What will be the Cascade journal of record?

[Alex]

Sorry, one more thing. I think there is another very large issue when contemplating something like this, and that is that what we are proposing works fine for new routes, but that updated routes and existing routes found in many volumes on the Cascades will not be initially represented. Multiple sources of information, especially out-of-synch information, only makes things confusing in the long run, so one thing that might be discussed is how to incorporate existing, copyrighted information into the proposal, if at all. This may require some level of cooperation from the authors, such as Jim (who does visit this site), and Jeff, but also Mr Beckey himself and a whole host of other people.

I guess I just want to be a bit careful before we go bashing off into the proverbial Devil's Club.

[This message has been edited by Alex (edited 02-01-2001).]

[dbb]

I'm all for having the local book writters give input, and perhaps let their descriptions of approaches and pitches be used. But I think that the community here can also furnish these reports. It is true that we must have the "proper" information on each climb. That is where the BBS aspect of this site will come in handy: many people can help scruitinize inconsistancies within anyone's general report.

[This message has been edited by dbb (edited 02-01-2001).]

[none_dup1]

As Jim Nelson and Peter Potterfield found out, I love to edit. Count me in as an editor if and when this thing gets off the ground and editing is needed. This is a great idea.

John Sharp

[gapertimmy]

Alex-

I sent you a mail about this, but I'm sitting here scratching my head and thinking "WHY?"??????

As I said before, I can have this forum setup in a couple of clicks of the keyboard, and I don't understand the need to create a whole seperate website to do this.

I hope all interested can pool all trade and climbing talents together on this one. Does anyone else find it odd to create two NW climbing communities on the web....??? especially one bearing the exact same name as this one?

[Rodchester]

Mountain Dude/Tim,

I agree with you.

Why set up a whole different web page? It seems very fitting to have it right here as a subsection of cascadeclimbers.com.

------------------

Have a nice day.

[mvs]

I understand the motivation for a .org in this way. A .com domain suggests proprietary information, that can be used for profit, or removed at any time when the venture fails. (I'm not saying cascadeclimbers.com is like this, this is just my fuzzy impression regarding the difference between .com and .org in the abstract).

Hey, what if Tim reserves cascadeclimbers.org, makes that the primary name and redirects traffic from the .com to the .org? Then we get

1) the excellent database infrastructure he's been talking about

2) the existing community and name

3) the beginnings of a real organization, (recently) charged with "journal of record" for new climbs.

--Michael

 

[gapertimmy]

The real crazy thing about this recent turn of events is that Jon and I were on our approach hike this weekend and he said (I swear!):

"We need to register the cascadeclimbers.org this week, and setup a redirector to our site, becuase you know, we are really more of a .org"

I wasn't really paying attention, and just shrugged his comment off because I really didn't think that anyone would go and register that name and put up another site. HA! I guess I'm never destined for an upper-level mgmt posistion at amazon.com

I agree mvs. We did the .com because it is so easy to remember, but as anyone can tell, we are nowhere near being a .com. (we couldn't get angel funding so we dropped the idea) but we are hoping to get aquired by quokka.

All joking aside, this is the climbers site. I look forward to coming here everyday (when I should be working) and reading/posting about climbing, and I think i'm not alone on this one. cascadeclimbers.com is a result of multiple peoples hard work, and the site would be worthless without peoples posts/opnions, this is the people's site!

I'm all for having .org name redirect to this site (and hope Alex agrees since he bought that name), and having this review board (or whatever you want to call it) hosted here. I hope we can find some others interested in helping develop this, Jon and I from day ONE have asked for people's help with the site, and now is the time we can use it.

On this note I would like to commend a fellow cc.com bbs fan, Jason Petteway, who has been working hard on our new route report database. He has developed it using some software he wasn't very familiar with, just to help create and share a great new resource for the community.

i'm drifting off on a tangent, but hope that we can keep the community and all its efforts here. if anyone else desires to help out with the further development of the site, the door is (and always has been) open to volunteers.

I gotta jibbo, look forward to hearing some more opinions.

[This message has been edited by tim (edited 02-01-2001).]

[Alex]

Oh for Gods sake!

Seems I've pulled a Dan. Everyone sit back, take a breath and get silly notions out of your heads.

Hosting a web site, publishing, admin, dealing with legal issues and doing what we are proposing to do will take a bit more planning than just having Tim and Jon set up a "private room" on a chat BBS. If you think that is sufficient, then Godspeed. As I mentioned to Tim, I also strongly believe this is a public domain issue...something like freeware. This requires a little bit of preparation.

The last thing I really want to do is explain everything here, as it would take way too much time.

