Goto Chockstone Home

  Guide
  Gallery
  Tech Tips
  Articles
  Reviews
  Dictionary
  Links
  Forum
  Search
  About

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

  Shop
Chockstone Photography
Australian Landscape Photography by Michael Boniwell
Australian Landscape Prints





Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

 Page 5 of 6. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 80 | 81 to 100 | 101 to 114
Author
ACA call for Blood!!!

rodw
18-Sep-2009
8:07:22 AM
Not sure what you mean by "Even if its the ACA"?...currently the info is free etc isn't it? If its a popular site it wouldnt take much to get a company to pay the hosting costs...much like chockstone...and if development is being provided free what other costs are there?

The ACA site can create PDF's of areas so thats covered (just needs a little work like most of the database.)

Printed guides will still have there place, the ACA site is just making information that should be free available to those that want it.

The benefits for ACA is that it raises its profile and could help in other areas like membership...getting other bodies on board etc....if not we still have a great resource.

ajfclark
18-Sep-2009
8:50:08 AM
On 18/09/2009 rodw wrote:
>Not sure what you mean by "Even if its the ACA"?...currently the info is free etc isn't it?

In addition to being online and free, Thesarvo offers printed and bound versions of the online guides via lulu ( http://stores.lulu.com/thesarvo ). I believe thesarvo makes a small amount whenever someone purchases one of the lulu printed versions.

What I'm asking is if ACA offered a similar service would you object to them making a small profit from each copy sold?


gremlin
18-Sep-2009
9:17:16 AM
No money is needed to keep the site running. Hosting is provided for free by my employer, i donate my spare time and the domain renewals aren't that much of a hassle for me to pay out of my own pocket. Put the $$$ towards operation costs, starting another state chapter, rebolting funds and other causes.

I do however accept donations in the form of pints if you see me at the Doogs... :P

I now have a second person helping out with site maintenance, we have some ideas and may look into services like Lulu by the end of the year.

pmonks
18-Sep-2009
9:21:00 AM
On 18/09/2009 rodw wrote:
>Not sure what you mean by "Even if its the ACA"?...currently the info is
>free etc isn't it?

Only by whim of the ACA - there is no legal protection if they decide to change their terms of use.

<insert repetitive rant about open source licenses here>

rodw
18-Sep-2009
9:22:08 AM
Ok got what ya mean.....

Yeah I would TBH, can cover cost of printing said guide and website costs but then offered at cost to public with no profit would be my preferred option if they had to do it...but seriously I dont think the site should go down that path...ACA wasnt setup to sell guide books.

They start making profit from this resource it then starts to be viewed as a money spinner and the open free information source is threatened as why give it away when it will affect sales...much like the issue with all guide book authors at the moment. Which is fine as they collected there info for there guide book...were as the ACA didnt.

They can use the website and information gleened on it to raise profile of there organisation, that should be the profit they are after. Kinda be like cliffcare asking for people to help with track work then once its all done, asking for a fee to use it...just not right I reckon.

And I agree with Mr Monks...fix up the free licence wording deal...immediate affect is you can get the whole sydney guide in there.

garbie
18-Sep-2009
12:00:02 PM
What would be the cost to ACA of producing these pdf's or mini guides? If not too much,
better to raise funding for ACA as a whole (Sydney Indoor would put something in) and
keep the price zero.

rodw
18-Sep-2009
12:15:02 PM
PDF's are currently already being generated except only for each area not a crag as a whole...its really just hosting and bandwidth thats cost money which is currently being meet.

My point about it not going down the Lulu path is your likely to not get support of any clubs who publish guides as you are taking away there potential income. For example for the sarvo info, you could have that info in ACA and have mention in the listings somwhere, if you want to have a complete printed guide goto Sarvo site. Sarvo wins by added exposure and possible potential sales, ACA wins by better content.

ajfclark
18-Sep-2009
1:17:09 PM
Thesarvo seems to go a little further and for areas that are covered by a current guidebook they don't publish an online guide at all. Hillwood for example just lists the two physical guides that cover that area.

rodw
18-Sep-2009
1:32:37 PM
Yeah you could find that some guidebook owners dont like the model and not give there information readily...but nothing is stopping indivuals as is currently happening...putting in own info with there own routes descriptions and by passing the guidebook altogether.

