You can now flag a discriminatory name

abandon moderation wrote:

I don't know if it did, but I looked up the route in question.

Route is already renamed

OK, this has a certain beautiful symmetry to it. While this is a route that was named with no ill intent, the FA was willing to change it. He changed it to the title of the song from which the original name was taken, so it still retains at least some of the original meaning for him. But it also takes on a certain poetic new meaning. When someone asked him if he would be willing to change the name, his response was, "I would for you".

abandon moderation wrote:

I don't know if it did, but I looked up the route in question.

Route is already renamed

Thanks for info. I didn’t understand the full context. 

I reject the premise in the pasted thread above that "climbing should try to be as welcoming as possible at all levels" . NOFX wrote a glorious song about what happens to the music industry as it becomes more popular and commercialized; they concluded "It's my job to keep punk rock elite". Perhaps climbing is better if it's more welcoming but with increasing impacts in wild places due to an increase in climbing participation I have a feeling that climbing should become more exclusive. It's my job to keep climbing elite.

This is a great start to a long-overdue feature, thanks MP for implementing it. It's not yet perfect, but it doesn't have to be, just better than it was. Please stop with the simplistic comments about how we're going to routes 1-99999, that's not constructive, since obviously were not going there. 

A couple ideas for improvements:
- Formalize the guidelines and policies. Get a diverse set of viewpoints here, and be as transparent as possible. Make this guide easy to find  This would help with accusations of gatekeeping by admins. 
- Make flagging not be binary, but a count of flags, so you get the sense of seriousness and community concensus. 
- Better monitoring, possibly in a dashboard: how many routes have been changed, how many flags, how many have been resolved without change. A list of flagged routes without outcomes looks like a list of ignored problems.

Peter Blankwrote: I reject the premise in the pasted thread above that "climbing should try to be as welcoming as possible at all levels" . NOFX wrote a glorious song about what happens to the music industry as it becomes more popular and commercialized; they concluded "It's my job to keep punk rock elite". Perhaps climbing is better if it's more welcoming but with increasing impacts in wild places due to an increase in climbing participation I have a feeling that climbing should become more exclusive. It's my job to keep climbing elite.

I find the statement "climbing should be exclusive because of environmental impact" dangerous. What groups should have access, and what groups should be limited? All too often that's gonna end up being racist, classist, etc, at least with the Maverick attitude you seem to have. If we need to limit access to a resource then it should be done officially, with free limited quota permits or something designed explicitly to be equitable.

Besides environmental impact are there any other reasons you feel climbing should not be inclusive at all levels?

In theory, the addition of this feature is welcome and a long time coming, but it appears that Melissa Utomo had been marketing this idea to Mountain Project (or rather to REI, the owner of this site) for months to no avail. The article above, as well as Melissa's personal instagram account, argue that it's stolen intellectual property, or at least partially so, as the feature is a much more basic version than the one Melissa proposed.

REI's treatment of Melissa Utomo is pretty despicable throughout all of this.

M Spraguewrote:

Most of the arguing is defining where the discrimination line is, if using certain words actually is defacto discrimination and to what degree does it outweigh protecting people's free self expression. 

And I think that’s a good discussion to have. I was referring to the culture wars BS of trying to make it about “overly sensitive woke people” and “it’s erasing history”. I love crude humor and almost nothing offends me, but I have a lot of empathy for people who are treated poorly.

It’s not an easy call to make. I think we could look towards the supreme courts decisions on obscenity to get and idea of how to deal with discriminatory language:

After grappling with the obscenity problem in many cases during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Supreme Court laid out “basic guidelines” for jurors in obscenity cases in its 1973 decision Miller v. California. These include:

• Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
• Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.
• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value

Some names that are borderline offensive have more value if they are funny or clever IMO. And I’d personally vote for them to stay.