I would suggest, as was mentioned previously a while ago, that the interested parties meet and we come up with a plan for how to go about doing all this. This included Tim and Jon, Mike Stanton, Jim Nelson, Lowell Skoog, hopefully J Fisher, hopefully Darin, and a whole host of other people who have been doing legal, publishing, web, and software/hardware for a long time.

I am free tonight and Sat night and Sun night late. Let me know where we should be drinking...

Alex

[mikeadam]

#

[This message has been edited by mikeadam (edited 05-15-2001).]

[Alex]

As a result of this discussion, I have reserved the

www.cascadeclimbers.org

domain name, as a starting point. The .net name is still open, and I did not reserve it because I do not think .net accurately indicates that an organization is at heart. Jon and Tim, you might want to reserve .net and PARK it, so that there is no confusion in the future about what site is what...

I would like some suggestions from the members of this discussion what other possible names we could register, to make the intent of the site clear(er) as well as not infringe too much on jon and tim's very apt choice of domain name(s).

If I receive a good number of suggestions and consensus from a number of people who are interested in contributing (Lowell, others), I will then register more names.

Thanks for your thoguht and time, Alex

[jon]

This has been a very interesting conversation to follow and has raised some pretty good questions, and I hope we can remain fairly civil in our postings. Everybody has their own opinion here on what they believe should be done in regards to Lowell’s question, I just hope we can avoid the flame wars that have manifested in the last couple of days. In a forum like this I think it is pretty easy to misinterpret what people are saying (in Dan’s and Alex’s case, sorry that happened guys), and in something as informal as this, where for the most part we haven’t met each other and can associate a face to a name, things can get out of hand quickly even though everyone has good intentions. I think between all of us we can accomplish a lot as far preserving and building on the legacy of Fred Beckey’s incredible work. We are starting to make some headway here and I can feel the excitement, but I don’t feel we need to rush into anything to quickly, and certainly not get at each other’s throats.

So here are my thought that have brewing the past couple weeks from this thread, as well as other thoughts that have come about since the introduction of the website in October.

I just spent a few minutes analyzing our server stats from January and they are pretty incredible. For January alone we had 3500 visitors (accuracy is questionable, dhcp, same people using multiple clients, bots, etc.) and served over 38,000 non-cgi based pages. If you include the cgi generated BBS pages we are talking over 100,000 easily. As of now we have approximately 450 visitors a day and 325 registered users. Those are some pretty amazing numbers all things considered, and in my mind really signify the need for such a local resource. I don’t think there can be a bigger compliment than that for the time Tim, myself, and others have put into this thing. It also means though that we have a responsibility to keep this thing going, build upon the foundation that we have built, and ensure this thing doesn’t die and goes in the right direction.

So I guess the question begs to be asked in the spirit of Lowell’s original question, where do we go from here as far as cataloging new routes, as well as what the future of this site should be? Reading the thread in conjunction with a few emails that have flown back and forth from various people it appears there are some varying views on the grandeur and approach of such an endeavor. There has been talk of an annual journal to supplement/complement a web based journal/database, a review committee consisting of seasoned cascade hardmen, and the support infrastructure of lawyers, publishers, etc, and young enthusiastic tech geeks like myself to write code and maintain the thing. I think these are all good ideas, but as I eluded to earlier I don’t see a reason to rush such a thing. Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe we should do such a thing in some form, but it certainly won’t hurt to take our time, make sure we do it right, and make sure we can come to a general consensus on what it is and how we will support it. Also we need to make sure what we do is beneficial to ALL climbers and the areas being used. One thing I think that needs to be avoided at all costs is this group of dedicated individuals becoming a climbing club or click, where to be involved you have to have a extensive resume of grade V’s, do one finger pull ups, drink a 40 oz upside down and flash .13c while covered in tar and feathers to be initiated. In such an instance it really defeats the purpose of having something in the public domain, which leads to next question.

What does the future behold for cascadeclimbers.com? I think Alex raised a very good point in an email, asking who will be running this thing five years down the road. I’d like to say I’ll still be involved, but I’d be ignorant to say I would be for sure. That said, I want to ensure this thing is here in the long run whether Tim and I are here or not; it would be such a waste if it wasn’t. Since the idea of this site popped in my head while in the North Cascades this summer with Tim, we both have had different and ever changing visions of what we should do, try to do, and what it should ultimately become. One of my original was to create something that is self supporting, not relying on the contributors/maintainers to pay it’s way. I don’t really have a definitive answer on how to do that, but it is something to consider when you start talking large databases, lots of traffic, and high availability, among other things that have been discussed in the thread. For the time being though the hosting costs are so minimal I’m not concerned about it. Another thing I’m still pondering is how we can advocate proper and safe usage of our wilderness, and contribute to maintaining our climbing areas, protecting them from being taken away. This would include some way of raising money to help maintain areas like Little Si, 38 and FC, as well as supporting players like the Access Fund and the North Cascades Conservation Council in their dealing. I personally think we owe it to the groups and the areas to do this.

