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Chockstone to go national?

maxdacat

16-May-2005
8:28:14 PM

Just wondering what people thought. I would be all in favour of having a national climbing website, forum etc and I would hazard a guess that 60 - 70% of climbing related website traffic is on this site.

The other sites out there such as ClimX and Qurank seem more geared towards local forums. It shouldn't be much effort to migrate these to a common forum with regional sub-catagories. It would then be possible to share development, maintenance and other resources and it would give a common voice/portal to the online Aussie climbing community. It would also be good to extend the already excellent crag guides to other parts of the country if people were willing and able.

Let me know what you think.....any comments from the organisers would be esp. welcome.


HM33

16-May-2005
8:30:08 PM

there is something like that in the works i believe.

maxdacat

16-May-2005
8:37:27 PM

any more details?


Paulie

16-May-2005
8:40:35 PM

It would be good to link such a site to www.climbing.com or www.thecrag.com so the same forums appear

Paul


rodw

16-May-2005
9:43:08 PM

On 16/05/2005 Paulie wrote:
>It would be good to link such a site to www.climbing.com or www.thecrag.com
>so the same forums appear

Not climbing.com aussie posts would be lost in the void, thecrag.com on the other hand is australian so would be a better choice.

The main problem I see with national forum is the ethic issue, ie every area have way different ethics/politics and flame wars could abound? (look at rc.com fourms for all the crap that gets posted).

Smaller fourms are easier to manage and make posters more accountable, ie a small gathering around the camp fire feel, rather than a group of unknowns crowding around a huge bonfire.

Bigger isnt always better, just my 2c worth...Im not opposed to the idea just wary...

maxdacat

16-May-2005
10:06:29 PM

On 16/05/2005 rodw wrote:
>The main problem I see with national forum is the ethic issue, ie every
>area have way different ethics/politics and flame wars could abound? (look
>at rc.com fourms for all the crap that gets posted).

Are ethics really that different from one state to another? Not enough to start a flame war....though you might have to watch out for those shirtlifting bananna benders...joke!

But seriously I think there will always be issues that are best discussed at the local level eg replacing lower-offs at Shipley or track maintenance at Araps. That's why i suggested regional sub-forums.

Also if the local forums tier up to the main one (as with rc.com) there is scope for swapping ideas etc.


cheesehead

16-May-2005
10:44:04 PM

As mentioned, Chockstone is great for it's size - no bigger please.

I'm not certain that 'going national' would change much except in name alone.

jjobrien

16-May-2005
10:56:14 PM

I'll be dead in the cold, cold ground before I recognise Chockstone as a national forum.
J.J. O'Brien.
Shirtlifting, banana bending, card-carrying qurankster.

maxdacat

16-May-2005
11:46:37 PM

maybe if peole could elaborate on the cons it might be helpful....rather than the standard if it ain't broke don't fix it chestnut.

If going national wouldn't change much except name alone why be concerned it would get bigger. How does the concept of "biggness" apply in cyberspace.....surely that's a concern more for the people maintaining the site in terms of workload etc.


rodw

17-May-2005
6:24:55 AM

Chockstone even now has growing pains, anonymous post, mini flame wars once you get larger it will start to be like RC.com. Their forum is littered with a lot of crap.

Im obviously a little biased but I like the seperate forum for each state, as they all have ther own feel... I think this would be lost in a national forum.

But to be honest Chockstone is the largest and by default "national forum" anyway.


Phil Box

17-May-2005
9:46:11 AM

I wouldn`t mind a national forum per se. That way I could post all my Frog pics and other propoganda from the sunshine state out in the open instead of skulking around in the dark corners of the Hex thread. Mind you though I really have become quite attached to qurank, I will defer to what Lee decides to do though.

As far as rc.com goes, that site of course is the biggest climbing site in the world and yet it still retains the same campfire appeal and feel albeit via much work on the part of the mods.