People who buy guidebooks would still buy them....printing out large crags on a home computer isnt very economical anyway...by supporting ACA central database they would help ACA and also allow people to know what guides are out there to buy if they are so inclined and also makes there guides relevant for longer as people can log onto ACA and see of any updates made. Also means the gudiebook authors can use ACA as reference for furture editions of guidebooks rather than hoarding new info in a shoe book for a few years.

Technology changes the way people will access info...rather than fight it.... best to embrace it and see how it can help you.

The record industry is a classic example of outdated thinking...in the past they charged $30 plus for a CD that cost them 10 cents to produce and cry fowl when people circumvent there distribution channels for faster, cheaper ways of accessing the music they want as they no longer see the value in buying CD's etc.

Richard
18-Sep-2009
1:42:39 PM
On 17/09/2009 BA wrote:
> When I was Argus editor 5-10 years ago I fielded questions about "What's
>that route with the bolt just right of ..." People were using a 'selected'
>guide and didn't 'realise' it didn't contain ALL the recorded routes at
>Araps. "Has any climbing been recorded on cliff BBB?" 'Yes, 30 years ago'.
>
>A lot of it was based on the fact that I've been involved with climbing
>for over 40 years, have a reasonable collection of old copies of Argus,
>Rock (as well as Flash, Splat, Australian Rockclimber, some old Thrutches
>and write-ups of Australian climbs in OS mags, oh, and something called
>Crux) that contain mentions of routes, their histories, their repeats and
>trip reports.

The difficulty I see is, only you have access to these old sources -- they're becoming lost by keeping them off the web. Because you had this resource, you could answer these questions. But if the info was online ... everyone would have this info and the question would not be likley to occurr in the first place, or could be anwered by many people.

I appreciate what you've done for climbing, and am tempted to to say anything because it may be interpreted as deliberately antagonistioc, but I just have a completely different perspective.

NM wrote:
>What always annoyed me about the 'new route only' database concept is the basis of what it's built around. It implies that it records new routes, but ...After a few years its just a jumble of thousands of routes that have some vague connection to an assortment of print guides... I think a comprehensive online guide, that every new route is immediately added into is by the far the best solution for keeping accurate records.

100% agree.

onsight
18-Sep-2009
1:47:25 PM

100% disagree.

I think, in the form it is being suggested, that it is a terribly bad solution which will lead to a very significant denigration in the quality of the information in the long run.




rodw
18-Sep-2009
1:57:07 PM
Lol spoken like a true guidebook author :)...defense rests your honor.
BA
18-Sep-2009
2:11:39 PM
On 18/09/2009 Richard wrote:

>The difficulty I see is, only you have access to these old sources --
>they're becoming lost by keeping them off the web. Because you had this
>resource, you could answer these questions. But if the info was online
>... everyone would have this info and the question would not be likley
>to occurr in the first place, or could be anwered by many people.

See 2) [way] above ... What Tony was trying to do.
rolsen1
18-Sep-2009
3:54:29 PM
On 18/09/2009 onsight wrote:
>
>100% disagree.
>
>I think, in the form it is being suggested, that it is a terribly bad
>solution which will lead to a very significant denigration in the quality
>of the information in the long run.
>

The real issue to me is data portability, the ability to get the data out. Think back to when the crag was in meltdown and looking like folding and wanting to charge $30 to get tick data backed up.

Until we have an open system of standards that allow route information to be shared between sites and services then I agree that the ACA system is not a good long term solution.

nmonteith
18-Sep-2009
4:33:14 PM
On 18/09/2009 onsight wrote:
>
>100% disagree.
>
>I think, in the form it is being suggested, that it is a terribly bad
>solution which will lead to a very significant denigration in the quality
>of the information in the long run.

What form would you like to see?

I reckon the ACA guide is only as good as the author who puts in the effort. If someone spent the months of hard yards that Simon & Co put into the Bluies guide into making an ACA version then it would be a worthy rival. Unfortunately because its 'only the internet' no one really bothers to make that effort!