So what is the next step? Obviously we have a group of individuals (Lowell, Alex, Ray, Tim, myself, the retired Mike Adamson, Michael, John Sharp, Daryl, Rodchester, Loren (are you in?), and possibly Dave Burdick?) who care about this are willing to work together and get this rolling, and obviously anyone else is welcome just give a shout out. I think it would be great for some of us to gather, preferably in the presence of beer, and discuss the matters before us. I’ll leave it up to the next person for time and place, but I would suggest in the next couple of weeks and somewhere in the Bellevue area so it is central to everyone.

I’m really excited what the coming months have in store for us. The seems to be a lot of enthusiasm within the group and hopefully in the next few weeks the route reporting database will be ready to play around with, among other fun things we’ve been secretly working on in Skunk workz.

Tired, need sleep. One more thing, bring on the f#%&ing snow.

-Jon

intensity@cascadeclimbers.com

P.S. Rumor has it people are tired of the pictures on the main page. Send us you picts for crying out loud.

[This message has been edited by jon (edited 02-02-2001).]

[gapertimmy]

Hey Alex-

My mail server is down here at work (surprise), could you post the mail you sent me last night though. I think we should keep the discussion/ideas/concerns up here on the board for all to see.

Thanks for your reply, I you have some really great points, and I'd like to see what others have to say about the matter.

snowin, snowin snowin

tim

[Alex]

Hi Tim,

1) you may not agree but I think you should have registered all 3 domain names when you put up the site, .com, .org and .net. This is a common practice and reduces confusion when other sites go up using the same domain prefix. So one of the things on my agenda was to reduce any possible confusion by taking at least the .org out of the running, and reserving should CascadeClimbers indeed be the venue to host the whole concept. I was going to grab .net too, but thats why I told you and Jon to do it...it only costs 25$ for a 2 year lease, just take it off the market and park the name. Thats all I am doing with .org, reserving it and parking it. It does not have a DNS server associated with it, so unless I turn it on through InterNic, the name will never resolve. If you want to, I can go get .net too, and park it as well.

2) I believe very strongly that this type of thing be public domain, not private domain. Your site, as open as you are about it, is private domain. There is nothing wrong with private domains hosting this kind of thing in general, or mirroring another site, but I don't like the idea of private domains hosting what should be public data in principle because they have private funding, people running the site who are unknown to me, of unknonwn skill (no offense!) and are not answerable to the general public (and rightly so!). So I believe very strongly that you and Jon should be allowed to do whatever you want with the internet. But I also believe that unless you are a public servant, answerable to the public, then the public should be careful with entrusting its information to you. Now, you provide a valuable service to the climbing community. I just think that this particular thing is different than a BBS.

so, for example: you and jon host the site. 5 years from now, which is a LONG LONG time from now, you are both older and wiser and dont want to do web crap anymore. Who then takes the responsibility for the info? What if no one comes forward?

for example: the site gets hacked and you guys loose the database. Who is reponsible for the loss? Who is responsible for nightly or weekly backups? high availablity? You should not be, because your server is doing charitable work for free. But you would be. I want to avoid those kinds of "front end" issues

for example: copyright issues arise. Who is then responsible? You would be. I don't want to subjugate anyone to a lawsuit.

2) I am not planning on building a seperate site. I am not planning anything really, I already have a website and don't care to build and maintain another one. domain names are just that, names that resolve to IP numbers.

so, to explain further, *should* cascadeclimbers.com host this concept site, you can do so simply by pointing a domain name, any name, at your static IP. the DNS entry itself is pretty meaningless.

So I believe that hosting this concept idea should not be done in the private domain. For one because I am a little paranoid, and also because I do this professionally and think there are too many issues in private hosting.

Now, the actual behind the scenes role that CC.com plays may be pretty great, those are things we can talk about. For example, we could point the x.org name (whatever its called, just about the last thing I want is to use cc.org!) at a server mapped behind your firewall, that people other than just you and jon have access to. Maybe host it at a public isp and distribute the FTP and root passwords over PGP. Whatever.

I guess my long story short is I am trying to protect everyones interests, and believe that is accomplished through public domain hosting.

Thoughts?

Alex

more..

Sorry I am in the middle of a build so this is short.

things that worry me:

You guys are using pre-packaged BBS software. Makes me nervous.

You use CGI. Makes me very nervous as it has huge security holes and scales like shit.

No idea what your firewall is. Do you have one?

No idea what dB you are using. Hope its not Access.

No idea how your site will scale,

what its uptime is,

or who fixes broken things.

I am guessing you are on UNIX. Good uptime, harder to administer and patch security holes.

