Ethics of adding routes without direct experience

About the new suggestion system: the back end is entirely new too, and we're now very careful to make sure every suggestion gets handled.  Even bad suggestions get a response even if we don't incorporate it.  If you gave up on it based on past experience, please try it again.

They work like this:

1. Anyone makes a suggestion.
2. If the Original Poster of the route or area is still an "active" user of MP, they get notified and can deal with it.
3. After 2 days, if the OP hasn't done anything, regional admins can deal with it.  Some places have several admins, and one of them can "claim" it and work with the person who made the suggestion if necessary.
4. After 6 days, if no admins have looked at it, our staff deals with it.  This isn't the best outcome because we usually don't have good local knowledge, but it's better than nothing.

So far, it looks like about 15% of suggestions get handled by the OP, about 65% by the regional admins, and the remaining 20% by our staff.

About the original topic: we once had a strong opinion that routes descriptions should be based on first-hand experience.  With the new suggestion system, that seems a little less important, but we definitely don't want a bunch of nearly meaningless descriptions.  I can imagine it being possible to describe a route you didn't do (you watched a few folks, belayed someone, or maybe a grid-bolted wall of similar climbs), but I don't want that to be the norm.

FWIW, the few suggestions I've made were incorporated into their respective pages almost immediately.

Chris C. wrote:

 I've had a 0% success rate with suggestions.  Basically it comes down to people having to take the time to made edits to their page.  Obviously there is no way to prevent people from making pages, but if you do, please know you are taking on the responsibility of making edits via suggestions.

Part of the problem might be, that the system doesn't allow the requested update.

Example:  I've done an outstanding job on this page https://www.mountainproject.com/route/114037902/karma-crack

In spite of me not even being that into climbing, I crank out gems like this as a service to the select few San Diego climbers that live 3 minutes walk (max) from the climb.  However, some nobe name Louies or something marked it as 5.7, and I wasn't able to change it even though someone suggested that I do so.  Luckily, it appears the admin stepped in and changed it to 3rd class (solid.)

I would only suggest that we add another dropdown menu on each page that allowed the user to indicate how much their wilderness experience was ruined by the existence of the page itself, which defaults to "utterly and totally."

Nick Wilder wrote: So far, it looks like about 15% of suggestions get handled by the OP, about 65% by the regional admins, and the remaining 20% by our staff.

Given those numbers, I'll withdrawal my earlier vote of leniency.  Too much is already falling on the shoulder's of volunteers. 

Best to only post climbs you have led.

Thank you, Nick.