Qualifications to Keep a Crag off MP

Old news braji

https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/119486950/keep-tahoe-bouldering-off-mountain-project

Max Tepferwrote:

Really?  To me secret is equivalent to locals only.  As in I only tell my friends and no one else and everyone keeps it as tight as possible.  Whether or not it's on the internet is academic because no one trusted with the secret would ever put it there.  Word of mouth/off line is tell anyone you want, but don't post it on social media or mountain project.  I can tell my friends, their friends, anyone from anywhere as long as it's communicated directly and not via some sort of online mass-broadcast. (IG/FB/MP)  Where the people who get the beta come from has nothing to do with whether or not they get the beta.  You honestly don't see the distinction?

Here, this will help you make friends at the crag: 

https://www.leafly.com/strains/sour-apple

Max Tepferwrote:

Whether or not it's on the internet is academic because no one trusted with the secret would ever put it there. 

And yet they do. 

And they put it online.

And why is MP supposed to now be the arbitrator of what was put online when no one entrusted with that secret would have put it online in the first place by your logic?

@Kevin, MP isn't supposed to be the arbiter.  That's exactly my point.  They currently are and their policy is that everything should be online.  I think they should allow space for the local community to make that call when appropriate.  Also, I'm still curious to hear why you think locals only and offline are the same thing?  

@Fan, I haven't ever had too much difficulty making friends at the crag, but if that ever changes, I'll bear your advice in mind.

Fail Fallingwrote:

Those are the same thing. 

These are not the same thing here in NC at least. There are some crags that are guidebook only, and there are some crags that are actually secret. You have to know somebody who is willing to take you for the latter. The guidebook only crags are a good middle ground imo. It stops the secretive locals only mentality, but also keeps the traffic down considerably. 

Max Tepferwrote:

@Kevin, MP isn't supposed to be the arbiter.  That's exactly my point.  They currently are and their policy is that everything should be online.  I think they should allow space for the local community to make that call when appropriate.  Also, I'm still curious to hear why you think locals only and offline are the same thing?  

@Fan, I haven't ever had too much difficulty making friends at the crag, but if that ever changes, I'll bear your advice in mind.

i think you are going to have a hard time getting people to support your stance when you undermined your stance a long time ago by posting trout creek.  i know you aren't going to take this well, but honestly you sound like you are saying "do what i say, not what i do."

in the big picture, unless the new area is completely sick it will probably be dead quiet in 5 years.  i have seen numerous crags get posted that i initially lamented, but they ended up being ghost towns.  i continuously go to nice little crags and never see a soul, while hordes of selfie-stick toting bumbies mob the same old 1% of the crags day in and day out.

Max Tepferwrote:

@Kevin, MP isn't supposed to be the arbiter.  That's exactly my point.  They currently are and their policy is that everything should be online.  I think they should allow space for the local community to make that call when appropriate.  Also, I'm still curious to hear why you think locals only and offline are the same thing?  

By taking areas off the database, as you propose, they effectively would become the arbitrator. To say they currently are the arbitrator belies a lack of comprehension of what a user-created database is. And this very thread has shown that they don't have a policy that everything should be online. (Find Gold Wall at Table Mountain, one of the more popular sport climbing areas in Northern California that literally EVERYONE knows about, on the database. Go on, I'll wait.)

MP is word of mouth. We don't live in the time before the internet. MP and sites like it are the campfire where word of mouth happens. The region and area moderators are part of the local community.  Requiring face to face interaction with a local, or one deigned trustworthy by a local, to receive information about an area is locals only secrecy. 

And I don't care about whether a community wants to play surfers on their rock, but it's when you want to try to turn back the clock on an area that's been shared that just seems pointless, doesn't solve the issues that people want to solve, and creates more opportunity for information to be limited. There's no problem with developing a crag for yourself and not telling anyone so that it's yours and yours alone but once a developer tells anyone about it, the genie is out of the bottle and the gold rush begins. 

slimwrote:

i think you are going to have a hard time getting people to support your stance when you undermined your stance a long time ago by posting trout creek.  i know you aren't going to take this well, but honestly you sound like you are saying "do what i say, not what i do."

in the big picture, unless the new area is completely sick it will probably be dead quiet in 5 years.  i have seen numerous crags get posted that i initially lamented, but they ended up being ghost towns.  i continuously go to nice little crags and never see a soul, while hordes of selfie-stick toting bumbies mob the same old 1% of the crags day in and day out.

