On 28/10/2014 One Day Hero wrote:
>Regarding star allocation, it's a bit tricky. If you over-star it's exactly
>the same as under-staring.
Not exactly. There is nothing worse than having limited time to visit a cliff and jumping on an overly hyped route only to discover that your time would have been better spent on something else. However you don't exactly get pissed off if your chosen climb turns out to be much better than you expected.
It sounds like Neil is coming from the perspective of having climbed a lot at The Point so he can start jumping on the more obscure routes and being picky about their write-ups. The cobweb symbol to me simply implies that the route doesn't receive many ascents and that knowledge about the route might be lacking. I reckon it is a great symbol as it means that the route might be a gem, but the guidebook author simply doesn't know much about it.
>This is ridiculous. You've disappeared up your own arsehole with notions of how a guidebook author has to manage expectations and objectively quantify route quality. As long as the starring is relatively consistent within the book, smartish people will work the rest out very quickly.
All I am saying is that guidebook authors will cop less flak by being conservative. In my opinion a three-star system works pretty well and basically anything that gets one star should be worthy of your time, whilst the three-star routes are generally mega-classics that have been acknowledged as such by a large number of climbers over time (not purely by Neil or yourself saying 'I did this route the other day and it is a three-star mega-classic!').