Nick Wilder's Response to Recent Allegations

I have run Mountain Project (MP) for a long time—15 years now, though I was completely uninvolved from early 2019 until May 18, when REI and MP parted ways and I once again took up the mantle. For most of my tenure, I considered MP a passive "publisher" of shared data and chose not to take a stand against discriminatory route names that were added to the site by others. I regret having taken that stance in the past and sincerely apologize to the community, particularly to those climbers who are the targets of that hate speech.

Yesterday, Melissa Utomo and Anaheed Saatchi published this post which accuses me of refusing to address this topic and subsequently stealing Melissa’s intellectual property. To the contrary, I have embraced this “can of worms” head-on as my top priority since rejoining MP this spring. I would like to share with the community how I have worked to address these issues over the last 5 weeks:

June 4: In an admin-only forum discussion about diversification, I made it clear that my top priorities for the new company include several diversity issues, especially route names. Plans were already underway on several fronts, including an outline of the steps needed to address discriminatory route names. An intense internal debate among the admins ensued for nine days.

June 5: I released several features to reduce the visibility and toxicity coming from the most divisive forum members.

June 18: I released non-binary gender options for member profiles.

June 20: I received my first email from Melissa Utomo and agreed to review her proposal over the phone with her a few days later. The proposal I received details a route flagging feature and concludes with a few bullet points that predict the difficult tasks ahead. Since MP has already had multiple flagging systems in existence for over a decade, I tried but failed to shift the conversation to an aspect where I genuinely need and wanted help—identifying and reaching consensus on what MP content is discriminatory.

June 24: MP admins and myself were flooded with form emails asking for changes to route names. Some admins started proactively contacting FAs and renaming some routes, but later we agreed that we needed to develop a comprehensive policy first.

June 25: The “Contact User” feature of MP was used to ask some of the millions of regular MP users to change names for routes they did not themselves create. Some users responded inappropriately, and many people mistook those responses as coming from MP admins or staff.

June 26: I attempted to form a coalition among MP and the seven largest guidebook publishers so that we might work together on addressing discriminatory route names. This work is currently in progress.

July 2: I built and released the “Report Discriminatory Name” feature that will flag routes and gather the data needed in the next steps of the process. The concept of flagging content has existed on every user-generated content website for many years. Since MP already has three other flagging systems (for comments, photos, and forums), I re-used existing MP code.

July 3-Present: I started being accused of stealing Melissa’s intellectual property. I have reached out to Melissa—my goal is to hear her concerns, apologize for my lack of collaboration, and find a way to move forward together. Melissa has not yet agreed to meet.

My actions and statements demonstrate my commitment to working on the issues of discrimination and hate on MP. But I have made many mistakes in the process: I should have acknowledged the care Melissa put into her proposal; she’s deeply committed to combatting discrimination on MP and in the climbing community as a whole and was very influential in spurring on the project. I should have asked Melissa for help on language topics where I desperately need it. I also should have consulted more with BIPOC groups (in addition to Melissa) before releasing new features on MP that were designed to address the issues of discrimination.

I am still committed to the original mission. I am drafting a policy that includes guidelines for defining what is discriminatory, and then describes how we will address discriminatory names. I know it will be far from complete, and as we continue this work, I hope to include expertise from BIPOC people and groups.  

Please accept my apology for the mistakes I’ve made; I’m focused on the goal we share, and I know we’ll get there better and faster by working together.

Nick Wilder

I will aggressively moderate this topic.

Nick Wilder wrote: I will aggressively moderate this topic.

Yay...but don't lose transparency. 

Thanks Nick. You have a hard job, and I appreciate what you to do keep this site running. Thanks for the transparency.

I’m glad you are addressing this directly. I do think that the steps you/MP have taken are in the right direction, and I hope this can move forward with more input from people like Melissa and the minority communities in general.

Anaheed’s blog manages to stir the pot regularly, and often takes the discussion into unproductive weeds. But she is one of the voices in the community, and has the right to express her opinion as much as anyone. 

Thanks for your response, appreciate your sincerity.

Nick,  I think you do a good job with the site. I think the 'allegations' against you were unfair - you have been concerned with discrimination, jerks, and flagging for a long time - and you have built/added many tools for them over a long period of time. But thank you for the transparency.

You've gone above and beyond Nick.  The transparency is appreciated.

Thanks for MP, and its vast database of climbing routes.  I disagree that "Mountain Project has gained notoriety as it transformed into an online hub for bigotry and racist trolls." Keep it a site by climbers for climbers.  

Thanks for the explanation Nick. Those allegations did not sound like you at all. I have always seen you as someone who is deeply concerned about social justice issues, and has always walked the walk. That being said, we can all do better with this and it is good these conversations are taking place. They won't be easy.

Hi, Nick. Still waiting to hear your responses to some of the statements and issues posed by publishers in the first responses to your "coalition" effort. It's been almost 2 weeks since you weighed in.

J Achey wrote: Hi, Nick. Still waiting to hear your responses to some of the statements and issues posed by publishers in the first responses to your "coalition" effort. It's been almost 2 weeks since you weighed in.

Yes, I definitely owe you guys an email. As you might have noticed, I got derailed a bit.

Thanks, Nick, for all your hard work and attention to providing the awesome data base and climbers' resource that Mountain Project is. As John Dutton of Yellowstone stated "If you build something worth having someone's going to try to take it away or tear it down." Keep the faith and we've got you ON BELAY!

The July 2 item should be edited for style in a massive, bold, underlined, and highlighted manner, so that even the delusional armchair developers the back row in the nosebleed section take note of it. Regardless of whether Nick or MP or anyone else was proactive/reactive/inactive in addressing social injustice in route names, there was no theft because there was no novel intellectual property.

July 2: I built and released the “Report Discriminatory Name” feature that will flag routes and gather the data needed in the next steps of the process. ***The concept of flagging content has existed on every user-generated content website for many years. Since MP already has three other flagging systems (for comments, photos, and forums), I re-used existing MP code.***

Thanks and bravo to both Nick and Melissa for their efforts to expand inclusiveness in climbing through MP.

Please don’t hesitate to let us know how we can most effectively help with the effort.

Thanks for the writeup and admission of mistakes, Nick. I don't expect that you'll hit every nail on the head in this process, and you've done well so far.

I would love to see you take a more proactive effort involving BIPOC climbers and affinity groups in the process. Contacting guidebook publishers is a necessary step, for sure, but have you reached out to different folks who can weigh in? And have you sought to hire climbers in the DEI space for their expertise?

Nick, I do not think you have anything to apologize for. You made the best route choice possible at the time with what beta you had. In hindsight there might have been a better route, but that is because hindsight brings new beta.

Nick, I appreciate the effort you've put into MP and now your commitment to fight discrimination.  However, I'm very disturbed by what I read in the original post.  While I don't think it's my role to adjudicate your dispute, my default position is to take the concerns seriously, believe that all parties are telling the truth, and hope that everyone will act in good faith in the future.  I would encourage all parties to put their differences aside and work together towards our common goal of making the climbing community more inclusive.  Please communicate with us as you progress on the efforts you're making to move forward.

that same website also publishes such gems as "Stop making movies about White guys doing cool shit" (a two-article series railing against Honnold and Caldwell's movies). Nearly every one of their articles is incredibly racist (using the dictionary definition here of judging someone by their skin color) and is just not advancing the climbing community for anyone. 

The trouble with the writers over at the melanin basecamp is: even though the cause they champion is incredibly important, they likely need to restaff with more professional people.

I find it reprehensible people feel they need to bend the knee to bullies and those who judge by color of skin rather than content of character. Shame on anyone who does that.