The ACA database is only a medium, like paper is to a book. Its big advantage over a book is that it can always be up to date and the data can be used easily for other purposes.

nmonteith
18-Sep-2009
4:35:36 PM
p.s. all this talk of printable PDFs is so early 2000. I've been using an iPhone as my crag guidebook for several weekends now. Providing you have reception you don't need to print anything - and if you don't have reception just download the guide before you head out for the day.

wallwombat
18-Sep-2009
5:03:08 PM
On 18/09/2009 nmonteith wrote:
>p.s. all this talk of printable PDFs is so early 2000. I've been using
>an iPhone as my crag guidebook for several weekends now. Providing you
>have reception you don't need to print anything - and if you don't have
>reception just download the guide before you head out for the day.




Phil Box
18-Sep-2009
5:32:47 PM
On 18/09/2009 wallwombat wrote:
>On 18/09/2009 nmonteith wrote:
>>p.s. all this talk of printable PDFs is so early 2000. I've been using
>>an iPhone as my crag guidebook for several weekends now. Providing you
>>have reception you don't need to print anything - and if you don't have
>>reception just download the guide before you head out for the day.
>
>
>
>

Wrong thread, see the bash Neil thread.

gremlin
19-Sep-2009
7:05:10 AM
On 18/09/2009 rolsen1 wrote:
>Until we have an open system of standards that allow route information
>to be shared between sites and services then I agree that the ACA system
>is not a good long term solution.

Now have a second code monkey helping out with the web dev stuff.
This is our next major goal and i'm hoping we have something working by xmas.

The ability to export your tick list as CSV has been possible since the redesign.

nerm
19-Sep-2009
10:24:01 AM
thesarvo.com's guides are mostly donations of previous out of print guides (i.e. Mt
Wellington, Freycinet, Craglets, Frenchmans), with a few that have been written
originally on the web (most significantly the bouldering guide), which means they are
relatively high quality, and have all the bits and pieces you expect from a published
guide - maps, full access details, some history etc etc. The motivation was always to
have both web and print versions of these guides - and have the same content for both.

There is a small profit made on printed guides - about $4 or $5 - this goes towards
hosting costs on the site (which are about $300-$400 per year). But the guide PDFs are
downloadable for free anyway - so people are just paying for convenience.

thesarvo.com content is all licensed under the "Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 2.5 Australia
License" - see details on the page footer at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/au/
For those that care this is kind of like GPL but more appropriate to written content than
a source code licence. This kind of licence was actually one of the conditions of the
donation of Craglets by Roger Parkyn. IMHO ACA content should be under the same or
similar licence if the contributors agree.

Nerd alert:
Gremlin - In the background the guides are stored as a really simple XML structure -
which could be the basis of a standard interop if your interested. You can view the
source of one of the pages like
this:http://www.thesarvo.com/confluence/pages/viewpagesrc.action?pageId=521
which is the XML for the Frenchmans guide.
Neil - have been thinking about making thesarvo.com guides as iphone downloads -
definitely the way of the future.



 Page 5 of 6. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 80 | 81 to 100 | 101 to 114
There are 114 messages in this topic.

 

Home | Guide | Gallery | Tech Tips | Articles | Reviews | Dictionary | Forum | Links | About | Search
Chockstone Photography | Landscape Photography Australia | Australian Landscape Photography | Landscape Photos Australia

Please read the full disclaimer before using any information contained on these pages.



Australian Panoramic | Australian Coast | Australian Mountains | Australian Countryside | Australian Waterfalls | Australian Lakes | Australian Cities | Australian Macro | Australian Wildlife
Landscape Photo | Landscape Photography | Landscape Photography Australia | Fine Art Photography | Wilderness Photography | Nature Photo | Australian Landscape Photo | Stock Photography Australia | Landscape Photos | Panoramic Photos | Panoramic Photography Australia | Australian Landscape Photography | High Country Mountain Huts | Mothers Day Gifts | Gifts for Mothers Day | Mothers Day Gift Ideas | Ideas for Mothers Day | Wedding Gift Ideas | Christmas Gift Ideas | Fathers Day Gifts | Gifts for Fathers Day | Fathers Day Gift Ideas | Ideas for Fathers Day | Landscape Prints | Landscape Poster | Limited Edition Prints | Panoramic Photo | Buy Posters | Poster Prints