As far as free expression goes it makes me think of the quote  “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”  Of course where the nose starts is the crux of the discussion.

marmot marmotwrote: https://www.melaninbasecamp.com/around-the-bonfire/2020/7/6/how-mountain-project-stole-from-a-woman-of-color?fbclid=IwAR0RFgrfMCSRHVUaV2azhE0cAEcQcMS_dDow9xqDkH2-3n85WzyGfbNKrog

In theory, the addition of this feature is welcome and a long time coming, but it appears that Melissa Utomo had been marketing this idea to Mountain Project (or rather to REI, the owner of this site) for months to no avail. The article above, as well as Melissa's personal instagram account, argue that it's stolen intellectual property, or at least partially so, as the feature is a much more basic version than the one Melissa proposed.

REI's treatment of Melissa Utomo is pretty despicable throughout all of this.

QFT. Nick Wilder, do you have a response to this?

Only 18 pages?! C'mon......lets pump these numbers UP! Nick isn't a thief and people whine far too much...this help? 

Nick Crewswrote:

.

Besides environmental impact are there any other reasons you feel climbing should not be inclusive at all levels?

Yeah. To keep people from Boulder from perverting an engaging and personal sport into a lame lowest common denominator blah.

Rick Carpenterwrote:Nick isn't a thief 

So I'm assuming you have some compelling evidence to refute Melissa's claim?

Matthew Tangemanwrote:

So I'm assuming you have some compelling evidence to refute Melissa's claim?

Nick > Melissa (who?)

marmot marmotwrote: https://www.melaninbasecamp.com/around-the-bonfire/2020/7/6/how-mountain-project-stole-from-a-woman-of-color?fbclid=IwAR0RFgrfMCSRHVUaV2azhE0cAEcQcMS_dDow9xqDkH2-3n85WzyGfbNKrog

In theory, the addition of this feature is welcome and a long time coming, but it appears that Melissa Utomo had been marketing this idea to Mountain Project (or rather to REI, the owner of this site) for months to no avail. The article above, as well as Melissa's personal instagram account, argue that it's stolen intellectual property, or at least partially so, as the feature is a much more basic version than the one Melissa proposed.

REI's treatment of Melissa Utomo is pretty despicable throughout all of this.

I’m confused, if this is intellectual theft why doesn’t she take legal actions if none were taken already?

marmot marmotwrote: https://www.melaninbasecamp.com/around-the-bonfire/2020/7/6/how-mountain-project-stole-from-a-woman-of-color?fbclid=IwAR0RFgrfMCSRHVUaV2azhE0cAEcQcMS_dDow9xqDkH2-3n85WzyGfbNKrog

In theory, the addition of this feature is welcome and a long time coming, but it appears that Melissa Utomo had been marketing this idea to Mountain Project (or rather to REI, the owner of this site) for months to no avail. The article above, as well as Melissa's personal instagram account, argue that it's stolen intellectual property, or at least partially so, as the feature is a much more basic version than the one Melissa proposed.

REI's treatment of Melissa Utomo is pretty despicable throughout all of this.

Always two sides to a story I am sure.  But alas, according to the article "In recent years, Mountain Project has gained notoriety as it transformed into an online hub for bigotry and racist trolls." 

Who knew?

If this were the case, why was she recently trying to even work with MP?  

Another quote "a major outdoor brand preserved its status quo - unchecked hate speech - by refusing to listen to a woman of color." She seams to blame being not listened to on the fact that she is a woman of color.  I am guessing there were other reasons.  

Then even though the idea of flagging offensive route names has been thrown around for years, she claims MP "stole it from a woman of color. "

MP takes her suggestion and she's mad about it?! If she wanted to get paid for it, she should have had them sign an agreement or something before sending them her idea.

The actual implementation isn't even the same as what she proposed - just similar.

Anyway, it is also likely true that the legality of this doesn't even matter. REI is not going to want the public seeing them as the enemy of an outdoor sports diversity group. They are probably going to have to bow down on this one.