The trick with any forum based website is to limit the moderating only to those extremely annoying micro percentage of users that create havoc amongst the rest of the users. Fix those prooblems and by and large you do not have to micro manage the forums. More often than not the users self moderate. It is only an extremely small percentage of problem users that create the work for the mods. I concel not going down the road of micro managing every post, that will cause burnout to the mods and it ensures that the users do not have a chance to express their ability to self moderate. It puts the users offside to the management thus creating an ever incresing them and us scenario. Not healthy in my opinion for the free exchange of views and opinion.

Since rc.com took the stance of not micro managing the forums I believe that it has become a far better place to hang out. It has not gone the way of rec.climbing by any means. Mind you there are still some strong personalities who will tell the n00Bs!!111 exactly what they think of their lame brained ideas. But then isn`t that simply an expression of what the result will be out in the real world and on the rock face. Gravity is a bitch and stands no competition from any other theory from some n00b!!1111. Get you facts right and you do not have an argument. You have an interesting discussion.


Super Saiyan

17-May-2005
10:01:36 AM

On 16/5/2005 maxdacat wrote:
Are ethics really that different from one state to another? Not enough to start a flame war....though you might have to watch out for those shirtlifting bananna benders...joke!

As a born and bred shirtlifting banana bender now subjected to victorian weather, i would love a national forum. chockstone is much easier to use and navigate (in my opinion) then the others. And a nice healthy war between states would be some good motivation to get strong for some interstate incursions >:)

climberman

17-May-2005
11:29:43 AM

If people from all over the country use it isn't it national already ?


Eduardo Slabofvic

17-May-2005
11:44:01 AM

We would all have to type much slower and use a monosyllabic vernacular if Queenslanders were going to be included.


nmonteith

17-May-2005
11:49:26 AM

hey, what ya tryn to say, hey?


nmonteith

17-May-2005
11:53:23 AM

The biggest problem i see is that all the other forums have years worth of very informative content. If you could transfer this wealth of info over to Chockstone than it would be great - unfortunetly that is not an easy task. Everything is linked in chockstone using usernames ect so you can't just add the previous posts from another forum easily - without making all the usernames from the old forums and re-linking them. I would go so far as to say it is almost impossible to do by a mere mortal (who has a 9-5 job).

gfdonc

17-May-2005
12:49:33 PM

Whaddya mean, go national? We're already International! Which reminds me: we haven't had any postings from our Russian chapter for a while eh?

Duncan

17-May-2005
1:33:45 PM

The rc.com forums are full of crap because they are inhabited by morons.

If all the forums (Chockstone, Quarank and Crag X) were archived, then joined, and maybe made accessible through all three sites, surely it would make getting local beta easier?

Are there WA and SA forum's? If not, why not? I think this is a great idea. mojozone.co.nz seems to work quite well and seems to pretty much self moderate. I think that we have a small enough community here that a national forum would work.

dalai

17-May-2005
2:06:11 PM

On 17/05/2005 Duncan wrote:
>If all the forums (Chockstone, Quarank and Crag X) were archived, then
>joined, and maybe made accessible through all three sites, surely it would
>make getting local beta easier?

Not necessarily. If I want NSW or Queensland beta I go straight to the source..i.e. the site in the region I want to find beta about.

Each forum has it's own feel, and deserves to exist on it's own merit.

>Are there WA and SA forum's? If not, why not?

Probably because it takes time to code and costs money to host!

Duncan

17-May-2005
2:27:14 PM

If I was after specific NSW beta, I'd post on both CragX and here, because the NSW user's on Crag X are pretty much all on here too (as far as I can tell), and there are NSW user's on here who don't post on CragX.

You are right when you say that each forum has its own feel, but I don't see that having a central portal for the three forums would change this.

Point taken on the hosting/coding time thing, but I would guess that a national forum would be able to attract some sponsorship? In the end I guess it comes down to what Rod, Mike and Lee decide. My vote goes for putting them all together.

There are 26 messages in this topic.