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marc801
Jun 10, 2014, 4:45 PM
Post #26 of 45
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jumpingrock wrote: rc.com's cake is being eaten by sites like: http://climbing.ilooove.it/, http://climbingnarc.com/ and facebook. It's a little bit sad as it's only nostalgia and a currently boring day job that brings me back here.
http://www.similarweb.com/.../climbing.ilooove.it
http://www.similarweb.com/...ite/climbingnarc.com
http://www.similarweb.com/...ite/rockclimbing.com
I agree about rebuilding the community first and not getting all worked up over policing said community unless it actually becomes necessary, but the predictions of demise are a bit premature.
If anyone wants a great case study in a site's total decline into irrelevancy, look at gunks.com - a shadow of its former self with only a dozen or two remaining posters. This despite having perhaps one of the most coveted domain names in the Northeast.
The huge decline started when the web master, due to a highly charged and contentious thread (which spilled over here as well), waded in with some extremely heavy-handed "moderation", which included mass deletion of posts that he didn't personally agree with. Gee, what a surprise. There was also a promise of fixing and improving the bug-ridden software running the forums "within a month" - that was well over 2 years ago.
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cracklover
Jun 10, 2014, 5:04 PM
Post #27 of 45
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marc801 wrote: jumpingrock wrote: rc.com's cake is being eaten by sites like: http://climbing.ilooove.it/, http://climbingnarc.com/ and facebook. It's a little bit sad as it's only nostalgia and a currently boring day job that brings me back here. Never heard of the first one and only heard the second one mentioned once or twice. The estimated site visits in May 2014 are 190K and 170K respectively while rockclimbing.com is 310K [Source: similarweb.com] http://www.similarweb.com/.../climbing.ilooove.it http://www.similarweb.com/...ite/climbingnarc.com http://www.similarweb.com/...ite/rockclimbing.com I agree about rebuilding the community first and not getting all worked up over policing said community unless it actually becomes necessary, but the predictions of demise are a bit premature. If anyone wants a great case study in a site's total decline into irrelevancy, look at gunks.com - a shadow of its former self with only a dozen or two remaining posters. This despite having perhaps one of the most coveted domain names in the Northeast. The huge decline started when the web master, due to a highly charged and contentious thread (which spilled over here as well), waded in with some extremely heavy-handed "moderation", which included mass deletion of posts that he didn't personally agree with. Gee, what a surprise. There was also a promise of fixing and improving the bug-ridden software running the forums "within a month" - that was well over 2 years ago.
While I agree with you that gunks.com is a perfect case-study for how to kill a great climbing site, I disagree with your analysis of what caused its decline. With that being said, I think if you asked six different gunk.commers why the site went belly up, you'd get six different (and believable) explanations. Anyway, the relevance to this site is arguable. So I won't bother sharing mine.
GO
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JohnCook
Jun 10, 2014, 5:24 PM
Post #28 of 45
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Brave move.
Good luck and I hope all goes well.
Try to avoid over-moderation, most of us are big boys and girls who can roll with a few insults.
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JimTitt
Jun 10, 2014, 6:56 PM
Post #29 of 45
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JimTitt wrote: Donīt ban Sungam, set up a sin-bin where the bad boys can mouth of to each other and we can watch the fun from the sidelines.
Well that was a joke but as others have commented there is a point to it. While you own the site the community makes it what it is otherwise itīs just a blog. You can only direct it in a direction WE want it to go and there is no chance whatsover you can tell a bunch of climbers what to do if they donīt want to.
Simple rules about racism, sexism etc are enough from the administrators side, the community is quite capable of either ignoring or humiliating dick-heads on its own. Watching two "adults" making fools of themselves in front of thousands is entertainment and that is all internet forums are at the end of the day.
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Jeff
Owner
Jun 10, 2014, 7:30 PM
Post #30 of 45
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We'll just figure it out together here in our own little corner of the internet.
We'd all like to see the RC community thrive, but I don't see this as a zero-sum game of winning/losing compared to other sites. Over the last couple of years, a lot of people have dipped their toe in the world of climbing, particularly gym climbing, and the big question in my mind is how good of a job will we do as a sport at converting those folks into regular climbers. If we do a good job, all the climbing sites will grow in size.