He posted Trout Creek 11 years ago. He can't regret that and change his opinion over the course of a decade?

Schuyler Baerwrote:

He posted Trout Creek 11 years ago. He can't regret that and change his opinion over the course of a decade?

I think a lot of climbers go through this cycle.  When you are young and enthusiastic you post a crag, then over time you end up regretting it, and then you become anti-posting.  You have to remember that, at the time you were an enthusiastic crag poster there were folks that were later in the cycle, lamenting you posting the crag.  Now, you are the anti-posting geezer lamenting some enthusiastic gumby from posting a new crag.  And so on...

Someone above in the thread mentioned the need for trails and all sorts of goodies when a crag is posted.  i couldn't agree with this any less.  shitty approaches to raggedy crags help keep a crag from turning into an insta-twatter debacle.

FWIW I don't regret it and it wasn't secret at that point.  From Jeff's guidebook: 

"Some people flat out disagreed with the mindset of keeping things quiet. To them, our semi-covert message of “Come on out, tell your friends about Trout Creek, but don’t tell the world!” was problematic and sent the wrong message. A new message was soon delivered. In early 2007, “Utah” Dave McRrae wrote a piece for a local magazine titled, The Best Hand Crack Ever: Blowing the Lid off Trout Creek, with a version of the same article running in Climbing Magazine less than a year later."

I posted it in 2009 after someone started a forum post here suggesting it get added.  Jeff contributed to that post in favor of adding it.  At that point it was no longer a secret or even word of mouth crag.  I think trout is in a class of climbing areas that belongs on here.

Anyway

@Slim, I think we're actually mostly in agreement.  I think the best crags (like Trout) should be posted while the little ones that aren't on the database currently and aren't world class might be better left alone.  I totally see your point that a lot of them tend to stay quiet anyway.  

@Kevin, I'm not proposing taking anything down that's currently up.  Rather if something gets posted that the local community doesn't want up, there'd be space for the regional admin to remove it without going against the written policy.  I don't know anything about Gold Wall but assume that it's either on private land (unlikely looking at Table Mountain) or has an access issue?  Otherwise, per policy, it 'belongs on mountain project.'  

I disagree with your point about word of mouth.  The scale is entirely different.  With mediums like this and social media you can literally reach thousands of people.  (I think you have over 18k followers on Instagram, no?) Saying that putting information there or here is equivalent to sharing beta around a campfire is absurd.  While the internet isn't going anywhere, neither is person to person communication.  The two coexist well and both have their uses. What I'm advocating isn't mandatory face to face with a local.  It's direct person to person communication as opposed to mass broadcast.  Word of mouth means that anyone can share the beta with anyone else as long as they do so directly. (in person, over text/phone/email/fill in the blank messaging service/whatever)  

Max Tepferwrote:

Rather if something gets posted that the local community doesn't want up, there'd be space for the regional admin to remove it without going against the written policy. 

Where are you with this defined and unified local community? How would you get consensus that the majority of local (whatever that means) climbers want a crag removed, unless you're just deferring to the LCO?

Otherwise, per policy, it 'belongs on mountain project.'  

I think that the policy is not to say "all crags on public lands must/should be added to MP", but rather "if someone chooses to add info to the database, MP's opinion is that it deserves to stay." There are plenty of examples of good areas that could be added but haven't (maybe like the one Kevin mention above, but I don't know much about it).

Interesting discussion though, thanks for starting it.

Max Tepfer wrote:

@Slim, I think we're actually mostly in agreement.  I think the best crags (like Trout) should be posted while the little ones that aren't on the database currently and aren't world class might be better left alone.  I totally see your point that a lot of them tend to stay quiet anyway.  

IMO this is kind of the opposite of what mountain project is for. I realize that this doesn't apply for trout in particular, but the best crags are often already well known and well documented in guidebooks. Mountain project is the ideal place to distribute information about small crags that aren't really destinations and don't warrant their own guidebook (the garden is a great example of this).

