wrote:Could we find a couple of pages whose owners are willing to open up sections for editing? Start small, see how that goes. Of course, I don't want "the community" to "steal" anyone's pages. But if there are a few volunteers out there, could we try "wiki-sections" on their pages?

If mountains/rocks were part of the experiment, I'd open my non-Alaska ones (North Carolina, Austria, Dominica, Wyoming) with the idea that locals might want to participate.

But more to the point, if there was a wiki opt-in, I'd START some pages that have been too daunting to tackle solo. These would be
1) Anchorage logistical center (could be a nice resource for the Denali crowd, but logistical pages are a bit boring to create and a collaborative approach would relieve the burden)
2) Chugach State Park (nobody has ever done a decent job on Chugach regional pages because the area is too vast and diverse)
3) Kenai Mountains (of great interest to Alaska visitors but I only have quality material on 10 or 20 percent of the range)
4) Kigluaik Mountains (Nome area--I have starter material and SPers like Iccareau who visit there could chip in)

I'd open up my route/mountain pages of course, not that there is much. More importantly I'd add more stuff. For example, I climbed the beautiful Rosengartenspitze East Wall a month ago, and tragically had no camera. I remember all the details though. It's a classic case for saying I've got the info but need pictures. Some good fellow who wanders the Alto Adige could come by with some route pictures and paste 'em up himself. Truly collaborative!.

Thanks everyone for the good discussion. Not that we've decided anything, but I feel grateful for the space to develop some positive arguments out of what was previously inchoate grumbling (on my part).
--Michael

I don't think anyone has mentioned this idea. If this idea does go through, there should be a "subscribe" feature which allows members to be notified of changes to a page. I've worked with software that has this feature, plus it also had a feature where it showed a list of names who edited what. Now that gave "editors" more credibility.

Fletch,

Cheer up, now look at the bright side: There's been JUST ONE "NO" to Bruno's

Bruno wrote: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 (…)?

Bruno,

I appreciate not only your answer but also your question.

Yep, I was speaking about category 3. As far as I remember, within my little CE European corner there were seven or eight such "forced adoptions" last year. (Many more pages were reported as junk and deleted.) Probably none this year, so you might be right arguing this is no real problem any more. But I'm afraid that with the option to make your pages "public" now those weird, say over-active, owners will return, and in the hope of collecting even more easy power points than they can get from hundreds of meaningless photos, they'll start producing dozens of embryo pages, some of them surely with a note at the top kindly inviting anybody interested to develop the page.

Bruno wrote:I don't think there's such a big risk that a new system would increase the manipulations of the members obsessed with power points. You know, if you open your own pages for public editing, it means that you don't give so much importance to you own "private property" and value more the collaborative nature of the project. I suggested in mvs article to change the name "owner" to something else for all open or partially-opened pages. If what you say becomes true, you can also reduce the power points attributed to the "maintainer" of "public" pages...

I suggest owners opening the overview section for public editing lose the power points they've got for this page then. Plus that the page becomes anonymous as of that time.

Guhj,

guhj wrote:

yatsek wrote:What I'm afraid of is that if you ask the Elves to let you own a poor "public" page, instead of getting the page, you'll receive the following message: "This is a public page, which means you can edit it any time you want. We are looking forward to your making the page better."

But why do you fear that answer? You can still take good care of the page. …

No, thanks. I've been through this before - creating a page with someone not on the same wavelength. Second, I'd rather create my own page simply because when I'm locked in my city cage I find creating SP pages more relaxing than watching an average football match whereas correcting someone's frequent errors can be a nightmare to me (I guess I was a teacher for too long a while.) Third, I agree with most of what Alpinist put down on the previous page.

Bruno wrote:More seriously, some numbers for thought regarding the current evolution of SummitPost:

SP has 10'577 Routes pages. 65% were created between 2001-2006, 35% between 2007-2011.
SP has 627'335 Picture pages. 33% were created between 2001-2006, 67% between 2007-2011.

It strikes me to see that 67% of all routes in SP were created during the first five years. The statistics for mountain pages show roughly 50% created during 2001-2006 and 50% during 2007-2011.

Out of the 6883 route pages created between 2001 and 2006, only 24% of them have receive some edit between 2007 and 2011. 76% have received no edit at all during the last 5 years.

This shows the lack of dynamism of the current SP structure. Many pages are turning into museum pieces for the archaeological collection, but we might expect a bit more for a "collaborative content community focused on climbing, mountaineering, hiking and other outdoor activities" (see frontpage statement)

I don't think this lack of dynamism results from SP's anti-wiki approach.

yatsek wrote:I don't think this lack of dynamism results from SP's anti-wiki approach.

What does it result from?

Fourteen pages of comments is a lot to digest … and I admit I did not read them all.