I know some of you have been climbing since the dark ages and may not remember life BC (before climbing), but I still remember looking in the window at a local climbing gym and thinking "That looks fun, but I have no idea how to get started." Once I climbed a few times with friends, that moved to "Wow, everyone else is so much better than me." Even though everyone was very friendly and encouraging, there was still a voice inside my head that kept saying "scary, very scary!"
If you want the community here at RC to thrive, probably the best thing you can do is warmly welcome the n00bs when they make that first post. When they ask for the zillionth time "What pair of shoes/harness should I buy?" posting a simple "Welcome, we're glad to have you. Here's a few links to articles to learn more..." means a lot more than you think it does.
Some of these posters are hit-and-runs looking for a quick answer and will never come back, and yes, that's annoying. And many of them are asking the same questions as every other n00b, and that gets old quickly too. That's why one of my todo's is to update the articles section with answers to the common n00b questions so that our time is spent making sure the person feels welcome, not have to re-type the same answer over and over.
We get over a hundred thousand people from Google every month, so there's plenty of new blood to grow this community. The trick is to encourage these visitors to engage and become regulars. If we do that, we'll wake up in a few years and realize we have a thriving community.
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Gmburns2000
Jun 11, 2014, 1:11 AM
Post #31 of 45
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sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. 
That was nothing less than C3. I saw stars on those quarter-inchers.
(and it was four pitches, including the tyrolean)
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sungam
Jun 11, 2014, 8:02 AM
Post #32 of 45
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Gmburns2000 wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. That was nothing less than C3. I saw stars on those quarter-inchers.
At risk of derailling the thread here is a picture of one of the starbolts, in Fisher tower sandstone, with a badly cracked hangar.
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jumpingrock
Jun 11, 2014, 8:30 AM
Post #33 of 45
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Agreed completely. It's not a zero sum game and there will always* be more than one rock climbing website around. But content is what makes a webpage and you need to generate content. (more specifically, your users need to generate content, so you need to make them happy enough to do that) It's a balancing act, which I am interested to see how well you pull off over the next 6 months or so. Good luck!
*bold prediction, I know.
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Gmburns2000
Jun 11, 2014, 1:29 PM
Post #34 of 45
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sungam wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. That was nothing less than C3. I saw stars on those quarter-inchers. At risk of derailling the thread here is a picture of one of the starbolts, in Fisher tower sandstone, with a badly cracked hangar.
And that was just the first one!
(a suggestion - find a way to change the code to get rid of the automatic dot on image tags when replying)
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Jeff
Owner
Jun 11, 2014, 9:49 PM
Post #35 of 45
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Gmburns2000 wrote: sungam wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. That was nothing less than C3. I saw stars on those quarter-inchers. At risk of derailling the thread here is a picture of one of the starbolts, in Fisher tower sandstone, with a badly cracked hangar. And that was just the first one!
Yowzer. Don't think I'd be in a hurry on that climb either.
In reply to: (a suggestion - find a way to change the code to get rid of the automatic dot on image tags when replying)
Thanks for the heads up, that should be a very simple bit of code as long as I can find the correct file.
Update: This is fixed now.
(This post was edited by Jeff on Jun 11, 2014, 11:13 PM)
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marc801
Jun 11, 2014, 11:11 PM
Post #36 of 45
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Jeff wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: (a suggestion - find a way to change the code to get rid of the automatic dot on image tags when replying) Thanks for the heads up, that should be a very simple bit of code as long as I can find the correct file.
Sure, that won't impact performance at all.
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sungam
Jun 11, 2014, 11:40 PM
Post #37 of 45
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marc801 wrote: Jeff wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: (a suggestion - find a way to change the code to get rid of the automatic dot on image tags when replying) Thanks for the heads up, that should be a very simple bit of code as long as I can find the correct file. So you're suggesting that in a multiple reply thread the same image is downloaded again and again and again and again and again.... Sure, that won't impact performance at all.
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USnavy
Jun 12, 2014, 1:02 AM
Post #38 of 45
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sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower.
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Gmburns2000
Jun 12, 2014, 1:11 AM
Post #39 of 45
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USnavy wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. THat is because you spent all your time BitCoin mining on your iphone.