Eric Carloswrote:

Always two sides to a story I am sure.  But alas, according to the article "In recent years, Mountain Project has gained notoriety as it transformed into an online hub for bigotry and racist trolls." 

Who knew?

If this were the case, why was she recently trying to even work with MP?  

Another quote "a major outdoor brand preserved its status quo - unchecked hate speech - by refusing to listen to a woman of color." She seams to blame being not listened to on the fact that she is a woman of color.  I am guessing there were other reasons.  

Then even though the idea of flagging offensive route names has been thrown around for years, she claims MP "stole it from a woman of color. "

MP is still the number one climbing utility for any climber out there. A crowd-sourced collection of routes around the globe with a free app to go along with it. My guess, it's less work to reach out to such an organization than to try to build it one's self, and the message she wants to send reaches a huge portion of the climbing community as a result. I think that's a good idea.

Is it intellectual property? It depends what you define that as. It appears she did go as far as to write up a proposal, which I found on her website. True, there wasn't a patent or copyright, so I suppose by law, nothing is wrong here. I still don't agree with REI's actions.

marmot marmotwrote:

Is it intellectual property? It depends what you define that as. It appears she did go as far as to write up a proposal, which I found on her website. True, there wasn't a patent or copyright, so I suppose by law, nothing is wrong here. I still don't agree with REI's actions.

Any work is automatically protected under copyright law. As a hypothetical example, if REI copied the HTML from her proposal, that would be a copyright violation.

I'm not one to stand up for a bunch of Tech Bros, but this is not the first person of color to approach the climbing community recently with a dubious personal story of discrimination and a vague demand for money. I'd also note that it's been mostly people in CA from the LGBT activist community doing this and not in any way normal black folk - and by "normal" I mean, "not activists." For instance, the woman decrying racism at GWPC a few weeks ago, but who refused to say what actually happened (GWPC also refused to comment on the specifics). And who subsequently was involved in a second unlikely episode from which she gathered money for her non-profit (the white people hanging out at Indian Rock in Berkeley aren't the sort to call a ten year old black girl the n-word; sorry, to paraphrase Dave Chappelle on Jussie Smollet, I need some more evidence before I'll believe that). And now this.

If this individual who is a programmer has a personal grudge they should contact a lawyer and sue. Then we'll all know how innocent or evil MP is. If this person doesn't have a basis for what they are saying, then MP should consider suing them for libel.

Rory Jones wrote: Pretty disingenuous response from Nick, especially since MB article was published. I'm guessing the topic is important to his quarterly earnings since REI dropped him.  Nick is becoming more like Zuckerberg and Dorsey everyday now that he owns a platform devoted to hate and oppression and lives part time in San Fransisco.  And let's not forget the negative impact that this platform has on climbing areas due to overcrowding that comes from areas being posted on this platform.  

Maybe it's time to shut this site down and rebuild super topo?  Would not be hard to rebuild something better and open source run by communities across the country.

Why are you wasting time creating an account and posting on a "platform devoted to hate and oppression"?  I guess I thought this was a site devoted to climbing.  Who knew?

Rory Jones wrote: Pretty disingenuous response from Nick, especially since MB article was published. I'm guessing the topic is important to his quarterly earnings since REI dropped him.  Nick is becoming more like Zuckerberg and Dorsey everyday now that he owns a platform devoted to hate and oppression and lives part time in San Fransisco.  And let's not forget the negative impact that this platform has on climbing areas due to overcrowding that comes from areas being posted on this platform.  

Maybe it's time to shut this site down and rebuild super topo?  Would not be hard to rebuild something better and open source run by communities across the country.

Dude wtf are you talking about? Get offline, go into the world, read a book. This kind of thinking is unhealthy.

Edit: oh I see, troll account. I'd say we are probably up to about 30% strict trolls in these threads. Probably one guy arguing with himself. How about we ban burner accounts Nick?