Max Tepferwrote:

@Kevin, I'm not proposing taking anything down that's currently up.  Rather if something gets posted that the local community doesn't want up, there'd be space for the regional admin to remove it without going against the written policy.

Ok, if you honestly don't see the contradiction in your own post above then I wish you well out there. 

I just wanted to point out that MP is not the enemy.

Kyle M thanks for your reply. 

No MP is not the enemy. The entitled sense of data ownership of the MP user-base, now there's the enemy.

@Max:  i definitely understand though.  about 20 years ago i posted a route/area that was kind of an obscure classic.  an older climber was really not happy with me about it and was concerned it would turn into a circus.  at first i was a bit stunned, and then when i realized he had written several guidebooks with this route/area in it i was really confused.  about 10 years later i regretted posting it. i was concerned that it was probably turning into a circus.  now it is 20 years later, and when i look at the ticks on MP it looks like there might be 1 party a weekend x 3 months a year or so.  i have asked a few friends if they run into anybody up there and they say "rarely".

i agree with Andrew Child. I like the obscure crags on MP.  over the years i have really enjoyed going to random hole-in-the-wall areas.  when i am at popular areas i often daydream - in a perfect world the trails would be cush, there wouldn't be any litter, the routes would be super clean (but not polished!), the parking lot would be empty, the crag would be empty, etc.  it's a lot to ask for.

Max Tepferwrote:

I don't know anything about Gold Wall but assume that it's either on private land...

It is

Said this on another thread but - information wants to be free.  Hiding your crag from MP probably won't keep it secret for very long.

As for the crowding everyone seems to complain about - I was on Seal Rock Sunday, in the middle of the flatirons.  I saw a single other party.  Even in the middle of "Crowdarado", it would seem that it isn't very hard to find places to climb alone-ish.  Actually, thanks to MP, I know about all the random canyon crags I can go to instead of Eldo/Lumpy/whatever, thus I am no longer part of the "crowds", so maybe MP is the hero here?

Kevin Beverly wrote:

Mountain Project being a privately owned for profit a social media network is no different. It has single handedly destroyed the guide book industry much like Craigslist obliterated newspaper classified ads.  

Destroyed the guidebook industry? Could’ve fooled me. They seem to be as prevalent as ever. The skyrocketing price to produce a guidebook seems more a culprit. Wasn’t really much of an “industry” to begin with. They’ve always been a personal and fairly fruitless endeavor. 

  He's the king of social media influencers in the climbing world.

Too bad he can’t have nearly the financial success to go along with it... lol. Speaks to how small the climbing world really is. 

i would say that MP has resulted in me buying a lot of guidebooks over the years.  i am constantly researching new areas to check out, and i look to see what guidebooks are available.  everything from fancy full color epic novels to little home-made pamphlets.   we were on evacuation notice a few weeks ago, and the first thing i did was go take a bunch of photos of my guidebooks for insurance reasons.  :)

Word of mouth is not the internet, that’s a huge justification for what you like to do, spray needlessly to promote yourself. If you bolted it and want it on MP, bueno. If you didn’t, wtf is your entitlement to promotion of that area? You want a special star with you name on it? Did mom not pay attention to you as a kid? Climb, enjoy, try to not spray. It’s a sign of your immaturity. Bottom feeding dolts need not apply for an opinion. Oh wait, that’s what mp was made for!

 This site has destroyed several areas I used to love. Areas that I bolted. Areas that used to be wild. I have contacted him about this and he bans my accounts instead of dealing with the shit sandwich he serves in the name of information. This has been going on before REI bought the site and will probably continue indefinitely.  Will I get banned again for criticizing the number one reason for access issues (MP)? You bet. Nick has done it before and he’ll do it again. He can’t take criticism and this site caters to bottom feeders. That’s his bread and butter. 

Bobby, Robert, Rob, Hernandez. Yep, I’ll be seeing you soon with a new avatard. As this site can’t deal with the crap it creates.

Thankg god I am almost 50 and the arthritis is catching up. Soon I’ll have something else to complain about.