You can now flag a discriminatory name

Terrence Gallibier wrote: This is stupid. A route name, by definition, cannot actually be racist/sexist/etc because there is no actual damage to be done by one. Can a name actually hold someone back somehow? Can it prevent you from getting a job, moving ahead in life, or actually sending the route? Absolutely not...so while they may be in poor taste, they're just words and don't actually meet the true definition of discrimination. I wonder how many "racist/sexist" route names are going to be flagged even though they were named by someone of the "offended" population...I personally know a female FA who has already had one of her "sexist" route names flagged...

Your anecdotal evidence a poor representation of a big part of the climbing/outdoor community. It doesn't take a smart person to know that people would find a route with the n-word or other inflammatory phrase attached to it would see it as racist, offensive, and frankly stupid. 

Glad you quoted that shit show of a post by Terrence before it was deleted/retracted! 

Jared Williswrote:

We are waaaaayyyyy beyond those words meaning what you think they mean. You need to get into critical theory, get behind the idea that every aspect of life is racist and a microaggression towards someone, somewhere and begin to understand your evil, dirty little role in the whole thing. 

So true.

Even if you see no racism or sexism, it is there.

It lurks in every nook and cranny, and someone will find it! Some people are specially trained to sniff it out. :)

I think a lot of the disagreement in this forum has to do with how different people view climbing. Some people view climbing as a way to connect to a social group. For these people routes should be the property of everyone and so for them the FA’s doesn’t matter to them because their focus is the group. This group generally pushes for retrobolting as it makes everything supper safe allowing more people to climb certain routes. The other group of climbers are the ones who view FA’s as an art. They see climbing as a high consequence time honored art form.  They see art as something that can be controversial but that doesn’t mean it needs to be censore.  They develop routes to push themselves and see their routes as reflections of themselves. Like an artist naming their art they chose a name very intentionally and it often has a very personal meaning to them.  Unfortunately for the first group, the second group is the one that is establishing most routes because establishing routes isn’t a particularly social activity. However, in the end I suspect the first group will win and thousands of route names will be censored.  

FrankPSwrote:

So true.

Even if you see no racism or sexism, it is there.

It lurks in every nook and cranny, and someone will find it! Some people are specially trained to sniff it out. :)

And with some we don’t need to look very far at all. That fact that the Terrences of world can’t even recognize that words can be and are racist and sexist is ridiculous. It shouldn’t take a rape or a lynching to rise to the label of sexist/racist. If we we were less tolerant of racist language and ideas, we wouldn’t need to get truly offended by racist actions as often. Stop it before it turns into overt action.

Sure, the pendulum has swung far in the opposite direction and offense is being taken at things that would otherwise have been ok. But apparently, that’s what it takes to get any true action done. Pointing out overtly racists/sexist action for the last 100 years hasn’t moved the needle far enough, so don’t be surprised when an over-reaction is necessary to get it to move at all.

"grading that route 10d is VERY offensive to my climbing skills."

11b easy.

csproulwrote:

And with some we don’t need to look very far at all. That fact that the Terrences of world can’t even recognize that words can be and are racist and sexist is ridiculous. If we we were less tolerant of racist language and ideas, we wouldn’t need to get truly offended by racist actions as often. Stop it before it turns into overt action.

Sure, the pendulum has swung far in the opposite direction and offense is being taken at things that would otherwise have been ok. But apparently, that’s what it takes to get any true action done. Pointing out overtly racists/sexist action for the last 100 years hasn’t moved the needle far enough, so don’t be surprised when an over-reaction is necessary to get it to move at all.

I don't really see it as a pendulum. Culture changes and evolves over time. Progression has always been human nature. Some people just like to hold on to the past, and for whatever reason, they choose to hold on to the worst parts of it.

Did yall know that Mountain Project stole this idea from Melissa Utomo. She pitched this feature fully designed and thought out in 2019 to REI (which at the time was owned by REI). They turned her pitch down and then she re-pitched it to Mountain Project, they turned it down, and guess what? Days later Mountain Project comes out with her flagging feature, not credit given to her. Wilder stole her intellectual property. Read the full article PLEASSSSSE melaninbasecamp.com/around-…

csproulwrote:

And with some we don’t need to look very far at all. That fact that the Terrences of world can’t even recognize that words can be and are racist and sexist is ridiculous. If we we were less tolerant of racist language and ideas, we wouldn’t need to get truly offended by racist actions as often. Stop it before it turns into overt action.

Sure, the pendulum has swung far in the opposite direction and offense is being taken at things that would otherwise have been ok. But apparently, that’s what it takes to get any true action done. Pointing out overtly racists/sexist action for the last 100 years hasn’t moved the needle far enough, so don’t be surprised when an over-reaction is necessary to get it to move at all.

^^^

This is a well-thought out comment.

I think that the complaints about every little thing diminishes from real racism. "Real racism" is subjective, and varies from person to person.

When people complain about a route called Aunt Jamima, I think they do a disservice to the cause of ending racism. It's counterproductive, in my opinion.

And I think I've hit my post limit.

Evin Harriswrote: Did yall know that Mountain Project stole this idea from Melissa Utomo. She pitched this feature fully designed and thought out in 2019 to REI (which at the time was owned by REI). They turned her pitch down and then she re-pitched it to Mountain Project, they turned it down, and guess what? Days later Mountain Project comes out with her flagging feature, not credit given to her. Wilder stole her intellectual property. Read the full article PLEASSSSSE melaninbasecamp.com/around-…

Where have you been?

