Route Ratings Changed to Consensus

I have no complaints with this change.
I always got a kick out of Moby Dick Ahab - a nasty 10b offwidth/squeeze being downrated to 10a by the original route submitter when Supertopo says 99 out of 100 5.13 sport climbers would be completely shut down by this climb.

Mark E Dixon wrote: We could call it the Tony B tag. :-)

Or the Tank Evans tag for harder routes. Though he doesn't perform the same downgrade on boulder problems...

Back on topic: the consensus does still have the issue of people grading the 1st pitch of a multi-pitch route or different variations of a single route/boulder problem. Here, the intention of the OP is better defined than the mob consensus.

I love this.

The argument that people will only submit a rating if they disagree is lessened by the very fact that consensus is now the rating. People are now more motivated to submit a rating and if a rating does creep up or down, then those people who agreed with the original rating will submit their opinion.

Nice.

Great change, thumbs up from me. It would be cool if there was a little popup that showed all the ratings from which the consensus is calculated, or perhaps a histogram...

1+ for comment by Brian. Hopefully I'll be able to lead 5.10 again!

Noah Yetter wrote:Great change, thumbs up from me. It would be cool if there was a little popup that showed all the ratings from which the consensus is calculated, or perhaps a histogram...

If you click on the link, [details], next to YDS, you get a little pop up that shows the ratings from each contributor.

If there is a wide range of ratings, it would be cool to know if the contributor was short or tall, and their ape index. ;). But then again, adventure rules, as do bail biners!

It is the beginning of distorting ratings towards the typical climber who mainly understands face climbing - thumbs down.

I think Bill has a point, but it works both ways. Climbers who have specialized in one genre of climbing naturally tend to overrate less familiar types of climbing. And when it comes to trad climbing, there is the prospect of undergrading by people who have not "really" led the route.

If we are going for precision, then reporting the standard deviation would be nice too.

In principle, half the responders think the climb is as difficult or harder than the median grade, and half the responders think it is as difficult or easier than the median grade. I think there is quite a difference between nearly full agreement and a spread of ratings as much as, say, two full grades between the hardest estimate and the easiest. The standard deviation would at least alert the reader about the precision of the consensus grade.

Bill Lawry wrote:It is the beginning of distorting ratings towards the typical climber who mainly understands face climbing - thumbs down.

This is a really good point.

Another issue is that people that have only top roped a trad route or have not completed have the same weigh as someone who have lead the route on gear.

If I am wondering how hard a route really is sometimes I go out and try to climb it. Unless it looks scary,then I just set up a TR on something I've done a hundred times and run laps on that instead. No statistics degree required.

Is there a way of counting everyone who ticked a route before this switch that didn't rate its difficulty as confirming the listed grade at the time of the tick? Most of the grade suggestions people make are the result of their experience not matching the listed grade, so if you've ticked a route and felt it was true to the grade, you wouldn't feel compelled to comment on whether it was hard/soft but have now retroactively consented to an upgrade/downgrade in the current system.

A lot of routes have many ticks but only 2 grade suggestions, and the system now takes the 2nd grade suggestion even in the face of overwhelming evidence that people who climbed it felt that the grade wasn't off. A consensus v8 where one person flashed it and felt obligated to downgrade shouldn't change the listed grade to v7.

As an aside, virtually no one is going to offer a dissenting opinion that a climb is harder than the consensus grade unless there's definitive support behind them (holds breaking, extreme hold-polishing, or a long period between the 1st and 2nd ascents). Basically, if it was easy for you, you downgrade it to keep the gym rats in check, but if it was hard for you, you suck and probably have bad technique. There's a reason some of the best climbs get the least traffic - they're stoutly graded and no one wants to spend the time projecting a climb if they have to take a grade that's lower than it felt.

Yeah, I have to agree with a bunch of the posts that this is going to invite people screwing with the grades on purpose like the recent posting of the Dawn Wall at 5.7. I've seen routes intentionally rated ridiculously low to skew the consensus grade. Example: mountainproject.com/scripts…
I climb a lot at the Gunks so almost all roofs out west seem soft to me so I'm going to grade them low not necessarily according to the area. This could potentially cause havoc.