You have no true incentive to be nice to other climbers except that you are nice guys. You are not paid by me.

This type of data collection requires alot of work. I think people are sitting around right now going hey, thats a cool idea, but I would be very curious as to how many stick around and actually work through tough times. I am a pessimist so I would wager alot would rather go climbing than deal with a dead harddrive that hosted your reserved dB memory.

Alex

A final note: I asked that people come up with other possible domain names that could be used to relay the intent of the site, and not step on Jon and Tims toes as far as domain names are concerned. Sorry if I did not make this more clear: I do not want to use CascadeClimbers.org in particular, but I do not want to use CascadeClimbers.com for the above reasons.

As always, only an opinion....

 

------------------

Wimp Climber

http://www.mountainwerks.com/alexk/

[Lowell_Skoog]

Wow, this topic sure took off while I wasn't looking. ;-)

I agree with Jon that we don't need to be hasty. It sounds like there is a fair bit of interest in having a "reviewed" source of information on new climbs and guidebook revisions. Most of the heat in the recent discussions has centered around where and how to host it. Some good points have been raised.

One idea to consider is to involve the Mountaineers in the discussion. I'd think that the Mountaineers Books would be interested in hearing about guidebook errata. I'd also think that the Climbing Committee would have an interest in new route reporting. The club might be able to play a role, both in the "review board" and in publishing the material somewhere (perhaps on their website). I have some contacts in the Mountaineers, and would be willing to explore the subject with them.

My time of course is limited, but I'll be happy to help nudge the effort along.

Lowell Skoog

lowell.skoog@alpenglow.org

[gapertimmy]

thanks alex! I tried to reply to you last night but i'm on a POS exchange server. I think Jon summed up alot of my feelings also.

[jon]

Microsoft Enterprise Software. Always Ready. Always Reliable.

[Peter_Baer]

Should this proposed database contain only reviewed material -- guidebook style route descriptions -- or also individual route reports? It would be nice to have all the beta you need for a particular climb in one central place.

Similarly, it would be good if there were a way to incorporate photos as well -- overviews showing the entire route as well as photos accompanying individual route reports. Of course that requires a beefier storage solution.

And just to throw out a technical suggestion: it would be great if the database were XML-based to allow third parties to incorporate the data easily. For example, in my spare time I'm working on a tool to produce high-quality 2D and 3D maps from 7.5-minute DEMs and DLGs for an entire region (e.g. the Cascades) -- it would be spiffy if I could pull down some XML to overlay peak names, routes, etc., onto the map.

 

[Ade]

Seems to me that no other route data is in the public domain. All guidebooks are copyrighted, their authors invest the time to assemble all the information and then hope to make some of it back by selling the guidebook. Having done a bit of it I remember it being very dull.

I think people will submit reports but finding enough people with time to edit and review submissions, rather than going climbing, will be hard. Web hosting costs money as does the creation of the sort of bespoke route recording application that's been talked about. I don't think that the web site would generate enough traffic to attract sufficient sponsors or ad revenue to pay for itself.

If you believe that (and maybe you don't) then you need to find some way to cover your costs and editorial work.

If you partnered with a commercial interest, The Mountaineers or Falcon Press would seem like a good fit, they publish many of the guidebooks, or CC who are in the business of building a community and want to drive more traffic to their site.

Here's my idea...

Those submitting work give up their copyright to individual submissions in exchange for access to all the raw data. This site is setup to allow any author to download the whole raw database. This would mean that even if the partner/host decided to kill the site the data would still be available. This would also allow guidebook authors to use the data for updating existing guides and publishing new ones. Important if you partnered with a publisher.

How much editing would get done? Some but not a lot. The partner would be keen to do at least some, after all a route DB that's a total mess isn't going to drive traffic. Some authors would also edit and review entries. But then editing is the real value add of a guidebook and something you're pretty much always going to have to pay for. But at least this way you have a new routes web site that contains public domain data and covers its costs.

I also have a few ideas on implementation but I think that's getting ahead of ourselves. And it sounds dangerously like my day job :-)

Ade

 

[Peter_Baer]

Why should only the contributors have full access to the data? I thought the whole point was to make this a public resource. If you want the database to be resilient to the vagaries of its official maintainers, then anyone should be allowed to mirror it (another reason to have it in a simple universal format like XML).

[Ade]

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. Everyone has access to the site (and hence the data). Contributors can download the raw data (yes, XML would be an excellent format) and reuse it.

Maybe everyone should be able to do this but I thought it would be a good incentive for people to contribute if they got something extra.

You could also let people mirror it but while this increases it's resilience it decreases it's worth to a hosting partner as they will loose traffic. Maybe you could let people mirror the raw data and it would be upto them to provide a web site around it?