Now I've surely hit my post limit!

T Dwrote:

I don't really see it as a pendulum. Culture changes and evolves over time. Progression has always been human nature. Some people just like to hold on to the past, and for whatever reason, they choose to hold on to the worst parts of it.

The idea that humans have been on this march of progression throughout our history and things never move backward is a myth. There have been many instances and times where we have lost technology, lost huge amounts of our population, and lost troves of our knowledge. Forward progress is in no way guaranteed. 

Evin Harriswrote: Did yall know that Mountain Project stole this idea from Melissa Utomo. She pitched this feature fully designed and thought out in 2019 to REI (which at the time was owned by REI). They turned her pitch down and then she re-pitched it to Mountain Project, they turned it down, and guess what? Days later Mountain Project comes out with her flagging feature, not credit given to her. Wilder stole her intellectual property. Read the full article PLEASSSSSE melaninbasecamp.com/around-…

Lol.  "Fully designed"? She simply copied what MP already had to flag forum posts.  She took their mechanism and pitched it back to them, nothing was stolen.  

T Dwrote: Renaming routes isn't destroying history, it's one small step in giving a voice to every group in the outdoor community. Confederate statues are being torn down and y'all are worried that changing something as simple as a racist/sexist/homophobic route name is really rewriting and destroying a climbing history that nobody outside of climbing really gives a shit about. 

Most commenters seem to support the flagging feature, at least in principle. It is, though, just a refinement of existing features. Users already had the option of commenting about the names, and in fact people did — I saw comments from Nick going back to 2016. But there wasn't (and still isn't) a process for addressing the complaints, so whether it's comments or flagging, the routes mostly stayed up, affirming the source community's naming decision.

The fundamental question is over who has naming and renaming rights. The standard is that the first ascentionist gets to pick, and publishers (including Mountain Project) can exercise editorial discretion with respect to publishing the name. Where the FA is known, living, and could be contacted, the standard works fine — delegate it to the FA and let them decide. The interesting question is what to do when the FA is unknown, can't be contacted, or dead, and no one has really proposed a standard here. Mountain Project clearly has no legitimacy with respect to making that decision — it is just a website — but you can imagine adjudicating the claim through a local organization or network of organizations like the Access Fund. They can plausibly claim to represent the community, have an interest in enhancing the sport's local respectability (clearly, with respect to access), and they actually have money.

As for Mountain Project, obviously it has the right to set its own publishing policy. My view is that it should publish all valid routes along with their generally accepted name (rather than remove routes which are deemed offensive) and provide a mechanism — as it has! — for the community to flag and comment on routes. Keeping the names searchable makes it possible to gather data and bring a renaming case to the people actually responsible for it.

Jared Williswrote:

The idea that humans have been on this march of progression throughout our history and things never move backward is a myth. There have been many instances and times where we have lost technology, lost huge amounts of our population, and lost troves of our knowledge. Forward progress is in no way guaranteed. 

+1, actually thanks for correcting me.

Gumby Da Younger wrote: 1. The FA don't own the route or the name, unless its on private property. That the name is kept is a courtesy.

It's not simply a courtesy — the FAs and bolters are the ones actually putting in the work to produce the route, and the name is partly compensation for their contribution. In a sense, the more work you put into the FA, the more discretion you ought to get from publishers. Your decision on that question reflects how you value meaningful effort, free speech, and community standards, and personally I fall way towards the side of "meaningful effort".

Just for a reminder: This website does not reflect all of climbing. It's a microcosm. Change a route name on here whatever. In the real world it will probably still stick. Especially older routes.

T Dwrote:

You can remember atrocities of the past without having a statue or a route name to remind you of it. Maybe you should try reading a book or taking a history class. I got my first history lesson in... Oh lets see, like 1st grade? Your argument is poor.

OMG...

Sanitizing your view does nothing to change the world.

BTW, whose history books shall we read?

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." G.O.

I'm a lawyer but not an IP lawyer. I have no idea whether Melissa Utomo has a claim against the site. But I recognize shitty treatment when I see it. I'll be waiting for Nick's apology and I hope he finds a way to make it right.

caughtinside wrote:

I’d be curious as to how many routes have been flagged so far. All the ones I thought might be flagged, have been flagged. And surprisingly some routes at the same crags with questionable names have not. 

It was well over 3,800 2 weeks ago when the link to all of them was still available and enumerated and I looked.
I see a reference to 4000+ just above.  So about 2% of all route names by now. 

SinRopa wrote: Anyone know why the viewable list of "bad names" is restricted to the first 200 now?  This gets more bizarre every day...we used to be able to view all 4000+

https://www.mountainproject.com/bad-names

performance issues... pulling 4000 database records is slow(it took several seconds for it to load for me a couple days ago). That number must be much bigger now and would likely hog server resources every time someone tried loading it.

If they wanted to they could build search/filter/sort/pagination functionality into the page but that takes time/effort for what I assume is a small team(mproj is no longer owned by REI and likely doesn't have many resources).

FWIW, the feature they implemented to flag the routes is stupid simple and despite not knowing anything about their codebase I would be willing to bet that it took 1-4 hours to implement. They likely didn't want to spend much money/time on it as it doesn't really generate direct value. I suspect Melissa's proposal was much more complex because going to someone with a proposal to add a flag is more of a suggestion than a proposal/idea. By the way, does anyone have information on what Melissa's proposal actually was/is? I'd be curious to know what she had in mind.

Source: am web developer.