I’ve created mountain pages, routes, photos and trip reports. I do not want to give people access to edit my work. I have had suggestions made and I have incorporated them into my mountain and route pages. I like the idea of giving the page owner the option to allow changes to parts of the mountain and route pages but do not believe the personal pages of trip reports and photos should allow changes. I think the comments allowed are suitable for the personal pages and am partial to an “appendix” for the route and mountain pages for comments to be added by others and hopefully incorporated and then deleted by the page owner. If the page owner fails to incorporate the comments, then they remain on the page for all to see.

I day hike, backpack, winter mountaineer, and rock climb and I actively use SP for beta. I appreciate the variety of routes that are available on a given mountain page; be it a 5.10 off-width or an 8-mile round trip with 4,000 feet of gain. This is one of the key appeals of SP to the public: the ability to access information for a wide variety of activities on any given mountain.

The idea of separating technical from non-technical routes has been discussed. At what point does a route become “technical”? When a rope is needed? If I rope up on Class 4 terrain, is it not technical to me? Where would we draw the line? Perhaps a system could be used for naming the routes such that they could be easily identified in the left sidebar of the page. Perhaps, on the backend, something could be added that would check the route type and difficulty and sort the routes in the left side bar.

As an aside, I have been a member of other websites and boards and when I become inactive after a period of time my username and login are purged from the rolls but my contributions remain. Perhaps SP should consider some purging of inactive members.

mvs wrote:What does it result from?

My friend Mark Straub left this site for the following reasons:
-Uploading one by one was a pain (he did not know of the bulk uploader)
-Was not pleased with the rating system of pages which only a 10/10 was a good vote. Not the people, but the system
-Had no luck with the plans&partners section (It's obvious to me why, I rarely get partner request from it)

And most importantly he found a site called "MountainProject" which according to him has much more rock climbing information. So for this reason this is why I feel as though this site needs change.

DukeJH wrote:I day hike, backpack, winter mountaineer, and rock climb and I actively use SP for beta. I appreciate the variety of routes that are available on a given mountain page; be it a 5.10 off-width or an 8-mile round trip with 4,000 feet of gain. This is one of the key appeals of SP to the public: the ability to access information for a wide variety of activities on any given mountain.

+1

Ugh. Too many pages to read through! I read the earlier forum threads & MVS's article, as well as a bit of skimming and spot reading in this thread to make sure my little tidbit is reasonably informed.

I LOVE the idea of an pseudo-wiki style that is controlled by the page owner, with the owner receiving notifications of changes so that they can still act in an 'editor' capacity.

I've cringed from the idea of a full wiki because I've always felt like that system is pretty haphazard and decreases the satisfaction I get from creating things, since there is much less of a sense of ownership.

However, because I have this feeling of pride in my contributions, I also have felt bad about not keeping my pages up to date. The problem though is that I have a lot of pages, I have added a lot of information, and it is a TON of work to attempt to update them. I am still in the process of trying to update many of the routes created in SP1 (which were made to SP's standards then) to SP2, but when I have choose between adding new content (which is always more fun) or revising old content, I usually add new content, though I've wisened up and realized that it is best to do this in a trip report since then it can become dated and no maintenance is necessary. I've actually been toying with the idea of putting a lot of my pages up for adoption to those who are still in Utah (where many of my routes are) so that they can be kept up to date or revised to SP2 standards by someone with 'fresher' energy for those mountains and routes.

I think that is a key issue - it feels good to build something nice like a route page, but the minimum standards are pretty high for a complete page, and they require maintenance for changing standards, and new photos or beta. Trip reports can be much more basic and require no maintenance. Allowing a more dynamic sharing of pages can bypass this problem by allowing a user to get a start on a page, but not be obligated to have the entire thing worked out or to worry about the added cost of maintaining their creation.

I have a LOT of information I'd be happy to share and nice annotated photos for the many routes I've climbed this year, but having to create full pages has become too much work (especially when I think of the further maintenance required) and that information not integrated into the main page of an existing route is a big disincentive to post it, since I doubt it is viewed all that often, if ever. For example, a lot of my annotated route photos get low scores/few votes relative to more aesthetic or older photos, so they are often buried deep within a cluster of miscellaneous photos. Yet I imagine someone wanting to climb the route would really like to see them on the route description. I could imagine myself making a "route photo/map" section to many pages that lack them, which either could be nice additions, or at least prompt the page owner (through the changes notice) to integrate them.

I think so long as one's contributions to a page can be well integrated such that the creator knows their work will be seen and credited, and so long as the page 'owner' idea is changed more into a page 'editor', the pseudo-wiki idea is a great idea.

I wonder, for added content, if perhaps a dynamic footnote could be automatically added, linked to a list of contributors at the bottom of the page, similar to a citation in Wikipedia? This could allow many people to add bits of information to a page with credit, but without clutter. I think citing a contributor would be useful not only for encouraging additions, but also allow page viewers to know who added that information so they know how to view the writings or know how to contact the contributor to ask questions (e.g. more beta).