Brian wrote: I climb a lot at the Gunks so almost all roofs out west seem soft to me so I'm going to grade them low not necessarily according to the area. This could potentially cause havoc.

This is possible but you're not likely to be climbing out west as much as people who actually live out west so your (and other gunks travelers) vote on the few climbs you do on a trip out there are likely to be diluted by the opinions of the locals.

Alos, ff this change motivates more people to declare ratings I don't see any problems as the averages only get more accurate with the more opinions people give.

Not to mention, remember, that this is keeping in mind what we came from. Which is that one rando puts down their submission with a climb and that's where it sits. As someone who is notoriously inaccurate at grading climbs I really want my opinion watered down on the new climbs I'm developing and adding to MP.

Brian wrote:I climb a lot at the Gunks...

A thread about grades couldn't possibly be complete w/o somebody mentioning the Gunks. Good work.

The gunks...the route desciptions say things such as "anywhere else this would be 5.10". Okay, why not just grade it 5.10? Ego? Douchism? Whats the point of grades if not to provide the climber a universal idea of how difficult the terrain he will encounter may be.

Hopefully this new consensus grading system will "fix" the gunks.

grog m wrote:Hopefully this new consensus grading system will "fix" the gunks.

*preparing popcorn to watch shitstorm*

KrisFiore wrote: *preparing popcorn to watch shitstorm*

don't worry i brought enough for everyone.

Brian wrote:Yeah, I have to agree with a bunch of the posts that this is going to invite people screwing with the grades on purpose like the recent posting of the Dawn Wall at 5.7. I've seen routes intentionally rated ridiculously low to skew the consensus grade. Example: mountainproject.com/scripts… I climb a lot at the Gunks so almost all roofs out west seem soft to me so I'm going to grade them low not necessarily according to the area. This could potentially cause havoc.

It takes the median not the mean. It takes the median not the mean. It takes the median not the mean.

As you can see from your very own example, the outliers don't matter.

grog m wrote:The gunks...the route desciptions say things such as "anywhere else this would be 5.10". Okay, why not just grade it 5.10? Ego? Douchism? Whats the point of grades if not to provide the climber a universal idea of how difficult the terrain he will encounter may be. Hopefully this new consensus grading system will "fix" the gunks.

Ha! As if...

Really, the "problem" is much more substantial than just the Gunks. It may be that grades should be universal, but they aren't and never have been. Grades reflect, first of all, some of the history of climbing in a region and, second of all, the local specialties required by the area's rock. Either of these two can have a substantial effect, offsetting the grades by at least one notch and not infrequently more than that. What isn't really at play is ego and douchism, at least not in general.

Leigh Ortenburger made a grand attempt in 1963 at creating a national climbing classification system that would make grades at all areas comparable. ( supertopo.com/climbers-foru…) The effort failed, and no one has even begun to try to revive it.

The fact of the matter is that grades within a region are often fairly inconsistent, so the problem of consistency across regions isn't even the first thing one would want to tackle. But one does hope that at least within a region the grading will provide---for the accomplished climber---an idea of how difficult the local terrain will be.

My preference is that rating within an area should be as consistent as possible. Those climbs are all in one guidebook, and there shouldn't be 5.8's that are harder than some other 5.9's for instance. When visiting climbers come to the area, they tackle some climbs cautiously to get used to the local rock type and ratings, and then can count of the guidebook consistency after that.

When you allow a "consensus" of climbers (often including tons of visiting climbers, not used to that particular style of climbing) to chime in on the ratings, some climbs get changed (to match climbs in totally different areas where the climber is from). But, not all of them get changed, and the "consistency" of the ratings in that area suffer. Due to this effect, I've found that the older guidebooks to an area are often more internally consistent than the newer ones. Of course the older books have generally stiffer ratings, but they don't seem to have the unpredictable scatter that the newer books have.

I'm talking about trad climbing rather than sport, because the local rock types make such a difference in the style required, and that is mainly what I have experience with. Of course, I'm not opposed to fixing up some true "sandbags," or over-rated climbs, that are not rated consistently with the other climbs in that same area.