I thought about doing that actually (not on a phone). Doesn't seem worth it.
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sungam
Jun 12, 2014, 8:11 AM
Post #40 of 45
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Gmburns2000 wrote: USnavy wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. THat is because you spent all your time BitCoin mining on your iphone. I thought about doing that actually (not on a phone). Doesn't seem worth it.
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Gmburns2000
Jun 12, 2014, 1:49 PM
Post #41 of 45
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sungam wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: USnavy wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. THat is because you spent all your time BitCoin mining on your iphone. I thought about doing that actually (not on a phone). Doesn't seem worth it. Are you sure? I made, then lost, a s***load of money.
I'm sure. You need pretty high-quality systems that can cost quite a bit of money, and really the best way to mine is to get into groups that don't necessarily guarantee that they'll split the proceeds with the folks who actually helped to mine it.
Basically, with the amount of coins available going down significantly in the next few years, you'd break even after three to four years and maybe make a couple of thousand after that until everything is mined.
And oh yeah, this doesn't include the hackers stealing the document-less cash you have in your account.
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sungam
Jun 12, 2014, 3:56 PM
Post #42 of 45
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Gmburns2000 wrote: sungam wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: USnavy wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. THat is because you spent all your time BitCoin mining on your iphone. I thought about doing that actually (not on a phone). Doesn't seem worth it. Are you sure? I made, then lost, a s***load of money. I'm sure. You need pretty high-quality systems that can cost quite a bit of money, and really the best way to mine is to get into groups that don't necessarily guarantee that they'll split the proceeds with the folks who actually helped to mine it. Basically, with the amount of coins available going down significantly in the next few years, you'd break even after three to four years and maybe make a couple of thousand after that until everything is mined. And oh yeah, this doesn't include the hackers stealing the document-less cash you have in your account.
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Gmburns2000
Jun 12, 2014, 6:44 PM
Post #43 of 45
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sungam wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: sungam wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: USnavy wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. THat is because you spent all your time BitCoin mining on your iphone. I thought about doing that actually (not on a phone). Doesn't seem worth it. Are you sure? I made, then lost, a s***load of money. I'm sure. You need pretty high-quality systems that can cost quite a bit of money, and really the best way to mine is to get into groups that don't necessarily guarantee that they'll split the proceeds with the folks who actually helped to mine it. Basically, with the amount of coins available going down significantly in the next few years, you'd break even after three to four years and maybe make a couple of thousand after that until everything is mined. And oh yeah, this doesn't include the hackers stealing the document-less cash you have in your account. You ignorance is stopping you from wasting literally hundreds of dollars here, Greg.
I'll stay ignorant. When you cash your fortune out, though, don't forget us when you do that trip to Norway.
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climbs4fun
Moderator
Aug 11, 2014, 11:00 PM
Post #44 of 45
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Registered: Mar 19, 2003
Posts: 9679
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tminus44 wrote: Jeff wrote: On the community/content side, I'll be spending more time reaching out to folks. This is where I felt I was really failing because of lack of time. Good luck!! and for the love of rock find more pictures to rotate than the same 5 we've seen on the homepage for the past year.
Those photos are added by users. All are welcome to add them
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climbs4fun
Moderator
Aug 11, 2014, 11:24 PM
Post #45 of 45
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Jeff wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: sungam wrote: Gmburns2000 wrote: sungam wrote: Jeff wrote: Plus I'm the first to admit that climbing with all y'all I'd feel a bit intimidated--I don't climb that often and my technique is so bad that my muscles are generally shot after one day of 5.9's... if I can even last that long. Let me tell you about the time GMBurns, Jmeizis and I took 3 days to do a 7 pitch grade III C1* tower. That was nothing less than C3. I saw stars on those quarter-inchers. At risk of derailling the thread here is a picture of one of the starbolts, in Fisher tower sandstone, with a badly cracked hangar. And that was just the first one! Yowzer. Don't think I'd be in a hurry on that climb either. In reply to: (a suggestion - find a way to change the code to get rid of the automatic dot on image tags when replying) Thanks for the heads up, that should be a very simple bit of code as long as I can find the correct file. Update: This is fixed now.
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