BTW, I second Josh Lewis' comments about uploading, voting, and plans & partners.

The only real problem I see with uploading in light of the bulk uploader is that it is NOT well integrated into the site, as it is a separate application that is not well featured on the site, which makes it a bit awkward (I really appreciate it automatically filling in captions I've added in Picasa though!).

In SP1 I actually felt like voting gave me good feedback on the quality of my contributions or the value it had to the site (redundant photos got few votes or low votes). This has never been the case with voting in SP2.

And I have never had any luck with 'plans and partners'. These days when I need a partner for a particular climb, I find MountainProject or CascadeClimbers the better alternative without question. I've come to feel that it isn't even worth my time to advertise for a partner on this site due to how poorly this feature has worked for me.

An idea for making photos more useful for a page:

For photos that show key parts of a route, an annotation of a route, or that is a drawn topo, why not allow them to be classified differently than photos that are aesthetic or are more of the 'trip report' type? Something similar to the 'beta photo' concept on MountainProject. When looking at a route page I would love to filter my search of photos to look solely at these types of photos if I am researching a route - especially on a page with a lot of photos (e.g. an old page or a page of a popular peak/route).

After i joined this site, it took me about a year to start posting thing on it, partially because i didn't have much to say, but also because i was afraid not to have good enough/ interesting enough things to share.
When i felt i could maybe be of interest, i wrote something. I am not saying everyone needs to wait all that time, but one fear i have is that opening to wiki would make some people just start posting away without giving much thought to it, albeit with a good heart.
One point some wiki sustainers bring is that most pages would be collaboratively written by not more than a few contributors, since the quantity of contribution has gone down, and many just post photos, so there should be no fear of edit battles, but that is how things would work applied to the current population of SP.
I have a feeling that would change, and soon there would be edit wars.

Still, don't take me for a bigot, i can understand the points in favor of the wiki approach, and i find them strong and valid. I simply think it's positive aspects can be obtained by tweaking the current system, without the potential drawbacks.

I like the idea of the open appendix section with proposed edits remaining visible until integrated or rejected, and i think it would be a great starting point to test all of our hopes and fears. There is no need to make it secondary and half-hidden. Make it visible and important, it will be like writing margin notes on an older guide. (With the difference these notes can be integrated).
As i see most people would be ok with that, why not decide to try it now? or, say, decide by page 16 of this discussion.

Another interesting point someone made (sorry, the discussion is getting long and i don't remember who it was), was the possibility to use the collaborative option to write pages about routes or mountains for which one has the knowledge but lack the photos, or vice-versa.
There might be a way to help people in this situation without the wiki approach.
Why not open a section of the website for "pages in progress"? It could be made visible on the site, so that people would keep being reminded of all the incomplete pages there are and these pages could benefit from contributions from other members, coordinated by the page opener. All contributors could receive credit for the page, while ownership, once the page is closed would be of the main contributor (Not necessarily the page opener).
I think this "Lab" could give some users the creativity, dynamicity and collaborative spirit they are looking for, while maintaining all the features of SP we all know and enjoy.

mvs wrote:

yatsek wrote:I don't think this lack of dynamism results from SP's anti-wiki approach.

What does it result from?

1 "system" that cannot be altered, e.g. voting system

2 so many mts "taken" by so few people

3 so many poor pages, without real info or "heart"

4 slow upload

5 competition from other sites, e.g. from those for rock climbers only

6 difficulty writing in English

7 rock climbers feeling excluded (e.g. there's Best Album on the front page but there's no Best Route)

8 most people happy to be able to benefit from the site without having to contribute

and I get the feeling it's not the end of the list yet.

Just to add another of my 2 bob's worth (that's the Scottish equivalent of 2 cents, not two Bob Sihlers).

On the wiki-fying...I'm curious to who exactly would be willing to contribute in certain areas of the globe if this was the route that was to be taken or do we think this would, as a direct result, encourage more users to join/stick around when the current average is 1 or 2% of registered user being active? I think in higher populated areas this might not be an issue, but lesser ones it would.

Looking at the current figures on this side of the pond we have the following;

Uk - 41 users with a power score +10 - 24 of these active in 2011 - 1000+ users registered
Scotland - 4 users with a power score +10 - 3 active in 2011 - 61 users registered
Wales - 4 users with a power score +10 - 4 active in 2011 - 34 users registered
England - 9 users with a power score +10 - 8 active in 2011 - 94 users registered
Sorry Northern Ireland, nobody (unless listed under Uk) +10

Again we're looking at around 1 or 2% of users being active. Is this enough to get the wikifying to work?

On another point. Go to people, search under United Kingdom and put Glasgow as the City. There's a guy (age 43) who has 19 user names...19 USER NAMES. Sometimes only two weeks apart. Whats wrong with this guy, can he not remember his user name/password! FFS

gabr1 wrote:(...)Why not open a section of the website for "pages in progress"?

I'm afraid this would be the Return of the Junk.